Outlines of German Literature - The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia (2023)

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

{{Template}}Outlines of German Literature (1873) is a book on German literature by Joseph Gostwick and Robert Harrison.

Full text

OUTLINESOFGERMAN LITERATUREBYJOSEPH GOSTWICKAUTHOR OF A HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 'ANDROBERT HARRISONLIBRARIAX OP TIE LONDON LIBRARY

PREFACE

THESE OUTLINES are designed to supply a want whichthe wide- spreading study of the German language and itsliterature has created . Though this study has rapidly advanced in England during recent years, it has been mostlyconfined to the writings of modern authors, and manyreaders may still ask for a book giving a general view ofthe literature of the German People from the earliest tothe latest times. These Outlines extend from the year 380A.D. to 1870.More than thirty years have passed since Mr. CARLYLEwrote -Germany: is no longer to any person that vacantland of gray vapour and chimeras which it was to most Englishmen , not many years ago. One may hope that, as readers of German have increased a hundred -fold , somepartial intelligence of Germany, some interest in things German, may have increased in a proportionably higherratio . If these words were true in 1838, with how muchgreater force may they be applied to the present time!The German language is now stadied in all our best schools and colleges, as well as at the universities, and isone of the subjects given by examiners to candidates for the Civil Service. Where a knowledge of German is rated so high ,' says Prof. Max MÜLLER, “ it is but fair that the examiners should insist upon something more than avi PREFACE.conversational knowledge of the language . ... Candi.dates may fairly be required to know something of theHistory of German Literature.'It may be asked, why have we not translated one of thebest of many German books on the History of GermanLiterature? The reply is, that, in some instances, theyare too extensive; in others they are rather critical thannarrative or descriptive, and are designed for readers who.already have some considerable knowledge of the subject.The work now offered to English readers is moderately compendious, and while many critical remarks may be found inits pages, its general character is descriptive. As far asis possible, writers of various schools and of several periods are here allowed to speak for themselves. In several ofthe quotations given, the form of abridged translation isused, in order to gain more breadth of outline. With theexception of two or three stanzas (from hymns noticed inChapter XI.), no translations, either in prose or verse, havebeen borrowed . The translations from minor poets, whichmay seem numerous, are intended to give a fair representa tion of German poets of the second class - writers whosegenius is truly poetic, though not comprehensive, and who have especially excelled in their lyrical ballads.It is not long since a notion prevailed, that a review ofpoetical literature, with a few brief notices of history andbiography, might be accepted as the history of a nationalliterature. But theology and philosophy are, though notimmediately yet closely, united with general culture, andwe have, therefore, made no attempt to evade the difficultyattending the treatment of these subjects.Our work would indeed have been lighter if we could have declined the task of giving an account of recentGerman literature - especially its theology and philosophy.PREFACE . yiiIn these sections we have viewed as useless the observanceof reticence respecting the negations of Rationalism . Thefact is, that they are already well known in England, asthey were, indeed, more than a hundred years ago. Innegative criticism , as applied to both theology and philo sophy, German writers have been ifidustrious - as in allother departments — but they bave said nothing as negativeas the doctrine to be found in Hume's works, writtenbefore 1760. What is now called rationalism was commonin England before that date, though it is sometimes spokenof as the solo result of German philosophy . *In Modern German Literature all the parties engaged inpolemic theology, and in the present controversy of free dom against external authority, are fairly and very stronglyrepresented . As far as our limits would allow , we have endeavoured to let all — Catholics, Mystics, Lutherans,Pietists and Rationalists - speak for themselves.The assertion, that everything that has been calledGerman Philosophy is ' Atheistic ,' is nothing less than anuntruth, and we have endeavoured to make this clear.' It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many per sons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment; and nothing remained , but to set it up as apriucipal subject of mirth and ridiculo , as it were, by way of reprisals,for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world . This was written in 1736 by Joseph BUTLER, author of the well-known bookon The Analogy of Religion.' The passage is quoted here to correct the false notion that everything known as rationalism has come from Germany, and was invented there by the philosophers. On the contrary, rationalism , under the name of Deism, was first imported from England into Germany before the middle of the eighteenth century.For ample proofs of this assertion, see LECKLEN’s ‘ History of English Deism . The only new feature we can find in the materialism now fashionable in Germany is Mr. Darwin's theory of development.viii PREFACE .The motive is, no doubt, very good, but, nevertheless, the effect is depressing, when young students are told thatphilosophers — however sincere and however profoundmust always end in Atheism or Pantheism , if they thinkof more than finite and perishable things. The tendencyof this kind of warning may go further than the monitor'sgood intention, and may lead to frivolity, as easily as to anabject and blind submission to authority. It is bad toteach young men to look down on the lowliest of theirfellow - creatures, and it must be worse when they aretaught to look with contempt on their superiors. Weprefer to the narrow and controversial mind, now tooprevalent in some departments of science and literature,the charity of LEIBNITZ, who could find some truth everywhere.The literature of the time 1830–70 has not been treatedwith the freedom of criticism asserted with regard to preceding periods. The reasons for reserve are obvious. Inour study of the literature of our own age, we have no aidfrom criticism confirmed by the verdict of time. Many ofthe writers named in our later chapters are still living,and their reputations have still to be tested. For theaccount here given of recent literature, no respect isclaimed more than what is due to a careful statement offacts.LONDON LIBRARY, 12 ST. JAMES'S SQUARE:March 25, 1873.INCONTENTS.FIRST PERIOD. 380-1150.CHAPTER I.PAGBIntroductory -- High and Low German - Gothic - Old High German -Middle High German - New High German - Characteristics of German Literature - The Seven Periods of its HistoryUlflas Kero - Otfried - Notker. 1SECOND PERIOD. 1150-1350.14CHAPTER II.The Times of the Hohenstaufens Chivalry- The CrusadesNational Legends, the · Nibelungenlied ' and ' Gudrun' East Gothic and Longobard LegendsCHAPTER III.Romances of Chivalry and other Narrativo Poems:—Parzival,'• Tristan ,' • Dor arnie Heinrich ' - Carlovingian, Antique, and Monastic Legends, Popular Stories — Reynard the Fox 'CHAPTER IV.Lyric and Didactic Verse - The Minnesingers — Prose662545THIRD PERIOD. 1350-1525 .--CHAPTER V.The later Middle Ages -- Towns –Guilds - The Master Singers -Narmtire and Lyrical Verse--The Drama - Prose Fiction . 66CHAPTER VI.Satires - Comic Stories-Brandt- Geiler - Murner 79X CONTENTS.CHAPTER VII.PAGE6 Chronicles of Towns - Didactic Prose — The Mystics — Tauler - Der Franckforter ' .89FOURTH PERIOD. 1525-1625.CHAPTER VIII.Characteristics of the Time - Ulrich von Hutten - Luther 96CHAPTER IX .Theologians:-Berthold--Zwingli —Mathesius - Arndt -- Agricola - Franck -Böhme -- Historians: Turmair - AnshelmTschudi --Kessler -Bullinger - Lehmann -Theobald - Art and Science:-Dürer -- Paracelsus 107--CHAPTER X.Lutheran Hymns -Hans Sachs — Valentin Andreä - Ringwaldt- Waldis — Alberus - Rollenhagen - Spangenberg —Fischart The Drama -- Manuel - Rebhuhn — The English Comedians 'Heinrich Julius -- Faust - Weidmann - Wickram 120· FIFTH PERIOD. 1625-1725.CHAPTER XI.The Times Opitz and his School – Lutheran and Pietistic Hymns -Secular Lyrical Poetry - Didactic and Satirical Verse -The Drama - Popular Songs and Ballads . 136CHAPTER XII.Prose Fiction -History - Tho Thirty Years' War— Travels -Lettors - Didactic Prose - Pietism - Leibnitz - Wolf . 152SIXTH PERIOD. 1725-70.CHAPTER XIII.Characteristics of the Time - Literary Unions—The Swiss - LeipzigControversy - Gottsched— Bodmer - Breitinger --- The Fable Writers — Haller - Hagedorn — The Saxon School — Gleim and his Friends-- Hymn-Writers--Prose- Fiction 167CHAPTER XIV .Frederick II. of Prussia - Historians -Popular PhilosophorsRationalists - Writers on Æsthetics - Winckelmann . 181-CONTENTS.xiCHAPTER XV .Klopstock - Lessing - WielandPAGE195SEVENTH PERIOD. 1770-1830.66.CHAPTER XVI.The Time of Goethe's Youth - Religion -- Politics and Literature -Sturm und Drang ' - Hamann - Jacobi - Herder 221CHAPTER XVII.Götz von Berlichingen ' - Werther's Leiden?—TheMen of ' Sturm und Drang ' - The Hainbund - Prose Writers - Kant 237CHAPTER XVIII,• Egmont' - ' Iphigenia ' - Tasso ' - Hermann and Dorothea ' 252CHAPTER XIX .Goethe's Lyrical and Occasional Poems - Songs - Ballads -- Refer ences to Autobiography -Odes -Elegios - Epigrams and other Didactic Poems . 270- -.CHAPTER XX .6

• Faust'

283CHAPTER XXI.Schiller 3006OHAPTER XXII.Schiller's Writings: - The Robbers' — Fiesco ' . • Intrigue andLore'- Don Carlos '-Historical Studies - Æsthetics - Ballads Lyrical Poems- Pooms on the History of Culturom Later Dramas: Wallenstein '- Maria Stuart'The Maidof Orleans'- The Bride of Messina ' - Wilhelm Tell ' 316CHAPTER XXII.Schiller's Cotemporaries:—Jean Paul - Minor Poets -- Prose Fiction -Low Literature the Drama 338CHAPTER XXIV.The Romantic Schoo . 364.CHAPTER XXV.The Romantic School ( continued )388CHAPTER XXVI.The War of Liberation ( 1812–15)-Patriotic Statesmon - Philo sophers --- Publiçists --- Poets- The Snabian School of Poetry . 421xii CONTENTS .CHAPTER XXVII .Goethe's latest Works - Rückert - Platen - Hoine PAGB440CHAPTER XXVIII,( 1800-30 .)July 1830 — Progress — Retrospect of 1800-30 — Fichte Schelling -Hegel — The Hegelian Method -Logic -Nature -- Mind Philosophy of History - Freedom –Religion —Morals and Politics -- Æsthetics . 459CHAPTER XXIX .Philosophical Controversies - Herbart - Schopenhauer - BaaderThe Hegelian School - Materialism 485CHAPTER XXX.( 1830-70 .)Young Germany , Political Poetry , Austrian Poetry . 503CHAPTER XXXI.Poems: -Epic - Dramatic -Lyrical -- Hymns — The Poetry of Domestic Life . · 517CHAPTER XXXII.Recent Prose- Fiction: - Village Stories – Realistic RomanceTales of Travel and Adventure - Inane Fiction - Romanceswith Social Tendencies - Historical Romances - Novels andShort Stories - Domestic Stories . 529CHAPTER XXXIII.( 1770-1870. )Special Literatures: --The Physical Sciences - Geography - Voyages and Travels - Biography - History - National Economy and Social Science Education - Philology, Literary History. and Æsthetics 544CHAPTER XXXIV .Ecclesiastical History — Theology and Religion 563CHAPTER XXXV.The Threo chief: Divisions of German Literature - The Seven Periods and the Present Time- Modern Realism - Materialism -Controversy - Poetry and Reality– Conciliation- Schillerand Princo Albert - Tho Literary Union of Germany, Eng.land, and America . 576OUTLINESOFGERMAN LITERATURE .CHAPTER I.INTRODUCTORY - HGI AND LOW GERMAN - GOTHIC -- OLD HIGH GERMAN - MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN - NEW HIGH GERMAN - CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN LITERATURE -- TUL SEVEN PERIODS OF ITSHISTORI — THE FIRST PERIOD: ULFILAS - KERO - OTFRIED -- NOTKER.6>THE PEOPLE who now occupy the grenter part of Central Europe and, in race and language, form onenation, have since the twelfthcentury called themselves die Deutschen .' The name German itself not German, but, like • Teuton,' borrowed from Latin - is sometimes employed to include not only die Deutschen ' of Central Europe, but also, and with regard to their common origin , the people of Holland, the English , and the Scandinavians. As com monly used in England, however, the word " German ’ includes only the people whose literature belongs to the High German language.Down to the time of the Reformation Low GERMAN was thewritten language of the districts bounded on the north by the Baltic and the North Sea, and on the south by a line drawn from Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) through Bonn, Cassel and Dessau to Thorn on the Vistula. One of the more obvious distinctions ofHigh and Low German is found in the consonants, which, in thelatter, mostly resemble the English. Thus we have in Low German, t, k, and p used respectively instead of the High German 8, ch, and f. Low German, with which English, the languageB2 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.spoken in Holland, and the Scandinavian languages are all closelyconnected, declined rapidly in its literature soon after the Reformation .High GERMAN, in the course of time, from the sixth century tothe present, has passed through changes so extensive as to divideit into three forms— Old, Middle, and New High German — whichmay be practically styled three distinct languages. The first pre vailed in literature from the sixth century to the eleventh; thesecond from the Crusades to the Reformation; and the third wasestablished by Luther's translation of the Bible ( 1522–1534 ).The first of these languages is now as difficult for a modernGerman as King Alfred's English is for an Englishman of the.present time, and, as Prof. Max Müller observes, the Middle HighGerman of WALTUER, a lyrical poet of the thirteenth century,' is more remote from the language of Goethe than Chaucer is from Tennyson .'With respect to the times during which they were used in literature, the Old High German might be called Mediæval, and the Middle High German might be distinguished as LaterMediæval.In the transitions made from Gothic to Old High German, and from this language to Middle High German, the general tendency was to reduce both the number and the strength of inflections;· in other words, to make the language less natural and sensuous.The Gothic, like Greek, had a dual number, and some distinct forms of the passive verb; though, like all German languages, ithad only two tenses. In Gothic nouns the nominative, the ac cusative, and the vocative are distinguished. In Old High Germanthe vocative case, the dual number, and the passive form of the verb disappear, and the accusative is made like the nominative;but the number of the vowels is increased, many abstract nouns are introduced by translators from.Latin , and changes of consonantstake place; such as from t, k , and p to their respective substitutes8, ch, and f. This change is, as we have noticed , characteristic of all the three High German languages, as distinct from Gothic,Plattdeutsch, English, and the languages of Holland and Scandinavia . A great improvement in verse was made during the Monastic, or Old High German period, by the substitution of rhyme for alliteration . In Middle High German the diminution of Gothic inflections was carried farther, and thus the language1I.] MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN . 36was rendered less cumbersome in grammar, and more fitted foreasy use in conversation. Several very remarkable improvements were now made in versification. Its melody, depended, not on adull counting of syllables, but on both accent and quantity, and strict attention was paid to the purity of the rhymes. These characteristics belong chiefly to the poetical literature of the thirteenth century; but that literature was reduced to a pitiablecaricature of itself in the course of the fourteenth and fifteenthcenturies. In those dark , yet not uninteresting times, literature became popular and prosaic, and verse was manufactured. Manyilliterate men, who could not always count syllables correctly, and cared nothing for purity of rhyme, set up joint-stock companies for making ' poetry ,' and produced bales of that sort' which neither gods nor men can tolerate .' We may add, that the Middle High Germandiffers from the Modern more in its forms than in its sounds; sothat the reader who is puzzled by the appearance of a few lines from a song written in the thirteenth century, will sometimes understand them as soon as they are read aloud.The chief characteristic which has been preserved, through alliis changes, by the German language, is its independence. The root- words are few , in comparison with their wealth of derivatires and compounds. A German - English dictionary, to be useful,must be rather extensive; but all the roots commonly used inModern High German might be very readably printed in a smallpocket volume. Instead of borrowing words from Greek, Latin ,and French, in order to express new combinations of thought,German developes its own resources by manifold compositions ofits own roots'and particles. It is, consequently, a self -explanatorylanguage, and the German student who knows little or nothing of Latin and Greek can trace the etymology of the longest compoundwords which he employs. In English, in order to express onethought in its various modifications, we use German, Greek, and Latin . In German, where the thoughts are closely related, thecorresponding words have a family likeness. Consequently, whilethe German language is far superior to our own in originality, itdoes not admit such strong distinctions of diction as may be madebetween English -Latin writers, like Gibbon and Jobpson, and authors like Swift and Bunyan, who wrote a purer English.The several States of Germany stand by no means on a level,with regard to their contributions to literature. The Nor: hern StatesB24 [ Ch.OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE.1have been far more productive than those of the south, and, as afact, it may be stated without any partiality, that, in almost alldepartments of learning, the Protestant States have excelled their Catholic neighbours. Of the Modern German Literature nowspreading its influence throughout the civilised world, a remarkably large portion belongs to Prussia and Saxony. Of one hundredand seventy authors who wrote during the period 1740–1840, sixtybelonged to Prussia, about thirty to Saxony and Würtemberg, tenor a dozen to Bavaria and Baden, and very few to Austria . Of the nineteen universities of Germany, thirteen belong to Prussiaand the North German Confederation . These numerous freeinstitutions - open alike to the rich and the poor — are almost the only good results of the division of Germany into so many States.They were established by the nation itself, have been closely united with its literary and political history, and now form bulwarksfor the defence of the empire. Pedants have too often reigned in these great schools for the people; but let it always be remem bered that Luther and Melancthon were German professors. In1867-68, about fifteen thousand students were attending lectures at the German universities, and the number of professors - ordinary and others -- was about one thousand. It will not seemremarkable, therefore, that of the one hundred and seventy authors living between the years 1740 and 1840, about fifty were professors.To pursue the analysis a little further, it will be seen that twenty two of these writers including Goethe, Müller the historian ,Karl vom Stein, the brothers Humboldt, and Niebuhr-werestatesmen, while three were sovereigns. The greatest number of authors, including the best, arose, however, not indeed from thelowest, but from the middle classes, and were men who had beentrained in the universities.It is hardly necessary to argue now, that a devotion to learning is not inevitably followed by a neglect of the duties of social and political life. Though Germany has had her own peculiar school of pedants — men who, as Prof. Max Müller has said, “ have been admirers of that Dulcinea, knowledge for its own sake ' - the Germans have not become a nation of bookworms. Von Roon, the organiser of Prussian victories, began his career by publishing ahandbook of geography for schools. Von Moltke was employed as al teacher before he planned the campaign of 1866. Schoolmastersprepared the way for the success of 1870. There may still beа61.] CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN LITERATURE. 5ܪfound, especially among the Saxons of the north and the northeast, men of powerful build , light hair, and blue-gray eyes, re calling the Teutons who refused to yield to Rome. From those people of Holstein , Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg, and East Prussia, have descended such men as Kant, Herschel, and Gauss in literature and science, and, in politics and warfare,Blücher, Moltke, and Bismarck. The central Franks — mostly Catholics in the hilly districts around Würtzburg and Bamberg,but Protestants in the plains-have been, from the old times of the Hohenstaufen kings down to our own, well represented in poetry and the fine arts. The names of Wolfram , Frauenlob, Goethe, and Rückert in literature, of Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach in art, belong to the Franks. Thuringia, the home of poetry and music in the times of the Crusades, has hardly produced , since then, a poet of the first class; but the great musicians, Bach and Händel, were natives of this district. Saxony and Silesia are illustrated by the names of Leibnitz and Fichte in philosophy;Flemming, Gerhardt, and Lessing in literature; Schumann, Schnorr,and Lessing in art.The Suabians and the German peoples east and west of Switzerland may boast of such names as those of the Hohenstaufenkings; of Kepler, Hegel, and Schelling, in science and philosophy;of Melancthon and Zwingli in theology;; of Gottfried, Hartmann,Haller, Schiller, and Uhland in poetry; and of Erwin von Steinbachaud Holbein in art. The Bavarians and their neighbours — theAustrians and the Tyrolese — who have mostly remained Catholics,have not in literature and philosophy kept pace with the peopleof the Central and Northern States. As some compensation, theSouthern Germans have had in music men like Gluck, Mozart,Haydn, and Schubert; in poetry , Zedlitz, Auersperg, Grillparzer,Stifter, and Blumauer; and in art, Schwanthaler, Stiglmaier,Schwind, and Steinle.It would be idle to attempt to characterise, in a few words, the men of even one of the States in a nation with a population offorty-seven millions; but a few traits commonly regarded as characteristic of the German people may be mentioned here. It is generally admitted that the Germans are less sensuous and passionate, and also less vivacious, than the peoples of Latin origin , to whom they are also inferior in ease of address andfluency of expression. On the other hand, many Germans of the6 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Ch.69higher educated classes have been remarkable for their deepthoughtfulness, their perseverance in study, and their power ofretiring from the world of the senses and resting in the world of their own thoughts. So Kant, who might have truly said, ' My mind for me a kingdom is, ' lived to a good old age at Königsberg,from which he never travelled many miles. And both Fichte andHegel, though they wrote much on man's duties in society, taughtthat his highest life and enjoyment — as Aristotle had already said-must consist in self-knowledge and meditation . Such men as Kant, Fichte, and Hegel do not represent a nation; but there must exist a strong thoughtful tendency in the people who have produced so many retired students great in philology, theology,and philosophyAmong more ordinary traits of the Germans may be noticed their free subordination, circumspection , caution, perseverance ,and patience . The last two gifts they exhibit in their acquisition of foreign languages. The German in England listens and studieslong, patiently submits to all the anomalies of our orthography,and then surprises us by delivering a lecture or writing a book in good English. The same qualities make him ready to obey,capable of ruling, and fully sensible of the truth that the first ofthese duties must precede the second . Industry, patience, and alove of order make the Germans, as colonists, inferior to none not even to the English and the Scotch.To notice briefly the most prominent external defects of German literature, it must be at once admitted that a neglect of clearness and beauty of style has too long been tolerated. Some apology may be made for the abstruseness of philosophical books. Deep thinking can hardly be made popular. A dry and uninviting style is not a proof of depth of thought; but there is truth inHegel's remark, that ' some writers and preachers , very popular on account of their clearness, only tell the people what they alieady know. ' The obscurity ' found in. Kant, Fichte, and Hegel may be partly ascribed to the problems they endeavour tosolve; but too many authors have written in an involved style on topics less difficult. The fault must be ascribed to themselves, and not to their language; for while it allows, it by no means requires a complicated structure of periods.. If an author is determined to write as few principal sentences, and to append tothem as many phrases as possible before he makes a full stop, he1.] THE SEVEN PERIODS OF ITS HISTORY.7sone.can do it in German without writing nonsense. His inflections ofnouus and adnouns afford an advantage of which he too often makes an abuse.Another fault of some German authors is the result of theirvirtues - industry and perseverance exaggerated and made tire The learned professor, in treating a topic, will refer to everything connected with it from the creation of the world downto the present time, leaving nothing unsaid that can be saidabout it . The Frenchman, too oſten, rejects all that cannot be rapidly understood and readily expressed , but gives the remainderin a fluent or brilliant style. The Englishman asks for facts ofwhich he can immediately make some use, and cares little for the style in which they are conveyed. Good care has been takenthat the trees shall not grow up into the sky, ' says an invidious old proverb, and the divided characteristics of Germans, French wer , and Englishmen seem to support the saying. A union of German depth and French clearness with the Englishman's practical purport would have a high value in life as well as inliterature.The history of Gerinan literature has been divided into seven periods, to which we venture to add an eighth , to include the literature of our own time.I. The First Period extends from the time 360_380, when agreat part of the Bible was translated into GOTHIC, down to the eleventh century. After the migrations of the Germanpeoples, their language was reduced by monks to the written formknown asOld Higu GERMAN. In this language we have little more than a few heathen ballads and some translations of creeds, prayers,Latin hymns, and passages from the Bible. The literary characterof the time, extending from the sixth to the eleventh century,was monostic.II. In the Second Period (1150-1350 ) a transition of languagewas made from Old to MIDDLE High GERMAN, and at the same tine literature found now patrons among the nobility and at the courts of princes; especially in Austria and Thuringia.III . In the Third Period ( 1350–1525 ) literature - cast aside asa worn -out fashion at courts and in the balls of the noblesfound patrons among the townspeople. Verse lost its unionwith poetry , and assumed a didactic and satirical character, but8 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Ch.improvements were made in prose, especially in the writings ofpious men known as Mystics.IV. In 1522–1534 LUTHER translated the Bible into German,and the general reception of that version established the languagecalled New High GERMAN. This is the most important fact in the literary history of the Fourth Period, included in the time1525-1625.V. The Fifth Period (1625–1725) includes the deplorable timeof the Thirty Years' War. It might, perhaps, have been credit able to the German people if no light or imaginative literaturehad then existed . It was not a time for writing poetry , and,with the exception of some hymns, little true poetry was written,but great improvements were made in versification, especially byOPITZ and his followers.VI. The Sixth Period (1725-1770) includes a time chieflynoticeable for its literary controversies, and for the appearanceof LESSING—the herald of a free, national literature.VII. It is enough to say here of the Seventh Period (1770-1830)that it was the time of a general revival and expansion in litera ture, art, and philosophy; the time in which GOETIE displayed the wealth of his genius, and when SCHILLER, by his noble, ideal characteristics, as well as by his poetry, gained such a permanent grasp on the sympathies of his nation as the bighest genius alonecould hardly deserve .VIII. The prolific German literature that has appeared since 1830 does not belong to history. Many of its writers are still living, and their reputations have still to be tested by time. Forany account we may be able to give of recent German literature,we claim no respect, more than what is due to a careful statementof facts.We profess to give merely the Outlines of German Literature.Omissions of many names must not be misunderstood as implyingany want of respect for the unmentioned writers. Erery plan oftreating briefly the history of an extensive literature must havesome defects when it is reduced to practice. If, in accordancewith the views of some literary historians, we confined ourattention to works of imagination, to poetry, epic, lyrical, anddramatic, and to prose- fiction — as comprising the literature mostclearly expressing the general characteristics of a people, we should leare unnoticed history, criticism , philology, and literary1.] ULFILAS. 9&history , as well as theology and philosophy - departments of studyin which German thought and learning have won the highesthonours. On the other side, it may be truly said, that thedistinct literatures of theology and philosophy must be studied,each in its true order and union, and cannot be fairly representedin fragments, scattered here and there among notices of popularliterature. The essence of philosophy consists in unitive thought.It must be systematic, or it is nothing. The enquiries of suchmen as Hume, Kant, Jacobi, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Her bart are all connected as links in a chain . It might seem easy togive, in isolation, a sketch of the practical philosophy of such awriter as Schopenhauer; but even that would be better understoodby a reference to other writers — to Kant and Hartmann, forexample. These views might lead us to reject philosophy as apart of German national literature. But both theology andphilosophy are, though indirectly, very closely united withnational culture. The thoughts developed by the best writers inthese departments may seem, for a time, to be confined to universities and to the studies of learned men; but they gradually findtheir from one circle of society to another, until they exertan important influence on the education of the people. Theseconsiderations have led us to select the plan of giving, first, andin their historical connection, some notices of the general literature of the German language, to which may be appended some outlines of the special literatures of philology, theology, andphilosophy.wayThe fragments that remain of the literature of the Gothic andOld High German languages all serve to tell one story, of agradual spread of Christianity and of the establishment of theauthority of the Church in Central Europe, from the fourth century after Christ to the eleventh .The Goths were the first Teutonic people who received Christian teaching. Their bishop, ULFILAS (318-388 ) translated almost the whole of the Bible into their language. A considerable part of his version of the New Testament and some fragments of the Oldhave been preserved , and on these venerable remains German philologists have based their knowledge of the Gothic language.For our knowledge of Old High German and its scanty literature,10 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LİTERATURE. [Cu.awe are mostly indebted to some studious brethren of the convents of St. Gallen and Fulda. We cannot wonder that thesemonks, who employed this language from the sixth to the eleventh century, endeavoured to destroy the remembrance of old heathenballads that were inspired by a love of warfare and a spirit of revenge. Several fragments of those ballads which have beenpreserved to our times, prove that from such materials the closing scenes of the Nibelungenlied derived their savage character. In oneold ballad the slain are every night recalled to life, that battle may be renewed on the following day. In another, warriors, after a bard fight, sit down and make grim jests on such injuries as the loss of a hand, a foot, and an eye. A third ballad describes a contest between a father and his son. Legends like these were, how erer, sometimes preserved by the monks, who found them usefulas aids to the study of the people's language. Thus it happens that the last of the ballads referred to above was preserved in a religiousbook of the ninth century, having doubtless been written down by a monk: KARL, the great German king (Charlemagne) waszealous for the culture of a national literature, and, in obedience to his will, a collection of old ballads was made. Though his son Ludwig consigned them to neglect, they were not entirely forgotten, but lived among the people, and reappeared, with a changeof dress, in the twelfth century.The Old High German language lived from the sixth to the close of the eleventh century. Fragments of translations from the New Testament, and of creeds, hymns, and monastic rules, written in German, prove that the monks had already partly done what Karl demanded . The two monasteries of St. Gallen and Fulda werethe chief schools for the culture of a national religious literature.In the first, founded by St. Gall in 705, a monk named KERO, about760, made an interlinear version of the Benedictine Rules, and translated, it is said , the Te Deum, with other hymns ascribed toSt. Ambrose . A translation of the Apostles' Creed, made at St. Gallen in the eighth century , shows that that symbol could then he expressed as concisely in German as in Latin. The Heliand, aLife of Christ, freely translated from the Gospels into alliterative verse , is believed to have been written in obedience to the commands of King Ludwig der Fromme ( Louis le Débonnaire ). Itis in the Old Saxon language, and, while it gives hardly more than the letter of the Gospel, preserves some traits of heathen times./I.] OTFRIED -- NOTKER. 116Among the passages treated by the writer, we may notice his version of the prophecy of the end of the world, and the transla tion of the narrative of the Nativity, which begins thus:- " They were watchmen who first were aware of it; herdsmen, out in the field [ and ] guarding horses and cattle, saw the darkness in the air melt away, and God's light came gladly through the cloudsand surrounded the watchers in the field. Then the men fearedin their soul . They saw God's mighty angel come, and, havingturned towards them, he commanded the herdsmen in the field:

