There is nothing of the manuscript sort in Teufelsdrockh’s repositories that would suit you well; nothing at all in a completed state, except a long rigmarole dissertation (in a crabbed sardonic vein) about the early history of the Teutonic Kindred, wriggling itself along not in the best style through Proverb lore, and I know not what, till it end (if my memory serve) in a kind of Essay on the Minnesingers. It was written almost ten years ago, and never contented me well.  It formed part of a lucklessly projected History of German Literature, subsequent portions of which, the Nibelungen and Reinecke Fox, you have already printed.  The unfortunate “Cabinet Library Editor,” or whatever his title was, broke down; and I let him off,—­without paying me; and this alone remains of the misventure; a thing not fit for you, nor indeed at bottom for anybody, though I have never burnt it yet.  My other Manuscripts are scratchings and scrawlings;—­children’s infant souls weeping because they never could be born, but were left there whimpering in limine primo!

On this side, therefore, is no help.  Nevertheless, it seems to me, otherwise there is. Varnhagen may be printed I think without offence, since there is need of it:  if that will make up your fourth volume to a due size, why not?  It is the last faint murmur one gives in Periodical Literature, and may indicate the approach of silence and slumber.  I know no errors of the Press in Varnhagen: there is one thing about Jean Paul F. Richter’s want of humor in his speech, which somehow I could like to have the opportunity of uttering a word on, though what word I see not very well.  My notion is partly that V. overstates the thing, taking a Berlin propos de salon for a scientifically accurate record; and partly farther that the defect (if any) was creditable to Jean Paul, indicating that he talked from the abundance of the heart, not burning himself off in miserable perpetual sputter like a Town-wit, but speaking what he had to say, were it dull, were it not dull,—­for his own satisfaction first of all!  If you in a line or two could express at the right point something of that sort, it were well; yet on the whole, if not, then is almost no matter.  Let the whole stand then as the commencement of slumber and stertorous breathing!

Varnhagen himself will not bring up your fourth volume to the right size; hardly beyond 380 pages, I should think; yet what more can be done?  Do you remember Fraser’s Magazine for October, 1832, and a Translation there, with Notes, of a thing called Goethe’s Mahrchen?  It is by me; I regard it as a most remarkable piece, well worthy of perusal, especially by all readers of mine.  The printing of your third volume will of course be finished before this letter arrive; nevertheless I have a plan:  that you (as might be done, I suppose, by cancelling