genuine humour, the humour of Cervantes and Sterne, the product not of Contempt but of Love, not of superficial distortion of natural forms, but of deep though playful sympathy with all forms of Nature. It springs not less from the heart than from the head; its result is not laughter, but something far kindlier and better; as it were, the balm which a generous spirit pours over the wounds of life, and which none but a generous spirit can give forth. Such humour is compatible with tenderest and sublimest feelings, or rather, it is incompatible with the want of them. In Richter, accordingly, we find a true sensibility; a softness, sometimes a simple humble pathos, which works its way into every heart. Some slight incident is carelessly thrown before us: we smile at it perhaps, but with a smile more sad than tears; and the unpretending passage in its meagre brevity sinks deeper into the soul than sentimental volumes.
It is on the strength of this and its accompanying endowments that his main success as an artist depends. His favourite characters have always a dash of the ridiculous in their circumstances or their composition, perhaps in both: they are often men of no account; vain, poor, ignorant, feeble; and we scarcely know how it is that we love them; for the author all along has been laughing no less heartily than we at their ineptitudes; yet so it is, his Fibel, his Fixlein, his Siebenkas, even his Schmelzle, insinuate themselves into our affections; and their ultimate place is closer to our hearts than that of many more splendid heroes. This is the test of true humour; no wit, no sarcasm, no knowledge will suffice; not talent but genius will accomplish the result. It is in studying these characters that we first convince ourselves of Richter's claim to the title of a poet, of a true creator. For with all his wild vagueness, this highest intellectual honour cannot be refused him. The figures and scenes which he lays before us, distorted, entangled, indescribable as they seem, have a true poetic existence; for we not only hear of them, but we see them, afar off, by the wondrous light,