• Fear not for yourselves any evil from the light. I shall tell you ,

intruth , news very desirable and of mighty power; Christ ~ the Lord, the Good — is born this night in David's town, whereof the race of men may rejoice." The chief traits of the Heliand are itsilliterative verso and its German epic tone - both derived from old heathen ballads. These national characteristics are not found in the Krist, a rhymed harmony of the Gospels, which was written by a monk named OTFRIED ( 776–856 ), who, for some time, studied at Fulda . His work --the oldest known in German rhymed verse -is, as a narrative, inferior to the Heliand. The story is less popularly told , and is interrupted by reflections. The unknownauthor of the Heliand describes the end of the world as he wouldthe close of a battle, and does not stay to moralize; but Otfried,after telling how the Wise Men from the East returned into their own land , appends a homily, reminding Christians that this worldis not their home, and exhorts them to prepare for another.Another production in rhymed verse, the Ludwigslied — a lay on the victory of Ludwig III. (881 )—has been ascribed to a monk whodied in 930; though it has the traits of a popular ballad . Weare also indebted to monastic students for several Latin translations of German ballads and of the stories of the Fox and theWolf — Rcynardus and Isengrimus. The latter enable us to tracethe well -known mediæval tale of Reynard ' as far back as to the tenth century; but its origin was in fact far earlier. We havealready referred to one of the ballads translated into Latin asstrikingly indicative of a delight in warfare. It may be noticed,in passing, that for our knowledge of the history of these times we are mostly indebted to Latin writers.NOTKER, surdamed Teutonicus, & monk of St. Gallen, who diedin 1022, was the chief representative of German literature in his day. He wrote translations of the Psalms and of some treatises by12 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.6&Aristotle and Boethius. His immediate successors were inferiorwriters:-WILLIRAM , a monk at Fulda, who wrote a paraphrase ofthe ' Song of Solomon, ' and died in 1085, and the unknown author of a book on cosmography entitled Merigarto ( the garden surrounded by the sea) , which is written in rhymed prose.The eleventh century was a time of darkness, of which hardly any literary vestiges exist in German. During that time, andin the opening of the twelfth century , a transition was made from Old to Middle High German. In this language, FRAU Ava, who died in 1127 -- the first German authoress of whom we have anyknowledge - wrote a ' Life of Jesu. 'Other important changes were coincident with this transition inlanguage. The Crusades awakened the knighthood to a new life,governed by new ideas, and both the clergy and the nobility nowbecame more distinct as castes. The clergy, by their neglect ofGerman literature, loosened the bond that might have unitedthem more closely with the people. Churchmen became morewealthy and more independent of secular support; but, at the same time, weaker morally and intellectually, than the monks whohad first preached to the heathen and opened schools at Fulda and St. Gallen . If their example had been generally followed,the progress of German civilisation and literature would, in allprobability, have been more steady and satisfactory than thatwhich we have to describe. But even in this earliest period wefind the beginning of that separation of learned men from the general sympathies of the people, which was more remarkable ina later time. Literature was regarded rather as a world in itselfthan in its relation to the real world. Scholars, proud of their enlightenment, concentrated it in monastic cells. Learned menstudied and wrote for their compeers, rather than for the people.While the uneducated hardly understood the simplest rudimentsof moral truth, the scholastic divines of the middle ages multiplied subtleties, and exercised their intellects in the finest distinctions ofdoctrine. A barrier of language was raised between these twoclasses. Latin was the language of all respectable literature for some centuries. The romances and other poems produced duringthe age of chivalry form exceptions to the rule; but it was maintained , on the whole, so strictly, that even at the close of theseventeenth century the prejudices of the middle ages remained,1.) THE CRUSADES. 13 .and the German language was then only beginning to assert its capabilities as a vehicle of literature .The Crusades were for the Church both a triumph and a failure.They served to increase its wealth; but at the same time, to diminish its intellectual power. The knight became more prominent than the churchman. Literature, once confined to the monk's cell , was now transferred to courts and castles, and this change ofresidence was attended with new internal characteristics. TheChurch , firmly established, was less careful of the culture of thepeople, and monks no longer interfered in the making of ballads.The poetical literature that was one of the results of these changesin the Church and in society divides itself into two classes— &people's literature of old legends, carried about by wandering ballad -singers, and a new literature consisting of songs and romances, and mostly patronised by the nobility . The people,unwilling to forget their old legends, found writers who revived them in a form suitable to compete with the foreign romances of the times; but these revivals of heathen poetry were not generallyacceptable to the higher classes. Their military spirit was nowtempered with some elements derived from the Christian religion.The crusader, though a warrior, could hardly sympathise with such heroes as Hagen and Volker in the Nibelungenlied.'14 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Сн .CHAPTER II.SECOND PERIOD. 1150-1350 .THE TIMES OF THE HOUENSTAUFENS - CHIVALRY — THE CRUSADESNATIONAL LEGENDS: THE ' NIBELUNGENLIED ' AND ' GUDRUN '-EASTGOTHIC AND LONGOBARD LEGENDS.The period included in the years 1150-1350 is characterised in German history, as in literature, as a time of transitory splendour,followed by an almost total eclipse. The fall of Konradin on thescaffold at Naples ( in 1268) marks the time when a poeticalliterature having some refinement, but mostly confined to a class,began to decay. It was followed by its extreme opposite, the low and prosaic, but popular literature of the fourteenth and fifteenthcenturies.It is hard to divest the times of which we now write of theirdreamlike characteristics. Distance in thought has a greaterpower than distance of time. We find ourselves at home in thesixteenth century; for there we meet the democratic movement,and the political and religious strife with which we are wellacquainted in our own times. Going back, in imagination, anothercentury, or rather more, we are still in an intelligible world, forthe movement that promised something greater than the Lutheran Reformation was beginning. But when we come to theHohenstaufen times, what dreamlike figures meet us there!-knights in armour, longing to expiate their sins by a pilgrimageto the Holy Land, and ready to encounter hosts of Saracens; yetamusing their leisure by composing and singing such over - refined and artificial verses as the Minnelieder; or in studying foreignromances, telling the adventures of Parzival, King Arthur, Tristan,and other visionary heroes. Realities were almost ns dreamlikeas these fictions. The Crusades were the acted romances of theirtime. The attempt to change the most internal and spiritual of>CH . II.) THE TIMES OF THE HOHENSTAUFENS. 156 >5all religions into an affair of locomotion, with pilgrimages, bathingsin the Jordan, and attacks on Saracens, was wilder than anylegend of the Court of Arthur, and had less of a true religious purport than may be found in passages of the ' Parzival' romanceas told by WOLFRAM. The Crusades indeed served a greater purpose than the development of commerce and civilisation .They inflicted a deep discouragement on externalism , and referredmen back from Palestine and so - called " holy places ' to the heart.the birthplace of religion . But of this great purpose even Walther, the best of the singers of Minnelieder, hardly dreamed.He hints at some deep emotion when he tells us that he longed to . make a pilgrimage to Palestine, as a means of gaining absolution,and a full release from all his sorrows,' but he goes no farther.From the time of the great emperor Karl down to the twelfthcentury, literature was left mostly to the care of monks; but in the times of the Crusades the inferior nobility became the chiefrepresentatives of such culture as was patronised at the courts ofprinces, especially those of Austria and Thuringia. Townsmenwere mostly occupied with the interests of their tbriving com mercial guilds. They encouraged art - especially architecturebut cared nothing for such poetry as the knights studied. Thepoets of the period cared as little for the pursuits of townsmen, or for any other realities of life. The wealth of the people was rapidlyincreasing, thousands of serfs had become freemen , cities wererising and threatening feudal institutions, mines were discovered,and a taste for luxury and ornament prevailed among the towns people. Their grand cathedrals at Ulm, Strasburg, and Cologne were the best ideal works of the age, and expressed thoughtsnobler than we find in its literature. The themes selected by versifiers and poets wore mostly foreign or antique. Legends of Arthur's Court were borrowed from France and Belgium, andVirgil's Æneid was turned into a mediæval love - story. Of the contests of the Hohenstaufen rulers with the popes, of the anarchyof the interregnum , and even of the events of the Crusades, we find few traces in the contemporary German literature — the battle poems that appeared being reproductions of old national ballads.In their lyrics and their romances, many of the knights who wrote verses seem almost destitute of national feeling. When religious themes are introduced, they are mostly treated apart from all application to life; but the ascetic character of some poems seems8..?16 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.as unreal as the love expressed in many of the Minnelieder. Toread thoughts, we must turn away from poetry to the sermons of brother Berthold, and to the clear didactic prose written by the 80 - called Mystics.The best imaginative works of this time are the two national epic poems- the Nibelungenlied and Gudrun, in connection withwhich we may notice briefly some less important national legends.The Nibelungenlied may be traced to the close of the twelfth century , when it was put together from materials furnished by far older ballads. The writer or compiler, whose name, after some guesses, remains unknown, derived the substance of his narrative from several legends preserved by popular tradition , strangelyintermingled, and often changed in their purport. Of these he made a selection, and while he preserved well the characteristics of an age antecedent to the introduction of Christianity, he gave to his work certain superficial traits of the days of chivalry. Forexample, he tells of his two heroines attending mass, and mentions tournaments as pastimes of heroes; but both Christianity and chivalry serve as mere drapery, under which the heathen character istics of the old ballads are clearly visible. Like other long narrative poems of its time, the Nibelungenlied is wanting in an artistic union of its parts. It divides itself into two stories; one ending with the death of Siegfried, the other closing with the fulfilment of Kriemhild's revenge of that death. When contrasted with the romances of the time, this national epic is distinguished by its good keeping of characters, by the absence of lifeless de scription and forced similes, and by an orderly progress of events;though many details of the narrative — especially those of the closing series of battles — seem tedious to modern readers. The following is a summary of the story, which we endeavour to give,here and there, in a style approaching the simplicity of the original:There lived at the castle of Worms on the Rhine, a princess of great beauty, named Kriemhild , the sister of King Gunther of Burgundy. In another fortress, situate lower on the same river,lived the hero Siegfried, the dragon -slayer, who had overcome in battle the mysterious and unearthly race of the Nibelungen, and had taken possession of their great hoard of gold and gems. In another adventure he had slain a dragon, and , by bathing in the dragon's blood, had made himself invulnerable, except in oneII.]THE NIBELUNGENLIED .'17>spot between his shoulders, where ' & stray leaf of the linden -treehad fallen and hung .' He then came to Worms to win the handof the Princess Kriemhild, spite of a warning hehad received that his love must end in grief. He was welcomed at Worms, and there distinguished himself in tournaments; but was not introduced to the lovely princess for the space of a year. Meanwhile,however, he had won, at least, her admiration.;; for when he was engaged, with other knights, in a tournament, Kriemhild, at the window of her chamber, would look with pleasure on the pastime,and smiled when he was the victor. At the end of the year, and when he had rendered military service to King Günther, the hero was introduced to the princess, and they were soon afterwards betrothed . The story proceeds with the recital of a servicerendered to the king by Siegfried that was of an extraordinary character, and seems to refer to some legend of northern mythology.There lived, we are told, far over the sea, at Isenstein, an Ama zonian queen, called Brunbild, destined to become the wife of any heru who could prove himself her superior in martial prowess.This task was too formidable for Günther alone. He sailed away to Isenstein, but took with him the hero Siegfried; and, when thequeen's challenge was accepted by Günther, the dragon - slayer,who had made himself invisible by the use of a charm, gave such assistance to the king that Brunhild , greatly wondering, was compelled to own herself defeated and won in the battle. She then came to Worms as Queen of Burgundy, and soon became jealous of the honours bestowed on the dragon -slayer and his bride. The enpity thus begun between the queen and Kriemhild soon rose to such a height that Brunhild secretly resolved on the death of Siegfried . To carry out her design, she appealed to the loyalty of Ilayen , the sternest of all the Burgundian heroesFierce Hagen of the rapid glances ,and represented to bim that she had been grievously insulted by the dragon -slayer and by his wife. Loyalty demanded that the queen's wrong must be avenged; but oven Hagen, not daring to encounter Siegfried in an open and fair fight, and sacrificing good faith as a man to his loyalty as a vassal, stooped to a base act of treachery - the most unpleasant, but perhaps not the least cha racteristic feature in the whole narrative. He now pretended tobe the devoted friend of Siegfried , and declared he would stand018 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Cu ..by his side and protect him in an approaching battle. By Hagen's persuasion , the unsuspecting princess marked on her husband'scoat the place between the shoulders where he was vulnerable.Hagen then invited the hero to join a party going to hunt wildboars in a neighbouring forest. In several passages of the storythe dreams and forebodings of women are described as prophetic,According to the belief of the ancient Germans. At this crisis,when the dragon -slayer was hastening away at morn to join thehunting party, Kriemhild entreated him to stay at home. “ For Ihave had a dream, ' she said, ' that two wild boars were chasing you along the wood, and the grass was wet with your blood; andanother dream , just before I awoke, that two rocks fell upon youas you walked along a dale. ' But the dragon - slayer enfolded hiswife in his arms and kissed her, to banish her fears, until shegave him leave to go. Then he hastened away into the great forest,where he had to meet enemies more formidable than the wildboars. There was a clear, cool spring in the forest, and the hero,warm with the chase, was stooping to drink when Hagen thrust aspear through his victim , just at the fatal spot which Kriemhild'sown hand had marked. The body of the lifeless dragon -slayerwas carried home, and Kriemhild, after recovery from her first violent sorrow, demanded the trial of the bier, in order to detectthe assassin of her husband. Several heroes passed beside thebier, and when Hagen's turn came, drops of blood trickled from the corpse and silently accused the murderer. Now Kriemhildknew the man who had slain the hero -husband she had loved andadored, and her soul soon became as still as a pool frozen hard in the depth of winter. She bad hitherto had but one bosom -thought --love for Siegfried . She had still but one, but it was now revenge. Hagen should die, if all Burgundy must die with him .That was her resolution , and for its fulfilment she waited thirteenyears and more. The first part of the story ends here and leavesKriemhild in deep and melancholy seclusion at her castle of Worms on the Rhine.agen , having feared lest she should, by distribution of her wealth — the hoard of gold and gems carried from the Nibelungen -- raise a powerful party in her favour, carried away thetreasure and buried it in an unknown place in the Rhine. Thiswrong also was endured in silence for thirteen years, and then the opportunity for revenge, so long waited for, presented itself to theawayII .) THE ' NIBELUNGENLIED .' 19widow of the dragon -slayer. Etzel, the King of the Huns, sentone of his chief vassals, Rüdiger, the noblest character in the story ,to ask for the hand of Siegfried's widow . She cared nothing now for royal splendour, and had no wish to leave her solitude, but sbe resolved to accept a second husband as a means of avengingthe death of the first. Accordingly she departed from Burgundy,and travelled with Rüdiger and his escort into the land of the Huns. There she was hailed on the confines of Hungary by Etzel ,twho was accompanied by a host of warriors. • ' Tis well, ' saidKrienbild, when she first saw the army coming to meet her; • Ishall have warriors now who will avenge my wrong. ' A festivalof several days followed her arrival in Vienna, and the beauty of their queen won enthusiastic praises from the chief vassals ofEtzel; but in the midst of all their splendid array her heart wasstill with Siegfried in his castle on the Rhine. A few more years passed away, and then the Queen of the Huns proceeded to carry ber plan of revenge into execution . She persuaded King Etzel toinsite King Günther and his heroes into the land of the Huns.' For,' said she, ' what will our subjects think of their queen, if my powerful kinsmen do not visit me? ' When the invitation wasreceived at Worms, its purport was at once suspected by Hagen,who said to the king ,' Be assured that the wife of Etzel will seekto revenge the death of Siegfried. ' Other gloomy forebodings were not wanting; the king's aged mother, whose dreams bad previously been prophetic, now dreamed that all the birds ofBurgundy lay dead in the fields. But, in defiance of this badomen , the king, with a host of followers, set out on his journeyinto the land of the Huns. After travelling some days, theyarrived at Bechlarn , the castle of Rüdiger, by whom they were well received and entertained with great hospitality. Giselher,the youngest brother of King Günther, was here betrothed to thefair daughter of Rüdiger. When they left the castle of Bech larn , their host gave a sword to the Prince Gernot and a shield toIlagen . As thoy rode away, Volker, one of the chief warriors,who was also a minstrel, tuned his fiddle and sang a cheerful farewell song:And little thought their host, as they rode along the shore Of the Danube, that his eyes must greet his wife, his home, no more .aWhen the Burgundians arrived in front of the palace, or castle,C220 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Ch.Herose,of King Etzel, the queen, with a cruel joy, was glad to see that Hagen had come with them . It was soon noticed, as another bad omen, that when she received her kinsmen, she gave a kiss to none save Giselher, the youngest prince, who bad taken no part in the death of the dragon - slayer. When Hagen observed this,he instinctively fastened his helmet more tightly. His fears of an attack by surprise had been mentioned to his friend, the hero Volker, and when all the other Burgundians went to rest in the vast halls of the castle, these two warriors stood all night as sentinels in the courtyard, and Volker, with a sure foreboding of the coming events that were now casting their shadow over him , sang fearlessly the death - song of the royal race of Burgundy.But some days passed away without any outbreak of enmity,except in a conversation of the queen with Hagen. Then a grand banquet was prepared; but while Hagen and many of his friends were feasting in one of the halls of the castle, an attack was madeon the Burgundians assembled in another apartment. The news reached Hagen when he was seated at the royal table.drew his sword, and said, ' Now we drink a health to the dead,and in the king's own wine.' With these words of dreadful pur port he smote off the head of Etzel's youngest son . This was thesignal for the beginning of a series of desperate hand-to - hand battles and duels; but the noble hero Rüdiger refused to take anypart in the warfare. His fidelity was due to King Etzel; but he had sworn faithful friendship to King Günther and bis men,whom he had led into the land of the Huns. The conclusion ofthe poem is dreadful, but the tale of carnage is relieved by theconduct of the hero of Bechlarn . There was a severe contest inhis heart when his queen commanded him to call his followers toarms against his friends the Burgundians, whom he had lately entertained in his castle. “ Take back, ' said he, to King Etzel,• whatever you have given me, but set me free from this service. 'Etzel might have relented now, but Kriemhild must have, atleast, the life of Hagen, and as all the Burgundians are bound together by loyalty as one man, her commands cannot be obeyed without a general slaughter. She is, moreover, the queen , andRüdiger must obey. He commended his wife and his daughter toher care, and then went forth to battle against Günther, Hagen,and their companions. " God forbid ,' said King Günther, whenthe purport of Rüdiger's coming was told, ' that I should drawII. ] TAE NIBELUNGENLIED.'. 216>C0my sword against you, the friend by whom I have been led into this foreign land .' ' I bitterly repent that I ever led you hither,'said the hero of Bechlarn , “ but I must obey my queen. ' ' Stay!'said Hagen; "the good shield you gave me at Bechlarn has already stopped many thrusts, but is now shattered.' " Then takemy own shield,' said brave Rüdiger; and may you carry it homesafely to Burgundy, for I have no wish to live after this. Andnow, the queen must be obeyed. Defend yourselves! ' In the combat that followed Rüdiger fell under a sword - cut from theweapon he had lately given, as a pledge of long friendsbip, to the Prince Gernot. When Dietrich of Berne, another of Etzel's chiefvassals, heard of Rüdiger's death, he sent his hero, Hildebrand, to assemble new forces and attack the Burgundians. After a desporate conflict Hildebrand returned alone to call for the aid of Dietrich . At last King Günther and Hagen — the sole survivorsnow of all the Burgundian mpany - were exhausted by longfighting and made prisoners. The king was placed in confinement,while his last warrior was led into the presence of the queen.• Restore to me, ' said she, ' my Nibelungen treasure.' WhenHagen refused and still defied her, she gave commands that King Günther should be put to death. Then, turning to Hagen, shesaid, ' I have still one precious relic — Siegfried's own sword; ' and,drawing it from its scabbard, she with one blow beheaded the wounded and exhausted prisoner. The hero Hildebrand, enragedto see such a warrior perish by the hand of a woman, forgot for amoment that sbe was the queen, and the death of Kriemhild by the hand of her own vassal ended the tragedy. All the sorrow thatfollowed at the court of King Etzel and in many bereaved families is told in the Klage (Lamentation ), an inferior poem of the twelfthcentury.Such is the story of the Nibelungenlied. Though its concludingscenes are extremely savage and lie beyond the pale of our sym pathies , this old epic developes two motives that command admira tion . The first is the long -enduring love of Kriemhild. InSiegfried she had known a hero who, possessing supernaturalpower in addition to his personal beauty and bis steadfast kind nezs, seemed to her of more value than a whole host of mere warriors like Hagen and Volker. For his sake she mourned long years in solitude; to avenge his death she married an alien king and sacrificed her own nearest relatives. Such power and endu22 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.аrance of will commands admiration , even while we deplore itsdevotion to no higher purpose than that of revenge. The other noble motive that controls all the chief events of the narrative is that of loyalty unconquerable. Not to gratify any personal spite,nor to gain any selfish advantage, did Hagen slay Siegfried; but to avenge a wrong believed to have been inflicted on the queen.In good faith, and all bound together as one man by the principleof mutual loyalty, the Burgundians go into the land of the Huns.They go because they must, though they have gloomy forebodings of the result. However erroneous in the purposes to which itmay be devoted, the power that binds men together so deeply and closely, and makes them all one in facing an enemy, will be both honoured and formidable as long as the world endures. Kriemhildwishes to slay one man , Hagen; but he is one of a stern union of heroes, and if he must die, the king and all the chief warriors of Burgundy must die with him . That is the thought that lifts intothe realm of high tragedy some passages even of the terrible closing scenes of the Nibelungenlied. They describe a fearful slaughter attended with hardly a trace of any personal hatred .The heroes fight like lions, but wail like women or children over the slain .“ That sorrow ever follows love ' is the key-note of the tragic epic above described. That constant love is at last rewarded isthe sentiment prevailing throughout the epic poem of Gudrun .With regard to its conclusion , it is related to the story of Kriem hild's revenge as ' All's well that ends well ’ is to Othello; 'while, in other respects, it may be said that Gudrun is to theNibelungenlied what the Odyssey is to the Iliad. The prevalence of domestic interest, the prominence given to the characters of women, the unity preserved throughout the long story, and several improvements in style, might all lead us to ascribe the authorshipof the poem to a later time than tho middle of the thirteenth century, when it seems to have been known as a modified reproduction of some far older narratives. It is divided into three parts, of which the last only is devoted to the adventures of the heroine Gudrun. The best feature of the poem is that, in its conception of love, it is higher and more comprehensive than many poemsand romances of later times;; for the union of Herwig and Gudrunis more truly characterised by sincerity, constancy , and patiencethan by passion. The Princess Gudrun, we are told, was betrothedII .) ' GUDRUN . 23to Prince Herwig of Seeland; but, during the absence of her father, was carried away from his realm on the shores of theBaltic, and was taken to Normandy by the piratical Prince Hart mut and his attendants . These robbers were soon pursued by thebereaved father and his followers, and a sternly contested battletook place on a part of the coast called the Wulpensand. So fierce was the fight that, ' when the evening -redness had died away in the western sky, it seemed to be shining out again in the glitter ings of many swords striking fire from the helmets .' Hettel, the father of the heroine, was slain , with many of his followers; buthis chief warrior survived and went home, there to wait until he could raise a new army strong enough to invade Normandy.Meanwhile the heroine remained a captive on a foreign shore, andsteadfastly refused to give her hand to the pirate Hartmut, who was so far honourable that he would wait for her consent. He waited long in vain, and his mother, Queen Gerlint, was so enraged at this treatment of her son, that she degraded Gudrun to the rank of a menial, and especially employed her in washing linen . It wasa bleak , frosty morn in March, and the captive princess and some companions were hanging out white linen in the breeze on the sea coast, when her betrothed and her brother with many followers landed from their vessels and came to her rescue. A recognitionfollowed, but King Herwig refused to steal away his bride. He waited until night came on, and then followed a battle by moon light, in which the men from the Baltic gained the victory. Areconciliation and happy conclusion soon followed . It must be evident from these outlines that the interest of the old epic depends rather on its scenery and its delineations of character than on its plot. The scenery is fresh, and indicates that a part of the story had its origin among a seafaring people; the charac ters are , on the whole, distinct and well preserved , and the senti ments are frequently more chivalrous and Christian than such as are found in the Nibelungenlied - always excepting the passagewhere the noble Rüdiger goes to fight with Hagen .Several national legends of which versions probably existed inthe thirteenth century , and which were partly included in the Book of Heroes,' edited in the fifteenth century, may be herebriefly noticed. Their merits are by no means such as to rank them with ' Gudrun ' and the Lay of the ' Nibelungen .' In Biterolf and Diellieb we find some ill - connected fragments of old legends6 724 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CA.atreated in the style of the Hohenstaufen times. We have twolegends under the title of Rosengarten. In one of them a fightingmonk named Islan is the most original character. In the other the hero Dietrich defeats a formidable dwarf, Laurin , whose preternatural power is dependent on his keeping safe a magic ring.The end of the story is prosaic. Laurin, after losing his ring, is compelled to earn his livelihood by honest labour. This was the author's notion of punishment and degradation. Another East Gothic legend tells how Dietrich, after slaying a giantess, wasimprisoned in a tower by the widower giant Sigenot; but was released by Hildebrand; not, however, without the aid of a dwarf.The Eckenlied tells of a duel of two days' duration fought between Dietrich and a giant, and we find the same bero, still fighting , in several other stories of the same class, of which one of the longest is the ' Battle of Ravenna .' Warfare for the sake of warfare, or towin the favour of princesses, and adventures with dwarfs and giants, supply the chief materials for the wild stories of King Rother, Ortnit, Hugdietrich, and Wolfdietrich, which seem tohave been founded on some legends of the Longobards, but have the scenes of some of their adventures laid in eastern countries.In several of these stories the plot depends on the abduction of aprincess. Such inferior works of imagination hardly deserve notice; but they had once a high reputation , and were partly reproduced in the Heldenbuch ( the Book of Heroes ' ), which passed through several editions in the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies.&6III.] ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY, ETC. 25CHAPTER III.SECOND PERIOD. 1150-1350.ROYANCES OF CHIVALRY AND OTHER NARRATIVE POEMS: ' PARZIVAL,TRISTAN ,' ' DER ARME HEINRICH .'-- CARLOVINGIAN, ANTIQUE , ANDMONASTIC LEGENDS - POPULAR STORIES REYNARD THE FOX .'The national epic poems already noticed deserve the priority we have given them on account of their distinctive German origin;but they did not form the most characteristic literature of the thirteenth century. This was supplied by the romances of chivalry,mostly founded on Breton legends of King Arthur's court. The broad outlines of the original legend afforded plenty of space forthe free exercise of imagination, and might be filled up with endless adventures, such as long, aimless wanderings, tournaments,duels, and enchantments, according to the fancy of the versifier.Arthur, a British prince , who lived, we are told, in the sixth century, and bravely resisted the English invasion , made his court the home of a noble chivalry. From its centre, formed by the Twelve Knights of the Round Table, champions went forth into all parts of the world in quest of adventures. It cannot be difficult to explain the attraction that such a theme had for the poets and versifiers of the thirteenth century, when we know that such a poet as Milton had great delight in reading the story of the Artburian heroes, and meditated writing an epic on the myth of Arthur. The laureate of Queen Victoria and the versatile anthor of ' Pelham’have been spell-bound by the same influence .The appearance of such romances as • Parzival' and Tristan'inGermany, during the thirteenth century, was hardly more re markable than that of the “ Idylls of the King ' in our industrial and commercial England of the nineteenth century. Men are imaginative and love freedom , and both freedom and imagination tind an ample field of playful exercise in the adventures of the626 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.romanceknights of Arthur's court. In contrast with the unreality bothof sentiment and manners found in most of these tales of adventures, the story of Tristan and Isolt — but slightly connected with King Arthur's series of legends — is marked by earnest passion , .and may be described as modern in its tone, though it was thefavourite love -story of the middle ages. Other materials forwere supplied by the Gral Legend, of which some account will be given in our notice of • Parzival,' and by Carlo vingian, antique, and monastic legends .Seldom has a contrast appeared in literature more striking thanthat presented to us in the two most remarkable romances of thethirteenth century— Parzival' and Tristan. The former is characterised in its best passages by moral earnestness, and sometimesapproaches asceticism; the latter is gay and graceful in its narra tive, but its purport is of the earth, earthy. The former is oftenobscure, but, here and there at least, a ' light from Heaven ' shinesout of the gloom. The main purport of ' Parzival' is too often lostin a complication of many episodes. The poet's intention is sometimes clear, but at other times we are led to doubt whether heever even faintly dreamed of the high purpose ascribed by someable critics to his wild and weird romance. The most characteristic passages of the two stories suffice to bring out the remarkable contrast of the two poems. Their costumes and theiradventures belong to the middle ages; but their chief moralcharacteristics are for all time. The two heroes still have manyrepresentatives in the real world, and the opposite motives of thetwo poems are still contending in the bearts of many men.Parzival treats life as a discipline; Tristan would make it “ aperpetual feat of nectared sweets. ' Tristan'swims down withthe tide of the world; ' Parzival strives upward against it. Thehigh purport ascribed to the graver romance, and the doubts thatmay be reasonably entertained respecting the author's own insightinto such a meaning, both contribute, apart from its poetic merits,to increase our interest in the story. Mysterious lights shine hereand there as we travel through the forest.The author, a poor knight named Wolfram , derived his materialsfrom a French version of the two legends of King Arthur and theGral. The lighter and, for us, the less interesting parts of thestory belong to the former legend; the more serious andmysterious passages are those which refer to the Gral legend,aIII . ) ' PARZIVAL: 276But the two legends are strangely mingled, or, we might say ,confised together, and, instead of attempting to explain the plot of their complication, we shall confine our attention chiefly to one part of the story. All that may be said here of the legend of Arthur's Court is , that Sir Gawein and other knights of the Round Table here represent the splendour of worldly chivalry,· the pride of life ,' and the quest of high renown; while the service of the Gral demands a victory over self -love, and a consecrationof life to religious duty. This contrast, we may repeat, shines out clearly only in some of the best passages of the story. In others it disappears, and leaves us in doubt whether the author ever dreamed of it. Indeed, it may very fairly be said that there is scarcely, in the whole compass of mediæval literature, a book harder to describe -- not to say explain — than Wolfram's Parzival.'The following is a summary of what may be called its centrallegend The Gral was a chalice ( sometimes mentioned as a platter ), cut out of one rare chrysolite, and was first confided to the care of Joseph of Arimathea, after its use in Christ's last supper with Hisdisciples. It ever afterwards retained a healing and life- giving power. To be appointed one of the guardians of the chalice was the highest dignity that could be conferred on a man. Truepenitence and humiliation alone could fit the heart for suchservice . For a long time after Joseph of Arimathea had broughtthe chalice into western lands no men were found here worthy of its guardianship. At last it was confided to the family of Titurel,of which Parzival was a descendant. The old King Titurel hadbuilt a temple for the reception of the Gral, and for its preservation had founded an order of knights of the temple. Wolframdescribes this shrine as a castle situate on the almost inaccessibleheight of Montsalvage.Parzival, who belongs by birth to the order of the guardians of the Gral, is left in early life without a father, and is brought up in deep seclusion in a forest, where he receives his sole educationfrom his mother, a religious woman, who keeps her son in igno rance of the world, and especially fears lest he should be seduced by the splendour of chivalry . She teaches him to fear God and to shun evil, but tells him nothing of his own noble ancestry.Her prayer for him is that he may live and die in obscurity.During his boyhood, spent in the forest, he submits himself well&28 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Сн .to his mother's teaching, and seems likely, as a youth, to fulfil her hopes, when his character receives suddenly a new impress.He is made discontented with his life in solitude by meeting onthe skirts of the forest three knights, who tell him something of the splendour of an unknown world. He can rest now no longerin shade, but must go forth and see the bright scenes ofchivalry of which the knights have told . Without knowing clearly the object of his own ambition, he escapes from his forest home,and goes to the court of King Arthur at Nantes. There hischildlike simplicity excites the mirth of knights and ladies; but,after receiving some instructions, he gains distinction in chivalry;among other exploits, rescuing a queen from the invaders of herrealm . But, discontented with the reward of his valour, he wanders forth again , and travels far, urged on by a vague unrest,that cannot be appeased by any military success.One evening, after long wanderings, he finds himself near alake in a secluded valley, where, in reply to an enquiry for a place of shelter, a fisherman, described as ' a melancholy man, yet richlyclad, ' directs him to a lonely castle as the only place where he may find entertainment. For Parzival has now arrived in a deepsolitude -- a region where only knights of a certain high lineage are welcome. He goes to the castle , is readily admitted, and there witnesses a ceremony of a very mysterious character. Inthe spacious hall four hundred knights are seated around their king. Beautiful maidens, dressed in splendid robes, bring in lights and censers, and take their places near the throne, ready tobear part in some high festival. Last of all comes in a maiden of surpassing beauty and radiance, bearing the calice cut from onerare chrysolite.' She places it before the king, who gazes devoutly on it, but must not taste its contents. Amid all the rich decorations of the ceremony a deep tone of sorrow prevails. Parzival sits in dumb amazement, unable to guess the meaning of thesolemn rites which he beholds. The king seems to have been wounded, and when a page, dressed in mourning, enters and trails through the hall the spear, with blood on its steel , from whichthe king received his wound, the assembled knights bow theirheads in lamentation. Through an open portal Parzival sees now ,in an interior ball, an old , snow- white man ' seated on a couch ,and apparently near his death . The wounded king; the beautifulmaidens richly, attired and holding up the brilliant lamps; the66

