The best _wedded_ love is not what the _maidenly_ was; and so, too, is there in inspiration and delineation a maiden muse. Ah, all first things in poesy, as in life, whatever else may be wanting to them, are so innocent and good; and all _blossoms_ come so _pure-white_ into the world, in which by and by,--as Goethe says,[2] even of material colors, "The sun tolerates no white." Therefore shall all the ardent words of my inspiration for Emanuel's dying and Victor's loving and weeping, and for Clotilda's sorrow and silence, stand evermore in Hesperus uncooled and unchanged. Even the Now shall take nothing from the Once. For although during these twenty-five years I have been made, by some imitations and echoes of the book, actually sick of myself, nevertheless I overcome the disgust of this self-surfeit by the hope that the youth who wrote will again, by and by, find young men and young women to read him, and that hereafter, even for older readers, more will survive of the thing imitated than of the imitations. And so, then, may this Evening Star--which was once the morning star of my whole soul--run its _third_ circuit around the reading world in the fuller light of a better position toward the sun and the earth! JEAN PAUL FR. RICHTER. Baireuth, January 1, 1819. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. I have as yet completed nothing of this Preface beyond a tolerable sketch, which shall here be given to the leader unadorned. I may perhaps, by the gift of this sketch, also raise the curtain which continues to hang down before my literary workshop, and which hides from posterity how I labor therein as my own serving brother and as master of the Scottish chair. A plan is with me, however, no outline of a sermon in Hamburg, which the head pastor gives out on Saturday and fills out on Sunday. It is no automaton, no lay figure, no canon, after which I work; it is no skeleton for future flesh, but a plan is a leaf or sheet on which I make myself more comfortable and move more at ease, while I shake out upon it my whole brain-tree, in order afterwards to pick over and plant the windfalls, and cover--the paper with organic globules and layers of ph[oe]nix ashes, that whole brilliant pheasantries may rise out of it. In such a sketch I keep the most unlike and antagonistic things apart by mere dashes. In such sketches I address myself, and _thou_ myself like a Quaker, and order myself about a great deal; nay, I frequently introduce therein conceits which I do not have printed at all, either because no connection can be contrived for them, or because they are of themselves good for nothing. And now it will be time that I should really present the reader such a sketch, which happens to be this time the plan of the present Preface. It is headed:-- ARCHITECTURAL PLAN AND BUILDING MATERIAL FOR THE PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION OF HESPERUS.