I do not deny that Hoffmann did smoke a great deal, that he did occasionally get fuddled on German beer or Rhine wine, and that he had frequent attacks of fever, but that sort of thing happens to everybody and has very little to do with his talent. It is desirable to clear up the mind of the public, once for all, on the point of these supposed means of exciting inspiration. Neither wine nor tobacco imparts genius; a great man when drunk lurches from side to side just like anybody else, and because one tumbles into the gutter it does not follow that one will be exalted to the skies. I do not believe that any man ever wrote decently after parting with his brains and his reason, and I fancy that the wildest and most vehement tirades have been composed in the company of a carafe of water.

1

The cause of Hoffmann's success lies unquestionably in a direction where no one would think of looking for it. It lies in the strong and true feeling for nature which shows so vividly in his most unexplainable compositions.

Hoffmann, in truth, is among writers one of the quickest to seize the character of things and to impart the appearance of reality to the most unlikely creations. At once a painter, a poet, and a musician, he notes

everything under a triple aspect, that of sounds, colours, and feelings. He takes account of external forms with wondrous clearness and accuracy. His touch is sharp

and sympathetic; he has the knack of drawing silhouettes, and sportively cuts out innumerable mysterious and striking profiles which it is impossible not to remember and which give the impression of having been seen before.

His method of working is very logical, and he does not, as might be supposed, ramble at haphazard through the realms of fancy.

He begins his tale. There is seen a German interior; a deal floor carefully holy stoned, whitewashed walls, windows framed in with hop-vine, a piano in one corner, a tea-table in the centre; the plainest and simplest interior possible. Suddenly, however, one of the piano strings snaps untouched with a sound like the moan of a woman, and the sound long vibrates in the resonant case. The reader's peace of mind is forthwith broken and he mistrusts the apparently calm and honest interior. Hoffmann may affirm as much

as he pleases that the string is really nothing else than a string drawn too tight that has snapped as strings snap every day; the reader refuses to be convinced.

Meanwhile the water is heating; the kettle begins to bubble and hiss; Hoffmann, who is getting uneasy himself, listens so intently and so seriously to the humming of the coffee-pot that the reader remarks to himself with terror that there is something about it which is unnatural, and becomes expectant of an extraordinary happening. There enters a maiden, fair and lovely, dressed in white, a flower in her hair, or an old Aulic Councillor, in iron-gray coat, chiné stockings, imitation shoe-buckles, and his hair powdered. On the whole he has a jolly, entertaining face, yet the reader shudders with terror just as if he saw Lady Macbeth appear with her lamp in her hand, or Hamlet's father's ghost glide in. On looking closer at the maiden, he discovers a suspicious green tinge in her eyes; the brilliant carmine of her lips does not strike him as consonant with the waxen pallor of her neck and hands, and just when she thinks she is not noticed a slender lizard's tail is seen quivering in the corner of her mouth. The old Councillor himself makes certain undefinable ironical faces; the reader mistrusts his apparent good-naturedness, begins to entertain the most alarming conjectures concerning his nocturnal occupations, and while the worthy man is deep in the

reading of Puffendorf or Grotius, suspects him of seeking to penetrate into the mysterious secrets of the Cabala and to decipher the much scrawled pages of a devil's horn-book. From that moment suffocating terror oppresses the reader, and he ceases to breathe freely until the end of the tale has been reached. The farther the tale diverges from the ordinary course of things, the more minutely are the objects described, and the accumulation of slight probable circumstances serves to mask the impossibility of the main portion. Hoffmann is endowed with a marvellous gift of observation, especially where ridiculous physical peculiarities are concerned; he notes remarkably well the comical and laughable side of forms, and in this he is singularly like Jacques Callot, and especially like Goya, a Spanish caricaturist who is too little known, and whose works, at once comical and terrible, produce the same effects as the tales of the German story-teller.

In art an untrue thing may be quite true, and a true one quite untrue; it all depends on the execution. Scribe's plays are more untrue than Hoffmann's tales, and there are few books that, artistically speaking, have subjects more readily admissible than "The Entail" and "The Cremona Violin." Then one is agreeably

HOFFMANN'S TALES

surprised to come upon pages full of feeling, passages that sparkle with wit and taste, dissertations upon the arts, and an amount of fun and a sense of humour that one does not expect to meet with in a hypochondriacal German who believes in the devil, and also, a matter of importance to French readers, the node is skilfully involved and solved; there are catastrophes and events, in a word all that constitutes interest, in the ideal and the material meaning of the word.

Further, Hoffmann's use of the marvellous is not quite analogous to the use of it in fairy tales; he always keeps in touch with the world of reality, and rarely does one come across a palace of carbuncles with diamond turrets in his works, while he makes no use whatever of the wands and talismans of "The Thousand and One Nights."

The supernatural elements

recourse are occult sym

to which he commonly has pathy and antipathy, curious forms of mania, visions, magnetism, and the mysterious and malignant influence of a vaguely indicated principle of evil. It is the positive and plausible side of the fantastic; and in truth Hoffmann's tales should be called tales of caprice or fancy rather than fantastic tales. It follows that the dreamier and cloudier Germans greatly prefer Novalis to him,