• I11 . ) ' PARZIVAL ' 29

solemn company of knights; the dying snow -white old man; 'the glory and the sorrow of the ceremonial - all excite enquiry;but Parzival remains silent. He asks no question, even when theking calls him up to the throne, and presents to him a sword withan intimation that it is to be used in the service of the donor.After this the silent champion goes to rest. In the morning he riees, and finds a profound stillness within and all around thecastle, and everything prepared for his departure. As he ridesaway down the dale, the seneschal, standing on a turret of thecastie , calls after him, not to invite him back, but to reproachbim for his diffidence in asking no questions. Soon afterwardsbe meets with similar reproaches from a woman whose husbandhas been recently slain in battle. She claims Parzival as a relative, and, when she finds that he has been entertained in theGral Castle, tells him that he has been guilty of a fatal error innot caring to know the meaning of the rites he has seen, and inneglecting to make enquiry respecting the wound received by theking. Amazed by these reproaches, the hero rides away, and,after passing through other adventures, returns to the court ofKing Arthur. Here he would gladly rest awhile; but when heis seated in the hall an angry messenger from the Gral Castlearrives, and, in the presence of the assembled knights, chargeshim with unfaithfulness and neglect of duty. He leaves thecourt of Nantes, and again wanders far, finding no service worthyof the sword given to him by the wounded king.Meanwhile Sir Gawein and other knights of Arthur's circle areengaged in an adventure to loose the spell cast by an enchanter on the mansion Château Merveil ' and all its inmates. Parzival,alode, rides by the mansion, and hears the battle cry of the knightscoming to its rescue, but takes no part in the fight. In thecourse of subsequent adventures, he meets again his old companionin arms, Sir Gawein, who is travelling, without knowing it, on theroad that leads to the Gral Castle. A dispute arises betweenthe two champions, and ends with a duel, when Gawein fallswounded by Parzival's sword. In another part of the storyParzival rescues Gawein, who has been attacked by a band ofrobbers. But neither these nor any other adventures of worldlychivalry give satisfaction to the heart of Parzival. He representsso far a man of heroic impulse who has no knowledge of his own true destiny. For years he has wandered far in doubt, and now,30 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.666says the poet, believing ' neither in a God nor in any Providence,'he arrives, on a Good Friday, at the cell of a hermit, who also belongs to the lineage of the guardians of the Gral. Thehermit explains to the knight the mystery that has hitherto attended his adventures. He tells him that the wounded king inthe castle has made himself unworthy of his office by yielding tothe seductions of earthly love. He has been fighting with no higher device than ‘ Amor ' on his shield, and that is not worthy of a guardian of the Gral. Now he awaits the coming of the true champion, who will announce his arrival by asking of the safety of the holy chalice. " You, ' says the hermit, “ have been in that castle; you have seen the wounded king, who is your uncle and my brother. The maiden princess of surpassing beauty, whocarried in the Gral, is your late mother's own sister, and the snow-white old man is Titurel, your ancestor, who is still there waiting for your arrival.'In the sequel of the story Parzival overcomes all difficulties,among other adventures vanquishing a band of heathen men andgaining the victory in a duel with the great heathen prince Feire fiz from India, in whom he afterwards recognises his own halfbrother. This recognition is one of the most beautiful parts ofthe romance. The two heroes go to the Gral Castle, where Parzival is received gladly, and is crowned as King and Guardianof the Gral. The heathen prince Feirefiz falls in love, at first sight, with the maiden who carries the sacred chalice. They aremarried , and, after their return to India, they have a son, who, as • Presbyter John ,' rules over an extensive Christian state in thecentre of Asia.So ends this wild and weird story. To state briefly our impression of it, on turning again and again to the more significant passages, we feel sure that they are symbolical, and include asecond meaning. For example, that radiant princess who bears the Gral must be, it seems, intended to represent the spirit of Christianity. The Indian prince may be a symbol of heathenism ,and his passion for the princess may be an expression for the vic tory of the true faith . Such an interpretation would be supported by several passages of direct and plain religious purport; butthere are other passages that discourage attempts to find a deep or religious meaning in the story, and, with regard to its final>5III .)&" TRISTAN .' 31purport, the reader is left in doubts as profound as those of Parzival on his own true destiny.The poet speaks often with an earnestness and depth of feeling that is surprising in one of the Minnesingers. His genius is lyrical rather than epic, and sometimes rises to a bold, pretic strain . One of his characteristics is that, in several places, herefers to his own history, and more frequently to his own opinions;but his egotism is frank and not unpleasing. But for these pas sages, the little that is known of his life would have been nothing.WOLFRAM von ESCHENBACH was a poor knight and, as he confesses, could neither read nor write; but he could speak French as well as German . Though complaining of his poverty, he betrays some pride of ancestry. His feudal lord was the Graf von Wertheim , a pleasant little town situate at the junction of the Main with the Tauber; yet he calls himself a Bavarian . He survived his chiefpatron, the Landgraf Hermann of Thuringin, who died in 1216.From several passages in ' Parzival' we may infer that the author was happily married and had children . He was acquainted with the minnesinger Walther von der Vogelweide. During Wolfram'slifetime his style was condemned by his clever rival Gottfriedvou Strasburg, who called it ' odd, dry, and obscure. ' That Gott fried could write more fluent verse was proved by his " Tristan; 'but ‘ Parzival ' survived this censure, found many admirers, and wasprinted in 1477. The poet's grave in the churchyard at Eschen bach used to be shown to visitors in the early part of the seventeenth century . We may add, for the benefit of students of old litermure, that Simrock’s translation of Parzival ' is remarkably faithful to the original.Whatever doubt may exist of the purport of Parzival,' there canbe none respecting that of the rival romance, " Tristan . It may be given in few wordsnec dulces amoresSperne, puer, neque tu choreas,Donec virenti canities abestMorosa.6 >66GOTTFRIED VON STRASBURG wrote the romance of " Tristan ' about1207-10, or some six years after Parzival bad gained a reputation;and though he wrote twenty thousand lines, he died before the gay story was completed. He was, for his times, a well - educated man,32 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ Cu.>but apparently did not belong to the order of knights, for he sub scribes his name as Master Gottfried of Strasburg. In ease and fluency of versification, and in all the graces of style, he was the best German poet of his time. He could say lightly and cleverly whatever he had to say, and never troubled himself with any problems. He laughed at his more thoughtful rival, Wolfram , forsending out, under the name of a romance, a book that required akey or an interpreter. The author of " Tristan ' describes well both the external features and the mental and emotional changes of his hero and heroine, and ably developes their characters in passion and in action . When judged by the standard of his own times, he must be commended for the good taste of which he gives proof in several passages, while treating a dangerous subject. He does not bewilder us by a multitude of ill- connected adventures. The con struction of his story is comparatively good and clear, and his versification is harmonious, while it seems to be extemporaneous.His theme is Minne,' or Love; but not in its refined meaning,which implies little more than kind remembrance. He writes the history of a passion out of union with the whole system of life and its duties, of which a true love should be the soul and the centre .The love which is his theme is not that deep, quiet source of the power that endures opposition , submits to law, supports the burdenof existence, establishes homes, binds together families, and or ganises society; but it is the egoistic and socially negative passion that would break all the bonds of duty, would reject all the claims of friendship and society, and prove itself as fatal to the true de velopment of the individual as to the interests of the race. It isrelated to true love as the swift and transitory lightning and the destructive fire are to the genial glow of summer warmth and the expansion of light. Of this passion Gottfried makes Tristan andIsolt involuntary and helpless victims. It was, as he tells us,under the influence of an irresistible charm that both were vanquished. But while he tells their story as that of their fate, he hardly treats it as a tragedy. Their faithlessness and their trans gression are described in a light and pleasant tone, and with an exuberant cheerfulness often reminding us of Chaucer in some of his Canterbury Tales. The tardy precautions of the wronged husband, King Marke, are treated in a style of humorous banter and satire that would not seem out of place in a modern French novel of the school of despair ,' as Goethe called it. " Women areIII.] DER ARME HEINRICH .' 33all the true daughters of Eve,' says Gottfried; " she broke the first commandment ever given, and simply because it was a command ment. She might gather as she pleased all the fruits and flowers of Paradise, with only one exception - the parsons have certifiedtbat it was but a fig — and it is my firm belief she would neverhave tasted that if it had not been forbidden.'. This is but a tameexample of the author's liveliness in both narration and reflection;but for obvious reasons we must pass silently over his gayestpassages. As he left the story unfinished, it has been, with extreme charity, suggested that he might, had he lived longer,have atoned for its levity by appending a moral; but he was too good an artist to be guilty of such a breach of continuity between the begioning and the end. Two inferior writers completed the romance in the course of the thirteenth century, andafterwards honest Hans Sachs made a drama of it. It was the farourite love-story of medieval times. In modern times Immermann devoted his genius to a new version of the legend,but died, leaving it incomplete. Other poets have treated thesubject 80 often that this brief notico of the story will doubtless suffice for our readers.One of the best of the versifiers of Breton legends was HARTMANNVON AVE; but he was always unfortunate in his choice of asubject. Like Gottfried, who praised him very highly, he was aneducated man, and possessed a talent that might be envied by reriewers; for, as he tells us, ' he could read without fatigue any book that ever was written .' He seems to have joined one of thecrusades. The author of " Tristan ' speaks of Hartmann as still living in 1207, and adds, he can tell a story in words as clear as crystal.' It seems certain that he died before 1220. His bestpoem , with respect to its style and form , is ` Iwein; ' but its storyis not attractive. The romance of · Erek ’ is the author's weakestproduction. In his tale of Gregorius,' though his purpose was good, he treated a subject that no skill could render even tolerable.The same censure may be applied, if we accept the judgment of Goethe, to the story of Der arme Heinrich which, however,has been highly praised by other critics. We are here told that & vobleman afflicted with leprosy was miraculously cured. The love of life had, however, proved itself so excessire in his case,that in order to obtain a cure, he had consented to the sacrifice of an innocent maiden's life. It is impossible to tolerate, even in666D34 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE [Сн. .>6afiction, the gross improbabilities assumed in the story; but we must allow that its details are in some passages given with admir able simplicity and pathos. The story runs as follows:There lived in Suabia a rich landlord , Heinrich von Aue, noted,during his prosperity, as much for his goodnėss as for his wealth .Bụt the virtues that had made him a model while all men spoke well of him failed in his deep adversity, when he became a leper and was shunned by his nearest relatives. He had neither thefaith nor the enduring power of Job. In restless quest of a cure for an incurable disease, he travelled to Salerno, then famed for its medical school. • You are curable and, at the same time, incurable,' said one of the learned doctors there; and when Heinrich demanded some explanation of the paradox, it was added, “ Curable,because a medicine for you exists in theory; incurable because the medicine cannot or must not be found . If a pure maiden, free from all constraint, would die for you, you might be cured; but on no other condition .' Utterly disappointed, Heinrich returned from Salerno; he sought for no victim to his own love of life, but left to the care of others all his wealth, and retired into a profound solitude, where he found lodgings in a mean farmhouse inhabited by one of his own poorest tenants. The devotion of this boor and his wife to the service of their landlord is well described. But their kindness was far exceeded by that of their only child, a girltwelve years old. The parents gave all the care and attendancetheir guest required; but the fearless and innocent girl solaced his solitude, and gave the cheerfulness of her own heart to cheerhim. The boor and his wife acted with some regard to their owninterest; for they feared lest, when Heinrich died, they shouldfind his successor a harder landlord . When they urged him totry the skill of the doctors at Salerno, he recounted, in a tone ofdespair, the result of his visit to their school, and repeated all that had there been said to him. The little maiden, unobserved, was listening to the strange story. She retired to think of it, anddwelt upon it so earnestly, that she dreamed of it all night; and day after day she thought of it, until a marvellous resolution followed all her musings. She would die for Heinrich! The authorof the story says all he can to make this moral miracle seem insome degree probable. He refers to the girl's religious faith. Shereally believed there was such a place as heaven, and that life there was the only life worth craving. Then she thought of theIII. ) ' DER ARME HEINRICH .' 356prospects of ber parents, and how their old nge might be comfort able if their good landlord lived, and was restored to health . The amazement and terror of the boor and his wife, when their childexpressed her wish to die, are well told. Child! ' said themother; ' you little dream what it is to die f-what it is to leare all we love here, and go to lie alone in a cold grave!? Themother sees only death in death , but the child sees the gatewayof heaven . To persuade her parents to consent, she now talks— too thoughtfully for her years - of the vanity of life, and the cer tainty of sorrow for one born in such a low condition as her own.If all that pious men have said of heaven be true, there can be noloss, surely, in going early to dwell there with a Divine Friend,Whose home no wants, no cares assailWith hunger there no children wail;None perish there from winter's cold;Years never make the angels old;And none can take their joys away;While here your twelve months' scanty gain ,Hard earned by all your toil and pain ,May perish in a single day.>She argues and pleads so long and so well, that another miraclefollows - her parents give their consent to her intended selfsacrifice! But Heinrich, when it is offered , sternly refuses for along time to accept it. Long pleadings follow , and the immoderate love of life in the leper's heart gives still greater force to the arguments of the child. Then follows the most incredible part of the incredible story. The parents with their child and theiraicted landlord, go to Salerno. There the doctor — or rather say,executioner -- first assures himself that the sacrifice is purely voluntary - then lifts the fatal knife, while the maiden fearlesslylays bare her bosom. • But the sacrifice shall not be offered! 'exclaims Heinrich, whose selfishness is suddenly melted . Alreadyrestored to soundness of mind, he returns with his poor friendsinto Suabia. On their way home he is miraculously cured, andat the same time, made to appear twenty years younger. The sequel may be guessed . He rewards the boor and his wife bymaking them free, and giving them a part of his estate. He calls together all his friends, who come to see him now. Whe: theyare assembled in his ball, he tells how he has been healed in mind and body by the devotion of a maiden, and then introduces her as D236 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH,his betrothed. Their marriage forms, of course, the conclusion ofthis marvellous story, of which the style is better than the subject.It has a melody of words and a simple natural pathos that should have been devoted to the treaiment of some tale that might have been believed . Hartmann follows the hero and the heroine totheir grave, assures us that they went to heaven, and ends with ashort prayer Such bliss as was their portion thenMay God bestow on us! Amen.6 >6Of the Carlovingian legends of this time, versified by Germans,two may be briefly noticed: —the ' Rolandslied ' by Konrad, and thelove -story of ' Flore and Blanscheflur' by Konrad Fleck . The latteris very slightly connected with traditions of the great emperor Karl. The story of the former — the hero of Roncesvalles, and of French legendary lore — is enough to make a good ballad; but hardly supplies materials for an epic. Roland, fighting against overwhelming heathen forces in Spain, defeats one host of foes,but another is soon mustered against him. At last, wounded and almost exhausted, he winds from his horn such a blast, that itsounds through all the din of battle, and far away to Karl's head quarters. The emperor hears the signal, and hastens to rescuethe hero, but finds him dead. Konrad's work seems to be nothing more than a dry translation of a French original.Among the romances founded on antique traditions, the ' Alexander,' written by Lamprecht, a priest, is the most noticeable . The hero is represented as writing an account of hisadventures in the East; but seems to be no more restricted by & regard to facts, than his quasi-biographer Quintus Curtius.Among other prodigies related by Alexander in a letter to his tutor Aristotle, we find an account of a forestWhere on the mossy turf there grewLarge rose -buds beautiful to viewSome as white as drifted snow;Others had a ruddy glow.We gazed with wonder there, beholding Each its fragrant leaves unfolding;For out of every flower-cup thereStepp'd a maiden young and fair,Rosy as evening skies and bright,In youth and joy, as morning light.Alexander, having conquered all the nations of the earth , andaIII . ] MONASTIC LEGENDS. 376still in his ambition ' insatiable as hell ,' arrives at the gates ofheaven, and intends to take it by storm . But an angel informs the hero that heaven is not to be won in this way, and exhortshim to return to his own country, and learn the virtue of self control. Lamprecht was indebted to a French original, and con structed his story with some art; but we find little in his poem to justify all the praise bestowed on it by Gervinus. Another poem of the same class is the ' Æneid,' or ' Eneit, ' as the author styles it , by Heinrich von Veldeke. It is a sentimental love- tale, made out of some parts of Virgil's epic, and has considerable merits withregard to style. The writer seems to have died at an advanced are, some time before 1200. Like Lamprecht, he borrowed his story from a French original. Of the Trojan war, by Konrad von Würzburg, we are hardly disposed to say more than that it con tains sixty thousand verses. The ancient heroes here appear asknights of the middle ages. Christians fight bravely for the Greeks, and the followers of Mohammed are on the side of the Trojang. Konrad, who died in 1287, was an industrious writer and translator; but his long stories betray under all their copious diction, & poverty of thought. His legends and short popular stories are better, and his ' Goldene Schmiede, ' a lyrical poem in praise of the Virgin Mary, has been highly commended, but it is rhetorical rather than poetical. For want of original thought and true feeling, he seeks everywhere for similes, and finds too many.These decorations are externally connected with his theme, and do pot arise naturally from its treatment. To use very plain words,they are stuck upon it. The author works like a mechanic in decorating his verses.The Christian or Monastic Legends of the time have an important historical interest; but we find little of true poetry in theirrecitals of miracles. The Life of the Virgin Mary ,' by Wernber,a monk of the twelfth century; a ' Legend of the Holy Coat ofTreves,' and “ The Childhood of Jesu ' by Konrad ( not to be identified with the versifier already mentioned ) —these and otherworks of their class mark the bare externalism of the times. Nothing less than a miraculous disturbance of nature seems to havebeen regarded as baving any religious interest. The infant Jesu of Konrad's imagination plays safely with lions and dragons;forms clay models of birds, and makes them fly away; goes toschool and finds the schoolmaster unable to teach him , and enters38 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CA.aa heathen temple where all the idols immediately fall down and are broken to pieces at his feet. Such stories as these weredeplorable substitutes for the sermon preached on the hill near Capernaum .We have already referred to the legends versified by Konrad von Würzburg. His . Alexius' is a noticeable story in praise ofcelibacy and asceticism . In his tale of Silvester ' we find an account of an extraordinary controversy. The Pope argues in defence of the Christian religion against twelve Jews, and soonconverts eleven . The twelfth remains obstinate, and to prove histhesis brings into the arena a wild bull! By a mere whisper ofone word belonging to the creed of Judaism , the animal is in amoment deprived of life. The Jews rejoice, and the Christians are for a moment depressed; but Silvester challenges his opponentto restore the bull to life . In attempting this, the Jewish theo logian fails and the Pope succeeds; whereupon all the Jews present embrace the Christian faith! The better legend of• Barlaam and Josaphat ' is supposed to have been derived from aBuddhistic original. It was translated into German from a Latin source, which itself was a translation from the Greek, and its history belongs to the curiosities of literature. Its purpose, like that of the legend of Silvester, is to maintain the supremacy ofthe Christian religion; but the arguments used by Barlaam aresuperior to those of the bull -reviving Pope.Two narrative works in verse may be noticed here, though theydo not strictly belong to the class of legends. The first - one of the best productions of the twelfth century - is a poem intended to celebrate the virtues of Anno, the Archbishop of Cologne,who died in 1075, and was canonised in 1183. The author begins with the creation of the world, and gives a summary of ancienthistory before he describes the lifo of Anno. The Kaiserchronik is an inferior work, consisting of fragments of history ( 80 called )oddly mingled with legends and fables. The compiler, who makes Tarquin reign after Nero, and perpetrates many similarblunders, is extremely severe in his censure of ' incorrect' histori cal writers. His chronicle was written , most probably, about the close of the twelfth century.In the fifteenth century we shall find coarse satire predominantin popular literature . The materials for such a literature existed in the time of which we are now writing . Mockery of all theIU. ) POPULAR STORIES. 3967pretensions of superior station, or learning, or piety, could now give a zest to the dullest story. Such satire was sometimes fairlydirected against pride, hypocrisy, and pedantry; but its success must be mainly ascribed to the fact, that it appealed to thecommon and powerful motives of egotism and envy. It was ' alevelling down ' that delighted the vulgar. So, in Salomon andMorolf '-a tale reproduced in the fourteenth century from a Latin original — the writer tells, with glee, how & coarse and abusive boor, Morolf, made a fool of Salomon! The king to whom all visdom was given was 80 unwise as to hold a long controversy with the fool. They differed especially in their respective esti joate of the virtues of women. Out of the fulness of theheart the mouth speaketh ,' says Morolf; ' you are always thinking of your wives and concubines, and therefore you are so eloquent in their praise . Salomon now recites his own fine chapter from the Book of Proverbs in praise a virtuous wife;but Morolf declares that it is a mere fancy -sketch, and utters, as acontrast, a series of coarse and indiscriminate libels on women.He reminds the king that, at the creation , God looked on all the works that He had made, and saw that they were good; but that,after woman was made, the earth was cursed . At this juncture,Nathan the prophet interposes, and prudently advises King Salomon to cease from further argument with Morolf. The kingreplies by quoting one of his own proverbs— Answer a foolaccording to his folly '- and then prosecutes the argument. At last, fatigued by the boor's impudence and pertinacity, he declinesto go on with the discussion, and Morolf, of course , claims thevictory. But an insurrection of the king's wires and concubinesfollows, and, in obedience to their demand, the fool is condemned to be banged. In recognition of some alleviations of royal ennuiafforded by Morolfs broad humour, the king gives him the privi lege of selecting the tree on which he will be suspended. Accord ingly the executioners lead the fool through the Valley of Jehoshaphat, to the Mount of Olives, all the way down to theDead Sea, and into Arabia; but nowhere can be find a suitabletree on which to be banged! The result is, that the king pardons Morolf, who thus, by his folly, triumphs over the wisdom ofSalomon, and secures for himself a place in medieval comicliterature .Among several narratives in verse which cannot be easily40 [ CH. OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE.classified, the story of ‘ Meier Helmbrecht' deserves notice, because it gives some account of the manners of the common people, ofwhich we find hardly a trace in the romances of chivalry. It lets us see some of the realities of life which existed at the time whenthe minnesingers lived, and it prepares us for some characteristics of literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. The author.of the tale, WERNER DER GARTENÄRB, was an Austrian, and lived about the middle of the thirteenth century. He tells the story ofthe prodigal son of a boor, who, urged by his dislike of hard workand poverty, goes forth, despite the entreaties of father and mother, to seek his fortune in dishonest ways. After manydisreputable adventures, be comes home, so changed that he must give proof of his identity before his father will entertain bim. He expresses his contempt of all lowly and honest occupations, seeksto win admiration by talking very bad French, insults his parents,and persuades his vain sister to elope and marry the leader of a gangof thieves. After another expedition he comes home again , but nowblind and lame, and in great distress. The father sternly refusesto receive him; but the mother still supplies the prodigal withfood . His depredations, however, have excited such indignationin the neighbourhood, that a party of boors take the law intotheir own hands, and, after a very short trial, he is condemned to death and is banged upon a tree. All this is told in a simple but graphic style, and the author ends with an earnest warning againstcontempt of parents.As the minnesingers and romancists of chivalry gained money by their songs and recitations, it was inevitable that their example would be followed by men of lower degree; ballad - singers, who travelled from one village to another, and frequented fairs, wherethey sang or recited stories for the amusement of the people.Between this class and the higher there seem to bave existed several gradations, so that the best of the wandering singers or reciters of ballads might hardly be distingnished , by their styleand their choice of subjects, from the minstrels who were patronised at the courts of princes. Among the numerous storiesascribed to one of the travelling ballad - singers, named DER STRICKER, one may be noticed , as it supplied materials for some jest -books which were popular in later times. It is the story of avagabond priest styled ' Parson Amis,' who, for some reason that we cannot guess, is described as an Englishman. His wealth and111.] * REYNARD THE FOX. '41The>6>the popularity he gained by hospitality had excited the envy ofhis bishop, who first endeavoured to eject him from bis living by means of an odd kind of test of his clerical qualifications. The parson, in the course of a vivá voce examination, is called on firstto answer the question, ' How many days have passed away since Adam was created? ' From this query Amis escapes by replyiny ,• Seven only; but repeated many times .' He is then required tofind the centre of the earth's surface , and solves the problem bysaying, ' My parish church is situated exactly on the spot.'distance from earth to heaven? ' is the next question , to wbichhe replies, ' It is just as far as my voice can be heard. Do you go up, my lord , and I will stand here and shout. If you do nothear me, I forfeit my church .' A severer test follows. ParsonAmis, it is said , has boasted that he can teach an ass to read, andhe must prove his assertion true or lose his place. " Very well,my lord ,' he replies; “ but I must have thirty years allowed forthe task . There are clever men who can bardly master a sciencein less than twenty years . The sequel of the story reflects less credit on the parson. Having wasted all his property, he tries bis fortune as a vagabond impostor. He pretends to be a very poor and utterly uneducated, but deeply pious man, and is accordingly received as one of a brotherhood of monks, among whom he soonacquires a high reputation for sanctity . An angel appears in avision, and tells the monk, who does not yet know the alphabet,that he must read the mass at the next service. As soon as hehas put on his priestly robes, he receives the power of reading and understanding Latin . The fame of this miracle brings manyvisitors to the convent, and the impostor receives many presents.After gaining considerable wealth by other deceptions, Amisretires to a monastery, devotes his old age to pious exercises,and, thus prepared for a better world , dies as a venerable abbot.This conclusion is the most ridiculous part of the story. Such were the jokes of the thirteenth century. We shall find some of them reproduced in the popular stories of a later time; such as the • Parson of Kalenberg ' and ' Till Eulenspiegel.'We have reserved for this last place in our review of narrative poems a notice of the tale of " Reynard the Fox ,' because it does not belong to the more characteristic literature of the period. It appears to have been neglected by the admirers of romances founded mostly on foreign legends.aa42 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ Ch.One of the most amusing results of modern science is the derivation of man from a large hairy ape with canine teeth, thesupposed inhabitant of some forests of the Old World. Such atransformation appears as a striking novelty in science; but it isold in fable. The Franks, probably as early as the fifth century,had fictions in which bears, wolves, and foxes were changed intomen, and the Hindoos had stories of the same kind at a far earlier date. The old German epic of which the heroes were animalshad not originally any didactic or satirical purport. It is not difficult to understand the process of conversion from a storyhaving its interest in itself into a fable recommended to reflective readers by moral deductions. The people of primitive times were,in some respects, like children. For them there was an attractivemystery in the lives of the wild beasts of the forest. Children,we all know, will still listen eagerly to the adventures of the wolf,the bear, and the fox; but will turn away, grieved that a goodstory should end 80 stupidly, when we come to the moral. TheFranks seem to have put no moral purpose into their old story ofthe wolf, bis friends, and his foes. Isengrim , the wolf, was theirleading hero; but his piace was usurped by the fox, in later times,when men admired cunning more than strength. The firstmakers of the fictions sympathised with the reverses of fortune to which both men and animals are liable, and, as a means ofexpressing their sympathy, endowed the beasts of the dark old German forests with a human understanding and with the gift of speech . Thus the wolf became “ Isengrim ,' and the fox wasstyled ' Raginobart' (strong through cuoning), which name, first contracted as · Reinhart,' was afterwards changed into the Low German diminutive of Reineke.' The lion of Asiatic fablesbecomes • Bruno ' the bear in the old German epic. Latinversions of some parts of the story were made by monks in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and received then, probably, theirdidactic elements. The oldest Middle High German version of • Reynard the Fox ' was compiled from some French original byHEINRICH DER GLICHEZARE, a native of Alsace, who lived in the latter half of the twelfth century. A fragment is all that remainsof his work, which was soon superseded by another version,different in style and language, but not in substance. As we havesaid , the story does not seem to have been much noticed inGermany during the thirteenth century; but it found a bettera66III . ) ' REYNARD THE FOX.' 4361reception abroad . It was especially popular in the Netherlands,where a good version in prose appeared in 1479. An English translation of this prose story of “ Reinaert de Vos' was printed by Caxton in 1481. The improved versified history of ' Reynke de Vos, ' founded on the prose edition of 1470 , and written in Low German, appeared at Lubeck in 1498, and passed through many editions. It has been ascribed to Hermann Barkhusen, a printerat Rostock, and may be regarded as the standard modern version of the epic. This was translated into German hexameters by Goethe in 1794. It has been said that he found in this occupation & relief from the annoyance caused by the political eventsof the time.To return to the story of the Fox, as told in the twelfth century-it is a tale of the triumph of cunning, and has hardly a trace of any didactic purport. Reynard, at a time when he is reduced tostarvation , is received as a friend and accomplice by Isengrim ( the wolf), whose hospitality is basely abused . On the otherhand, Isengrin is found guilty of a breach of faith when hedevours, with solitary greed , a large quantity of pork obtained by Reyvard's cunning. The fox takes revenge by making Isengrim the victim of several severe practical jokes, and these end, of course , in a serious quarrel. They are mustering their respectiveparties for warfare, when their quarrel is interrupted by a proclamation from the king (the lion) to the effect that all his subjects must immediately make their appearance at his court. The king,who has been for some time indisposed, ascribes his disease to the displeasure of Heaven, on account of long neglect in the administration of justice. All the animals except Reynard - against whom several heavy charges are preferred - obey the royal proclamation. Several messengers, who are sent to call the fox to court, are deceived and maltreated by the criminal. At lastpersuaded by Krimel' ( the badger) —he comes to court, and, in the disguise of a physician, prescribes for the king's disense. Thelion , he says, cannot be cured except by wrapping himself in thewarm skin of the wolf, who must be slain and flayed. By a series of other malicious stratagems, Reynard drives all his foes, in terror, from the court; afterwards, acts treacherously towards his own friends, and, lastly, poisons the king.To conclude this review of narratives in verse, produced, or reproduced, during the time 1150-1350 , it might appear from the644 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [Ch.6order in which the several classes of fiction have been noticed,that a decline took place from stories having some high purport,like that of ‘ Parzival,' to such fictions as “Meier Helmbrecht,' or ' Parson Amis ,' or ' Reinhart;' but, in fact, no such decline took place. Popular literature had never been raised to the morallevel of Wolfram's best passages, or of the ascetic prose writingsof the monks. These were the higber strata in the literature of the time. Below them lay all the elements of that more popularliterature which appeared in the course of the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries. The refinements of chivalry bad no effect onthe character of the people, but served as a mere varnish . The sermons and writings of some pious monks and friars of the thirteenth century — such men as David of Augsburg and his pupil Berthold—were far in advance of the morai culture of their times,and did not remain altogether secluded and barren. They penetrated the cells of many students, and even entered the homes and the hearts of many of the common people; but they had no general and permanent effect on the character of the popularliterature that followed them. No revolution took place when the coarse, satirical literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries appeared . Popular characteristics that had previously existed then only expressed themselves more loudly. The culture of the thirteenth century was confined certain classes, andfor these it was rather special than general.IV.] LYRIC AND DIDACTIC VERSE . 45CHAPTER IV .SECOND PERIOD. 1150-1350.LYKIC AND DIDACTIC VERSE - THE MINNESINGERS - PROSE .In days of yore how fortunately fared The midstrel, wandering on from court to court,Baronial hall or royal!6The life of a minnesinger, or German troubadour, of the thirteenthcentury seems now so unreal that we can hardly imagine it asever existing anywhere save on the stage of the opera. A modernpoet writing, in his lonely study, lyric poems of which he never sings one stanza, and sending out copies of them to be read mostly in solitude and silence;-this seems real and rational. We canrespect both the poet and his readers. But the medieval singer,trained to arms, yet devoting himself, in the prime of life, to thestudy of versification, wandering on from court to court, andthere, in the presence of ladies and knights, singing his own songs to tunes of his own composing, accompanying himself, moreover, on a large, inelegant kind of fiddle with only three strings;- this is a picture too fantastic to be taken for a portrait. The minstrel -knight, riding along with a studious, melancholy face,and humming over his own newly - composed tune; calling on woods, streams, and birds to sympathise with his sorrow , while he complains of the unkindness of an elected lady, to whom he hasnerer spoken a word; --this is a caricature that seems to have been invented by Cervantes; but it was once a living reality ,however incredible it may now seem. The minnesinger was, atfirst, an imitator of the French troubadour, and the travelling ballad - singer represented the French jongleur. Their songs and recitations were mediæval substitutes for such intellectual excitements as are now supplied by our newspapers and our prolific46 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Cu.literature of fiction, our theatres and our concerts of highly developed music.If it be hard to understand how the commonplace verses found in many of the ordinary Minnelieder could ever have been tolerated and applauded, we should consider how dull winter evenings must have been in a German castle of the middle ages.There is much affectation to be found in the love- songs of the time, and some of the lyrics composed to hail the advent of spring now seem artificial; but the complaints of winter's desolation and dulness have often a tone of real feeling.The knights and the men of lower degree who made versesborrowed at first both their themes and their modes of versification from the French troubadours, but gradually assumed more independent and national characteristics. The old popular ballads of the German people had fallen in esteem, and lyrical poems ofà far more artificial character became fashionable. A greatly improved style of versification is found in the best of the socalled Minnelieder. This name of ' love - songs ' has been incor rectly applied to the whole of the lyrical poetry of the thirteenthcentury; for the minstrels of that time, though love, or a sentimental respect for women, was their favourite theme, sang also of the beauty of the earth and the skies in spring and summer, and sometimes expressed their thoughts freely on such topics as morals, politics, and religion. The want of reality and common interest found in too many of their lyrics is easily explained by the fact that they were often invented as mere exercises in versification. It was a rule that a minnesinger must invent his own form of stanza and his own tune, and a repetition of a strophe or a melody already appropriated was regarded as a failure . Hence the study of the form prevailed over that of the purport; just as we find, in inferior music, mere counterpoint taking the place ofinspiration.For our knowledge of these mediæval poets and their songs we .are indebted to several manuscript collections, made about theclose of the period of which we are writing, the most extensive ofwhich, though not the oldest, is commonly known as the ' ParisianManuscript. It is supposed to have been written, by severalhands, in the fourteenth century, and contains specimens of the productions of one hundred and forty poets and versifiers, withone hundred and thirty -seven illustrations. This remarkable .IV . ] LYRIC AND DIDACTIC VERSE. 476manuscript was found in the library of the castle of Forsteck,near the old convent of St. Gallen , about 1600, and soon after wards was placed in the library of Heidelberg.. In some way not yet explained it was carried off to Paris about the close of the Thirty Years' War, and in 1815, when other literary treasures were restored to Germany, was retained in the Paris library. The wbole collection, well edited by Von der Hagen, was published in1838 .The reader of this book cannot but be impressed at first with asense of contrast between the variety of the metres and the sameness of the thoughts. But a closer acquaintance with the Germantroubadours reveals, in their best productions, both a poetical andan historical interest. Their farourite theme is ‘ Minne,' whichmeans, in the first place, the kind remembrance of a friend, eitherliving or deceased . This is the oldest meaning of the word, andit accords well with the purport of the best Minnelieder, whichhave been bighly praised for their chaste and refined style.Others, however, have supplied arguments in support of someunfavourable representations of the morals of the ages of chivalry.There can be no doubt that both the praise and the censure arewell founded. The former may be justified by reference to the best lyrical poems of Walther von der Vogelweide; while for anexample of the caricature of Minne ånd chivalry, there stands theautobiography of Ulrich von Lichtenstein. These two men re present, respectively, the lights and the shadows of the highercial life of their times.WALTIER VON DER VOGELWEIDE is in merit, though not in theorder of time, the first of his class. His master, or first model, hesays, was REINMAR DER ALTE , a crusader, who died about the closeof the twelfth century. Walther was born of poor parents, and in early life chose the profession of a wandering minstrel. Such avagabond life was, in his times, by no means disreputable. Therewas then no home in his native land for men of intellect orgenius, who were not churchmen . They were compelled to de pend on the patronage of courts. So Walther invented newstanzas and tunes, and rambled from one court to another, and yet he was no sorvile courtier. He did not gain riches by his travels. The assertion that he joined one of the crusades seems destitute of proof. In one of his poems, apparently written when he was old and weary of the world, he expresses an earnest longing48 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE, [CH.no產6to travel to the Holy Land. " Though I am still a poor man ,'he says, ' I should there gain great wealth. I mean neither landnor gold, but an everlasting crown. Might I but make a voyagethither over the sea! Then would I sing “ 'tis well, ” and say( alas " more. ' It is true that, in another poem, he speaks asif he had arrived in Palestine, but his voyage was, most probably,only imaginary. In his later years he resided on a small estategiven to him , as it appears, by the emperor Friedrich II.; but not withstanding this high patronage, the poet died as he had lived--poor.Walther's lyrical poems are distinguished from those of most of his contemporaries by a strong impress of sincerity and a wide range of thought. When he hails the coming of spring after along winter, he imitates in the gladness of his heart the carols ofthe birds, and goes on in melodious verses to speak of the beauty and grace of the lady to whom he dedicates his song, but whom he never names. " When she appears,' he says, all thecharms of the spring are forgotten .' In the next song the reader,to his surprise, will find the minstrel changed into a satirist, who denounces the political and religious corruption of his times, re bukes the Pope for his worldly ambition, and predicts a speedy ruin of the world . These are not all the notes of the scale onwhich his songs are constructed . As a specimen of his lighter and more popular style, the following strophe in praise of Germanwomen may serve:In many foreign lands I've been,And knights and ladies there have seen;But here alone I find my restOld Germany is still the best;Some other lands have pleased me well;But here'tis here I choose to dwell .German men have virtues rare ,AndGerman maids are angels fair!He rises to a higher strain than this in other lyrics, where he places domestic virtue above external beauty, and speaks of Minne in the higher interpretation of the word . “ Even where it cannot be returned ,' he says, “ if devoted to one worthy of it, it ennobles a man's life . His affection for one teaches him to be kind and generous towards all. Walther pleasantly describes himself as by no means good - looking, and censures all praise bestowed on men for their merely exterior advantages. And he is no fanatical>IV. ] LYRIC AND DIDACTIC VERSE . 496worshipper of feminine beauty, affirming that it may sometimes bea thin mask worn orer bad passions. Grace and amiability livelonger and exert a deeper influence than external charms. Walther agrees with Reinmar von Zweter in regarding wife ' as atitle more honourable than lady.' The first implies some dutiesfulfilled;; the second is only an abstract term .With regard to their moral and social purport, the verses of Wal ther have a considerable historical interest. They show us how insecurely the Church held the faith and loyalty of German men inthe thirteenth century. Walther is bold and violent in his defiance and contempt of the Pope's usurpation of temporal authority.Referring in one place to a fable commonly believed in his time,be says:- When Constantine gave the spear of temporal power,as well as the cross and the crown, to the see of Rome, the angels in heaven lamented , and well they might; for that power is nowabused to annoy the emperor and to stir up the princes, bis vassals, against him. ' The poet. was as earnest in dissuading the people from contributing money to support the Crusades. Very little of it,' said he, ' will ever find its way into the Holy Land. ThePope is now filling his Italian coffers with our German silver .'This saying seems to have been very popular; for a tame moralist who lived in Walther's time complains that, by making such statements, the poet was perverting the faith of many people.

