Schopenhauer

“I am quite glad to experience the birth of my last child through which I see my mission to the world completed,” Schopenhauer told Frauenstädt. “Actually, I now feel a heavy burden that I have borne and felt since my twenty-fourth year to have been lifted. No one can imagine what that means.” Schopenhauer's last child did not fall stillborn from the press like its earlier siblings.

Parerga and Paralipomena drew a readership. The arch-evangelists did their part. Dorguth, Frauenstädt, and Kilzer wrote flattering pieces in praise of their master. Anonymous and generally positive reviews appeared in the Hamburg-based Seasons [Jahreszeiten, December 1851], the Literary Central Newspaper for Germany [Litterarisches Centralblatt für Deutschland, January 1852], and on 1 April 1852, Schopenhauer received his first review outside of Germany, when a three-page criticism appeared in the British The Westminster Review – it was no April Fool's joke. In a short year, the unknown British critic would play a decisive role in the reception of Schopenhauer's thought. Schopenhauer was thrilled by the review in Seasons: “It is laudatory throughout, almost enthusiastic, and very well composed…The time of barking dogs and tub-thumpers is past.” He was even amused when a critic referred to him as “deceased.”