George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[112] treatises, pamphlets, etc., published during this period in Germany, making twelve octavo volumes. We called, too, on Prof. Knapp, the oldest professor in this University, and Director of the Theological Seminary. He is very old. He is also at the head of the missionary societies in this quarter of Germany, and has recently written for one of their publications a short but interesting history of missions. As a literary man, his merit is his Latin, which he is supposed to write and speak as well as almost any man of his time. . . . .

I dined with Prof. Sprengel. The dinner was poor,—such an one, perhaps, as few German professors would have been humble enough to have asked a stranger to; but, what I have not found before in a single instance, he made no apologies. The consequence was, that I was well contented, and had leisure to admire the extent of his literary knowledge, which, without the least show, was gradually opened to me.

After dinner he carried me to his neighbor, La Fontaine's, author of a great number of romances, one of which, ‘The Village Curate,’ has been republished in America. He is sixty or sixty-five, lives very pleasantly just outside the town, on the beautiful banks of the Saal. His mode of life is rather curious. He is in the church, but his place is merely nominal, and to support himself in living as he likes he writes. This he does not find pleasant, and therefore writes no more than is necessary. Twice in the year he labors night and day, produces a romance, sells it to the booksellers, and from the profits is able to have for the remaining five months the comforts and luxuries he desires. I found him with Prof. Niemeyer; we were soon joined by Prof. Ersch, Prof. Jakobs, etc. The old gentleman's gay volubility, which indicated his literary fertility, kept everybody alive about him, and we passed two hours in a rational kind of happiness with him. . . . .

In the evening we made a visit to old Hofrath Schurtz, editor of Aeschylus, and conductor, for I know not how many years, of the Allgemeine Literatur Zeitung. He was formerly professor at Jena; he is now above seventy years old, but possesses a vivacity remarkable even in a German man of letters. In good-nature he is said to surpass all his contemporaries. On this account, as Hermann told us, Wolf could never get along with him, for if he attacked Schurtz in conversation for any opinion whatever, Schurtz would always turn it off with a joke, and say nobody could be more willing to give up an opinion or a criticism than himself, for he advanced them only as specimens, and was ready to abandon them to their fate. This is true,