• All his fine verses,' the moralist adds, ' will not atone for that

bad libel on Rome. ' Yet the author of it was quite orthodox in doctrine, and was enthusiastic in his zeal for rescuing the Holy Sepulchre from the Saracens. In one of his best lyrios, already mentioned , he imagines that he has arrived in Palestine. The whole of this poem might serve, if it could be fairly translated, as an example of the author's bold and poetical style; but we cannot attempt more than a version of the first stanza:6Now I live without a care;For all I've longed for I bebold.The Holy Land of which elsewhere,Such wonders have been truly told,Lies all spread out before me there,And I may tread the path which God,In human form , 80 often trod.Then follows a summary of nearly all the articles in the Apostles' Creed. If this lyric makos it evident that the poet wasE50 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.a Christian in his belief, other verses express, with equal earnestness, his love of his native land and his grief for the social and political disorders of his own times. He believes that the world is falling a prey to anarchy. ' I hear the rushing of the water,he says, and I watch the movements of the fish that swim in itsdepth. I explore the habits of the creatures of this world, in the forest and in the field , from the beast of the chase down to the insect, and I find there is nowhere any life that is not vexed by hatred and strife. Warfare is found everywhere, and yet someorder is preserved even among animals; but in my own native land, where the petty princes are lifting themselves up against the emperor, we are hastening on to anarchy.' The course of events proved that he was too true in this prediction. Resignation and despair, rather than any hope of a reconciliation of religion with practical life, characterise other meditative poems. We give, in the following version, the purport of one of the best of this class:I sat one day upon a stone,And meditated long, alone.While resting on my hand my head,In silence to myself I said:• How, in these days of care and strife,Shall I employ my fleeting life? —Three precious jewels I require To satisfy my heart's desire:The first is honour, bright and clear,The next is wealth , and - far more dearThe third is Heaven's approving smile.'Then, after I had mused awhile,I saw that it was vain to pineFor these three pearls in one small shrine;To find within one heart a place For honour, wealth, and heavenly grace;For how can one, in days like these,Heaven and the world together please?Many inferior names must be left unnoticed to make room for those of two or three versifiers who, with regard to their didactic tendency, were followers or associates of Walther. Of the first of these, who was styled DER MARNER, hardly anything is known further than that he was a wandering Suabian minstrel, whodied some time before 1287. It is related by one of his friends,Rumeland, that Der Marner lived to an advanced age , became stone -blind, and was murdered when on a journey. Like Walther,IV .] LYRIC AND DIDACTIC VERSE . 51:he was audacious in his declamations against Rome; but his didactic verses have but little poetical interest. BROTHER WERNHER,who lived in the earlier part of the thirteenth century, and isdescribed as ' a pilgrim ,' was another severe didactic versifier, alaudator temporis acti, and a satirist of the rising generation of histimes. Indeed it seems to have been necessary to die, in order togain a good word from brother Wernher, for he praised only the deceased, and his best poems are elegies. Of Minne, whether inthe right or the wrong sense of the word, we find very little inhis verses. Dr. Johnson would have liked Wernher, for he was a good hater .'REINMAR von ZWETER — so named to distinguish him from the older Reinmar already mentioned - deserves to be noticed if onlyon account of his rational respect for real good women as distin guished from the abstract and imaginary ladies celebrated by somany versifiers. It is true he is rather prosaic in his style of repeating that the honest, homely, practical wife holds a place in the world far higher than that of the dreamlike goddess of aminnesinger; that true beauty survives the loss of youth'scharms, and that a devotion which has lived through trials of fortitude and patience is worth more than the bare promise ofyouth . " A true wife,' he adds, ' is as precious as the Gral seen by Parzival in the castle. She is, at once, a woman and an angel.?This passage recalls Wordsworth's lines ona creature not too good For human nature's daily food,And yet a spirit, too, and bright With something of an angel light.The portrait of Reinmar given in the ' Parisian Manuscript' is,of course, imaginary; but it is one of the most pleasing of theillustrations given in that volume. He sits, meditating, under aGothic canopy. On his right hand a little maiden, and at hisleft a boy, seem to be earnestly engaged in writing down the advice he has recently given them. This picture refers, probably,to one of his lyrics, of which the beginning, considered as poetry,is far better than the close. It opens thus:My life is in its eventide,My sunshine now has turned to gray;Of youth, still glowing like the dawn,I'm musing at the close of day.E 252 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Ch .6And then follows some advice to young people, which is goodand true in its purport, but prosaic in form .With regard to their moral tendencies, the versifiers of this timemay be divided into two classes;—those who hardly speak ofmorals and those who speak mostly in a severe and ascetic tone.While some describe life as a festival, others turn away from it in despair. Religion, as understood by Walther and others, is regarded mostly as a preparation for another world . This world ,'says Walther, “ though gay with green and rosy colours on theoutside, is black within, and dark as death , for those who lookbeyond the outer show; ' and many less powerful expressions of thesame thought may be found in the lyrical and didactic verse ofthe times. A remarkable protest against this medieval pessimism is found in some lyrical poems ascribed to FRIEDRICH VON SONNENBURG, who lived and gained fame as a ninstrel before 1253, and died before 1287. The most striking characteristic of his verses is their anti-monastic tendency. " To blame this fair world in which we live ,' he says, ' is to be guilty of impiety; for it is through this world that we obtain our knowledge of the Creator, and its substance is so good that God formed out of itthe Blessed Virgin and His own human nature. ' ' All the saintswho have üved have been indebted to this earth on which wedwell for their bodily existence ,' says the poet; and he adds— with a reference to the doctrine of transubstantiation - 'God formsdaily His own body out of the produce of the earth. Through this world lies our only way into heaven, and, at the resurrection,it must be from the earth that our new bodies will arise . Thecommandment “ Honour thy father and thy mother ” forbids acontempt of the world in which we live; for if God is our Father,the world is, surely, our mother. “ Forsake this evil world! ”men idly say; but it is simply impossible. Let us forsake oursins, and be thankful for the world we dwell in! ' These are the most original thoughts to be found in Sonnenburg's rhymes.That he could be sometimes severe in his censure of his fellowmen, and that he had no respect for the memory of the emperor,we see in a dismal elegy on the great Hohenstaufen . The poet here expresses a firm belief that Rome has for ever excluded herenemy from heaven . " It must be so, if all that the monks sny is true,' he adds, and he is not speaking ironically.The want of individuality and other faults of the Märnelieder are6IV .] LYRIC AND DIDACTIC VERSE . 53partly explained when we consider that they were composed to be aung, and that many of their metres and stanzas were intricate intheir structure. As a proof of the difficulty of combining such conditions with a free expression of thought, we may refer to oneof the best of the religious Minnelieder — a hymn in praise of theVirgin, which was written by EBERHART VON Sax. He lived in the later half of the thirteenth century, and was, probably, aDominican monk . Of all the twenty stanzas- each consisting oftwelve lines - it would be impossible to give an English translation of one, so as to preserve the sense and , at the same time, the metro , with corresponding rhymes. The structure of the regularItalian sonnet is less difficult than that of the stanza chosen forthis hymn, which is one of the best and most musical of all the religious Minnelieder .Haring given some brief notices of versifiers, who, in some respects, might be associated with Walther, we may now mentioni hose who belonged to the fantastic school. Of these, the first inrank is ULRICH VON LICHTENSTEIN, a knight of Steiermark, who was born about the beginning of the thirteenth century. If half of what he tells of himself is true, his adventures surpassed in absurdity some that we rend of in Don Quixote. He was employed as page to a noble lady when he was only twelve years old, and soon afterwards made a resolution of devoting his whole life to her service, for which she never thanked him. This wasted loyalty occupied about thirty years of his life, and gave rise to a series ofstrange adventures which are described in his romance ( or auto biograpby ), entitled Frauendienst. Its absurdity makes it almost incredible; but its style is that of a dry, versified chronicle, andit has been generally accepted as autobiographical. Here he tellshov, in order to vindicate the honour of his elected lady - which had never been questioned-he rode forth disguised as Venus,'and tilted against all knights who would accept his challenge.In another expedition, be represented King Arthur, restored to the world in order to revive the institutions of chivalry. The lady for whom he encountered all the dangers of his first series of adventures despised him, made him the butt of ridicule, and, at last, subjected bim to a practical joke so degrading that he will not tell us wbat it was. If I mentioned it, ' he says, ' everyhonest man would sympathise with my vexation.' His own wife,whom he now and then mentions kindly, and with whom he lived654 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CA.on good terms when he stayed at home, seems to have made noprotest against his Quixotism . His Dulcinea was a respectable married lady when he was first engaged in her service, and shemust have been , at least, about twelve years older than herchampion. Some critics, who accept Ulrich's story as a statement of facts, suppose that his imagination had been excited by a studyof French romances . Others find in his Frauendienst a fairpicture of manners in the times of chivalry. He died in 1277,when he was about seventy -six years old. His example wascopied, on a reduced scale, by John HADLAUB, of Zurich , who died in the fourteenth century; but this new Quixote was too late in the field, and his performances were hardly noticeable .Some of his verses are imitations of the style of NITHART VON REUENTIAL, a knight who lived in the first balf of the thirteenthcentury, and whose songs deserve notice for the novelty of theircharacter.NITIART was lively and fluent in his versification, and gave some interest to his songs by introducing coniic scenes from rusticlife and telling his own adventures at village festivals. In severalinstances his humour is more to be commended than his taste.Walther, most likely, referred to Nithart's innovations, when hespoke of low comic ballads that ought to be sent back to theboors from whom they were borrowed. ' Nithart generally gives some dramatic interest to his songs; but his plots have little variety. For example, he begins a song with a few notes on fine weather, and then lightly sketches his rural scenery. It is May the linden - trees are putting forth their fresh green leaves;the meadows are golden with buttercups, and the village maidens come out to dance. A venerable rustic makes her appearance ,entreating her wilful daughter to stay at home and work in thegarden. The mother scolds and threatens; but the girl trips away to join the dancers. In another song, the girl and hermother have changed their parts, and we have a livelier comedy.It is now the old dame who, unconscious of her age and infirmity,is seized with an irresistible passion for dancing. In vain the girl speaks of gray hairs and a becoming sobriety. The maiden must now stay at home, and the old mother trips away to the dance.Nithart had, probably, a lively style of singing and recitation thatFave effect to such songs as these . We find their characteristics in the lyrics of GOTTFRIED VON NIFEN, and in those ascribed totime;IV. ] LYRIC AND DIDACTIC VERSE . 55man .DER TANHÄUSER . In passing, we may observe, that the popularlegend associated with the name of Der Tanhäuser is far olderthan his time.Versifiers became more and more didactic towards the close ofthe thirteenth century , as may be seen in the writings ascribed to HEINRICH FRAUENLOB, of Meissen , who was born in 1260 and died in 1318. He was a man of some learning, and liked to showit, even when it was out of place. Other poets skim the surface,'he says; * I descend into the depths.' This refers, we suppose, tohis mystical verses, which are his worst. A tradition says that,on account of the praise he bestowed on good women and their domestic virtues, he was carried to his grave by ladies, and was buried, with great honours, in the cathedral at Mayence.Frauenlob's imitator, and subsequent rival, was a wanderingsmith named REGENBOGEN, who left his trade and, urged, as hetells us, ' by a love of poetry ' --but, more probably, by a wish toavoid hard work - chose the life of a ballad - singer. The times were unfavourable, and he seems to have been a disappointedUnlimited competition had injured the trade of rhyming,and the market value of verse had fallen very low . ' My noble patrons must soon pay me better,' says Regenbogen, or I shallgo back to the anvil.' Another rhymer, MASTER STOLLE, isvery emphatic in his condemnation of the king, Rudolf of Hapsburg, who would not pay money for verses. «The king, ' saysMaster Stolle, ' is an honourable man; but he will not spend.He is rich , no doubt, in all virtues; but he will not scatter his money. Sing or say what you will in his praise, this must be always added — he gives us nothing. ' It is a hard, unpoetic factthat the development of lyric poetry was interrupted in the days of Kaiser Rudolf by a want of funds. Walther, a true poet, com plained of bis poverty, and no wonder that bis degenerate fol lowers, the poetasters, had to complain more bitterly. Intellectualculture was becoming more and more resident in towns, and found less and less patronage in the castles of knights and barons and atthe courts of princes. The wandering ballad-singers fought bravely against the tendency of their times, and persevered in their old, idle way of life. The followers of Regenbogen were not easily suppressed. It was more than a century after his time,when & venal rhymer, MICHAEL BEHEIM , almost in despair,complained thus of hard times;56 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.With poverty 1I wage a useless strife;I never was so ragged in my life!About the same time, ROSENBLUT, a writer of heraldic ballads,gave up business; in other words, abandoned his vagabond life and his adulation of noblemen, settled at Nürnberg: and therewrote comic tales, not always edifying, for the amusement of thepeople. His example was characteristic of the general tendency of popular literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.Though several itinerant poetasters continued their struggle for existence, they did not represent the popular culture of their times, which found encouragement in the towns, and especially inthe guilds of the Master Singers, to which our attention must soon be directed.Here, then, we say farewell to the German troubadours, and to their attendants and followers, the wandering ballad -singers; butbefore we go on to describe the guilds or schools of their wellmeaning but prosaic successors, the master singers, we must notice several books of didactic verse, which belong to the thirteenthcentury and the early part of the fourteenth . In one of these oddly entitled “ The Runner,' and written by Hugo von Trimberg- will be found an indication of the general characteristics of popular literature from the close of the fourteenth century to the timeof the Reformation.Hugo von TRIMBERG was the rector of a school near Bambergin 1260-1309. The statement that he was a schoolmaster hasbeen called in question, but is supported by strong internal evidence. He has all the sourness and severity of an overworked and ill -paid rector of a school, and to this he adds the bitterness of an author who has lost a considerable part of his manuscripts.He wrote, besides “ The Runner, several books, including one entitled Der Sammler ( “ The Gatherer ' ) , which, as he tells us, was lost during his lifetime. Hugo had learning enough to enable him to make some quotations from Horace, Juvenal, and Seneca. His book was at first planned as an allegory, but he afterwards used it as he might have used a chest of drawers in which to stow away any articles he had not room for elsewhere. His memory seems to have been injured by his drudgery in the school near Bamberg;for he often inserts the same article twice. He declaims severely against all classes of society, excepting the peasantry. When 6IV .] LYRIC AND DIDACTIC VERSE . 57ܪa626the Old Serpent was cast down from heaven, ' says Hugo, “ his body was broken into three pieces. The first - pride — was shared among the wealthy laity; the middle - greed – became the pro perty of the clergy; and the tail - envy - was given to the monks.If Saint Paul and Saint Peter were living now at Rome, theywould be sold, if anyone would bid a fair price for them. ' Such sweeping accusations as these are repeated here and there, and the old schoolmaster apologises by telling us that his memory is ' not as good as it was forty yoars ago .' Turning to treat of his own profession, be assures us that elementary education is useless if it is not religious, and he makes the same complaint of the rising generation that we often hear now: - There are no genuine children to be found now, ' he says; " the boys are far too clever, and know more than their parents and their teachers. I do not like these little old men . When they are really old, I expect they will bevery childish . ' Then follow some laudations of the good old times that had passed away, it seems, before the opening of the fourteenth century! Hugo condemns the waste of time in read ing such romances as . Parzival ' and Tristan ,' which are full of lies, ' he says, and he ridicules tournaments and some other amuse ments of chivalry. The most readable parts of his book are the stories and fables which he inserts to illustrate his doctrines. Forexample, to show that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor in the confessional, he tells a story of the wolf and the fox who went to Rome to confess to the Pope. On theirway ,They overtook the Ass, and so All three to Rome together go.And when they saw the city near,The Wolf said to his cousin dear:Reynard, my plan I'll name to you:The Pope, we know, has much to do:I doubt if he can spend his timeTo hear our catalogues of crime.' Twill spare some trouble for the Pope ( And also for ourselves, I hope,As we may 'scape with penance less ),If to each other we confess:Let each describe his greates sinSo , without preface, I'll begin .To notice trifles I disdain;But one fact gives my conscience pain .' Tis this: -there dwelt beside the RhinoA man who lived by feeding swine.658 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.He had a sow who rambled wide,While all her pigs with hunger cried .I punished her in such a way,That never more she went astray.Her little ones, deserted now,Oft moved my pity, I'll avow;I ended all their woes one nightNow let my punishment be light! '

• Well,' said the Fox, “ your sin was small,

And hardly can for penance call;For such a venial transgressionYou've made amends by this confession .And now I'll do as you have done;Of all my sins I'll name but one:A man such noisy fowls would keep,That no one near his house could sleep;The crowings of his chanticleerDisturbed the country far and near. Distracted by the noise, one nightI went and stopped his crowing quite.But this feat ended not the matter,The bens began to crow and chatter;And so ( the deed I slightly rue)I killed them and their chickens too.'

• Well, ' said the Wolf, • to hush that din

Was surely no alarming sin.Abstain from poultry for three days,And, if you like, amend your ways .But now the Ass must be confessedDonkey! how far have you transgressed?

• Ah! ' said the Ass with dismal bray,

• You know I have not much to say;For I have toiled from day to day,And done for master service good,In carrying water, corn , and wood;But once , in winter- time , ' tis true,I did what I perhaps must rue:A countryman , to keep him warm( We had, just then , a snowy storm ),Had put some straw into his shoes To bite it I could not refuse;And so ( for hunger was my law)I took, or stole, a single straw . '• There! say no more! ' the Fox exclaimed;• For want of straw that man was lamed;His feet were bitten by the frost;' Tis probable his life was lost.' Twas theft and murder. — No reply!Your penance is, that you must die .'The author concludes his work with a passage that may disarmIV. ) LYRIC AND DIDACTIC VERSE ..59аcriticism . Self -knowledge was rare among the satirists of thesetimes, but Hugo had acquired it. ' I am like Balaam's ass ,' he says, ' speaking to warn sinners of the errors of their way. Butwherever my book travels — in Suabia , Thuringia, Bavaria, and Franken - I trust that many will thank me for putting into Germansome good doctrines hitherto little known in nur land, and Ientreat my survivors — especially women-to subscribe each apenny, that masses may be said for the release of my soul frompurgatory.'Hugo's didactic and satirical book may be regarded as repre senting the purport of a considerable part of the literature ofthe fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; but later satirists were eren wore severe and indiscriminate than Hugo in their censures.For a time, the men of reformatory tendencies had the advantage in polemical writing until Thomas Murner arose and showed themthat ridicule and bitter invective could also be employed with effect against Protestants. In these times the ten commandmentsseemed to have been virtually reduced to two: —the first, that every mau should bave a good conceit of himself, and the second that he should libel his neighbours.Der Winsbecke, written about the middle of the thirteenthcentury, is a more pleasing didactic book than Hugo's. It gives us the advice of an aged father addressed to his son, and its toneis both manly and gentle. A very short quotation may serre to confirm our statement that, besides fapatical worshippers and satirists of wonien , there lived some gentlemen in the thirteenthcentury. “ My son, ' says the old man, ' I warn you not to followthe example of those who rail against women. You may find,perhaps, even in high rank some ladies who are hardly worthy of their titles; but let not this mislead. you. To win the esteem ofgood women is a sure way to success in life. In their society we find our best solace, and all the cares and toils of our life are for gotten. ' This book, Der Winsbecke, had a feminine counterpart— Die Winsbeckin — in which a mother gives moral instruction to her daughter. Her well - intended advice is inferior to the oldman's, but is more amusing. A far better didactic book, entitled Freidanks Bescheidenheit (* Freidank's Advice '), has been, without authority, ascribed to Walther von der Vogelweide. The unknown author, or compiler, of this book , which includes a great number of prorerbs, resembles Hugo in some of his denunciations of the660 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [C.6mediæval Church; but writes on the whole with greater moderation . With regard to this quality, however, “ The Italian Guest ,a book on morals and manners written by TIOMASIN ZIRCLÄRE,in the early part of the thirteenth century, is one of the best didactic works of its time. In other respects it is not remark able.We find more amusement in the Edelstein, a series of stories and fables written by ULRICI BONER, a monk who died at anadvanced age, in 1340.' He wrote very clearly and without the sligutest attempt to decorate his verses. Plain words are myfashion ,' he says; one of my stories may look like a dry nutshell,but a kernel will be found in it. You may gather some medicinalherbs out of a homely little garden like mine. ' Sometimes, how ever, he gives a story purely for its humour, as when he tells howan incorrigible dunce came home from the University of Paris:aThe father spread his daintiest cheer For friends who came from far and near,Congratulating sire and son For all the lore at Paris won.John drew a long and studious face ( For every dunce may learn grimace):He nodded well, and shook his head,And, wisely, very little said.Then, when the dinner - time was o'er,He stood beside an open door,And studiously beheld the sky ,The moon was shining, full and high.Then whispered some good friends together:• He knows the laws of winds and weather.Astronomy!-he knows it all,And what to -morrow will befall.'The father was a happy man Until the son to talk began;For opening wide his mouth, he said:• One thing does puzzle my poor head;' Tis this: - the moon that you see there And that at Paris make a pairSo much alike, I cannot see Their difference in the least degree! 'At this the father shook his head,And to his friends, in anger, said:• Be warned by me- don't send to schoolA boy predestined for a fool.'IV . ] PROSE. 61We have still to mention the prose literature of this period. Itis scanty , but interesting; for it includes the remarkable sermonsof the Franciscan friar Brother Berthold, and the speculativewritings of the so - called mystic, Master Eckhart. These weremen who endeavoured, not to describe the world as it is, nor tosatirise it, but to make it a new world . They belonged , respectively, to the Franciscan and Dominican orders, founded in 1208 and 1215. Brother Berthold was the best popular preacher, andMaster Eckhart was the highest speculative thinker of the thir teenth century.BERTIOLD LECH, born about 1220-30 , was the pupil of Davidof Augsburg, a monk of some learning, who seems to have beenproud of the young preacher he had trained; for the master sometimes accompanied the scholar in his travels through Bavaria ,Bohemia, and Thuringia. So great was the fame of Bertholdamong the common people, that in many places where he cameho church was large enough to hold his congregation. He therefore often chose some elevated spot in the open field, and therepreached to assembled thousands. In order to give fair play to his powerful voice, he took care to place his congregation facing the quarter from which the wind was blowing. One of hischief traits was his opposition to externalism , and this alone was remarkable at a time when such a man as Walther, the poet, waslonging to join a crusade in order to save his soul. Though Berthold was an orthodox churchman and denounced heresy, hepreached boldly against trust in ceremonies, pilgrimages, and in-,dulgences. You have paid a visit to the shrine of St. James,' hesays, ' and there you have seen his skull, which consists of dead bones; but the better part of the saint is in heaven .' Thechief characteristic of Berthold's preaching was the vigorousapplication of his doctrine to the realities of common life. However various their tenets may be, moral teachers may, with regardto their purport, be all included in three classes:—they eithertolerato life as it is; or they denounce it; or they endeavourto transmute it into a bigher life . Berthold belonged to the tbird class, and his practical character. is clearly shown in an anecdote related of him . He had been preaching, on one occasion , when a notorious sinner cried aloud and expressed a suddenresolution to lead a new life. The monk immediately made apause in his discourse, and gave orders, which were promptly62 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.6obeyed, that a collection should be made for the penitent Magda lene, to enable her to start fairly in a course of honest living.That such a practice might be abused, and lead to conversionsmore numerous than genuine, is only too obvious.Berthold was a man of superior imaginative eloquence. There are some passages in the best of bis ‘ land- sermons, ' as he called them, which remind us of Jeremy Taylor's style; the following passage, for example: - What can a child unborn know ,' says the preacher, ‘ of the light and glory of this world; of the bright sun, the sparkling stars, the various colours and the radiance ofgems; or of the splendid array of silk and gold made by man'sskill; or of the melodies of birds and the sounds of instruments of music; or of the various hues of flowers, and of so many othersplendours? As little can we know truly of the unspeakable pleasures of Paradise .' Other equally fervid passages are to befound in the sermon on Heaven , where the light and warmth of the preacher's imagination play mostly upon the clouds, and strike out resplendent colours there; while in his practical teach ing his doctrine descends with fertilising power, and penetratesthe soil of daily life. His words are seldom abstract; he clotheshis thoughts in familiar imagery, and repeats them again andagaín, as if resolved to make his dullest hearer understand.Berthold's errors arose from his zeal for the welfare of thepoorer classes of society. It is easier to retire from the worldthan to mend it; but Berthold, though a monk, would not sur render the world to the power of evil. In his endeavour to reconcile his two beliefs , that the world was made to be ahome for happy men, and that it has been greatly depravedhe was led to some bold conclusions. The first was an assertionof the absolute freedom of man's will, to which he ascribed the origin of all existing evils. Again, his endeavour to reconcile thebenevolent purpose of the Creator with the wrongs and the sufferings of society led Berthold, though he knew nothing ofCommunism as a theory, to declaim in favour of something very much like it. He says nothing of the necessity of physical sufferings, in order to lead to man's higher moral education, and then to more favourable circumstances; he knows nothing of such doctrines as modern economists teach; but when he sees thesufferings of the poor he declaims thus: There is enough in theworld for all of you , and if any suffer want it is because othersIV. ) PROSE. 63have too much. God made this world as complete as He made the heavens. As there is no star wanting there, so there is no thing for man's use left wanting here. There is enough meat,and bread, and wine, and beer, fish and fowl, and game of all kindsfor all of us; and if you say it has been unfairly distributed, Ireply that some one bas robbed you of your proper share. ' Inconcluding one part of the sermon from which we quote, thepreacher declares that the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor,and that the rich must buy it from the poor - in other words, must merit it by a liberal distribution of alms. Such teaching as this was, no doubt, one of the causes of Berthold's popularity, and its influence survived his times. We find its echoes in the popular literature of the following two hundred years. So strong was the general democratic tendency of these two centuries, thatit was owing to Luther and his friends that the Reformation,when it did come, was not accompanied by a sweeping social revolution . Neither Berthold nor the Mystics everdreamed of such a result; but it can hardly be doubted that tothem the extreme left party of the Reformation were greatly indebted for their opinions and tendencies. From the highest truth to error there may be but a step. Men are created to befree, ' said Berthold , " and the gifts of Providence ought to be fairly shared .' So thought John of Leyden. The good frier never dreamed of having such a follower, and if he could haveInown him , would have been ashamed of him; but there was,Devertheless, an historical connection between these two men.Apart from some tedious repetitions, the style of Berthold'ssermons deserves bigh praise. He says two or three thingsdistinctly, and then makes a full stop; thus avoiding the complications of which the German language is capable. The sameclearness is found in the writings of Tauler, though he is called amystic, and his master, Eckhart, though his writings may seem abstruse, on account of the thoughts they are intended to express,is, in fact , one of the best of all the writers of Middle HighGerman prose. We cannot pretend to give here a full andsystematic account of his speculative views, which belong to the history of philosophy, and should be given in their proper connec tion; but his general tendency as a religious teacher may be herenoticed .MASTER HEINRICH ECKHART was born about the middle of the1a64 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .>2thirteenth century , and died a year (or perhaps two years ) before 1329, when he was excommunicated by the Pope, John XXII .The bull states that Eckhart, some short time before his death,recanted his errors; but this is clearly proved to be false by thedocuments of the trial for heresy, dated early in 1327, and still existing. They show that the father of German speculation -80 Eckhart has been justly styled - did not contradict himself.Instead of recanting, he made a protest against a judgment founded on garbled extracts from his writings. His accuser, the Arch bishop of Cologne, in fact, knew and cared little aboutany abstrusespeculations. But Eckhart had made himself enemies by his zeal for the reformation of monasteries; and hence arose a rathervague charge of having taught something like what is now called ' pantheism . If we take this word in its plain , etymological meaning, it may be safely asserted that Eckhart did not teachpantheism; that is, he did not teach that the two concepts of the universe and of its Cause are identical. But he would not restcontented with an imaginative view of the relation of the Creator with the created . According to the common representation, each excludes the other, and, therefore, each must be finite. As this involves a contradiction, Eckhart was tempted to think further,and thus made himself liable to an accusation so conveniently vague that it has been preferred against the author of the Bha gavad -Gita, the Persian mystic Jellaleddin - Rumi, the great churchman and schoolman St. Thomas Aquinas, Bruno, Böhme,Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel, Goethe, and Schefer. It might be as fairly preferred against the English poets Pope and Wordsworth .The address of the latter to One who includes all others ' as the sea includes her waves ' is as pantheistic as anything to be found in Eckhart; and Pope's linesAll are but parts of one stupendous Whole,Whose body nature is, and God the soulhave been accepted by Brahmins as a fair summary of their owncreed. If Eckhart must, however, be called a pantheist, histeaching was spiritual. The general tendency of his speculation was to translate into unitive thought the symbols supplied by the For example, he construės those words in the Creed,sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father ,' as meaning identitywith the Divine Being. ' Heaven,' he tells us, is not a place,senses.IV .] PROSE . 656and etemity is not an extension of time, however long, but is the substance of which all the things of time and sense are but shadows, and includes, now, all the past and all the future. Such speculation seems abstruse; but for Eckhart the spiritual and the practical were one and the same, and he therefore expresses his most abstruse thoughts with evident earnest feeling.Thespiritual man ,' he says, “ lives and moves in time, but has his true being in eternity .' Some of the characteristics of such a man are these: " he is not careful to defend himself against accusations;but leaves truth to speak for itself; he desires nothing except that God's will may be done; he is not excited by the things of time and sense , and does not depend on them for his joy; for this is in himself, and is one with his own being. God bring us all into this rest — now! ' says Master Eckhart, at the close of one of bis homilies. His religious purport will appear more plainly when the writings of his pupil, Tauler,are noticed . In concluding this sketch of the first of German mystics we may briefly mentionanother charge preferred against him and his followers. It has been asserted that their teaching was to the effect, that man might, without divine aid, liberate himself from sin, simply by his own will. ' It is obvious that this charge contradicts that of “ pantheism; ' for, if a man has no distinct existence,how can his will have it?6966 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.CHAPTER V.THIRD PERIOD. 1350_1525 .THE LATER MIDDLE AGES - TOWNS - GUILDS - THE MASTER SINGERSNARRATIVE AND LYRICAL VERSE - THE DRAMA - PROSE FICTION .6His prosaic6Tir literature of the romantic mediæval time was hardly in itsfull bloom when it began to decay. The thirteenth century opened with the songs of Walther and closed with the wisesaws' of the dry and severe Bamberg schoolmaster.book, Der Renner, marks the close of the period we have calledromantic. ' This word, as used by German literary historians,has a far wider meaning than the popular one, and is employed,not only to designate the literature of the romance languages, andto mark some characteristics of mediæval fiction, but also toexpress the general tone and tendency of ' medieval, as distinctfrom both ancient and from modern literature. That tone andtendency was nothing less than the utterance of a profound discontent - an alienation of the mind from the world in which it .lived, a discontent that led the monk to the seclusion of his cell,the romancist to seek his themes in foreign or imaginary sources,and the mystic to seek rest in self - abnegation and retirement fromthe world . Contrast the sublime complainings of the greatmediæval poet, DANTE, with the general tone of contentment andcheerfulness that pervades the ' Odyssey ' — though its hero is theman who suffered many hardships '—and a clear view will beobtained of the opposite characteristics expressed by the wordsantique and romantic. Ulysses, in the midst of all his troubles,never despairs. Mind and body; ‘ man and his dwelling - place;?his aspirations and his fate; religion and common life; '-allthese were, on the whole, well united in ancient times; but in themiddle ages this harmony was broken, and it has never yet been66V.] THE LATER MIDDLE AGES. 67-restored. We shall not find it in the times now to be described,extending from the middle of the fourteenth century to the openingof the sixteenth .The period 1350-1625 , though one of the highest interest in general history, and marked by events of the utmost importance to mankind, such as the discovery of the New World, the inventionof printing, the revival of learning, and the founding of universi ties, was a very dark time for German literature, especially forpoetry. Yet it is only by an intimate acquaintance with the growth of opinions during 1350-1525, as expressed in the popular literature, that it is possible fully to understand the great fact of the Reformation . If we imagine that, from the days of the Crusadesdown to the close of the fifteenth century, a medieval Church existed, enjoying all the repose of faith and obedience, and pro tected externally by & powerful monarchy, and that, then , &courageous monk, offended by a huwker of indulgences, suddenlystepped out of his cell and, by his declamation, shouk in pieces the Church and the empire, we have brought before our imagina tion & very striking spectacle - nay, a miracle; - but no suchmiracle ever took place. Luther was a great and an energetic inan; but he did not do that. He rather checked and controlledtban created the movement that is for ever associated with hisdame. Long before his time, the eloquent monk Berthold had gained popularity by the promulgation of democratic doctrines,afterwards widely spread by means of songs and satires; espe cially by irreverent stories in which the clergy – die Pfaffen were the butts of ridicule. After making large allowance forpopular exaggerations, å mass of evidence still remains of thegross degeneracy of the clergy in these times. The monks of-St.Gallen , formerly noted for their devotion to useful learning, werenow so illiterate that they could not write their own names.The vames of TAULER and GEILER are so prominent as to indicatethat , in their day, few faithful teachers of the people were left in the Church. Geiler, in spite of his eccentricities, was a good re presentative of a popular preacher; but the teaching of men ofTauler's school was suited rather to form a select brotherhood ofthoughtful and religious men than to supply any basis for areformation of the Church. Their doctrine was too spiritual and retined for the common people, and was liable to be misunderstood .What the people could most easily accept and apply was itsF 268 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.negative purport — that ' the kingdom of heaven ' was to be found in no external church or hierarchy. The positive doctrine, that an internal renovation must supply the true basis for external l'eformation, was less understood. Münzer, one of the leaders in the Peasants' War, had studied Tauler's writings; but knew little of them beyond their negative purport. It is hardly necessary to add, that we are not spealing here of the intrinsic merits of their doctrine, but of its practical tendency, as commonly understood by the people.While the old faith was thus disturbed, and the Church was losing the affections of the people, the affairs of the State were ina condition not less unsatisfactory. The efforts of the Hohenstaufens to maintain the unwieldy empire founded by Karl the Great left Germany a prey to be contended for by egoistic princes and their parties. Rudolf of Habsburg failed to restore union, partly because he was too much bent on the establishment of his ownhouse, and partly because what he did well was undone by theerrors of his followers. The attempts of Heinrich VII, and ofLudwig der Baier to extend their dominion in Italy led to new quarrels with the popes, and were followed by bans, interdicts and anarchy. It might seem impossible that any lord of misrule could make worse the disorder existing in the empire under the nominal sway of Wenzel; but a still more unworthy monarch appeared in Friedrich III. , whose cowardice frustrated all thereformatory measures of the Council of Basel. He was sum moned to appear, as a traitor, before the Fehmgericht of West phalia, which had partly usurped his imperial authority. It is enough to say of the times when Wenzel and Friedrich III. wereonly shadows of rulers, that the spread of disorder almost war ranted the existence of that secret and dreaded Westphaliantribunal, for its reign of terror was better than anarchy,Meanwhile, as the imperial power grew weaker, the people werenot gaining liberty, except in those towns which were protectedby powerful commercial guilds. Beyond these boundaries knights,barons, and princes exercised authority on Rob Roy's simpleplan That they should take who have the power,And they should keep who can.Old ballads tell us of • Epple von Geilingen ,' and other titled Dick Turpins, who lived ' by the saddle, ' as they said - otherwise,V.] TOWNS - GUILDS. 6961as moss - troopers — and, in several instances, closed their adventureson the ' Rabenstein '-a place set apart for the execution ofthieves and murderers.External nature seemed to sympathise with the disorder of the times. The oriental plague prevailed in several parts ofGermany, and its terrors induced in many minds a tendency to gloomy fanaticism . Burnings of the Jews in all the townsalong the Rhine, ' as an old chronicler says, ' took place because it was believed that the Jews had caused the pestilence .' To call the people to repentance, the Brothers of the Scourge ' travelledfrom town to town, marching in dismal processions, and armed with whips and scourges, with which they publicly lashed themselves. Forebodings of a coming time of still greater tribulation ,or of the end of the world, prevailed generally. One old chroni cler's book abounds in memoranda of earthquakes, and BRANDT, the satirist, died under cloud of melancholy, because he believedthat the world would soon be drowned . Literature was, on the whole, in good keeping with the realities of the times. It waspot indeed all gloomy; but when not utterly dull and prosaic, it was for the most part either coarse and licentious, or bitterly censorious.Such culture as existed among the people was, like the con merce of the times, mostly confined to the larger towns, where guilds were the chief institutions of civilisation. These unions oftownsmen arose from the necessity of protecting life and property against the violence of the feudal nobility. Commerce could notexist without the co - operation of men for mutual defence. Atfirst the guild was identical with the whole body of the towna people; but when greater distinctions of wealth prevailed in the towns, the rich members of the wbole guild became aristocraticand exclusive, and hence arose the several trade companies.'T'he merchant learned to despise the retail trader, and the leather - seller looked down upon the shoemaker. No bakers, nordealers in bides, nor costermongers who bawl in the streets, nor men with soiled hands and blue nails admitted to the Guild;'such were some of the new regulations, and their exclusivenessled to the institution of new guilds for the several trades which they represented. Then followed contests between the new com panies and the oligarchies of the old guilds. Such warfure was waged with bitter animosity in several towns, and sometimes led70 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.1to sanguinary results. Ten members of a working men's guild were burned alive at Magdeburg in 1301, and, after a battle be tween the Weavers' Company and the oligarchy of Cologne, in1371 , thirty -three of the associated weavers were put to death ,and about two thousand—including wives and children - were banished. Such facts are enough to show that the tendency of society to divide itself into castes was strong in these times circumstance that helps to explain the institution of the schools or guilds of THE MASTER SINGERS.The foundation of these schools bas, without any authoritykeyond that of probability, been ascribed to HEINRICH FRAUENLOB,a'ready noticed as a writer of lyric and didactic verse; but it is enough to say that they arose in several towns in the fourteenthcentury, when the institution of companies more or less co operative was the fashion of the times.The German troubadours and romancists of the thirteenth century bad left unnoticed the lives and the interests of the commonpeople, and in the fourteenth century the people took their revenge for that neglect by instituting a literature all their own. Versification, out of fashion at the courts of princes, was now patronised by ropemakers , smiths, bakers, potters, weavers, wheelwrights and tailors; —all had their songs, celebrating their several mysteries.de Gervinus says, “ There was hardly any class in society that did not meddle with versification . .. Doctors prescribed inLatin and German verse; astrology and physiognomy were explained in rhymes, and the topographies and histories of severaltowns were written in verse .' But the art of rhyming was notaltogether entrusted to the care of individuals. It had its co operative stores and its co- operative productive unions. Specialguilds, or schools, for the composition and recitation of verse were established at Mayence, Ulm, Nürnberg, and several other towns;the old Singing School ’ at Nürnberg was maintained until 1770,and an institution of the same kind was closed at Ulm as lately asin 1839.The motives of the versifying weavers at Ulm might screen their homely manufactures from ridicule. Their purport was generally moral or religiovs, and they afforded , at least, a harmless recreation. The shutile would fly more lightly, while the weaver hummed over bis verses and his new tune, prepared for the next meeting of the Singing School Sunday comes, and a board sus66V.) THE MASTER SINGERS. 71pended in the church announces that the Master Singers willbold a meeting in their school in the evening ,' or in the church at the close of the afternoon service. Sometimes, on festive occasions, the members and their friends are assembled in the townhall, where all the proceedings are conducted with a strict atten tion to order. In the most prominent place three umpires areseated, and in a large oaken chest, placed beside the chief umpire,the properties of the society are deposited. These consist of gold and silver chains, which have been worn by successful candidatesfor honours. The chief umpire opens the meeting by reciting some passages — often taken from the Bible - which have beenselected as themes for verses. Several compositions are recited ,or sung, and faults are noticed. Perhaps a plagiarism is suspected ,and hereupon reference is made to a ponderous volume containing the notation of tunes that have already gained prizes. At last,after several compositions bave been tried, one candidate is declared victorious. Thereupon the president opens the oaken chest, takes out a chaplet, which he places on the head of the victor, while round his neck he hangs a silver chain with a jewelsuspended. These articles still remain the property of the club, butthe master singer is allowed to wear them publicly on certainfestival days. Gloriously arrayed in these decorations, he will go to recite his verses at a meeting in some neighbouring town, andvanquish all the versifying weavers or shoemakers there assembled.At the close of the meeting the best verses are copied in a large volume, which is the common property of the club. Thus many productions of the master singers have been preserved to modern times; though few have proved worth all the care bestowed onthem.Of Poetry, in the higher sense of the word, there is in this period little or nothing deserving attention . The most important writings of the time are those containing evidences of popular culture , or want of culture. We shall, therefore, pass briefly oversome iuferior productions in epic and lyric verse, which connect this period with the preceding, and shall chiefly pay attention to the didactic and satirical writings in verse and prose, which,however rude, are characteristic of the times.In speaking thus of several inferior productions in epic verse ,we do not include with them the story of the Fox - the bestimaginative work of the fifteenth century. In the form in which72 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Ch .it now reappears, it is a free reproduction, in Low German verse,of the Reynard in prose which appeared in the Netherlands in1479. The story found in the German version of the twelfth century, already noticed ( in chap. iii.), is greatly extended and improved in the versified Reynke de Vos, printed at Lübeck in 1498,and, with some probability, ascribed to HERMANN BARKHUSEN,a printer at Rostock .In one point of view , the versifier of this Low German story of Reynard may be described as the best writer of his time; for hedoes not fall into the dull didactic style of writers who can do nothing better than compile maxims. He tells the story well,though with a greater fulness of detail than is necessary, and hedoes not stop to insert sermons. Without doubt, he intendedsome parts of the tale to have a satirical application; but he does not interrupt the narrative to intrude his own reflections on hisreaders. One of the best passages of the story is that which describes the Fox in his most desperate circumstances - condemnedto death, forsaken by all his friends, and led to the gallows. Nothing can be more reasonable than his last request. If he has not lived well, he wishes to die in an edifying manner, and there fore begs that he may be allowed to make a public confession andto warn transgressors. The king grants this request; Reynard mounts the scaffold , and thus confesses his sins:I see not one in all this throng To whom I have not done some wrong;And now, upon the scaffold here,I wish to make my conscience clear;I will not even one sin conceal:When but a cub I learned to steal.How well I recollect the dayWhen tirst I saw young lambs at play,And carried off my earliest prey!From little crimes I passed to great;The wolf soon chose me as his mate;“ Our compact ' --so he said — ' was fated,Because our families were related. 'I cannot tell our murders allHe killed the great, and I the small;But this, with death so near, I'll say,He never gave me half the prey .If ever we had slain a calf,Poor Reynard never had the half,Wolf and his wife, with hunger keen,Too often left the bones quite clean ,.V .) NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL VERSE . 73And, even if we had killed an ox,There was but little for the fox ,Yet hunger have I never known;I bad a pantry of my own,Of treasure such a plenteous store' Twould serve me for my life and more .'

