us 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
common things and showing the true charm of quiet domesticity.
Richter's _Contented Schoolmaster_ lacked much in grace of form, but
it revealed unguessed resources in the German language, it showed
democratic sympathies more genuine than Rousseau's, it gave the
promise of a new pedagogy and a fruitful esthetic; above all it bore
the unmistakable mint-mark of genius.

_Wuz_ won cordial recognition from the critics. With the general
public it was for the time overshadowed by the success of a more
ambitious effort, Richter's first novel, _The Invisible Lodge_. This
fanciful tale of an idealized freemasonry is a study of the effects in
after life of a secluded education. Though written in the year of the
storming of the Tuileries it shows the prose-poet of the
Fichtelgebirge as yet untouched by the political convulsions of the
time. The _Lodge_, though involved in plot and reaching an empty
conclusion, yet appealed very strongly to the Germans of 1793 by its
descriptions of nature and its sentimentalized emotion. It was truly
of its time. Men and especially women liked then, better than they do
now, to read how "the angel who loves the earth brought the most holy
lips of the pair together in an inextinguishable kiss, and a seraph
entered into their beating hearts and gave them the flames of a
supernal love." Of greater present interest than the heartbeats of
hero or heroine are the minor characters of the story, presenting
genially the various types of humor or studies from life made in the
"erotic academy" or in the families of Richter's pupils. The despotic
spendthrift, the Margrave of Bayreuth, has also his niche, or rather
pillory, in the story. Notable, too, is the tendency, later more
marked, to contrast the inconsiderate harshness of men with the
patient humility of women. Encouraged by Moritz, who declared the book
"better than Goethe," Richter for the first time signed his work "Jean
Paul." He was well paid for it and had no further serious financial
cares.

Before the _Lodge_ was out of press Jean Paul had begun _Hesperus, or
45 Dog-post-days_, which magnified the merits of the earlier novel but
also exaggerated its defects. Wanton eccentricity was given fuller
play, formlessness