The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen | Page 6

Raspe's absolute command of the two languages
encouraged him to publish two moderately good prose-translations, one
of Lessing's "Nathan the Wise," and the other of Zachariae's
Mock-heroic, "Tabby in Elysium." The erratic character of the
punctuation may be said, with perfect impartiality, to be the only
distinguishing feature of the style of the original edition of
"Munchausen."
Curious as is this long history of literary misappropriation, the
chequered career of the rightful author, Rudolph Erich Raspe, offers a
chapter in biography which has quite as many points of singularity.
Born in Hanover in 1737, Raspe studied at the Universities of
Göttingen and Leipsic. He is stated also to have rendered some
assistance to a young nobleman in sowing his wild oats, a sequel to his
university course which may possibly help to explain his subsequent
aberrations. The connection cannot have lasted long, as in 1762, having
already obtained reputation as a student of natural history and
antiquities, he obtained a post as one of the clerks in the University
Library at Hanover.
No later than the following year contributions written in elegant Latin
are to be found attached to his name in the Leipsic /Nova Acta
Eruditorum/. In 1764 he alluded gracefully to the connection between
Hanover and England in a piece upon the birthday of Queen Charlotte,
and having been promoted secretary of the University Library at
Göttingen, the young savant commenced a translation of Leibniz's
philosophical works which was issued in Latin and French after the
original MSS. in the Royal Library at Hanover, with a preface by
Raspe's old college friend Kästner (Göttingen, 1765). At once a courtier,
an antiquary, and a philosopher, Raspe next sought to display his
vocation for polite letters, by publishing an ambitious allegorical poem
of the age of chivalry, entitled "Hermin and Gunilde," which was not
only exceedingly well reviewed, but received the honour of a parody
entitled "Harlequin and Columbine." He also wrote translations of
several of the poems of Ossian, and a disquisition upon their

genuineness; and then with better inspiration he wrote a considerable
treatise on "Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry," with metrical
translations, being thus the first to call the attention of Germany to
these admirable poems, which were afterwards so successfully
ransacked by Bürger, Herder, and other early German romanticists.
In 1767 Raspe was again advanced by being appointed Professor at the
Collegium Carolinum in Cassel, and keeper of the landgrave of Hesse's
rich and curious collection of antique gems and medals. He was shortly
afterwards appointed Librarian in the same city, and in 1771 he married.
He continued writing on natural history, mineralogy, and archæology,
and in 1769 a paper in the 59th volume of the Philosophical
Transactions, on the bones and teeth of elephants and other animals
found in North America and various boreal regions of the world,
procured his election as an honorary member of the Royal Society of
London. His conclusion in this paper that large elephants or mammoths
must have previously existed in boreal regions has, of course, been
abundantly justified by later investigations. When it is added that Raspe
during this part of his life also wrote papers on lithography and upon
musical instruments, and translated Algarotti's Treatise on
"Architecture, Painting, and Opera Music," enough will have been said
to make manifest his very remarkable and somewhat prolix versatility.
In 1773 he made a tour in Westphalia in quest of MSS., and on his
return, by way of completing his education, he turned journalist, and
commenced a periodical called the /Cassel Spectator/, with Mauvillon
as his co-editor. In 1775 he was travelling in Italy on a commission to
collect articles of vertu for the landgrave, and it was apparently soon
after his return that he began appropriating to his own use valuable
coins abstracted from the cabinets entrusted to his care. He had no
difficulty in finding a market for the antiques which he wished to
dispose of, and which, it has been charitably suggested, he had every
intention of replacing whenever opportunity should serve. His
consequent procedure was, it is true, scarcely that of a hardened
criminal. Having obtained the permission of the landgrave to visit
Berlin, he sent the keys of his cabinet back to the authorities at
Cassel--and disappeared. His thefts, to the amount of two thousand
rixdollars, were promptly discovered, and advertisements were issued
for the arrest of the Councillor Raspe, described without suspicion of

flattery as a long-faced man, with small eyes, crooked nose, red hair
under a stumpy periwig, and a jerky gait. The necessities that prompted
him to commit a felony are possibly indicated by the addition that he
usually appeared in a scarlet dress embroidered with gold, but
sometimes in black, blue, or grey clothes. He was seized when he had
got no farther than