• A treasure! Ha! What! ' said the king;

• Where is it?! - " ' Twas a wicked thing;' Twas stolen! ' said the fox , and yetThat sin I never shall regret.There was a plot -with death so near,I'll tell it all; for now ' tis clear That, to bring foes to tribulation,I'd never risk my soul's salvation There was a plot against the throne,And, with the deepest shame, I'll own,Of all the traitors, that the first Was my own father, and the worst;Out of his treasure he would payThe villains hired the king to slay,And, when I stole it, loss of pelf So vexed him that he hanged himself .'These dark. the queen,insinuations serve their purpose; ofcourse, longs to know all about that treasure, and to possess it;while the king wishes to have full information of the plot against bis own life . Accordingly , Reynard is reprieved, and, in meek triumph over his foes, comes down from the scaffold. Then follows another long series of impositions, slanders, and falsehoods, all associated with admirable self -possession and audacity, and mostly successful. As an ill - used subject, Reynard first gains royal sympathy, and then becomes eminently pious. Though he has well defended himself from the charges preferred against him bybis foss — the wolf, the bear, and others - bis conscience has be come so tender that he must go to Rome, to receive, at head quarters, absolution for the peccadilloes of his youth. On hisreturn from this pilgrimage he is revered as a saint, and, as areward for all his cunning, is elevated to the rank of Lord High Chancellor and Privy Seal of the realm governed by King Nobel.When compared with the story of the Fox, the epic poem of Theuerdonk, though planned by the Emperor MAXIMILIAN I.the last representative of the age of chivalry –is bardly worth naming. The emperor suggested a plot founded on some adren tures of his own youth - especially his courtship of Maria of -74 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH,Burgundy—and gave it, to be turned into an epic, to one of hissecretaries, who, after doing his work badly, handed it over, to be made worse, to another secretary, who added some moralreflections. The result of the labours of the trio — including an emperor — was a very dull production; but it was well printed,and illustrated with one hundred and eighteen woodcuts, at Nürnberg, in 1517. The second edition (1519) is good; but the third ( 1637) is inferior, especially in the woodcuts. Having failed in verse , the emperor wrote a sketch of his own life inprose, and gave it, to be extended and edited, to the secretary whohad been first employed upon Thererdank . This prose work,entitled Weisskunig, has some biographical value, especially in thesecond part, which gives an account of the emperor's studies forthe improvement of artillery. Das Heldenbuch, founded on old national legends and printed about the close of the fifteenthcentury, was far better than Das Neue Heldenbuch, another workof the same class, compiled about 1472. These attempts to reviveold heathen legends were both more tolerable than a half-epic,half -allegorical work entitled Die Mörin by HERMANN VON SachSENIIEIM , who died in 1458. He attempts to tell a romantic taleof ‘ Frau Venus, ' the knight " Tanhäuser, ' and • faithful Eckart,'and, when he finds his powers of imagination failing, turns to drydidactic writing, and fills up his book with commonplace declamations against princes, wealthy merchants, and the clergy.Among several writers of historical poems two or three deserve notice, because they described the events of their own times.MICHAEL BEREIM, for example, who died in 1474, wrote in hisBuch von den Wienern an account of the insurrection of the people of Vienna against their servile emperor, Friedrich III ., who was mainly responsible for the chaotic covdition of both the Churchand the State in his time. It has been said that Beheim's account of the insurrection has a considerable historical value, 'because he was an eye -witness of what he tells; but he was utterly venal, and wrote what he thought would please the emperor who paid him.Another heraldic versifier, PETER DER SUCHENWIRT, describes,in his historical verses entitled Ehrenreden, many of the events of his time, especially the battle of Sempach, which is more popularly narrated in a ballad by HALB SUTER, who seems to bave been one of the combatants against Austria. HALB tells how Arnold von6V.] NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL VERSE . 75Winkelried made a gap in the close ranks of the Austrian nobles,who were armed with spears, and fought on foot:Then • Ha! ' said Winkelried , ' my brethren, every one,I'll make for you a road, and thus it shall be done;If Switzerland hath need , a Switzer's heart shall bleed;To break their close array, I give my life to- day.'The foemen's spears he grasped with both his arms, and pressed ,All in a bundle bound, their points upon his breast;And so he made a way for the Switzers on that day,As he had truly spoken; for the Austrian ranks were broken .Several ballads by VEIT WEBER — especially one on the Battle 6of Murten ' — and some war songs, telling of the deeds of the Ditmarsen men of West Holstein, are noticeable for their connec tion with history. Der Ritter von Staufenberg is an anonymousnarrative poem of the fifteenth century which we cannot classify.It tells the story of a knight, whose bride, elected for him by fate,is a fairy. This strange poem seems to have suggested some ofthe incidents in the well- known story of . Undine. 'The few attempts made to continue the lyric strains of a bygone time may be briefly noticed. One of the latest of the knightswho wrote Minnelieder was OSWALD VON WOLKENSTEIN, born in1367, a military adventurer, who wandered in England, Scotland ,Pobemia, Palestine, and Spain. His verses give many incidentsof his life, and are not without merit with regard to their style.The same praise may be given to some lyrical poems ascribed to MUSCATBLÜT, who seems to have lived early in the fifteenth century. The didactic and satirical temper of his times is expressed in one of his productions, oddly entitled, “ A Great Lie .' Itcelebrates the patriotism of princes, the equity of judges, and thepiety of tbe clergy. The characteristic discontent of the period finds another form of expression in the religious lyrics of HEINRICH vox LAUFEN BERG . They say nothing of the heroism of endurancenor of peace sought in the fulfilment of duty; but utter a rest less longing to retire from the world . ' I long to be at home; tohe at home in heaven! ' says Heinrich in some verses nearly aspopular in their tone as the hymns used in modern Sundayschools.For beartiness and vigour of expression soveral popular songsby unknowo authors must be commended, and the same praisebelongs to the Bacchanalian songs of Hans ROSENBLÜT. Our676 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.statement, that versification was a popular amusement in those days, might be confirmed by reference to numerous proverbs,riddles, and tricks in verse — such , for instance, as reserving all thesense of an epigram for the last line. There prevailed, in fact, amania for making rhymes. When Berthold, the popular preacher,wished to impress a few words on the memories of his hearers, he called for a versifier: — Now if there is any ballad -maker in mycongregation, let him mark these words, and put them into a song,and let it be short and sweet, and ring so prettily that the little children may learn it and sing it.' This fashion of rhyming increased in inverse ratio with the growth of true poetry.The dramatic productions of the later middle ages have considerable interest in the history of culture, but are destitute ofliterary merit. It may be assumed that the earlier religious plays,written in Latin, were introduced by monks as substitutes forsome rude dramatic performances of heathen origin. The eventscelebrated by the Church at Christmas, on Good Friday, and at Easter, supplied the materials for dramas of very simple construction, which were recited rather than acted in churches. Butwhen the vernacular tongue had been adopted in these sacred plays,and popular taste had insisted on the intrusion of comic interludes inthem, their performance in churches was forbidden . The people were then amused with theatrical representations given, on alarger scale, in the open air. A stage with nine stories waserected at Metz in 1427. Properties were collected without anyregard for correct costumo. A burgomaster's robe might fit eitherJudas or Gabriel. The clergy performed in the serious parts of the play, and the comic interludes were supplied by the laity and by professional buffoons. The mixture of sacred and comicsubjects was often offensive in the highest degree; for the most solemn events recorded in the Gospels were associated with grotesque circumstances. The characters introduced in these plays became more and more numerous; and the performance of adrama sometimes occupied two or three days. These amusements were continued after the Reformation . A grand spectacle -play,in fifty acts, performed in 1571 , required the services of onehundred players and five hundred pantomimists; and in 1593,Johann Brummer put into a dramatic form the greater part of theActs of the Apostles. In one of the oldest Easter plays-- the Innsbruck Play of the fourteenth century — the serious parts ofV.) THE DRAMA. 776the plot are relieved by the appearance of the clown, ' Rubin ,' and several other comic characters, who perform an absurd interlude as far out of place as possible. The ' Alsfelder Passion Play,'of the fifteenth century, is, in some respects, worse than the abovenamed; chiefly on account of a gross misrepresentation of the character of Maria Magdalena ,' who here comes upon the stage dancing among a crowd of demons. In another play-FrauJutten , written , most probably, in the fifteenth century — the plot is founded on the ridiculous fable of the feminine pope, Johanna.We may notice, in passing, that the ' Oberammergau Passion Play,' performed by Bavarian peasants in 1871, cannot be tracedfarther back than 1654. It is throughout serious, and free from the objectionable traits of the mediæval dramas we have noticed .Its performance - repeated with intervals of ten years — has had, itis said, a good moral effect on the people of Oberammergau.The Fastnachtsspiele— Shrove Tuesday Plays ' - were rude in every sense of the word, and were mostly performed by journey men and apprentices, who went from house to house and leviedcuatributions. It seems hardly credible that such dialogues asare found in these pieces could have been patronised by assembledfamilies, including both sons and daughters; but there can be nodoubt of the fact. Many pieces begin alike: a herald begs the attention of the audience; then follow some indecorous dialogues,intended to be amusing, and concluding with an apology, urgentlyrequired . Two of the most fertile inventors of such dialogues were ROSENBLÜT and Folz, master singers at Nürnberg. The offences that would have justified their expulsion from the singingschool of that old town were repeated in their plays, which sometimes ended with an apology like this:If aught offend you in our rhyme,Remember, ' tis a merry time,And Lent is quickly coming on ,When all our frolics will be done!To give a notion of the simplicity of the plot in a Shrove Tuesday plny, we may take one of the most decorous specimens • The Emperor and the Abbot. ' Here is the old story of which the people never grew weary - the triumph of native wit over learning. The emperor proposes three hard questions to the abbot, who, of course, cannot answer them , and, to avoid the penalty attached to his failure, consults a miller noted for his678 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.ready wit, as well as for stealing corn . The miller treats thechurchman's dulness with contempt, puts on the abbot's robes,and , in the emperor's presence, solves the three problems. He is,of course, installed in the place of the incapable abbot, and,though a boor now comes forward and accuses the miller of theft,this is not regarded as à disqualification for his new office .Another boor contradicts the accuser, and a fray seems likely tofollow , when a third boor steps forward and proposes a rusticdance, with which the performance concludes. One of Rosenblüt's pieces contains unsparing satire on the upper classes. The GrandSultan comes from Constantinople to Nürnberg, in order to reprove the clergy and the nobility for their vices. There is inthis piece a noticeable reference to the independence of the guila of Nürnberg. The representatives of the pope,, the emperor, and the princes rail against ' the great Turk ' for his interference with their affairs of government, and threaten to put him to death;but the Bürgermeister of Nürnberg steps boldly forward and declares that, in spite of the pope, the emperor, and the princes," the great Turk,' who has told them the truth, shall be defendedby the citizens, and sball have safe conduct back to his owndominions.In PROSE FICTION some translations by Niklas von Wyle, whowas a schoolmaster at Zurich in 1445–47, and others by HeinrichSteinhöwel, a surgeon at Ulm , and Albrecht von Eyb, a canon atBamberg ( 1420-83), deserve notice as contributions to an improved style of prose . But the most interesting prose translations of the time are those of " The Seven Wise Masters ' andthe Gesta Romanorum . The first of these favourite books ofmedieval times bad an oriental origin, and was probably introduced into Europe during the Crusades. A Latin version waswritten about 1184, and was followed by translations in severalEuropean languages. The authorship of the Gesta Romanorum,at first written in medieval Latin, has been, with some probability,ascribed to a monk named HELINAND, who died in 1227. Thebook, which consists of fables, anecdotes, and passages fromRoman history (so called )—all given in a mediæval style — sup plied light reading for monks, and was afterwards used as a fundof materials for fabulists, novelists, and such versifiers as HansSachs. The German translation was first printed at Augsburg in1498 .VI.]SATIRES. 79CHAPTER VI.THIRD PERIOD . 1350–1525.SATIRES - COMIC STORIES - BRANDT - GBILER - MURNER .6ars, whoSATIRR was the chief characteristic of these times, and foundutterance in many popular stories, in verse and prose. Though these are often very low and coarse, both in style and in choice ofsubjects, they are parts of the literature of the fifteenth century too prominent to be left unnoticed . A fair description of them is attended, however, with some difficulty, AS SEBASTIAN BRANDTindicates, in bis ' Ship of Fools,' where he speaks of some popular jest- books and satires of his time:- Frivolity and coarseness are canonised in our day,' he says; he who can make the most unseemly jest - especially on some serious subject - is esteemedthe greatest genius. This low taste of the people may be partly ascribed to the neglect of our so -called wise men, orstudy everything, and are ready to teach anything, save good morals for the people. So learning itself is made to appear ridiculous, and, while our scholars are studying Decromancy,astrology, alchemy, and other quackeries, the multitude are left in gross ignorance, and laugh at everything that is wise and good.And this great invention of printing does not mend the matter;for the printers care not what kind of books they send into theworld , but circulate fortune -telling pamphleta, scandalous satires,and anything that will sell.' The chief objects of the satires here referred to are the clergy and the nobility; but the wealthy townsmon are not spared. The peasantry are mostly allowed to escape easily, and the boor, who is often the hero of a comicstory, though illiterate, and not without a taint of the rogue in his character, is described as having such a rude force of native wit that he can refute the clergy, answer questions proposed by+80 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE ( CH: .a(doctors and lawyers, and reduce a bishop to silence. The comingtimes of the Peasants' War were foreshadowed in this comicliterature, which retained its popularity in the sixteenth century.One collection of comic and satirical stories, edited by a monk,JOHANNES Pauli, in 1522, soon passed through thirty editions.If a monk was as free as we find Brother Pauli, in his censures ofthe clergy and the nobility, the reader may guess what the greaterfreedom of the people must have been; and if DR. GEILER, the celebrated preacher of Strassburg , could introduce in a sermon &popular tale of a boor reproving a bishop, it is easy to surmise what might be said out of church . The prevailing temper of the day found expression in free and coarse satires, marked by contempt of authority, ridicule of the pretensions of the educated classes, and a mockery of things represented as sacred.It has already been shown how, in the story of Parson Amis,'a beneficed clergyman is represented as gaining his livelihood bya series of impositions. In a later story of the same class, the Parson of Kalenberg ' sells bad wine at a high price, and attracts customers by announcing that, on a certain day, he will take aflight from the top of the steeple. The peasantry are collected in great numbers to witness the feat. It is a hot day, and as thepastor keeps his flock long waiting, while he is trimming his pinions, they are glad to drink his sour wine and to pay for it.At last, he asks if anyone present can give evidence of such aflight having been safely made, and when they say . No,' he tells them he will not attempt it. In another popular tale, the parish priest is described as so fatuous, that he cannot remember the order of the days of the week. To help his memory , he makes,on every week -day, one birch -broom , and, by placing his sixbrooms in a row and frequently counting them , he knows when Sunday comes, and prepares to read mass. A wag steals away the broom that should mark Saturday, and on Sunday morningthe priest is found making another broom instead of going to church. In a story quoted by Geiler in a sermon , we find abishop riding ou at the head of forty mounted attendants. Hesees a boor standing still, staring, as in great amazement, and reproves him for this rudeness. ' I would have you understand ,'says the rich churchman, ' that I am not only a bishop, but also atemporal prince. If you wish to see me as a bishop, you must come to church. But,' says the boor, ' when the enemy at last runs166VI.) SATIRES - COMIC STORIES. 816 6"6 Howaway with the prince, where will the bishop be found? ' Inanother story we are introduced to a priest whose morals are bad,though he is a good preacher. He is grieved to find that his flock obstinately follow his example, rather than his advice, and thus exposes their error. On a certain day, after long wet weather,he leads a procession through the village, and walks resolutely through the deepest mire he can find. The people refuse to tread in his footsteps. That is right,' says the priest; attend infuture to what I say in my sermons, and never notice what I do. 'These are tame examples of some of the satires levelled against the clergy, but, for the obvious reasons which BRANDT points out,the choice of specimens is limited.There are many stories mure objectionable than the following:_The wife of a nobleman was deeply grieved on account of the death of a pet spaniel, and begged that its remains might beburied in consecrated soil. Her husband bribed the parish priest,and the burial took place according to the lady's wish. When the bishop heard of it, he sent for the offending priest, and toldhim he must be excommunicated. “ But I received a large bribe,”said the priest, in order to excuse what he had done.much? ” asked the bishop; and the offender answered, “ Four bundred forins.” “ Four hundred florins! ” the bishop exclaimed ,in great amazement; and did you read the full service? "" Certainly not, " said the priest, now hoping to escape. “ Then I must fine you , " said the bishop, “ for that omission , after re ceiving such a liberal fee . Hand over to me the four hundredflorins."Popular satires on the rapacity of the aristocracy are mostly too earnest to be humorous. In one, for example, we read of a youthfound guilty of highway robbery and hurried away to be executed.Some noblemen, passing by, are disposed to intercede for his life ,but when they are told the crime of which he has been guiltythey have no mercy for him. They care nothing for his crime in itself; but he has usurped ,' they say, one of the chief privilegesof the nobility .' ' A fine nobility that! ' says Brother Pauli;

• thank God we have nothing like it now ' (1622). But this thanks giving must have been ironical; for, as late as about 1555, old Götz von Berlichingen wrote an account of his own forays against

