Once again my warmest thanks for your kindly reception and 
for the beautiful souvenir from Munster ”°! I read it through in 
Osnabrück at one sitting with great enjoyment, and I envy the 
poet* for her original and tender images of nature, the many 
hidden splendours, the kinship with Byron, which you also, if I am 
not mistaken, stressed in your review.” It is a shame that these 
poems should have come and gone without making any impres- 
sion; but what does this depth of feeling mean to the shallow 
reading public of our days? At the first opportunity I shall 
publicly do justice to the book.”— Where is there a more beautiful 
ballad of its kind than Der Graf von Thal? 

Now concerning our Shelley-plan,? I had a talk with 
Schtinemann straight away yesterday; at the mention of the fee 
of ten talers he shrank back as if struck by lightning and said at 
once he could not take it on. He is just back from the Fair where 
he himself inspected his masses of unsold books of every kind, 
pietistic novels, descriptions from Belgium, Spanish readers and 
other rubbish; in addition, he was foolish enough to make 
contracts in Leipzig for works on theology and on world and 
literary history at a low fee, so that he has his hands full. These 
stupid bookseller people believe they risk less on a commentary on 
the epistles of John, which costs perhaps two talers in fees and is 
badly produced, and will perhaps be bought by 20 students at 
most, than on Shelley, for which production and fees may cost 

3 Annette Elisabeth Freiin von Droste-Hülsh6off.— Ed. 
© See this volume, p. 101.— Ed. 

To Levin Schiicking, June 18, 1840 495 

relatively three times as much, but in which the whole nation will 
take an interest. Just now I was with Schtinemann again to hear 
from his own mouth the final statement that on these conditions 
he cannot take it on; one sheet of poems, he said, contains only a 
quarter as much as a sheet of prose, so that the fee for a sheet 
would really come to 40 talers. I told him it was not child’s play to 
translate Shelley, and if he did not want it then he should leave it 
alone, for heaven’s sake; and that by the way he was standing in 
his own light. He: If only we would first give him a small 
specimen, he would print it, and then one could see what could be 
done. I: Schucking and Puttmann are not the people to agree to 
give specimens, and what specimens do for other people, their 
names do for them. Will you or won’t you? He: Not on these 
conditions. — Muy bien; to beg was beneath our dignity, so I 
left.—I am now of the opinion that this failure should by no 
means discourage us; if one will not do it, another will. Puttmann, 
who translated the first canto of Queen Mab, has sent it to 
Engelmann in Leipzig, and if he accepts, it will be easy to get him 
to take on the whole thing. Otherwise Hammerich in Altona and 
Krabbe in Stuttgart would perhaps be the ones we should 
approach first. But just now, immediately after the Easter Fair, is 
a very unfavourable moment for making our offers. If it were 
January I am sure Schtinemann would have grabbed it with both 
hands. I want to go to him once more and ask him for a joke what 
kind of conditions he can offer us. 

Friend Schtinemann evaded my visits by flight; he is on an 
outing to the country. He would probably have offered five talers 
a sheet and asked, as he always loves to do, for a little specimen of 
three to four sheets in advance. The whole thing is the fault of 
none other than the pietist Wilh. Elias of Halle, on whose novel 
Glauben und Wissen, published by Schinemann, the latter loses 
about 2,000 talers. If I catch the fellow Ill challenge him to 
scimitars. 

What do you say to all this? I shall write to Puttmann straight 
away today. I think it is too good a project simply to drop it. Any 
bookseller with a smattering of education (Schünemann is a 
blockhead) will take on the publication with pleasure. 

I am eagerly looking forward to hearing your opinion on the 
matter, and in the meantime commend myself to your friendly 
goodwill. 

Respectfully, 
Friedrich Engels 

What do you say to Gutzkow’s challenge to the Hallische 
Jahrbiicher in the Telegraph? Gutzkow seems to want to renew 
Menzel’s and Müllner’s critical terrorism; let him take care that the 
younger ones do not outgrow him!