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say that the undertaker, or the man of honour who kept the temple, had hardly printed from A—Aaaron to Alendroth—and only got in his first quoins, before he broke down under the weight of copy or biography sent in; others say that the high and well-wise Senate, moved by excess of modesty, prevented the project altogether, since they requested this architect of his own temple of honour to be out of Hamburg with all his virtues within four-and-twenty hours. Anyhow, from some cause or other, the work was never completed; and as I have an inborn yearning to do something great in this world, and have ever striven after the impossible, therefore I have revived this vast project, and will myself manufacture a great temple of honour to Hamburg, an immortal and colossal book, in which I will describe without exception all its inhabitants—wherein shall appear noble traits of secret charity which were never mentioned in a newspaper, traits of such grandeur that nobody will believe a word of them, to be preceded by a magnificent portrait of myself, as I appear when I sit in the Jungfernstieg before the Swiss Pavilion, and muse over the magnificence of Hamburg. This will be the vignette of my immortal work.

 

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