travelling merchants, describing his robberies as if they had been the innocent pastimes of his childhood.<6G82 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.A long ballad of the fifteenth century, already referred to,describes the justice and kindness of many knights and barons in their conduct towards their inferiors; but, at the close, the writer says that he has been trying to utter the greatest possible untruth .' Several satires directed against wealthy townspeople,their guilds and their growing liberties, may be briefly passed over. In one instance, at least, the rude invectives of the peasantswere well retorted by a townsman, HEINRICH WITTENWEILER,who lived in the fifteenth century. In a long versified story,entitled “ The Ring, ' he gives, in a mock - heroic style, the details of a boor's wedding, and merry -making, which are followed by afray. The coarse humour of some parts of this story proves thatthe author was very well matched against the boors; though in other passages he writes with sobriety and good taste.Hispurport, he tells us, was didactic; but he was compelled to decorate his story with grotesque features in order to suit the popular taste. That the people relished satire and humour, however gross,was sufficiently proved by the success of many stories invented or versified by such writers as HANS ROSENBLÜT and Hans Folz,both members of the Master Singers’ School at Nürnberg in the fifteenth century. If all their jocose stories were recited in that school, it was not very strictly conducted . We refer to them as fair representatives of many comic narratives of domestic immo rality. The following anecdote, intended to show the folly of extreme kindness, is one of the least objectionable of this class:" A bad wife, who had often been brought before the magistrates,was at last sentenced to stand in the pillory. Her husbandbegged that he might be allowed to suffer the punishment instead of his wife, and his request was granted when he had bribed the magistrates. Hestood in the pillory for some hours, and endured all the disgrace which the woman had merited . Some short timeafterwards, when his wife had returned to her evil ways, and be found it impossible to live in peace with her, he reproached her,and told her how often she had brought disgrace on his household.“ It may be all true,' said the wife, when several of her sins had been named, but I can say at least one good thing for myself:I have never stood in the pillory!' A passing notice must be given of the popular nonsense of such books as Eulenspiegel and Die Schildbürger.Tbo first of these jest-books was edited ' in 1519 by a monkVI.] COMIC STORIES. 836>Thomas MURNER — who collected a number of jocose stories long current among the people. Eulenspiegel, the hero of the tales,was by birth a peasant, but gained his notoriety as a wandering,journeyman, and concealed a love of fun and mischief under thedisguise of extraordinary simplicity.His chief characteristic makes him a model for attorneys. Inobedience to all instructions given by his masters, he accepts their words in a strictly literal sense, and so as to pervert their meaning. lle always means well; his purpose is honest, and his dispo sition is obliging; but his mental vision is oblique, like that of Ralph in ‘ Hudibras,' who by fair logic could defend almost any absurdity. A furrier gives Master Eulenspiegel orders to makesome fur- coats of wolves'skins, and, for the sake of brevity, calls them wolves;' the honest journeyman , therefore, stuffs the hideswith hay, and sends them back as preserved specimens of the species canis lupus. When the furrier refuses to pay for thesecuriosities, Eulenspiegel complains as an ill - used working -man,and at the same time gives his master a lesson on the correct use of language. “ If you wanted fur -coats made from the skins of wolres,' says Eulenspiegel, ' why did you not tell me so plainly? 'The popularity of Eulenspiegel may be partly ascribed to thecoarseness of some of his jokes. A considerable amount of learning has been expended on the derivation of his name, but it stillremains doubtful. It has been asserted by several writers that * Tyll Eulenspiegel ' actually lived , ' probably in the early part of the fourteenth century; ' that be travelled mostly in the north of Germany, and at last settled at Möllen near Lübeck, where he was buried in 1350, ' and that long after that time his grave usedto be visited by wandering journeymen and others .' No goodauthority can be referred to for these statements. Eulenspiegel's jokes were, most probably, both invented and circulated by wan dering Gesellen --journeymen tailors, shoemakers, and joiners—whohad a literature of their own in these times.Another series of popular stories tells us how, in old times, ' the men of Schilda ' - a town in Prussian Saxony - were so wise that their advice on the management of goverment affairs was eagerly sought after by many foreign princes. The result was that the wise men ' were very seldom found at home, and their own affairswere allowed to fall into a ruinous condition. Their wives then called the philosophers back to Schilda, and, in a general council,66G 284 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Cu.it was resolved that, for the future, their wisdom should be concealed under a pretence of extreme folly. This, at last, became their second nature; so that they were incapable of managingtheir own estates, and Schilda was again in great adversity.Numerous emigrations then followed; the men of Schilda went forth, and settled in all the surrounding lands, and this explains the fact that their descendants are now found everywhere.The preceding notices of a popular literature characterised mostly by its satirical spirit may serve to explain the remarkable popularity of Das Narrenschiff (“ The Ship of Fools ' ), printed at Basel in 1494. Though it had no beauty of style, its superiority to the ordinary didactic and satirical books of the times was soon recognised by the educated classes. Ten editions of the bookwere issued before the close of the year 1512; it was soon trans lated into Latin, English, and French, and Geiler, the popular preacher, chose it as his text-book for a series of sermons.SEBASTIAN BRANDT, the writer of this successful book, was bornin 1458 at Strassburg, where he was appointed town - clerk in 1503,and died in 1521. He was the friend of Dr. Geiler, and was patronised by the emperor Maxmilian I. Of all the satirists of this period Brandt was the most amiable . He felt grief for the errors and miseries of the age, and his latest years were darkened by a foreboding that the world would perish in a second general deluge in 1524. In his ' Ship’the author arranges ' fools ’in one hundred and ten classes; but in describing them he writes with out a plan, and his book is a series of ill-connected homilies, pro verbs, and complaints on such topics as the decay of true religion and the growth of infidelity and superstition. One of his best sermons is on the moral training of children , and another is di rected against the contempt of poverty. He generally reproveswithout bitterness and, with good humour, classes himself with the fools who buy more books than they can read and under stand .' Among several passages illustrative of the rude manners of the age, one of the more remarkable refers to gross disorder in places of worship. The satirist might well have been more severe than he is in describing the fools who bring their hounds to church, and strut about and chatter loudly while the Mass is read. ' GEILER, in one of his sermons, makes the same complaint.Another sign of a fool,' he says, “ is disturbing divine worship,As some do who come into the church with their birds and their66VI.] BRANDT - GEILER - MURNER. 851àdogs, as if they were going out hawking or hunting. What withthe tinklings of their hawks bells and the snarling of their hounds,neither the preacher nor the choristers can be heard .' To make bis complaint more remarkable, the preacher refers to men in holyorders who were guilty of such gross irreverence .In these notices of literature in its connection with the faithand the morals of the age the sermons of GEILER ( 1445–1510)must be mentioned with respect. Though he stooped too low in his endeavours to win the attention of the people, he was a faith ful and practical teacher. In a series of discourses on the sinsof the tongue,' one of the best is on a topic that would hardly be here expected--silence. The preacher ascribes all due praise tosilence, but condemus it when it has for its motive either indolence,or pride, or cowardice. The discourse is very distinctly arranged,but has too many subdivisions. As an example of the preacher's extreme condescension, one sermon is noticeable in which he deduces moral lessons from natural history. He tells his congregation that a bare has long ears, which are quick in catching sounds,' and these signify the attention with which we should hear theBible read;' and that a hare can run better up- hill than down,which shows that a Christian should be active in climbing up the bill of virtue. When a lion had been exhibited in a show atStrassburg, the preacher followed , as a competitor for popular attention, with a sermon on the lion of hell.' It is possible that some of the eccentricities of Geiler's sermons may be ascribed to their editors, for among them we find Johannes Pauli, alreadynamed as a collector of jokes.We have already alluded to a satirist far more energetic thanSebastian BRANDT — à restless, wandering, polemic monk named THOMAS MURNER, who may be regarded as an extreme representative of all the discontent of the times in which he lived. Hewas born at Strassburg in 1475, and, after studying in several schools at Paris, Cologne, Prague, and Vienna, was crowned poet laureate by the Emperor Maximilian I. The rest of his biography is a report of controversies in which he was incessantly engaged.One of the first was that of the Dominicans and the Franciscansrespecting the immaculate conception. In early life Murner was the friend of Reuchlin, and at its close he was one of the bitterest enemies of Luther. No class of society was safe from Murner'ssatire. He wrote against bishops, reformers, monks, nuns, noble86 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CH.6men, and lawyers. ULRICH VON HUTTEN, who was a champion for the Reformation with both sword and pen, and the principalwriter of the celebrated ' Epistolæ Virorum Obscurorum ,' agreedon many points with Murner, yet was not spared by him. Thepolemic monk travelled hither and thither with no fixed purposein life, and hardly anywhere failed in making enemies. In 1512he published one of his chief works, Die Narrenbeschwörung (“ The Exorcism of Fools ' ), which was suggested by Brandt's Narren schiff, but was not an imitation . Another of Murner's satires,Die Schelmenzunft ( “ The Rogues' Club ' ), consists of the substanceof a series of sermons preached by the author at Frankfurt. Its style is low and coarse, but he pleads that the public liked it.• Some tell me,' he says, ' to remember my sacred calling, and to write seriously on religious subjects; but the fact is, I have written about fifty serious books, and the publishers will not even look at them. So I have locked up all my divinity in achest. And, as it is now counted a degradation to write German rhymes, I must plead that I cannot help it; for when I try to write sober prose, I find my pen running into rhymes against my own purpose.' Nothing can exceed the violence of Murner'sdeclamations against simony, secular church patronage, and the luxurious lives of the superior clergy; por are the laity spared.He denounces especially their oppressive taxation of the poor.• When a hen lays an egg,' he says , " the landlord takes the yolk,his lady has the white, and the boor is allowed to keep the shell .'Murner's best work, ' The Great Lutheran Fool, as exorcised byDr. Murner ' ( 1522) , strictly belongs to the sixteenth century;but may be noticed here, that we may more speedily close our interview with this polemic monk. In this satire he introducesLuther as commander- in - chief of a large army marching in three divisions. The infantry carry a flag with the word 'Guspel'con spicuously displayed; the banner of the cavalry has the inscription ' Freedom , and the baggage have for their motto “ The Truth . As they march along, they boast of their exclusive possession of those three flags. We give a condensation ratherthan a full translation of a few lines from this part of the satire:Forth out of Babylon we go To make the loftiest mountains low,To lift the valley and the plain .Our Luther tells us to abstainFrom all good works, and not in vain6a .VI.] MURNER . 87Whatever he commands we do;For all that Luther says is true.66Murner then goes on to say that all the three banners carriedby the insurgents have been stolen .. The evangelical flag ,' he says, has been the property of the faithful for more than fifteenhundred years. The truth ' belongs to no individual man, but to the whole congregation of believers, and Christian freedom ' is understood only by Catholics. Luther leads on his forces todestroy churches and monasteries, but Murner and his friendsoffer a stout resistance. A hard fight is followed by a truce and oddly enough —by Murner's marriage with one of Luther's daughters! What this incident may be intended to symbolise we cannot even guess. The leader of the faithful is, however,disappointed in matrimony, and soon divorces his wife. Hostilitiesare resumed and continued until the death of Luther makes anend of the war . He is buried with contempt, as a heretic, and Murner, with great delight, acts as conductor at a charivari, or • concert of cats' music, ' vigorously performed at the grave of the reformer!In 1523, soon after the publication of the satire on Luther, its author was invited to England by King Henry VIII., in whose defence he had written a tract with a strange title— ' Is the King of England a Liar?-or is Luther p'. In the same year Murnerreturned to Strassburg, and there set up his own press; for he could not find printers for his violent satires. He was busy in preparing some new work, when his house was plundered and hispress broken in pieces by a mob. Murner then escaped from Strassburg, and in 1529 arrived, in a state of utter destitution, at Lucerne, where a public subscription was made to provide for him new suit of clothes. His restless life closed in mystery,all that is known further being that, some short time before1537, he found rest in the grave.Whatever may be thought of the quality of Murner's writings,they deserve notice as representing the temper of his times_timeswhen men, on both sides of the great controversy then waged,were wanting in self -knowledge and charity. Under their zeal for opinions they often concealed pride, self-will, and malice.Their tenets were forms behind which not seldom lurked a selfasserting will. Satirists like Murner have a burning zeal for truth , but hardly see the results to which they lead men. If888 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE [CA, .error has an overwhelming majority, what hope is there for the truth? If all the world has always been wrong, why not distrust the satirist himself? Whatever the errors of society, they willnot be corrected by abstract maxims. The polemic writer' oftenassumes as an axiom that, since his opponents are wrong, he must be right - if two dark colours differ by a sbade, one must be white.But it is clear that of two contending parties both may be inerror, and the truth may rest with a third , not involved in theirdispute. Murner had many followers who, dissenting from bis opinions, were like him in temper. He was one of the earliest ofthe bitter polemic writers of the sixteenth century, and his name has, therefore, suggested remarks that may be applied as fairly tosome of his opponents as to himself.Our view of this closing period of the Middle Ages has been , on the whole, gloomy. The pressior have received from thelow imaginative literature of the times is not removed when we turn to history.VII.] CHRONICLES OF TOWNS. 89CHAPTER VII.THIRD PERIOD. 1350–1525 .CHRONICLES OF TOWNS – DIDACTIC PRO8E - THE MYSTICS - TAULERDER FRANCK FORTER.'6Among the chroniclers of the period, one of the earliest was FRITZSCHE CLOSENER, & canon of Strassburg, who died in 1384.He wrote, in very ple prose, a record of the chief events of histimes, and his chronicle_excepting, perhaps, the notes on frequent earthquakes - seems trustworthy. The most interesting passagesare those which describe the spread of the pestilence, the perse cutions of the Jews, and the processions of the flagellants. His account of the black death ' —so the epidemic of the times was called - makes it clear that it was the Oriental plague. ' In the year 1349,' he says, ' when the flagellants came to Strassburg,there was a mortality among the people, such as had never been known before, and it continued all the time the flagellants stayed with us, but abated when they went away. Every day, in each parish, from eight to ten corpses were buried in the churchyard,to say nothing of many others interred near convents and at the hospital. The old graveyard of the hospital was found too small;and they added a large piece of garden -ground to it. All who died of the pest had boils or tumours, mostly under their arms,and after these appeared the plague-stricken died generally on the third or fourth day; but some died on the first day. The plague was clearly infectious, for it seldom happened that only one died in a house.' ' In the same year,' he tells us, in his own calm style,‘ on St. Feltin's Day, the Jews were burned on a wooden in the churchyard. Such burnings of Jews took place not only in Strassburg, but in all the towns along the Rhine,because the people believed that the Jews had brought the pestilence among us by putting poison into the springs and other waters. In some places the Jews were burned after a form ofscaffold set ар90 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .6trial, but in others their houses were fired, and they were not allowed to escape from the flames.' Closener's account of theflagellants is striking enough to merit a succinct quotation:In the same year (1349) two hundred brethren of the scourge came to Strassburg. They marched into the town , two and two abreast, chanting alamentation , and carrying banners and lighted candles, while, as they came into the town, the bells of the cathedral were tolled . When they entered achurch , they first all kneeled down and chanted ahymn beginning thus:For drink they gave to Jesu gall:Here, fellow -sinners, let us fall .' . ..Then, extending their arms, and making themselves so many likenesses of the cross, they fell all at once, with a loud clapping sound, fat on the pave ment. Twice a day, early and late, they publicly scourged themselves with knotted cords, and this was their fashion of doing it: —The bells of the cathedral were tolled as they marched two and two abreast out of the town into the open field . There , having stripped themselves down to the waist,they lay down on the grass, so as to form a wide circle, and each brother, by his mode of lying down, confessed the chief sin of which he had been guilty .Thus one guilty of perjury lay on one side and raised his hand, with three fingers extended. ... Then, at their master's bidding, they arose in suc cession, and some of their best singers sang a hymn beginning with the linesCome hither all who would not dwell For ever in the flames of hell! ' ...And, while they were singing, the brethren went round about in a ring, and scourged their naked backs until the blood flowed freely from many of them. Then they fell again to the earth, and remained lying there, with arms extended in the fashion of a cross, until the singing men began a hymn on the crucifixion:• Maria stood, with anguish sighing,While on the cross her Son was dying.' .Whereupon the flagellants arose , and repeated their scourging of them .selves; and this was done again and again. . .. Then there was read to them a letter brought, it was said, from heaven by an angel. It told how,for the sins of the times, plague and famine, fire and earthquake, had visitedthe land, and how the Saracens had been allowed to shed much Christianblood; and it threatened that, if men would not repent, strange wild beastsand birds, such as were never seen before, would be sent to make desolateall the land. Also the angel's letter commanded that Sundays andSaints' Days should be strictly observed . The people at first believedin the letter, and in the sayings of the flagellants, more than in all that thepriests said, and the clergy who talked against the brethren of the scourgedid not gain the favour of the people. ... Women formed themselves intocompanies to imitate the flagellants, and even children gathered together to whip themselves. . In the course of time, however, the Strassburgpeople grew weary of the brethren , and would not have the minster belltolled for their processions, and at last a law was made, that whoever wished to scourge himself must do it privately in his own dwelling.VII.) CHRONICLES OF TOWNS. 9166The canon ends his chronicle with one more earthquake, verybriefly mentioned; thus: - In the year 1362, on the morning ofSunday, the ninth day after St. Peter's, and while they werechanting matins in the minster, there was an earthquake. On thesame day this book was finished by Fritzsche Closener, a priest atStrassburg .' His chronicle was extended by JAKOB TWINGER, whodied at Strassburg in 1420.Several books of the same class — such as the ' Limburg Chronicle ,' a ' History of Breslau in 1440–79 ,' by PETER ESCHENLOER,and • The Chronicle of the Holy City of Cologne,' by an unknown author, supply some interesting facts respecting the growth of thetowns and their government. Two writers, both named DIEBOLD SCUILLING— one of Solothurn, who died in 1485; the other of Lucerne, who died about 1520 - must be named as the best Swiss chroniclers of their times. JUSTINGER, who died in 1426, andFRICKHARD, who died, in his ninetieth year, in 1519, both wrote of the history of Berne, and MELCHIOR Russ, who was living near the close of the fifteenth century , wrote the annals of Lucerne.In the general Chronicle of the Swiss Confederation ,' by PETER mann ETTERLIN , who died in 1507, the former part is fabulous;but the notices of affairs in his own time have some historicalvalue.61Was there in these times no better German literature than suchas bas been described? Yes; but it belonged to another world,noi to the world of contentions and divisions represented in suchliterature as we have noticed. The meditative men of the times,the Mystics, knew that the world around them required a reno vation, not external, but spiritual and deep, and that this renovation must take place, first of all, in the reformer's own mind. So they retired from the strife of society to find or to make peace in the world of their own thoughts. Their writings would deserve potice, if only on account of their improved prose style.JOHANNES TAULER, born, probably at Strassburg, about 1290,died in 1361. In early lifo ho entered the Dominican Order,and was, for a time, the pupil of Eckhart. After studyingmetaphysics and divinity, Tauler wrote and preached many ser mons, displayed considerable learning in theology, and gained areputation before he was fifty years old . At that time he received92 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.a visit from a layman, Nicolaus of Basel, the head of a religious brotherhood. This visitor told the great preacher that his sermonswere worthless, and that his knowledge of theology was merelyintellectual and not spiritual. Tauler, believing his new teacher,abstained from preaching for two years, and then once more appeared in the pulpit. He now preached with greater depth of thought and feeling, and, at the same time, more practically. Neither pantheistic nor passive, his mysticism was united with a burning zeal for the welfare of his hearers. Many passages in his sermonsare full of the eloquence not derived from studied diction , but springing immediately from the heart. " True humiliation ,' hesays in one place, ' is an impregnable fortress. All the worldinay try to carry it by storm; but they cannot.' ... Dear soul, 'he says again, sink into the abyss of thine own nothingness, andthen let a tower fall to crush thee; or all the demons from helloppose thee; or heaven and earth, with all their creatures, setthemselves in battle array against thee - they shall not prevail,but shall be made to serve thee. ' Such was Tauler's preaching on his favourite theme. Why or how we cannot clearly say , buthe offended his ecclesiastical superiors, and, though he had de votedly laboured to spread the consolations of religion among the people during the prevalence of the plague ( in 1348) , he was forbidden to preach and was driven away from Strassburg. His chief work , besides a series of sermons, is entitled Die Nachfolgedes armen Lebens Christi, which may be translated freely as “ TheImitation of Christ in His Humiliation .'The doctrine most prominent in the writings of Tauler and his friends is that religion is neither a history nor an external institution, but a life in the souls of men. All that is represented asexternally or historically true must be conceived in the soul andrealised in experience before it can become spiritually true. But the word " spiritual,' as used by Tauler, is not to be understood in a negatire or merely internal sense; for he teaches that what is spiritual is also practical. There are superficial thoughts that haveno power and lead to no practice; but there are also thoughts that are essentially united with deep feeling and a correspondingpractice, and these are spiritual thoughts. Tauler and other Mystics, while they assert the necessary union of religious thought with good works, dwell rather on the internal source than on theoutward results. ' One thought of God, attended with absolute66VII . ) TAULER . 936resignation to His will, is worth more,' says Tauler, ' than all thegood works done in Christendom .'The teaching of Tauler is concisely repeated in a little bookfirst entitled Der Franckforter, to which Luther afterwards gave the title Eyn deutsch Theologia, when he edited a part of it in 1516. The doctrine of this short treatise — written, most probably,in the fourteenth century - reminds us of the speculations ofEckhart. The fall of man,' or the origin of evil, is here viewednot historically, but as a present and continuous act of man's will,in the assertion of itself as distinct from and in opposition to the will of the Infinite. Man's will is the centre and the source of aworld of disunion. Before his “ fall,' or his separation from theInfinite , his will acted as a magnet on all creatures, and held them in union and subordination; but by the perversion of his will all creatures are perverted. It is vain to attempt, in the first place,any outward reformation . Man must résign his will; must claimno life in or for himself; must not imagine that he can possess anything good, as power, knowledge, or happiness. All such thoughts as are expressed in the words ' I ' and mine'must berenounced . Such resignation is the birth of the second Adam.In him the whole creation is to be restored to its primeval-divineorder. This birth of the second Adam must take place inevery man who would be a Christian. He must becomeweary of himself and of all created and finite things, and, relin quishing all his desires, must resign his whole soul and will.Though good works wrought in the life of the renewed soul are boly, yet more boly is the inner, silent self - sacrifice that cannever be fully expressed in good words or good works; for by that inner sacrifice the soul is translated into the one true lifebeyond all death-the eternal life in which sin, and self, andsorrow , and all things that belong to the creature apart from God,are for ever lost .Such was the teaching of TAULER and of many of his brethren in the fourteenth century. The above summary may serve as &substitute for notices of other mystic works by such writers asHEINRICH VON NÖRDLINGEN, the friend of Tauler, HEINRICH DERSerse (1300-66 ), and RULMAN MERSWIN ( 1307-82 ), another of Tauler's friends, and the author of a work entitled Das Buch vonden neun Felsen ( ' The Book of the Nine Rocks ' ) .The influence of the Mystics was very extensive, and lived long94 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.aafter the Reformation. It has been said that to read one ofTauler's sermons is to read them all. This is not exact; but thegeneral accordance of the mystic writers, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, in all the essential parts of their doctrine,is very remarkable .Of their relations with the external Church we bave hardlysatisfactory information . They were persecuted, but not to such an extent as might have been expected; for the full purport of their teaching was not understood by their opponents. It wasrather remote from , than directly opposed to, the tenets of the Church, and could hardly be made a basis for ecclesiastical reformation . A vast external institution, intended to include nations under its sway , might tolerate and include pious brotherhoods like the Mystics, but could not, if it would, enforce their doctrineor their practice. With regard to the application of their teach ing to practical life, some ambiguity may be complained of. TheMystics evade rather than solve the problem of uniting such areligious life as their own with a fulfilment of the duties of society.The battle of life, for religious men, is less severe in the monastic cell than in the shop, the market, the school, and the factory . Ifthe Mystics did not intend to say that retirement from the world is the only way to heaven, they wrote words that seem to mean that. If they wished to teach men how to act rightly as neighbours, fathers, and husbands, and when engaged in trade and industry , they should have been more explicit and condescendingin the application of their doctrine. We do not say that theirdoctrine was unpractical, for what can have a more profound effect on life than the subjugation of the passions and the resignation of the will? But, with reference to the guidance it affords for menwho have to live and act in this world , the teaching of the Mystics may be described as abstract.It is hardly necessary to say, in concluding this review of medieval German literature, that this is no attempt at a description of the general culture of the times. That must include an account of the revival of classic literature-to say nothing of many Latin folios filled with the subtile disquisitions of the schoolmen.The German literature of the later middle ages was obscure and despised — as it partly deserved to be; yet it served to indicate some characteristics of coming events. There might be seen,among the secular aristocracy of that age, as in the Church andVII .] TAULER . 95in the great schools of learning, powers that rose and enthroned themselves without attempting to lift up the people. Men werenot only classified, but separated, as churchmen and laymen, nobles and peasantry, scholars and illiterate . The press was multiplyingcopies of Roman Classics for the enjoyment of scholars luxuriatingin their new - found intellectual wealth, while the vernacular tongue was condemned to be used only for the most vulgar purposes. The sentence was, on the whole, strictly carried into execution. The people made a low comic literature for them selves. They could satirise existing institutions, but had no clear notions of any union of order with freedom . When freedom began to be talked of among other classes, the peasantry at tempted to revolutionise society, in order to fulfil absurd predic tions, falsely supposed to be contained in the Bible.96 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Cu.CHAPTER VIII.FOURTH PERIOD. 1525-1625.> CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TIME - ULRICH VON HUTTEN - LUTHER ,DISCONTENT was the chief characteristic of the later middle ages.We speak of the historical world , including the men of action,the thinkers and the writers who expressed the tendencies of theirtimes. There existed no doubt a quiet, unbeard - of world -- not lessimportant than the historical — a world of obscure people, happierthan the men who are ever looking forwards and beyond their ownimmediate interests. It is of the leading men we write when wesay that the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were times of discontent. We have read how it had expressed itself with regardto social life, and the institutions of both the State and theChurch. The didactic and satirical literature already noticed ismade wearisome by iterated complaints of the dualism existing be tween rich and poor, between master and servant, the learned andthe unlearned , the priest and the layman, the emperor and the pope . But, comparatively speaking, discontent had been onlymuttered in the fifteenth century; in the sixteenth it was outspoken. The literature of this time is, consequently, crude inform and violent in temper, but deeply interesting in its purport-in other words, in its connection with realities. It would beunjust to pass hastily over such a literature, on account of its want of a superficial polish. We might as well leave a blank in thehistory of English literature from Chaucer to Spenser, orbriefly pass by the authors of the seventeenth century, in order toconcentrate attention on Pope and Addison.We are still living in the midst of the movement that began in the sixteenth century, and how it is to terminate is the most im portant question on which the minds of men are divided. Marvellous progress has recently been made in the physical sciencesVIII .) CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TIME . 97a6and in applied mechanics, but in polemic literature written sincethe sixteenth century we find little that is both new and important. And this is neither to be wondered at nor deplored; forthe age of the Reformation left controversies in which we arestill engaged, and problems still waiting for a solution . In thatage all the abstract axioms of the French Revolution were pub lished. The years of the Parisian anarchy (1789–99 ) hardly gave birth to one original notion. Proudhon's startling axiom waspreached in Germany in the thirteenth century, and was accepted as a new Gospel by many in the sixteenth, when men of some learning could quote Greek, and refer to the fathers and the schoolmen, to support the doctrine that property should be abolished.Luther's own notions on tbe subject were unsound, as modernpolitical economists would say; but he hated the extremeopinions maintained by some educated men in his time and afterwards.Others beside the peasantry were dreaming of a new order ofsociety introduced ab extra , with abstract theory for a ground plan, and violence instead of workmanship for carrying it into execution . One learned man made a dreary sketch of a ' ModelCity , ' where all the inhabitants were to be made bappy by good sanitary regulations, improved cookery, and the abolition of religion . Another dreamer, in his “ Solar State, ' arranged a system of society regulated like a complex clock-work, with the abolition of both freedom and property as a moving power. Making such Utopias on pa was one of the amusements of learned men inthose days.It is a mistake to regard the controversy of the sixteenth century as exclusively theological or ecclesiastical, and it is a greatermistake to ascribe the whole movement to the zeal of a discontented monk. Luther neither inspired the dreams of Münzer andthe Anabaptists, nor excited the peasånts and others who endeavoured to fulfil such dreams. He might as well be accused ofcalling Savonarola into existence. There have been historianswho could ingeniously explain great events by mean anecdotes of personal interests, but it is more intelligible to ascribe great results to great thoughts — thoughts that have an irresistible power of first making themselves common and then demanding to be carried into execution . The prevalence of such thoughts in the sixteenth century made it a grand epoch. The main controversywas part of a process, still going on in the world, and having for itsaH98 OUTLINES, OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ Ch.object to lead men through all their errors to a knowledge ofthemselves and of the Divine Government to which they mustsubmit. This was the goal kept in view by good and honestinquirers in the sixteenth century, but they differed widely respecting the ways that led to it; in other words, on the respectiveclaims of the Church, the Scriptures, and free inquiry. Thecontroversy that followed is only partially represented in the German literature of the time. It is hardly necessary , therefore,to say that, in our notices of writers who lived during the time ofthe Reformation, we do not pretend to give, even in outline, ahistory of that movement.The controversy of the age gave only temporary life andvigour to German literature, which then, for a short time, might be called national. No longer confined to convents or to courts,it had its centres in several newly - founded universities, and wasspread abroad by means of the printing press. The Bible, trans lated by Luther, was the people's book, and hynios, founded on popular models, contained the best poetry written at that period .The rapid decline of this new literature is easily explained by areference to political and ecclesiastical history. Expectations ofpolitical freedom , cherished at the opening of the century, were soon disappointed; dreams of pious men who had endeavoured tospread the teaching of a religion independent of external forms,were not fulfilled; Luther, in his earlier years, read Tauler's sermons, and edited the German Theology;' but outbreaks offanaticism soon induced him to defend his own work of reformation by entrenching bimself within a strict system of theological institutes. The disappointment of men who wanted more freedom in theology was expressed by SEBASTIAN FRANCK ( 1500-45 ), one of the best prose writers of this time. Luther denounced him andhis friends as wild visionaries, " always prating of Geist, Geist ,Geist;' in otherwords, setting up their own convictions as distinctfrom Luther's exposition of the Bible .These and more serious dissensions impaired the strength of theReformation movement, while its influence on the general cultureof the people was greatly diminished by the use of two languages Latin for the learned , and a half- barbarous German for the common people. Learned men wrote in Latin on philology and theology, and the people were left with few intellectual leaders.The enthusiastic patriot HUTTEN saw the error of this division of6VIII. ) ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 991211languages, and endeavoured to write in his native tongue, so as to be read by the people; but he succeeded only to a limited extent,and when more than thirty years old could write far better in Latin than in German. The verse written during the sixteenth century - excepting Lutheran hymns-is, with regard to bothstyle and purport, inferior to the literature of prose, which would moreover demand precedence here, if only on account of onefuct; the greatest literary work of the century — the work that established New HIGH GERMAN as the language of the Gernianpeople—is Luther's translation of the Bible.MARTIN LUTIER, the son of a poor miner, was born at Eisleben on the tenth of November, 1483; he received his early education atseveral schools, in Mansfeld, Magdeburg, and Eisenach, and wentto the University of Erfurt in 1501. After some studies in theologyand scholastic pbilosophy, be, in opposition to the advice of friends,took vows as un Augustine monk, and devoted himself to religions exercises and the study of the Bible. A visit to Rome ( 1510)served to increase bis dissatisfaction with some practices au thorised by the Church, especially the sale of indulgences. Thecontroversy excited by his publication of ninety - five theses agaiost indulgences was revived by his disputation with Dr. Eck, whichwas followed by the excommunication of the reformer in 1520.Ile thereupon published ' An Address to the Nobility ,' and prayedfor their assistance in the reformation of the Church and theuniversities.Meanwhile Ulrici Von HUTTEN, a man of noble ancestry (bornin 1488 ), had already exhorted the aristocracy to win by the swordtheir national independence. He, at first, thought lightly of the controversy raised by Luther, as if it had been a quarrel of monks on a theological question; but soon understood that national andreligious freedom must rise or fall together. Ulrich, who hadwritten in Latin several of the ' Epistles of obscure Men, ' againstthe ecclesiastical authority of Rome, now studied German, inorder that he might co -operate more powerfully with Luther.But the two reformers differed in their choice of weapons. Ulrichwould use the sword; Luther, as he said , would trust in ' the Word; ' or in arguments based, as he believed, on the Scriptures.Ulrich , denounced as a heretic and a traitor, was driven from onetowo to another; till he found a refuge for a time in the castle of Franz von Seckingen. Thence he escaped into Switzerland, and2က်66>u 2100 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CH.66died in a retreat on the island of Ufenau in the Lake of Zurich, in 1523. His satires, in the form of dialogues, and his Complaint,addressed to the German People,' are remarkable expressions of the polemic temper of the time. The purpose to which he devoted his life was to liberate his native land from the religious andpolitical dominion of Rome, and from the powers usurped by the princes of the several States. Alea jacta esto, was Ulrich's motto when he declared war, not only against Rome, but also against the princes, while he despised the nobles among whom he was compelled to seek for allies. I know I shall be driven out of theland ,' he says, ' but I cannot turn black into white. No Turk, no heathen would rule so oppressively as our princes. To overthrow them , the towns must unite with the nobility .' Hutten's whole life was a bitter warfare, and his constitution was, iv his youth,undermined by the disease that brought him to an early grave.When persecuted by foes, and forsaken by his friends, he addressed to the whole body of the German people'a ' Complaint,' of which the following short passage may give the purport:Countrymen! let all unite to protect even one, if that one has done good service for all. I might have enjoyed the favour of Rome at this time, if Ihad not desired above all other things the welfare of my country. For thisI bave laboured and suffered . For this I have endured so many misfortunes;long journeys by day and night, so much want and care, and such shamefulpoverty; and all this in the prime of my life in the best, blooming years of youth! Surely for all my good intentions I have some claim on your assist If I cannot move you by my own case, be moved with pity for my friends and relatives . My poor and aged father and mother, my youngerbrother, who is in great trouble about me, all my relatives, and many who loveand respect me, besides several learned men, and some noblemen; all thesejoin in my petition. If I have added something to the honour of our Fatherland bymy writings— if I have endeavoured to serve my country - help me now!Hutten's writings -- including those in Latin -- are numerous,and are mostly directed against the Romish clergy. He gives asummary of all that had been said by the satirists of the preceding century. To whom the blame must be chiefly ascribed , is aquestion to be decided by political and ecclesiastical historians,but the fact must be admitted, that a great part of the literature of the time immediately preceding the Reformation is full of envy,malice, and all uncharitableness. Warfare seemed to be the only atmosphere in which men could breathe, and the spirit that ani mated many declamations against the evils of society was as bad as the evils themselves. In a word, discontent and bad temperance. ...VIII. ] LUTHER. 101>were almost universal, if literature is to be trusted . The spirit of Thomas Murner seemed to have diffused itself over the land. Thetroubles that followed Luther's protest had been prepared beforehis time. The discontent of the people under the rule of theirprinces, and the strife of the princes against each other, and against their foreign emperor — the Spaniard - were both ready to break forth into open violence and anarchy, and Luther's words were made to serve as a signal.Trusting, as he said , ' in the word ,' without the sword, Luther burned the papal bull issued against him, made his memorableprotest at Worms, and then found a place of shelter in the Wartburg, an old castle near Eisenach. Here he proceeded with his translation of the Bible. He had ended his labours on the NewTestament (1522) when his progress was disturbed by the excesses of one of his own friends, Andreas Rudolf Bodensteincommonly named KARLSTADT. He was professor of theology at Wittenberg, but also an iconoclast and a radical reformer, wbewished to go far beyond any reforms advocated by Luther.Go back to your native places, ' said Karlstadt to his pupils, at the university, and there learn some useful trades and make yourselves good citizens. Stay not here to study, while othermen are working to support you. The apostle Paul worked withhis own hands. Go and do likewise .' The professor carried into practice his own teaching; put on a white felt hat and a smockfrock , and went to work in the fields. But it was by his doctrine that all sacred images in churches should be destroyed that Karlstadt especially offended Luther. Their quarrel led to thebanishment of the iconoclast.Luther knew that his own work of reformation would be censured for any results that might follow when the Peasants' War of 1525 broke out. The doctrines preached at an earlier period byFriar Berthold — that the poor shall inherit the earth and that therich must surrender their wealth—had been long remembered;nnd it was supposed by many that the time had come for reducingtbem to practice. Luther at first advised the nobility to meetthe peasantry with liberal reforms. You must moderate your despotism , ' said he, and submit to God's own ordinances, or you will be compelled to do so .' But when the peasants grew violent,broke into convents, made themselves drunk in the cellars, andset fire to castles on the banks of the Rhine, Luther came forth6&102 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ Ch .6against them, and it is not too much to say that bis denunciationaprofitant torthe whole democratic movement of the time. If, guided by a more selfish policy, he had placed himself at the headof the peasantry, She might have easily triumphed over all hisown enemies. But he knew well the truth — confessed at lastby Münzer — that ' the sensual and the dark rebel in vain; ' thatmen must be free within before they can make a right use ofexternal liberty. If Münzer's exploits had not worn out the patience of Luther, the anabaptists must have done it. Dreamsof Utopia prevailed in those times, and a baker at Leyden had adream. He declared that he was Enoch,' and sent out twelveapostles to find the new Jerusalem. At Munster they enlisted afanatical tailor, and then gained the patronage of the mayor.Envy and rapacity, disguised by a few abused texts pickedfrom the Bible, began the work of reformation by driving outthe sons of Esnu, ' and distributing their goods among the children of Jacob,' in other words, the anabaptists. The destructionof works of art, musical instruments, and libraries was soon fol lowed by the institution of polygamy. The tailor - crowned asKing of Israel - acted as the public executioner of one of his own wives, while the people, assembled in the market -place, lifted uptheir voices in the psalm, “ To God on high give thanks andpraise. ' The worst remains to be told; for the sincerity of theanarchical men of Munster was very doubtful.Knipperdolling, conducted himself more like a buffron than anenthusiast. If the anabaptists of Munster had studied how tomake the most disgraceful caricatures of freedom and religion,they could not have done their work more effectually.The extreme notions of Karlstadt and his followers, the violence of Thomas Münzer and other leaders of the peasantry, and, lastly ,the madness of the anabaptists, had all tended to make Luthermore conservative and dogmatic - if this word may be used, with out offence, in its true meaning. He fortified his own position bythe strictly -defined tenets of his two catechisms ( 1529) , and denounced as departing too widely from the letter of the Bible the doctrines asserted by the Swiss reformers. Ulrich Zwingli,their leader, endeavoured to maintain the democratic character ofthe Reformation, and departed more widely than Luther from the teaching of the Church. The two reformers met in 1529,but failed to adjust their doctrinal differences.The mayor,VII.] LUTHER . 1036In the following year the Diet of Augsburg was assembled, butLuther being under imperial censure could not attend. If wemay judge from a letter he wrote about this time, he was notseriously depressed by the interdict:Here we are sitting ſhe writes ], and looking out of the window on &little grove, where a number of crows and daws are assembled as in a Diet;but with such a flying bither and thither, and croaking all day and all night - young and old all chattering at once we wonder how their throats can bear it .The letter does not conclude without some polemical bitterness;he calls the crows ' sophists and papists,' and prays ironically fortheir salvation . There is more sweetness in a note written by him about the same time to his son John, only four years old:I know a pleasant little garden, where many children dressed in golden frocks go in under the trees and gather rosy apples and pears, cherries andplums, both purple and yellow , and sing and dance and make merry, and havefine little horses, with golden reins and silver saddles. When I asked the gardener who these little children were , he told me: “ They are children who say their prayers, learn their lessons, and do as they are told . Well,' said I co the man, and I have a little boy, Johnny Luther, at home, who would like to come bere, to gather pears and apples, ride on these fine little horses,and play with these children . Very well,' said the man , ' if he is obedient and says his prayers, and learns well, he shall come, and he may bringLippus and Jost with him, and they shall all bave fifes and drums, andother kinds of music, and also little cross -bows to shoot with .'Luther published, in the same year ( 1530), a translation of • Æsop's Fables. A passage from the preface may be noticed asone of many proofs of the reformer's care for the education of young people: --I bave undertaken ſhe says] the revision of this book, and have dressed it in a better style than it had before. In doing this, I have especially cared for young people that they may have instruction in a form suitable to their age, wbich is naturally fond of plays and fictions; and I have wished to gratify their taste without yielding indulgence to anything bad .I mention this , because we have seen what an objectionable book some writers have made and sent into the world, as ' the German Æsop ' - the original fables mixed with scandalous tales, for which the authors ought to be punished; tales to be recited, not in families, but, if anywhere, in the lowest taverns. Esop endeavoured to introduce wisdom under an ap pearance. of folly; but his perverters would sacrifice his wisdom to their own folly.In 1534 the translation of the Bible into German was completed.In this great work Luther's aim was to write so as to be under stood by all the people, high and low , learned and comparatively104 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CK.

illiter: te . He spared no pains; but revised his work again andagain — for the last time in 1545. Its success was marvellous,but not greater than it deserved . It was soon accepted as thepeople's book, and in 1558, thirty -eight editions of the wholeBible and seventy- two of the New Testament had appeared.The effect was as important in general literature as in theology.Luther's Bible established the New High German language,which has become the medium of a literature now spreading itsinfuence throughout the world . The carefulness of the transla tion is often disguised under an appearance of facility. • When atwork upon the Book of Job, ' says Luther, ' we sometimes bardlycontrived to do three lines in four days.' If, in this difficult sec tion of his work Luther here and there failed, he seldom made 80adventurous a translation as may be found in the English Book of Job (xxxvi. 33). Another merit is, that as a churchmanof the sixteenth century , who had been accustomed to readmediæval jargon called Latin, he was, to a remarkable degree, free from the common error of translating words instead of their meaning. He did not always succeed; but he tried hard to put the Greek of the Gospels into such words as any German peasant might understand. The parable of the Prodigal Son may bementioned as one of numerous narrative passages faithfully and popularly rendered, and Psalm civ. may be noticed as one of many examples of a bold and clear translation of poetry. We translate two or three paragraphs from the preface to the Book ofPsalms, where Luther can be met on ground far away from allcontroversy:.The heart of man is like a ship out on a wild sea , and driven by storm winds, blowing from all the four quarters of the world; now impelled by fear and care for coming evil; now disturbed by vexation and grief for present misfortune; now urged along by hope and a confidence of future good; now wafted by joy and contentment. These storm-winds of thesoul teach us how to speak in good earnest, to open our hearts, and toutter their contents. The man actually in want and fear does not express himself quietly, like a man at ease who only talks about fear and want;a heart filled with joy utters itself and sings in a way not to be imitated by one who is all the time in fear; ' it does not come from the heart ,'men say, when a sorrowful man tries to laugh, or a merry man wouldweep . Now of what does this Book of Psalms mostly consist, but of earnest expressions of the heart's emotions — the storm -winds as I have called them? Where are finer expressions of joy than the Psalms of praise and thanksgiving? There you look into the hearts of the saints, as if you looked into a fair and delightful garden, aye, ar into honen itself andVIII .] LUTHER . 105ayou see how lovely and pleasant flowers are springing up there out of manifold happy and beautiful thoughts of God and all his mercies. . .But again, where will you find deeper, more mournful and pitiful words of sorrow than in the Psalms devoted to lamentation? I conclude, then,that the Psalter is a hand - book for religious men, wherein everyone, whatever may be bis condition, may find words that will rhyme with it, and psalms as exactly fitted to express bis wants, as if they had been written solely for bis benefit .In 1536 Luther prepared the articles of faith afterwards ar cepted , first by an assembly of divines at Schmalkald, and then by the Lutheran Church . He did not live to witness the misfortunes of the Schmalkald Alliance , when they took up armsto maintain their principles. His health had long been failing,and in 1545, when he refused to be judged by the Council of Trent, he was but a wreck of himself. Thirty years of veryhard work for heart and brain had made him long for rest.Writing to a friend about this time he says:As an old man, worn out and weary, cold and decayed, and with bot rne eye left, I had hoped that I might have , at last, a little rest; but here I am still harassed with calls to write and talk , and regulate affairs,23 if I had never written, spoken , or transacted any business. I am now tired of the world, and the world is weary of me. I would leave it as a manleaves an inn when he has paid his reckoning. So let me have an hour's grace before I die; for I want to hear no more of this world's affairs.To oblige his friend, he, however, took a journey to Eisleben ,in winter, when the surrounding district was flooded . One of the last traits to fade from his character was humour, as may beseen in a note written at this time to bis wife: ' We arrived here,at Halle, ' he says, " about eight o'clock , but have not ventured toen on to Eisleben, for we have been stopped by a great anabap tist -- the flood - which has covered the roads and threatens uswith immersion , and no mere sprinkling.' He is near the grave now, but his humour is still polemical, though not bitter. He died at Eisleben on February 18, 1546. ' I was born ,' he says,to fight with gangs of men and demons, and that has mademany of my books so impetuous and warlike. My shell may berather bard; but the kernel is soft and sweet. His numerouswritings —beside those already named-include controversialtracts and sermons, which belong to Church History rather than to General Literature, and cannot be fairly noticed here. Nothingcould exceed the violence of Luther's tone of declamation; but itWis characteristic of his times. A disposition to seek and find6106 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.in the Scriptures, not objective truth , but a confirmation of pre couceived opinions, was common to the theologians of the sixteenth century. They seldom dreamed that the true meaning ofthe Scriptures, to which they so often referred, might lie far beyond the range of controversial exegesis. It cannot be affirmed that Luther, in his expositions of the Bible, always avoided thecommon error of his time. For examples of his command of atruly popular style his series of seren vigorous ' Sermons against Image- breakers ' may be noticed. It is obvious that the most energetic passages of his polemical writings could not be fairlyrepresented by any brief quotations, and this remark will explain our extracts from his less important works. His numerous lettersand his " Table Talk ' — the latter not always to be trusted — areaids for an estimate of his character. Among the several editionsof his writings, that published in twenty - four volumes at Hallo (1740-51) may be named as the most complete.>IX .] THEOLOGIANS. 107CHAPTER IX .FOURTH PERIOD. 1525-1625.THEOLOGIANS: BERTHOLD - ZWINGLI --MATHESIUS - ARNDT -AGRICOLA - FRANCK - BÖHME -HISTORIANS: TURMAIR - ANSHELM -TSCHUDI - KESSLER - BULLINGER - LEHMANN - TILEOBALD - ART ANDSCIENCE: DÖRER - PARACELSUS.62Toe Prose Literature of these times must appear poor to readers unacquainted with the fact that, during the Reformation and afterwards, Latin was the language of theologiang. Their labours had no connection with national literature, but may be here mentioned in order to make clear the statement that our notices of afew German writers on theology do not pretend to representfairly the activity of the age in this department of study. As one example of the zeal and industry that produced libraries of folio volumes in Latin we may name the Magdeburg Centuries,' in thirteen volumes ( 1659-74 ). Its object was to show the agreement of the doctrines of the Reformers with the ancient autho rities of the Church. The work was first planned at Magdeburg,and was divided into Centuries, each occupying one volume hence the title. Voluminous itself, the work called forth a book still more voluminous, for to refute its statements Baronius wrote his Ecclesiastical Annals .'The few theologians who wrote in German may be here classified with regard to their respective views on authority, orthodoxy, and free inquiry. The principle of authority, as maintained by the most consistent advocates of the Roman Catholic Church,asserts that guidance in religion can be found neither in systemsof doctrine based on the Scriptures, nor in any conclusions de rived from human reason . But, as guidance with regard to both faith and practice is required by all men — including the most illiterate, and those whose powers of inquiry are most restricted it is maintained that there must be a fixed institution having108 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.absolute authority in all questions of religious belief and practice.Against these claims of the Roman Catholic Church Luther appealed to the authority of doctrines clearly stated, as he believed ,in the Scriptures. Other theologians differed from him, eitherwith regard to his choice of doctrines to be accepted as essential,or with regard to his interpretation of certain passages ofScripture, while they still maintained his principle of foundingall authority on the Scriptures. But a third class of writers arose,differing among themselves on many questions, but all agreeing,either in demanding more freedom than Lutheran orthodoxy allowed, or in asserting, with especial emphasis, the claims ofpersonal and spiritual religion. These theologians of the thirdschool, as we may call them, were known by many names, such asMystics, Weigelians, and—at a later time - Pietists. They in cluded men of various opinions, such as Weigel, Franck, Arndt, and Böhme. The names by which they were designated - or reprobated - must be, therefore, understood as having no definite meaning. One of these names, for example, was derived from that of VALENTIN WEIGEL, a theological writer who died in 1588; but it was applied to Johann Arndt and others who were no followers of Weigel, and also to some wild fanatics who had no connection whatever with either Weigel or Arndt. Withoutentering into any of the details of their controversies, we may notice the leading writers of the three schools above described, 80 far as they are represented in the German literature of the period.If our notices of the defenders of Church authority seem meagre,it is because few Roman Catholic divines of these times wrote inthe German language. To do justice to their arguments in defenceof an absolute external authority, we should have to refer to such writers as BARONI.US, BELLARMINE, and BossuET; but no authorsof their stamp wrote in German during the sixteenth century .JOHANN Nas ( 1534-90) , a Franciscan, author of Six Centuriesof Evangelical Truths ' ( 1569), was, in his time, prominent as an opponent of the Reformation, but his writings have little value.He was far less successful than the Jesuit, PETRUS DE HONDT,commonly called by his Latin name CANISIUS ( 1521-97) , whose efforts greatly checked the spread of Lutheran doctrine in thesouth of Germany. His Latin works, -including ' A Summary ofIX. ] BERTHOLD - ZWINGLI. 10966 1Christian Doctrine' ( 1554 ) and a Smaller Catechism ,' - passed through numerous editions.One of the best writers in German in defence of the authority of the Church was BERTHOLD, bishop of Chiemsee, who wrote ina plain style a work entitled ' German Theology,' which was printed in 1527. The object of his book was to call back wanderers from the ancient Church , and to counteract the popularliterature of the Protestants. Berthold says: " These times havemade manifest that secret hatred of the Catholic Church and itsclergy which has long remained hidden in the hearts of unrighteous men. ' He argues in the usual style against all inno vations of doctrine, by pointing to the variety of opinions found in such reformers as Luther, Karlstadt, Zwingli, and Ecolanı padius. The practical and uncontroversial parts of the book are written in an earnest and popular style.The mosi important of the earlier controversies of the times respecting orthodoxy took place between Luther and Zwingli, andended without reconciliation in 1529. ULRICU ZWINGLI, bornin 1484, was a map of considerable learning, and wrote clearly in his own German dialect, but without any great command of language. Like Luther, ho protested first against the sale of in dulgences, but soon proceeded to denounce all additions to door trines contained in the Bible . At two conferences held at Zurichin 1523, he defended so well his sixty - seven articles of belief,that they were accepted as the creed of the Reformed Church ofthat capton . Their substance was published by Zwingli as bis• Confession of Faith? in 1525. His departure from Lutheranorthodoxy consisted in a denial of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Some well- intended political measures recommendedby Zwingli served to hinder the spread of his own doctrines and to excite strife between the Catholic and the Protestant cantons of Switzerland. War followed; the men of Zurich , accompaniedby their pastor, marched out to meet forces greatly superior to their own, and Zwingli fell on the battle - field at Kappel, on the Ilth of October, 1531. One of his best works is un Manual of Christian Instruction for Young People. 'There were, even in these times, some religious writers whomostly avoided controversy, and wrote of their faith with regardto its practical results and as united with their own life and expe110 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Ch.rience. JOHANN MATHESIUS was a popular preacher and writer,who lived in the midst of a mining district, and adapted hisministry to the wants and the characters of the people. He wrote hymns and songs, which the minors sang while engaged in theirsubterraneous toil; and his sermons, which were full of popularanecdotes and proverbs, were well adapted to the practical interests and pursuits of his congregation. In one of his discourses,entitled a ' Sermon to Miners ' (published in 1597) , he collects allthe passages in the Bible which have any real or supposedreference to mines and metals, and employs considerable learningand ingenuity to prove that miners were recognised in the Bibleas an honourable class of men .The writings of JOHANN ARNDT may be classed with the best practical theological productions of this period. His treatise en titled · Four Books on True Christianity, ' which was published in1629, passed through many editions in Germany, and was translated into English. It is read and esteemed in the present day.Arndt had tendencies in some respects similar to those of Tauler,Franck, and other Mystics; but he stated his sentiments withclearness and moderation; and the pious and practical character ofhis book made it a favourite among religious men of various sects.It served as a manual of devotion during the times of warfare and calamity that followed the Reformation.JOHANN AGRICOLA (1492–1566) may be named here , not on account of the theological controversies in which he was engaged with Luther and others, but as the author of a collection of proverbs with annotations, which contain interesting notices of popular manners. A far better book of the same kind was written by SEBASTIAN FRANCK, already named as one of the opponents ofLuther. He was not alone in demanding more freedom of inquirythan Lutheran tenets allowed. Such writers as Schwenkfeld,Hubmaier, Denck, and Weigel, all agreed in their assertion of aright of private judgment; but Franck was the clearest polemical writer of their school , and was an industrious author in other departments besides theology. His religious principles agree , on the whole, with those of the Society of Friends ' in England, asstated in their Apology, ' published by Robert Barclay in 1676.Franck was born in 1500, was expelled from both Nürnberg and Strassburg, on account of his free opinions, and was condemned as a heretic by the conference at Schmalkald. He afterwards sup6IX .] FRANCK . 1111ported himself by printing, as well as writing, books, and died about 1545. Rejecting the claims of ecclesiastical authority,be maintained that there is in man an internal light, which canguide him aright in his faith . His best works include his

