Maria Wuz and Lorenz Stark. English Prints of Two German
Originals. By F. and R. Story. (Longmans.) 1881.—No task in prose translation could be much harder than to give an idiomatic and intelligible version of Jean Paul, with that abrupt and rapid fancy of his, for which no combination was too elaborate, no allusion too remote, no digression too sudden or too long. The first part of this dainty little volume is a highly successful attempt to defy these difficulties. Maria Wuz, "the merry-hearted Dominie " of Auenthal, is among the earliest and simplest of Richter's romances ; a charming little idyl, of less than fifty pages, which ought to meet with a warm welcome from English readers who appreciate Sorter, and who, if justly weary of the imitators of Carlyle, may still be able to relish his more genial and tender literary progenitor. The second tale, by Engel, is an interesting picture of bourgeois life in the last century:
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