observe as he was keen to sympathize and permitted himself an
astonishing variety of quickly changing and even simultaneous
experiments, both at Hof and later in the aristocratic circles that
were presently to open to him. In his theory, which finds fullest
expression in _Hesperus_, love was to be wholly platonic. If the first
kiss did not end it, the second surely would. "I do not seek," he
says, "the fairest face but the fairest heart. I can overlook all
spots on that, but none on this." "He does not love who _sees_ his
beloved, but he who _thinks_ her." That is the theory. The practice
was a little different. It shows Richter at Hof exchanging fine-spun
sentiments on God, immortality and soul-affinity with some half dozen
young women to the perturbation of their spirits, in a transcendental
atmosphere of sentiment, arousing but never fulfilling the expectation
of a formal betrothal. That Jean Paul was capable of inspiring love of
the common sort is abundantly attested by his correspondence. Perhaps
no man ever had so many women of education and social position "throw
themselves" at him; but that he was capable of returning such love in
kind does not appear from acts or letters at this time, or, save
perhaps for the first years of his married life, at any later period.

The immediate effect of the bright hours at Hof on Richter as a writer
was wholly beneficent. _Mr. Florian Fülbel's Journey_ and _Bailiff
Josuah Freudel's Complaint Bible_ show a new geniality in the
personification of amusing foibles. And with these was a real little
masterpiece, _Life of the Contented Schoolmaster Maria Wuz_, which
alone, said the Berlin critic Moritz, might suffice to make its author
immortal. In this delicious pedagogical idyl, written in December,
1790, the humor is sound, healthy, thoroughly German and
characteristic of Richter at his best. It seems as though one of the
great Dutch painters were guiding the pen, revealing the beauty of