• Paradoxes ' ( 1533), his ' Collection of Proverbs,' with comments upon them (1541) , ' A Chronicle of the German Nation, ' and his

• World-Book, ' or ' Manual of Universal History,' which was published in 1534. Franck writes more calmly and more clearlythan many of his contemporaries, and is remarkable for his charitytowards the heathen; but he is rather harsh in his condemnation of everything like ritualism . Thus, for example, he contemptuously describes the popular customs of his own neighboursxt Christmas- time:At this festive season the men - servants and other young fellows gothrough the towns and villages in the night- time singing songs to the people,with the greatest hypocrisy, and covering every householder, who can afford to give anything, with praises from the sole of his foot to the crown of hishead; and thus these serenaders collect a good sum of money. Other com panies of singers travel through the country, announcing their arrival inevery town by ringing a bell; then they go into the church, and there sing for the amusement of the people: after this they of course make a colleclion , and often return home with a considerable booty. On the festival ofthe Three Kings,' every householder makes cakes and sweetmcats; apenny is kncaded in with the dough, which is divided into cakes according to the number of the family. One cake is presented to the Virgin Mary,and each of the Three Kings has his cake; but the child who receives thecake containing the penny is styled the ' King ,' and is then lifted up on the shoulders of the family. When he is lifted, he takes a piece of chalk andmakes a cross on the ceiling, or on one of the beams, and this cross is regarded as a grand preservative against ghosts and misfortunes for the fol jowing year. During the twelve days between Christmas and the Festivalof the Three Kings, the people barn incense in their houses as a charmi todrive away all evil spirits and witchcraft.It is one great characteristic of the Mystics that they nevertolerate two distinct forms of religious teaching: one symbolical,frunded on external authority, and professing to be adapted tothe moral condition of the majority of men; the other based onprivate feelings and convictions. The latter is the only religionwhich Franck allows to be worthy of the name.In the above notices of several writers on theology who have been classed with Mystics, with regard to their principle of reference to an inner light, as a source of instruction in religion,it is by no means implied that all held exactly the same opinions;

+112 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE , [Ch.-but any attempt to point out their minor differences would exceedour limits. We have still to notice the most original of all theGerman Mystics—a man whose biography and writings are alikeremarkable.Jacob Böhme-sometimes called Behmen—the son of a peasant, was born in 1575, at the village of Altseidenberg, near the old town of Görlitz in Silesia. He was left in boyhood almostwithout education, and was employed in tending cattle in thefields near his native place. He tells us how when a boy, he usedto climb the Landskrone — a solitary bill of granite that overlooksthe plain, the river, and the old church towers of Görlitz - and itwas here, probably, that the love of nature so often expressed inhis writings was first awakened.After serving bis time as apprentice and journeyman, he settled as a shoemaker in Görlitz, married and lived obscurely in a cot tage near the bridge over the Neisse. Here he gained some education, and especially made himself well acquainted with theBible . During his travels as a journeyman shoemaker seeking work in several towns, he had heard much of the religious contro versies of the times, especially of that between Lutherans and Calvinists. His enlightenment, he tells us, was preceded by atime of doubt and depression induced by his endeavours, to solve bard questions respecting Providence and the destinies of men.He had read , it appears, some parts of the writings of Weigel audParacelsus, when he began to write the chapters afterwards col lected in his first book, entitled ' Aurora, ' which was printed in 1612. It contained many passages likely to be misunderstood,and its publication gave great offence to Gregorius Richter, pastorof Görlitz, who accepted as strictly literal several of Böhme's mostfigurative expressions. In obedience to his pastor, Böhme pro mised that he would abstain from writing on theology, and this promise was well kept for about seven years. He was encouraged by sereral friends to begin writing again in 1619, and produced after that time several mystic works, including a tract, On the Threefold Life of Man; ' Replies to ' Forty Questions respectingthe Soul; ' a tract entitled “ De Signatura Rerum; ' and the Mys terium Magnum ,' containing au exposition of the Book of Genesis.During the last four or five years of his life ( 1619-24) Böhme gave up making shoes, and was mostly supported by the sale of his books, and by gifts from several kind friends who believed in66 > 6>IX . ] BÖHME.113his teaching. His six tracts, collectively entitled “ The Way toChrist,' contain the clearest statements of his practical doctrines but in one of them his mysticism was so stated as again to givegreat offence to the pastor of Görlitz. To escape persecution,Böhme now submitted bimself, for an examination of his doctrines,to a jury of four divines at Dresden , who were assisted by two scientific laymen. When he had replied to many questions, oneof the theologians said, ' I would not for the world condemn thisman;' and another added, ' I will neither condemn nor approve what I do not understand .' The trial had been very kindly con ducted; but the excitement attending it and the previous perse cution had injured Böhme's health. After the conference atDresden he paid a visit to one of his friends in Silesia, but soon returned to Görlitz , where he died quietly on Sunday, November 18,1624. His last words were, " Now I go to Paradise.' The clergyof Görlitz refused his remains Christian burial until it was commanded by the civil authority. The rector then excused himself on account of illness, and bis deputy began the service by expressing a wish that he had been twenty miles away from the town .It is poticeable that the son of the pastor of Görlitz became one of Böbme's disciples. Jacob Böhme was a man of low stature,with a forehead low and rather broad, a noge slightly aquiline,clear blue-grey eyes, and a soft and pleasant voice. His life was free from reproach, and his manners were gentle and modest.His writings are by no means all alike, but include mystic and partly controversial expositions of some parts of the Bible - espe cially the Book of Genesis - some devotional and practical tracts,and speculations on the most difficult questions of religion and pbilosophy - such as belong to theories of creation , of the freedomof the will and of the origin of evil. The writings of his later years ( 1618–24 ) are less imaginative but clearer than the ' Aurora ,'which has been erroneously described as his chief work.The earliest complete edition of Böhme'swritings was published at Amsterdam in 1682. The editor, Gichtel, it may be observed ,held some doctrines never taught by Böhme. The latest complete edition was edited by Schiebler in 1831–46. Among the translators and expositors of Böhme we may name William Law , author of a well-known book, the ' Serious Call to a Derout Life; ' Franz Baader, a German Catholic, and the so - called “ unknown philo sopher,' Louis Claude de Saint-Martin.6&I114 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Ch.It is impossible to give here any fair account of the more ab struse speculations of Böhme. A short passage from one of his tracts may show how far he differed from many writers of histimes with regard to the doctrine of religious toleration:As the earth expresses her virtues in many flowers, so the Creator displays his wisdom and his marvellous works in his children . If, as lowly children and guided by a Christian spirit, we could dwell together, each rejoicing in the gifts and talents possessed by others, who would condemn us? —Who condemns the birds in the wood when they all praise their Lord, while each,in its own mode, sings as its nature bids?-Does Divine Wisdom condemn them because they do not all sing in unison? No; for all their voices are gifts from One, in whose presence they are all singing. The men who, with regard to their knowledge — especially in theology - quarrel and despise une another, are inferior, in this respect, to the birds of the wood and to other wild creatures; such men are more useless than the quiet flowers of the field , which allow their Creator's wisdom and power to display themselves freely; such men are worse than thorns and thistles among fair flowers; for thorns and thistles can , at least, be still.It would be easy to quote from Böhme many passages that mightseem either absurd or destitute of meaning. As he often saysespecially with regard to his first book-he finds great difficulty in expressing his thoughts, and he fears lest he should be misunder stood . His most comprehensive ideas belong to speculative theology, and can hardly be given, at once, truly and concisely. Shelling's later doctrines were partly borrowed from the shoemaker of Görlitz, who was neither a deist nor a pantheist. The assertion that he represented the Absolute Being as becoming self - conscious only in man will be found erroneous by those who will refer to Böbme's own words. All his teaching is based on one thesis made known to him, he says, by enlightenment' - that the Divine Nature is Triune, and reveals itself throughout creation and in the soul of man . The simple Deism of Islam was forBöhme not only erroneous but inconceivable. Pope's lines in the · Essay on Man ,' already quoted on page 64, accord well with apart — but only with a part — of Böhme's theory of creation . To give his views of nature would far exceed our limits. In one part of his theory he states that through man's freedom evil was introduced, and this clearly distinguishes his teaching from both optimism and pantheism. A few sentences given ,for the sake of brevity, sometimes in our own words, may con vey some notions of Böhme's religious doctrine: -Man, be says ,is created in God's image, and has, therefore, a capacity for66LX .]BÖHME.1156receiving divine knowledge. But all outward means of instruction are vain, without the shining forth of an inner light, not extinguished, but overcast as with a cloud in the soul of man.His darkness is the result of his own self-will, which contains initself both the origin and the essence of evil. Its most commonforms of manifestation are pride, greed, envy, and hate. But man is a union of body and soul, and Böhme never speaks of the soulas an abstraction . Moral evil, therefore, expresses itself in natural defects. Man's sin has debased not only his own physical nature,but that of the world that belongs to him. When man becomesdisobedient to God, the earth becomes disobedient to man.Böhme calls self -will, especially in the form of pride, ' Lucifer ,'and writes of him sometimes as if using personification; but, atother times, he speaks of Lucifer as the first transgressor. The ' fal,' however, which men deplore is the result of their own will.The greatest of all the gifts bestowed by the Creator on his crea tures is freedom , and its right use is a free obedience rendered tothe will of the Giver. But self -will has made a perversion of the higbest possible good. As the root of a thorn makes onlythorns out of the light and warmth by which roses bloom, so self-will has converted good into evil. But evil is not to prevail.It must be finally transmuted into good; meanwhile it serves to develope the energies of Divine Love. Man's deepest misery callsforth the highest expression of mercy . A second Adam appears and reverses the whole of the process instituted by the first. The first asserts his own will and forfeits Paradise; the second resignshis will, his soul, bis life; and so returns into Paradise, leading with him all who will follow him. No man is unconditionallyreprobated, and none will be finally condemned, except it be byhimself. The gates of heaven are everywhere, and stand always open for all. What remains of good in a man may be but a spark,be kindled to a flame that will burn up all his sins. Aprayer may be but a faint sigh, yet the Omnipotent cannot resistit, because He has no will to resist it.A few more sentences will suffice or Böhme's views on theexternal Churches and creeds of his time:-Religion, he says,isconfined neither to history nor to any churches built of stone; buthe by no means defends a neglect of public worship. We must remember the controversies of his times, if we find his remarks onthem too severe . " Christendom in Babel,' he says, ' quarrelsbut mas612116 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CH..6about theological science. The purport of the Christian religion is to teach us what we are, whence we come, how we havecome out of union into disunion, and how we may go back out of disunion into union .' Under all or any of our forms and opisions,the four sins - pride, greed, envy, and hate ---may be hidingthemselves. Böhme's views of the heathen differed wivelyfrom those of his contemporaries. He maintained that Jews,Turks, and infidels might be saved, and that the old heathensmeaning especially the Greeks — had divine teaching imparted to them . Though, in their error, they adored the stars, they were nearer the truth than some of the schoolmen who called themselves Christians. There is no elect nation . In all lands menhave sought for divine guidance, and have found it; for the door is opened to everyone who knocks.'The passages above given in a condensed form must fail toconvey the full purport of Böhme's more comprehensive thoughts." Light and fire ,' he says, are not more distinct than his owndoctrine is from the false interpretation of men who would thinklightly of moral evil. He writes of it in words that approachnear to Manichæism , and yet he describes it as a conditionsine quá non - of the development of freedom , and as an opposition that makes spiritual life more vigorous. One of his moreconcise passages on this subject may be found at the close ofa tract on Spiritual Life ,' which is written in the form of adialogue between a disciple and his master. The former asks," Why has the Creator allowed such a contest as we see between good and evil? ' and the master replies as follows: — ' He hasallowed it that, through all the oppositions of love and anger,light and darkness, his own eternal dominion may be made manifest and be freely recognised by all. . . . The striſe and the painendured by the good in their time of trial will be transmuted intogreat joy. The pain and the separation of finite life exist thatthere may be an eternal joy in overcoming.'The theological and ecclesiastical controversy of the sixteenthcentury has a permanent interest, though some of the arguments employed by the contending parties have become obsolete.Authority, orthodoxy, and free thought were set in opposition to each other. A child is made subject to an external authority,because his own duties and interests are unknown by him, and must be impressed upon him from without. It is assumed by the2IX . ) HISTORIANS:- TURMAIR . 117Advocates of an absolute external authority, that the majority ofmen must, with regard to religion , remain in a state of tutelage.But, say the advocates of freedom , when the child arrives at amature age, he rejects the external authority, and this rejection is not a negation; for he has now accepted the teaching, and has made it his own; so that an internal law has become a substitutefor the external. The reply is obvious: & people, still in their minority, may reject authority, may assert & negative instead of atrue freedom , and their errors may afford arguments for those who contend for absolutism . Such are the outlines of the controversyas it still remains; but since the events of 1864 and 1870 — the encyclical with the syllabus and the decree of individual infalli bility - the arguments formerly employed have become useless.The society founded in 1540 to oppose the Reformation has become predominant in Rome; the principle of absolutism has beenasserted in its most concrete form , and the questions formerlydiscussed between Catholics and Protestants have been reduced toone question of fact. Arguments founded either on the Scriptures or on the tradition of the Church have been set aside, and appeals to reason are met by demanding ' a sacrifice of the intellect . Onone side the forces are becoming more and more concentrated; on the other they are still greatly divided. It cannot be doubted, that bere we have the elements of a movement greater than that of the sixteenth century, and once more Germany is destined to be the centre of the controversy .Among the historical writers of the Lutheran period, one of the best was JORANN TURMAIR, who called himself AVENTINUS( 1477-15.34 ). He wrote at first in Latin, and afterwards inGerman, a ' Chronicle of Bavaria ' (1633) , noticeable for its patriotic tone. A ' Chronicle of Berne ' ( 1032–1526 ), written by VALERIUS ANSIELM, who died in 1540; the Helvetian Chronicle, ' written by AEGIDIUS TSCHUDI ( 1505-1572 ); a History of the Reformation in Switzerland ,' written by JOHANN KESSLER, of St. Gallen ( 1502-1574 ); and a ' History of the Reformation ,' by HEINRICH BULLINGER ( 1504–1575 ), the friend and successor of Zwingli, may be named among valuable contributions to thehistory of Switzerland. CHRISTOPH LEHMANN ( 1568–1638 )wrote a " Chronicle of the Free Town Speier ' (1612) , which contains some disquisitions on the respective merits of monarchy,aristocracy, and democracy. The writer's conclusion is very safe .118 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . ( CH ..

• That, ' says he, ' is the best government where the best men have Authority .' A history of • The Hussite War,' written by ZACHA RIAS THEOBALD ( 1584–1627 ), is remarkable for its graphic ac count of the death of John Huss. The scene seems to be described

by an eye -witness, and is brought before us with a painful reality:Cheerfully, and showing no sign of fear, he walked up to the stake fas tened in the earth , to which the executioner tied him fast with six cords,but with his face to the east, instead of to the west, as it should be done with a heretic. Then they cast an old rusty chain over his neck , as if he were not worthy of a new one, and he said: Christ was bound with aheavier chain for my sins and, therefore, I am not ashamed to be bound with this old rusty chain . ' They now placed under bis feet - on wbich he stillwore his boots with bis fetters - two bundles of brushwood, and all about him piled plenty of wood, straw and brushwood up to his neck. Before they set fire to the pile, the duke Ludwig von Baieru and the Marshal rode up to Huss and advised him to renounce his errors, as they called them;but he replied, ' I call God to witness that I have not taught the things laid to my charge by false evidence , but , in my preaching , teaching, and writing,have striven to turu people from their sins and to lead them to the kingdom of heaven. And the truth which I have taught, preached, written, and spread abroad, as according to God's word, I will still maintain, and also seal with my death. When they heard this they clasped their hands, and rode away. The executioners immediately kindled the pile, and it burned up quickly, for they had laid plenty of straw among the wood. ThenMaster John Huss, as he saw the smoke rising, cried out, with a clear voice,Christ, thou Son ofGod, have mercy upon me! ' But when he would have said it the third time, the flame, flapping under his face, took his breath away , so that he could not finish with have mercy upon me,' but continued praying and nodding his head, as long as one might say a paternoster, and then died.ALBRECHT DÜRER, the greatest German artist of his time ( 1470 1528), employed his native langunge in his treatises; one on the rules of perspective, the other on ' The Proportions of the Human Figure.' In the latter he insists on a careful study of nature.Dürer's letters are interesting, and show that he was a friend to the Reformation . In one of them he expresses his regret whenhe hears a false report that Luther has been made a prisoner, buthe trusts that Erasmus will now proceed with the work '-- strange mistake of the character of Erasmus.The physical sciences - especially chemistry and medicine - bad one representative in the literature of this period. THEOPHRASTUS VON HOHENHEIM , commonly known as PARACELSUS, who was born near Appenzell in 1493. He was the first professor who gave lectures on science in the German language. His Latin wasIX . ] PARACELSUS. 119too barbarous to be tolerated, and he introduced into scientific discussions all the violence and intolerance of theological controversy. He began one course of lectures by publicly burning the works of Galen and Avicenna. “ If any man wants to learn the truth ,' said Paracelsus, he must submit to my monarchy. All the learned schools together do not understand as much of medi beard does. ' He was -however boastful reformer inchemistry, and his search for active principles indicated the road that led to the discovery of such medicines as morphia and quinine. After a restless, wandering life of alternating popularity and ignominy, Paracelsus died in the hospital at Salzburg in1541.cipe as my1

120 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ C ..CHAPTER X.FOURTA PERIOD. 1525-1625.LUTHERAN HYMNS_HANS SACHS - VALENTIN ANDREA - RINGWALDTWALDIS - ALBERUS - ROLLENHAGEN - SPANGENBERG - FISCHART - THBDRAMA - MANUEL -- REBHUUN — THE ENGLISH COMEDIANS HEINBICE JULIUS - FAUST - WEIDMANN - WICKRAM .The best lyrical poetry of the period was devoted to the servicesof the Church, In older times the part which the people had taken in Church music had been confined to a few short responses;but Luther, who loved psalmody, encouraged the congregations to take a more prominent part in the public worship of God, and wrote for them hymns and psalms well suited to become popular.His first Hymn Book (1524) contained only eight hymns, but the number was increased to sixty-three in the fourth edition, to which Jonas, Spengler, Eber and others were contributors, while the collection, printed in 1545, contained one hundred and twenty five hymns and psalms, of which thirty - seven are ascribed toLuther. His bold and stirring psalm— Ein ' feste Burg ist unser Gott' A safe stronghold our God is still,A trusty shield and weapon!is well known, but can hardly be with justice translated . This may, indeed , be said of many other popular hymns written by Luther and his friends. Their merit does not consist merely in the sentiments they convey, but rather in the union of style and purport; in the force, directness, and euphony of language; and also in the music of their rhymer, for which we could find no equivalents in English. As Dr. Vilmar has said, ' These hymns,like our secular popular songs, were not composed to be read, but to be sung; and so closely is their melody inwoven with theirX.] LUTHERAN HYMNS. 121meaning, that if we would judge them fairly, we must have theirspirit, their metre, and their music given at once, as when they Are sung by the congregation . They were indeed the sacredpopular songs of the Lutheran times, and were founded in manyinstances on secular melodies dear to the people from old remem brance. Thus we account for their rapid and marvellous effect in spreading the Lutheran faith . A hymn in these times wasscarcely composed before its echoes were heard in every street.The people crowded around the itinerant singer (who now, iuaccordance with the spirit of the times, sang Luther's hymns instead of ballads), and as soon as they heard a new hymn sung once, they would heartily take up the last verse as a chorus.Thus these sacred melodies found their way into churches andprivate houses; and whole towns were won over to the newfaith by the sound of a hymn. Such lyrics as those of Luther“ Rejoice, my Brother Christians all!” and “ From depths of woe to Thee I call! ” or that by Paul ŠPERATUS, “ Salvation now hascome for all! ” or that by NICOLAUS Decius, “ To God on highbe thanks and praise! "-ew, as on the wings of the wind, from one side of Germany to another: they were not read merely, but,in the strongest sense of the words, were learned by heart; andso deeply printed in the memories and affections of the people, that their impression remains in the present day.'To the names already mentioned , as representatives of manywriters of Lutheran hymns, we may add those of NIKLAS HERMANN,who died in 1561, NICOLAUS SELNECKER ( 1530-92 ), author of thewell-known hymn, ' Ah, stay with us, Lord Jesu Christ,' andPHILIPP NICOLAI ( 1556–69), who wrote two hymns that havelong remained favourites, ' How brightly shines the Morning Star! 'and • Sleepers, wake! a voice is calling ,' the latter well known inEngland since its introduction by Mendelssohn in the oratorio of • St. Paul.' Several of the writers of Lutheran hymns composed orarranged the tunes to which their hymns were sung , and these tuneswere in some instances suggested by popular melodies. They bad,therefore, a natural, varied, and popular rhythm , and were by no means like the slow tunes stretched out, mostly in common time,and in notes of equal length, for the use of both German andEnglish congregations. For the musical expression of simplethoughts the hymn-writers, like John Knox, the great Scotch reformer, could find no better models than the secular songs of their6.122 OUTLINES, OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Св.66times supplied . Several of the Lutheran tunes, with their original and varied rhythm preserved, may be found in a collection editedby Dr. Layriz ( 2nd ed. , 1849) under the title Kern des deutschenKirchengesanges. Other forms of the same old melodies, greatlychanged by several editors, and mostly reduced to notes of equallength, are found in modern German and English books of psal mody. In some instances the old tunes can hardly be recognisedwhen reduced to notes of equal length, on the model of the modern ‘ Old Hundredth Psalm. ' In this style they are given ina German collection edited by Dr. Filitz. The apology offeredfor this treatment of the old melodies is the statement that it isfound suitable for the use of large congregations. During the seventeenth century the tunes, as given by Dr. Layriz, were suug in four parts by some congregations in Germany, but such per formances must have required the aid of zealous and efficientchoir -masters, and could never be made general.Among the tunes ascribed to Luther the melody of his well known psalm , above named , and another adapted to the hymn,Wir gläuben all an einen Gott, are probably genuine; but the ' Old Hundredth, ' often falsely ascribed to Luther, is found in a French book of psalmody edited by Goudimel in 1562. The tune of • Luther's Hymn, ' often sung in English churches and chapels,was probably, at first, a secular melody, and, in a collection printed in 1535, and edited by Klug, was adapted to a hymn on the second advent. The influence of these Lutheran hymnsdid not soon pass away. During the dreary time of the seven teenth century, though a great improvement in versification:then took place, the hymns written for the service of the Church were almost the only productions that deserved the name ofpoetry.The lyrical poetry of the Lutheran time may be connected withthat of the next period by the name of GEORGE RUDOLF WECKHERLIN ( 1584–1651) who wrote verse in a style so far improvedin form , that he might perhaps be rightly classed with Opitz as belonging to the school of the seventeenth century. Weckherlinspent the greater part of his life in London, where he was employed as secretary to the German embassy, and became wellacquainted with English literature. We find included among hisoriginal productions a translation of the well- known poem, ' Go,soul, the body's guest ,' which has been ascribed to Raleigh.аX.] POPULAR SONGS. 1236This is, we suspect, not the only mistake of the kind in Weckherlin's collected works.To give an account of the popular songs of which several col lections appeared in this period is as difficult as to write a description of a tune; for these songs were made to be sung — not read and their melody is often better than their meaning.One of the best collections is the Anibraser Liederbuch (1582) ,which was edited for the Stuttgart Literary Union ' in 1845.The love-songs, which form the greater part of the series, may,with regard to their realism, be contrasted with the Minneliederof the thirteenth century. Bacchanalinn, military , and huntingsongs are included, with a fow ballads and humorous tales.Several of the satirical stories given in the Ambraser and othercollections have the monks for their objects of ridicule, while afew songs about heretics are directed against Luther and hisfriends. Several hymn-writers endeavoured to put down. thecoarser specimens of the people's lyrical poetry, and in some instances their extinction was desirable. But HEINRICH KNAUST,who published, in 1571, a collection of popular songs newly con-.verted to Christianity, was too severe. He thought it desirableto convert'into a hymn a harmless little song, expressing joy forthe return of summer . Knaust was unfortunate; for his hymnsor songs were sung neither in the churches nor in the streets. Theywere rather too lively for the tabernacle, while they were too dullfor secular use .The literary merits of the old popular songs are partly negative.They are neither reflective nor didactic; like Goethe's lyrics, theyure without decoration , and they come from the heart. Theirinfluence outlived the dreary artificial verse -making of the seven teenth century. Some of their best characteristics were studiedby Bürger and Herder, and were revived in beautiful lyrical poems by Goethe. The collections of old popular songs editedrespectively by Uhland and Hoffmann von Fallersleben must becommended for their fidelity. The same praise cannot be extended to the collections edited by Brentano, Görres, and Erlach .If we may use the name poet in its plain and popular sense , or as claimed by all verse -writers who have displayed considerable inventive power, we may assert that Hans SACHS was the greatest German poet of the sixteenth century . Of poetry in the highermeaning of the word , we hare hardly any clear criticism in English,124 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.if we except Wordsworth's prefaces to his own poems. We do not use the name poet in Wordsworth's, but in the popular sense,when we apply it to the chief master singer of Nürnberg. The prosaic view of life; the love of satire, with a tendency to levelling downwards; the comic humour, not without coarseness; the self- assertion of the boor and the townsman, in opposition to thenobility and the clergy;; all these later mediæval traits are well collected in the writings of Hans Sachs; but his own 'acy style,honest purpose, and good humour place him above most of his predecessors. We should not accept all the Nürnberg shoemaker's six thousand pieces in verse as a fair exchange for Walther's lyrical poems; but in all the verse written from the days of Wal ther to those of Opitz (born in 1597) —when we have excepted some excellent hymns — we shall find hardly anything better than the jocose and didactic stories of the Nürnberg master singer.Hans Sacs was born at Nürnberg in 1494, and was educatedat the Latin School in his native town. When he had served histime there as an apprentice to a shoemaker, he started on his ‘ years of travel,' and wandered freely about the South of Germany. It was a rule of the trade -unions of his time that after theexpiration of the term of apprenticeship - shorter than in England —a journeyman must pass some years in travelling from place to place and working under several masters. For mutual aid during these years of travel journeymen formed friendly unions, by which they assisted each other in seeking work, and sometimes inavoiding it. The time actually employed by Sachs in making shoes, from 1511 to 1516, could hardly have been considerable; forin that interval he visited towns too numerous to be mentioned;exercised his rhyming talent in many singing schools, and was for some time employed in the service of the emperor. · Having re turned to his native place, Hans married and started as a master shoemaker, with a resolution to maku literatura " his walking stick, but not his crutch , ' as Sir Walter Scott used to say .Several great men have begun life on a more poetical but less substantial bas achs did well ith shoemaking as his centralfortification, and verse - making as an outwork. He made money,and was a great man in Nürnberg; but not only poetry — even its shadow , verse-making - bas in its nature a fatal antithesis to wealth, and we find Master Sachs, after writing about six thou sand pieces of verse — some of them long enough - poorer than he.-X.]HANS SACHS. 125was in his earlier days, but never reduced to abject circumstances.On the whole, he was a respectable man, and solved the problem of life better than some poets less despised. He was not mis understood, for he wrote in a style suited to the average capacity of Nürnbergers, and he knew nothing of the dreadful contrast of the real and the ideal.' After living comfortably forty years withone wife, he married secondly, when he was sixty -seven yearsold , a girl of seventeen , whose beauty he describes in a song, and this extraordinary union of May and November was, it is said,happy. Worn out at last by verse-making, as well as by shoe making, Sachs gradually lost his faculties, and during the lastthree or four years of his life was almost deprived of speech and hearing. At this time, when favoured with visits by his nume rous admirers, he sat silent at a table, on which were laid some well - bound books, and in reply to all compliments addressed to him nodded his snow - white head, but spoke not word. Hisportrait represents a venerable man with a high overhanging forehead, and a luxuriant but well - trimmed grey beard .The literary productiveness of the Nürnberg master singer was marvellous. He wrote, as we have said , more than six thousand pieces of verse - lyrical, narrative, and dramatic; but he seldom ,it' ever, invented a plot, or a story. That was mostly borrowed from tue resources of his very extensive reading. His best pieces are narratives, partly jocose, partly didactic, in which he describes popular manners in his own times. He has the satirical tone ofthe fifteenth century, and is not free from faults already noticed in another Nürnberg master singer - Rosenblüt- but Sachs hasgood bumour in his satire, while his coarseness belongs to his time, and has no bad purpose. Several of his legends are pleasing ,though for modern ears there is some irreverence in their tone.In the legend of St. Peter and the Goat' for exainple, we are told , that once upon a time St. Peter was perplexed by an appa rent prevalence of injustice in the world; and ventured to think that he could arrange matters better if he held the reins of government. He frankly confesses these thoughts to his master. Mean while, a peasant girl comes to him, and complains that she hasto do a hard day's work, and at the same time to keep in order afrolicsome young goat. " Now, ' says the LORD to Peter, you must have pity on this girl, and must take charge of the goat.That will serve as an introduction to your managing the affairs of56126 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ Ch.6the universe .' Peter takes the goat into custody, and finds quite enough to do:The young goat had a playful mindAnd never liked to be confined;The apostle, at a killing pace,Followed the goat, in a desperate chase;Over the hills and among the briers The goat runs on, and never tires,While Peter, behind, on the grassy plain ,.Runs on, panting and sighing, in vain .All day, beneath a scorching sun ,The good apostle had to run Till evening came; the goat was caught,And safely to the master brought.Then, with a smile, to Peter saidThe Lord: Well, friend, how have you sped;If such a task your powers has tried,How could you keep the world, so wide? 'Then Peter, with his toil distressed,His folly, with a sigh, confessed;• No, Master! ' tis for me no playTo rule one goat, for one short day;It must be infinitely worseTo regulate the universe .'Apparent irreverence and broad humour are united in severalother stories written by Sachs with a good intention . Wishing to expose the loose morals and profane conversation of the common soldiery of his times, he tells us, for example, that Satan, curious to know the truth respecting the morals of these people, sent ademon to bring into hell about half a dozen soldiers as averagespecimens of their class. The commissioner was, however, so much terrified by the talk of the soldiers, and gave to his mastersuch an account of their morals, that they were refused admittance into Pandemonium. In another story St. Peter, as the gatekeeper of heaven, exercises an unbounded charity, and admits a number of common soldiers. They soon prove the truth of Milton's saying," The mind is its own place; ' for, unable to relish any of the pleasures of their new residence, they collect their pence, and begin playing in heaven at ' pitch -and -toss .' This game ends in a quarrel, and after some trouble with them , St. Peter sends his guests down to their proper quarters. There is truth in such atale; and it is only superficially irreverent. Hans Sachs is never weary of making homely appeals of this nature to the understanding of his hearers. He tells of the tailor who clipped and stoleX.] HANS SACHS. 127pieces of the cloth he had to make up. At last, his conscience was awakened by a remarkable dream or vision. An escort of demons, bearing a flag made up of strips of stolen cloth, conductsthe tailor's soul into purgatory . He awakens, repents, and be comes a new man; but - on one occasion at least - steals a sampleof cloth , because there was nothing like it in the flag .' Atlast the tailor dies, and St. Peter admits him, but gives him aseat so near the boundary line of heaven, that he can see clearlyevery sin perpetrated in the world below. Having nothing better to occupy his thoughts, he undertakes the duties of a detective, andsurprises a poor woman of the lower world, who, urged by want,is stealing a pocket-handkerchief. Inspired by moral indignation,the tailor -- though so lately saved - seizes a footstool, and hurls itdown on the criminal, so as to make her a cripple for life. A 18proof of the Pharisee follow . Here again we bave wholesometruth under the disguise of a seeming irreverence. These mustsuffice as specimens of the subjects chosen by Hans Sachs. His dramas are inferior to his narratives; but he introduced to theGerman stage of his time a greater variety of characters, and gave to his men and women some traces of individuality. His ' ShroveTuesday Plays' are better than his crude attempts in tragedy and comedy. The shoemaker and master singer of Nürnberg wasoue of the friends and followers of Luther, whom he hailed as " TheWittenberg Nightingale,' and whose death he deplored in an elegy.If we find , among other versifiers of his times, few worthy evenof being classed with Hans Sachs, we must remember that ahistory of the German literature of the sixteenth century does not represent the higher intellectual culture of the age. Hessus, wbo,in Luther's judgment, was the best poet of the times, wrote in Latin, and JOHANN VALENTIN ANDREÄ ( 1586–1654 ), a learned theologian who could write respectable Latin , almost boasted ofhis carelessness when he wrote German. His best work in verseis good in purport, but about as bad in style as the writer intended it to be. It describes, first, the character of a pedant, who accepts a cure of souls in order to gain for himself a comfortableposition; then follows a sketch of a faithful pastor, who devotes bimself to the welfare of his flock . Another didactic work by Andreä is entitled Die Christenburg, and describes a Christian Utopia. Some of his more visionary writings gave rise to fictions about the supposed secret society of the Rosicrucians . The6а128 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. (CA.aauthor's allegories were mistaken for realities. The error ofpreaching and scolding in badly written verse instead of prose is found in Die lauter Warheit (“ Pure Truth ' ) , written by BARTHOLO MÆUS RINGWALDT (1530–1557), a Lutheran pastor at Lengfeld.He describes a vision of heaven and hell in his poem called True Eckart's Christian Warning;' but it is didactic rather thanpoetical. The hell, as a work of imagination, is more tolerablethan the heaven; but this is not saying much in favour of eitherof them.There is more narrative interest to be found in some fableswritten by BURKHARD WALDIS ( 1485-1558 ), and in others by ERASMUS ALBERUS (1500–1553). Both wore Lutherans in doc trine, and were polemical in the application of their morals. The latter, in his fable of " The Lion and the Ass, ' attacks all theProtestants who are not strict Lutherans of his own type, and Waldis often declaims violently against Rome. His fables with out any polemical interest are his best. They are certainly better than such long mock -heroic tales as Der Froschmeuseler by GEORGROLLENHAGEN ( 1542–1609) and Der Gansz -König by WOLFDARTSPANGENBERG . The first is an intolerable story of warfare be tween frogs and mice, every new complication and episode inwhich business excites in the reader a longing for some decisive engagement in which both parties may be finally suppressed.Der Gansz - König consists of six unconnected rhapsodies aboutgeese. The author wrote, as he tells us, several other poems,'in which the heroes were cats nd mice, sto kfish and frogs!Fortunately, these works of imagination have never seen the light.After the death of Luther, and during the latter half of thesixteenth century, polemical earnestness seemed to be declining,when the zeal and activity of the recently -founded order of Jesuitsin opposing reformed doctrines awakened another satirist, JOHANNFISCHART, who wrote both verse and prose. He was born at Strassburg in 1550, studied law at Basel, and, after travelling inEngland and several parts of the Continent, resided at Speier andat Forbach . He died in 1589. There is a want of clear information respecting some parts of his biography and the authorship of several of the works ascribed to him. He was a man of versatiletalents, had considerable learning and a remarkable command oflanguage, and was more than a satirist; for some of his writingsX.]FISCHART.129.show bis patriotism and his zeal for the education of the people.His satirical story of the saints Dominic and Francis was written in reply to a Franciscan monk, JOHANN Nas, already named as apolemical writer, who had asserted that the Enemy,' in assaulting Luther so frequently, was only claiming his own lawful property!Fischart reminds his opponent that St. Dominic was harassed inthe same way. It would be requisite to refer to Latin as well as German literature, to show the character of the satires to which Fischart intended to supply antidotes. The license, personalityand coarseness of many of the invectives published in these times can hardly be imagined . Not only themoral character of Luther,but also that of his wife, was made the object of virulent abuse.Acrostics were malicious in these days. In one of these vehicles of satire, the initial letters of the lines, when read perpendicularly,give Luther's name, in its Latin form 1; each line contains five words, all beginning with the same lotter, and the whole forms an epigram made up of the most abusive terms that can be found in Latin . To such satires Fischart replied in vigorous German, and with a resolution not to be excelled either in rude invectives or in verbal oddities. When he cannot find a word to express aptly his satirical humour, he makes oue. The satire above nanied was followed by another of a more intemperate tone commonly styled “ The Jesuit's Little Hat,' — though that was not the original title —and first printed in 1580. Its plot could hardly be decorously given even in outlines, as one incident may suffice to indicate:in order to make the four- cornered hat ' as full as possible of mischief, not only the special services of Lucifer and all his subordinates, but also those of " his grandmother,' are called into vigorous exercise. " The Bee-Hive,' another satire on the Romish clergy, is only in part an original work . Fischart's prose is, on the whole, better than his verse. His ‘ History of the Heroes Gorgellantua and Pantagruel' is, as the title indicates, an imita tion and partly a free translation of Rabelais. In this and other books Fischart delights in strange, uncouth combinations of words,which resemble the verbal exploits of Aristophanes. . Thus we read of the innumerable -as-stars - in - the-heavens-or- as - sands- on the - sea - shore impositions of the astrologers and prognosticators .'In this instance his satire was well directed; for the impostors,who called themselves astrologers,' were some of the most prosperous Literary men of these times, and established a flourishing666K150 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.66trade, requiring scarcely any capital beyond the ignorance of the people. The ‘ Prophetic Almanac ' was the selling -book at fairs and markets, and was read with excitement exceeding that producedby modern povels of the season . The poorest farmer gladly laid down his groat to carry home the book which marked all the lucky days' for sowing wheat, making bargains, ' hair-cutting ' and blood - letting .' The events of the times, as well as the ignorance of the people, were favourable to this trade in imposition. Athousand failures did not hurt the success of the tradesmen;preachers and divines, from the time of Luther to the eighteenth century , preached and wrote against ' the magicians' in vain.One of the absurd old almanacs ascribes all the events of theReformation to the fact, that · Luther was born under the planet Jupiter in Capricorn. Fischart justly says, “ It is presumptuous to involve Heaven itself in our disputes. ' We cannot literally trans late the strange title of the book in which he caricatures the productions of the impostors; ' but it is something like the fol lowing:: - The Grandmother of all Almanacs, or the Pantagruelistic, thick -with -impositions, Phlebotomist's Adviser, Farmer'sCode of Rules and Weather Book, suited for all times and everycountry; by the accomplished rat- catcher Wiphold AlcofribasWüstblutus.' In this caricature he endeavoured to recommend asafe style of prophesying, of which the following passage is aspecimen:we may expect the planets to be moveable; but they willmove only in the courses appointed by their Creator. From certain aspects,we may conclude that the colic and other signs of a disordered stomach will be prevalent in the summer among people who eat large quantities of unripe fruit, especially plums, and drink plenty of sour butter -milk . Corn will betoo dear for poor men, and too cheap for great landowners. Vines will notflourish in the Black Forest, nor in the Bohemian Forest; but the best vineyards on the Rhine will produce wine strong enough to throw many people down from chairs and stools. Beer also will be good this year, if thebrewers will not use too much water. In short, we may expect an abundantsupply of wine and corn, if the wishes of poor people are fulfilled. Dairymen may take notice that black cows will give white milk . With regard to the affairs of various nations, we may venture to say that the Bavarians and the Swabians will prosper, if nothing occur to prevent it. We have to notice dark • aspects ' for the people of Morocco and other hot countries; but the people of Sweden will be tolerably fair. Also we may promise that therewill be com in Poland, many cows in Switzerland, fine oxen in Hungary,good butter and cheese in Holland and Flanders, salt fish in Norway, fresh salmon in Scotland, and a plentiful supply of ignorance and folly in allcountries.In this yea1X.]THE DRAMA. 131A polemical tendency is found even in some parts of the dra matic productions of these times; especially in the plays written by NIKLAUS MANUEL ( 1484–1530 ), a man of remarkably versatile talents. He was active as a statesmen at Berne, and was also asoldier, a writer of verse, a painter, a sculptor, and a wood engraver. His Shrove Tuesday Plays, consisting mostly of satires on the Romish clergy, are bitter, humorous, and irreverent in theextreme.The greatest improvement made in the so - called religious plays of this time is found in their selection of subjects from the OldTestament. By this change, they at once gained variety andavoided such extreme irreverence as had been common. But theseso -called dramas founded on Bible histories were still low enoughin their general characteristics. Among their writers, PAUL REBHUHN, who was rector of Zwickau in 1535, may be named ashaving introduced some improvements in form; but his dramas – The Marriage at Cana ' and ' Susanna ' - have no poetical merits. A play entitled “ The Beginning and the End of the World, ' written (about 1580 ) by BARTHOLOMÆUS KRÜGER, has been commended for its tragic interest. The author possessedsome versatility, for he published in 1587 a New Eulenspiegel, or collection of jests.The Shrove Tuesday Plays were greatly extended with regard to their range of topics, and some of the best were written byHans Sachs. The singing school at Nürnberg had erected there an amphitheatre without a roof, for the performance of such secular plays as bad formerly been confined chiefly to private dwellings. But the most noticeable innovations in dramatic performances were introduced by a company of strolling players who called themselves • The English Comedians, though wehave no evidence that any of them came from England. Theybad, however, all the self -sufficiency and audacity of the lowest class of English players of their time. It seems probable that they extemporised freely on the stage, and assumed an unboundedliceuse, committing every fault condemned in Hamlet's warning.Nothing can be more atrocious than the plot of one of their pieces called • Titus Andronicus.' The extreme faults of these strolling players, who sacrificed everything to excite & sensation, made them very popular. JAKOB AYRER, who died in 1605, was one of their more successful imitators. The pieces of this German6612132 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CA.6contemporary of Shakespeare - including Dives and Lazarus,'“ The Prodigal Son, ' and ' Jan Posset, ' —have no literary value,but show more tact in theatrical effect than is found in HansSachs.HEINRICH JULIUS, Duke of Brunswick ( 1564–1613 ), may benamed as another imitator of the deplorable imitators styling themselves . English Comedians.' He kept in his service a com pany of players, and wrote several comedies in which he succeededwell, in one respect — in laying aside all aristocratic pretensions.In literature ad captandum vulgus seems to have been the duke's motto. His plays are in prose, and he often introduces a Low German dialect. His best characters are his fools; but they aretoo much alike. He is very fond of introducing demons, evenwhen there is no demand for their services. The bumour of oneof his comedies consists in a series of monstrous falsehoods, ofwhich some were copied in the well- known stories of Baron Münchausen. As a specimen of the duke's tragic power, we mayname his play of “ The Disobedient Son, ' in which eighteen.cha racters are introduced . Of these nine are murdered, four commit suicide, one is carried away by Satan, while only four survivors,three of whom are demons, escape from the tragic fury of HEIN RICH Julius. It might be imagined, after reading some of the plays written by the Duke of Brunswick, that the theatre could bardly fall to a lower level than it had reached in his times; but his' plays would be respectable if contrasted with some of the tragedies afterwards written by Lohenstein.Among several of the · People's Books ' written, translated , oredited during this period, the first place belongs to the notoriousstory of Dr. Faustus,' written in prose by an unknown author,and first printed by Johann Spies of Frankfort, in 1587. This successful book was followed and superseded by a tiresomely extended version of the story of Faust, written by GEORG RUDOLF WIDMANN, and published at Hamburg, in 1599.The prose story of ' Faust, ' as printed in 1587, is very stupid . Perhaps, the best part of it is the copy of Faust's ' bond ' with the enemy. It is firm and clear, and could hardly be frustrated by a modern attorney: — ' Having undertaken to explorethe elements, ' Faust writes, and finding that the talents bestowedon me from above are not sufficient for the task , I have engagedin a covenant with the commissioned genius now present, and6 >>6X.)FAUST. 133damed Mephistopheles, that he shall serve me for the space of twenty-four years.' Then follows the promise to pay for such service by a full surrender of the magician's soul and body for ever.This promise was fulfilled , we are told , at the village of Rimlich ,near Wittenberg, exactly twenty -four years after Faust had signedthe bond, and between twelve and one in the morning.Other versions of this tragic story are too numerous to be evennamed here. Faust was made the hero of a tale including amythology that had been long believed by the German people. Itis more than probable that a man named Faust - either a professorof magic, or popularly suspected as a magician - really lived inWürtemberg, about the beginning of the sixteenth century. At that time and before, remarkable pretensions in science or learning,when existing apart from the profession of theology, had often excited suspicions of magic. The intelleotual and religious movement of the times bad given rise to no general scepticism re specting the reality of magic, but had rather served to confirmpopular faith in old stories of demonology. That faith had been for a long time regulated by the authority of the Church , but hulnow liberated itself from such control. Several of the most enterprising intellects of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries stilladhered to a belief in necromancy and magic, and some learnedmen professed themselves to be adepts in these supposed sciences.AGRIPPA VON NETTESHEIM and VAN HELMONT were believers.Paracelsts, in his writings on the theory of magic, did not deny its reality, but gave a new explanation of its processes. While deny ing the virtues of external charms, rites, and formule , he ascribesall the powers of magic to the will and the imagination; imagination, he tells us, when it is attended with the exercise of a powerful will, on thepartof a magician , can subjugate the minds of other men.CAMPANELLA held a similar doctrine. Such teaching as this - notconfined to the studies of the learned - served to confirm traditionsof a popular demonology, including relics of old German mythology.All that had beep believed about alps, giants, dwarfs, kobolds,• Grindel and his mother, ' and other inhabitants of the mythicworld , was transferred to one personage - the spiritual foe of man kind. No man could hold the popular faith, as reduced to this simpleform , more firmly than Luther, and its power is shown, still more clearly , by the fact that, after Luther's time, the greatest of themystics, BÖHME, whose life was spent in an endeavour to solve the134 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Ch .question of the origin of evil, and to deduce all effects from one benevolent source, felt himself compelled to write of ' Lucifer'in language hardly to be distinguished from that of Manichæisin .This popular faith fully explains the success of the legend of Faust. In its first form , as already intimated, it had no literarymerits, and its purport -- that men must not forsake the simplicity of faith and submission to God's will, either to gratify intellectualàmbition or earthly passions — was but feebly set forth. But the story passed rapidly from one edition to another; it was dramatised by our English playwright Kit Marlowe at the close of the sixteenth century; in the seventeenth it was turned into a puppet show to please the German people, and, in this form , it long re tained its popularity. As recently as about the beginning of the present century, we read that the proprietor of a puppet-show , vexed by somo conscientious scruples, resolved that Faust should never be played again by his company.' The subject of the librettowas too serious, he thought, to be placed upon the stage; though the tragic effects must have been considerably mitigated, when Dr. Faustus, Mephistopheles, and several subordinate demons were represented by wooden dolls.There is little that is edifying in the stories written by WIED MANN and WICKRAM; but they have several characteristic traits,and tell something of the popular taste of the times. Wiedmann ,in his story of Peter Leu, ' presents to us an extreme caricature of a parish priest; a burlesque even grosser than that we have seen in the ‘ Parson of Kalenberg .' Peter is poor, and, at one time, is especially in want of linen for his household. It happens, about the same time, that a dense fog settles down on his parish, and isattended—as some people fancy – with a strange, sulphurous scent." This has been caused, ' says the clergyman, ' by some leakage from a subterranean Inferno;' but if the people will bring a suffi cient quantity of their best linen, sheets, and table -cloths, he willendeavour to stop the rift near the church, from which the vapourand the bad odour escape. They obey; the fog clears away; and the parsonage is decently supplied with good linen . LAZARUSSANDRUB deserves notice for one merit - rare among the versifiersof his times -- conciseness. He has no didactic purpose, and when he has said a thing once, he makes an end of it. One of his shortstories opens with some pathos. A young man is to be hanged;but, when he appears on the scaffold , a maideu - though a stranger1X.] THE PEOPLE'S BOOKS.' 135661to him — is so distressed by his fate, that she earnestly prays his life may be spared. The authorities relent and spare his life, on the sole condition that he will marry the maiden. The culpritconies down from the scaffold, critically examines the girl's physiognomy, and then expresses a ’ wish that justice should take its course, as before appointed . " Better to end all trouble thus at once, ' says the resigned man, ' than to begin a new life of trouble .'It is hardly necessary to add that his execution followed, and excited no further sympathy.As one more specimen from a class of books very popular in these times, we may notice GEORG WICKRAM'S Traveller'sLittle Book to Drive away Melancholy? (1555) . It is written in a prose style considerably better than that commonly found in jest -books. Here is one sample:A monk who had the cure of souls in the parish of Poppenried was renowned for his power of vociferation . One Sunday afternoon, while he wasshouting at the top of his voice, a poor widow in the congregation began to wring her hands and cry bitterly . The monk noticed this effect of his eloquence and, after the service, asked the widow what passage in the sermon had so deeply affected her. " Ah! ' said she, when my husband died, all thathe left, to aid me in earning a livelihood, was an ass, and he died soon afterI lost my husband . I have tried to overcome my sorrow , but oh, sir, when I heard your preaching this afternoon , it revived all my trouble; for it was just the voice of the ass .'The foreign legend of The Wandering Jew ' may be named among the People's Books of the time. Some better stories — suchas “ The Fair Magelone,' ' Patient Helene,' Melusina,' Genoveva ,'and ' The Four Sons of Haimon,' - though long popular in Ger many, had also a foreign origin, and must therefore be only briefly noticed . A collection of People's Books, containingthirteen stories, was published by FEYERABEND in 1578. Amonglater and better editions may be named SCHWAB's Buch der schönsten Geschichten und Sagen (1836), and SIMROCK's Collection( 1845_67 ).6 6>6136 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ Ch .CHAPTER XI.FIFTH PERIOD. 1625-1725.THE TIMES – OPITZ AND HIS SCHOOL · LUTHERAN AND PIETISTICHYMNS -SECULAR LYRICAL POETRY DIDACTIC AND SATIRICALVERSE - THE DRAMA - POPULAR SONGS AND BALLADS,Tuat the literature of a people represents their national life and progress, is a theory that must be understood so as to leave roomfor remarkable exceptions, such as we find in the earlier part ofthe period 1625–1725. During that time, men who wrote in verse or prose mostly turned their attention away from political and military affairs. The religious and ecclesiastical struggles ofthe sixteenth century, and the political movements for which the Reformation had been made to serve as a pretext, had failed togive either union or liberty to the German nation. The old order,founded on authority, had been broken in many parts of theempire, and intolerance, aided by the ambition of princes, could not supply a basis for a new union of three churches with thestate. The stern divisions of opinions between Lutherans and Calvinists; the efforts of the Jesuits in the South of Germany;the competition of princes for absolute power, and — worse than all — the interference of foreign powers;-all helped to make theland a battle-place of religious, political, and military parties - arealisation , on a vast scale, of the whole theory of intolerance. Thelower powers of human nature, which had been held down or regu lated, to some extent, under the old authority of the Church, badbroken loose, and rapacious adventurers were the rulers of thetimes.Of the miseries that followed the outbreak of the Thirty Years'War, the literati of the age tell us little. Thoughtful and senti mental men turned away from evils too great to be speedily remedied, and occupied their minds, as well as they could , inXI. ] LITERARY SOCIETIES. 1376making verses, or in other harmless studies. Religious menlooked away from this world into another, and expressed their longings in devout hymns which, during this period, became more and more expressive of personal feelings. Other educated men found recreation as members of several societies which were instituted for the culture of the German language. One of these literary unions included a great number of princes and noblemen,who called themselves “ The Palm Order, or The Fruit -bringingSociety. Among other unions founded for the same purpose the * German Association ' at Hamburg (1643), and the ' PegnitzOrder ' ( 1644 ), of which some scanty vestiges remained a few years ago, may be named. The Literary Societies establishednear the close of the century had a higher character than thoseabove noticed.Many of the poets and versifiers, who were members of societies like these, were classified with regard to their respective localities,or as belonging to several schools. ' The First Silesian School,with Opitz at its head, was the most important. The Saxon School could boast of one poet, Paul Fleming, and the Hamburg School counted among its members Zesen, a purist in language,and one of the more earnest of the members of the Palm Order.The worst versifiers, with regard to their moral purport and their Affectations in style, belonged to the Second Silesian School, of which Hoffmannswaldau was the representative.Opitz and his followers made great improvements in versification, and the members of the unions banished foreign words from German poetry, but its internal character was mostly imitative.French models were admired at the courts where successful versifiers — such men As Canitz and Besser - found patronage. In Epic poetry, hardly anything noticeable was produced by the schools.Their best writings were lyrical, and the hymns were better thanthe secular songs of the times. Their idylls and pastorals, tellingof the bliss of solitary or associated shepherds in flowery fields, are idade affectations; but the language of the heart may be heard in such hymns as were written by Heermann, Gerhardt, and Neumark .In the lower popular poetry of the times soldiers' songs prevail;but we hear also of the complaints of the peasantry, who were made victims by the armies of both confessions of faith .Didactic and descriptive poems (so called ) were as dull as they deserved to be; but in satires some improvement was made by138 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .61condensing them into the epigrammatic forms chosen by Logauand Wernicke.The Drama was represented chiefly by three authors, —Gryphius,a melancholy man , who wrote heavy tragedies, but showed some humour in comedy; Lohenstein, whose style is the extreme of bombast; and Weise, who generally tried to make his dramas moral and useful in their purport. It must be added that they are full of platitudes.The prose written during this century is, on the whole, inferior to the verse. Several men of some learning and no taste wrote inthe German - Latin called by Leibnitz · Mischmasch; ' others, misled by vanity, or intending to satirise a bad fashion, inserted French,Italian , and Spanish phrases in their prose. Meanwhile, in the universities, lectures on history, law, and other branches of learning were delivered and dry controversial theology was written in Latin. Near the close of the century, the pietists made some im provement in both form and purport. German was substitutedfor Latin, and religion took the place of theology. It is hardly necessary to add that, in the above remarks on the German prosewritten during the seventeenth century, no reference has been made to the writings of Leibnitz and Wolf. With regard toboth their style and their internal character, they belong to the eighteenth century.The greatest formal improvement in the literature of the period must be ascribed to the founder of the First Silesian School,MARTIN OPITZ, who was born in 1597, at Bunzlau in Silesia.He studied at Frankfort and at Heidelberg, and published, in 1618, a Latin essay on Contempt of the German Language.”His most important work , the ‘ Book on German Poetry ’ (1624) ,passed through nine editions before 1669, and produced a reforma tion in versification . For three centuries nearly, the art of writing in verse bad degenerated and, at last, had been reduced to nothing better than a mere counting of syllables. Opitz insisted on the importance of both metre and rhythm , while he contended for.purity in the choice of words. His own attainments as a scholar -especially as a writer of respectable Latin verses — recommendedhis book to the notice of educated men, and its success madeOpitz the founder of a new school, the First Silesian . His ser vices were, however, confined to the form of poetry; of its spirit,or inner power, he knew little or nothing. His own poems areXI.] OPITZ. 13966correct but imitative, and show good sense rather than genius.The best of his lyrical poems, are found in his ' Consolations during the Miseries of War ' (1632). " Zlatna, or Peace of Mind '( 1623 ), and “ The Praise of Rural Life,' both express a love of retirement, and show a tendency to reduce poetry to descriptive and didactic verse - writing. In · Vesuvius,' we have the first descriptive poem written in German. In his later years Opitz translated the Psalms and the Antigone of Sophocles and edited• The Annolied, ' a German poem of the twelfth century. Thepraise bestowed on Opitz during his lifetime now appears extravagant. His fame extended to Paris, where critics who couldpot read his poems declared boldly that he had redeemed hisnative land from the reproach of barbarism .' As his merits werepurely formal, and could not be seen in a translation, this Parisianlaudation must have been an echo or an intuition; but it servedto confirm the poet's fame at home. He was elected a member ofthe aristocratic Palm Order, ' instituted for the culture of theGerman Language, and in 1627 was raised to the rank of nobilityas Martin Opitz von Boberfeld . After several years of service indiplomacy, he settled in Dantzig, and gained, in 1637, an appointment as historiographer to the King of Poland. He was closelyengaged in historical researches, and was looking forward to theenjoyment of years of literary industry, when his career was cutshort. He died in August, 1639, of the plague, caught from abeggar to whom he had given alms.To explain the high reputation gained by the literary labours of Martin Opitz, his works must be estimated with the aid of references to his predecessors and his contemporaries. In correctness and good taste, bis theory and practice made a new epoch in German Poetry. Though its spring -time — the thirteenthcentury - had been promising, its summer was long in coming.Shakspere bad lived in England, and Hooker and Bacon hadwritten in their noble prose styles; but no such iterature as theirs had followed the Reformation in Germany. It was a drearytime in literature and in life when Opitz lived, and he did the best thing for literature that a man of his talents could have done at such a time. He could not change its purport; but he polished its exterior.We cannot speak as favourably of many of his imitators, who made a mere amusement of versification . Having nothing to140 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.Bay, they might have said it more concisely. Their mediocrity was, however, so well sustained , that, when viewed as a proof of steady perseverance, it looked like a virtue. The road fromHamburg to Berlin is not flatter than the works of several of thepoetasters who followed Opitz.To find the best and the most sincere poetry of these drearytimes, we must turn to the hymns written for the service of theChurch. Here we have specimens of sacred poetry that mayworthily follow the hymns of the Lutheran age. The first author who combined some lyrical inspiration with attention to thenew laws of verse which Opitz had introduced, was JOHANNES HEERMANN, born in 1582, in Silesia . He was for some years apastor at Köben on the Oder, and after a life of suffering, duringwhich he hardly enjoyed one day's health, died in Poland in 1647.His best hymns and other lyrical poems are contained in his Haus und Herz-Musica (' Music for Home and for the Heart'), publishedat Leipzig in 1639. They express the religious discontent-thecontrast between this life and a higher - that supplies the key -notefor a great part of the sacred poetry written during the ThirtyYears' War. The same feeling is discernible even in the verseswritten by a girl, SIBYLLA SCHwarz, who died in 1638, when only seventeen years old. " This world has been for me, ' she says,“ a school for learning sorrow; ' and she might well say so, forher father's homestead was burned down in the course of thewar.6• Vanity of vanities; all is vanity ,' is the text so often chosen by ANDREAS GRYPHIUS ( born in 1616) , that he wearies his readers,who may, however, excuse him when they read his biography.His ' Churchyard Thoughts ’ ( 1656 ), and his Odes and Sonnets often express gloomy sentiments, as when he speaks thus of himself:Since first I saw the sun's fair light, no day For me without some grief has passed away .Happy the child who, from the mother's breast,Early departs in Paradise to rest!One of his best hymns begins with this stanza:The glories of this earthly ball In smoke and ashes soon must fall;The solid rocks will melt away;Our treasures all, our pleasures all,Must ſade as dreams before the day.XI.) PIETISM . 141The melancholy expressed by Gryphius was unaffected. He had lost both father and mother in his early life, had been cast on the world by a stepfather, and after wandering about here and there, gaining his subsistence as a private tutor, had settled at Freistadt in Silesia. Thence he was driven by religious persecution , and after wandering again in search of employmentthrough several places, he was elected , at last, syndic to the principality of Glogau in Silesia, where he died in 1664. In hischoice of themes for sacred poetry, and in his prevailing funeral toves, he might be regarded as the master of a school. LikeGryphius in the tone of their sacred poetry were Simon DACH ( 1605–59), though he could be lively in his secular verses, ROBERTROBERTHIN (1600-48 ), and his friend HEINRICH ALBERT ( 1604 88) . CHRISTIAN GRYPHIUS ( 1649–1706 ), the son of Andreas,above noticed, was an inferior versifier, whose melancholy, in oneelegy at least, was quite out of place. He wrote a long anddismal lamentation, instead of a call to arms, when Vienna was besieged by the Turks in 1683.The general tendency of the sacred lyrical poetry of the seventeenth century was towards Pietism . PAILIPP JAKOB SPEN ER, aLutheran pastor, who lived near the close of the period, was calledthe founder of the Pietists; but their best thoughts had been expressed by earlier writers. There had long existed , not two,but three chief parties in the Church, representing respectively,external authority, intellectual orthodoxy, and mysticism , so called . The new name given to a moderated mysticism was Pietism, and, like the old name, it was used as a term of reproach.Lutheran orthodoxy, as taught by some professors, had become as dry as any branch of mathematics, and would have been as cold,if the heat of controversy had not supplied the want of vital warmth. Wrangling about articles was as dominant in theProtestant Church as scholastic disputation bad been in theCatholic, and the Pietists now held in the Lutheran a positionlike that which the Mystics had occupied in the Romish Communion. Spener held all the Lutheran articles of belief, but as serted that a creed was no substitute for a religion of the heart.• We must have,' said he, the living faith of Luther, as well as his orthodoxy.' Spener only gave expression to the thoughts and feelings of several predecessors, including some of the best hymn writers of the time.6142 [ CH .OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE.In the hymns written by PAUL FLEMING ( 1609-40), we findlittle of the tendency to Pietism of which we have spoken. One of his best hymps - still sung in German congregations- beginswith the line, ' In allen meinen l'haten . Like many other lyricalpoems, it is hardly translatable. With regard to his popular energy of expression, the Jesuit, FRIEDRICH SPEE ( 1591-1635)might be ranked nextto Paul Fleming; but he was more remark able for his benevolence than for his poetic genius. He waszealous in his endeavours to expose the cruelty of persecutingwomen accused of witchcraft. When asked why bis hair hadturned grey at the age of forty years, Spee replied:- It isbecause I have seen so many women taken to the stake, to beburned for witchcraft, and I never know one fairly found guilty .'In one of his best lyrical poems, Spee gives expression to theenthusiasm that so ' soon made the order of Jesuits a formidablepower in Europe. He writes thus of the missionary zeal of St.Francis Xavier:When the stern devoted manTalked of sailing to Japan ,All his friends conspired together,All against him set their faces,Talked of seas in stormy weather,Dangers grim in desert places.aHush you! close your dismal story!What to me are tempests wild? --- Heroes, on their way to glory ,Mind not pastimes for a child.Blow , ye winds! -North, South, East, West ' Tis for souls of men I'm sailing,And there's calm within my breast While the storm is round me wailing.6Writers of hymns, more or less successful, were so numerous in this period, that we must, without any disrespect, pass by several names worthy of some notice - such as Frank and Schmolcke — and we can mention RINCKHART ( 1586–1649) only as the author of the very popular hymn. Nun danket alle Gott' ( ' Let all men praise the Lord '), introduced by Mendelssohn in his Lobgesang. GEORGNEUMARK ( 1621-81), who was a virtuoso on the viol da gamba,wrote and set to music a fine hymn, expressing an absolute trust in Providence, and beginning with the line, " Wer nur den lieben Gott lüsst walten .' The tune was introduced by Mendelssohn, inXI. ]GERHARDT. 1436his oratorio ' St. Paul,' and was one of Prince Albert's favouritesacred melodies.PAUL GERHARDT ( 1606-76 ), who was like Neumark in hischoice of a key -note, was, on the whole, the best sacred lyrical poet of the seventeenth century. He departed from the old Lutheran style, without falling into the weak sentimentalism of the later Pietists and the United Brethren . Like Neumark, hesings of the repose that attends a firm and resolute faith . If any serious fault can be found in his hymns, it is that they are, in someinstances, too long. One of the most pleasing of the series beginswith the melodious line, Nun ruhen alle Wälder ' (' Now all the woods are sleeping ') , and has long been a favourite. But bis best hymn — still sung by many congregations in Germany and in England - begins with the lines,Commit thou all thy griefsAnd ways into his hands.The twelve stanzas of which the hymn consists all serve to- expand but one thought:Give to the winds thy fears!Hope, and be undismayed!God hears thy sighs, and counts thy tears;God shall lift up thy head .Through waves, and clouds, and storms,He gently clears thy way:Wait thou his time, so shall this night Soon end in joyous day!Several bymo - writers, differing widely in some respects,were united by one common trait - their expression of personal sentiments, rather than orthodox opinions. They were men of rarious creeds, and were called either Mystics, or Pietists, or Pantheists, as taste might dictate. All were weary of the dry theological controversy of their times, and wanted a religion for the beart and the life of man, rather than for his head. To JOHANNES SCHEFFLER, or Angelus Silesius, as he was called ( 1624 77 ) , the titles Pantheist and Mystic might be applied more fairly than to many other writers so named . His chief characteristictras a bold and unguarded expression of views on personal religion.He had read Böhme's works; but his interpretation of them was questionable. In his later life, he entered the Roman Catholic144 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .6Church, and became a member of the order of Minorites. Afterthis change of profession, his writings were rather didactic than mystic. His most remarkable book, the Cherubinische Wandersmann (1657) , consists of a series of short mystic sayings in rhyme,hardly pointed enough to be called epigrams, but frequently very audacious in their assertions. It is quite enough to say of them ,that, on account of their brevity, they are mostly abstract and un qualified; yet they were admired, in their day, by both Protestants and Catholics. Scheffler wrote some superior hymns, including one beginning with the line, .Follow me! the Lord is saying ,and another beginning with the words, Thee will I love, my strength, my tower! ' The latter was translated into English , and is still sung in many chapels. It expresses a glowing devotion, as one stanza—the last — may suffice to show:Thee will I love, my joy, my crown,Thee will I love, my Lord , my God,Thee will I love, beneath thy frown,Or smile,-thy sceptre, or thy rod:What though my flesh and heart decay?Thee shall I love in endless day!6Poetry has a conciliatory power, and sects differ less in theirhymns than in their catechisms. This hymn, written by ' a Pantheist , who was afterwards a Franciscan monk, is now sung in Wesleyan chapele.CHRISTIAN KNORR VON ROSENROTH, who died in 1689, was amystic of a character widely different from that of the Pietists.He studied alchemy and cabbalistic, so - called science. Hismysticism is generally moderated, or we may say veiled, in his sacred lyrics, of which several are translations from Latin.QUIRINUS KUHLMANN, born at Breslau in 1651, published a collection of sacred lyrical poems (1684), which contain a few good passages, and many extravagant expressions. He is now remembered chiefly on account of his miserable death . Having indulged his imagination in dreams of a millennium , he wildly endeavouredto establish it. It was to begin with a union of Jows and Christians, and to preach this doctrine, he wandered about in England, France, Turkey, and Russia. In Moscow bis fanatical preach ing gave great offence to the Patriarch . Kuhlmann was arrestedand imprisoned as a heretic, and after a short trial was condemned to be burned alive. This horrible sentence was carried into execution on October 4, 1689.XI.] SECULAR LYRICAL POETRY . 145GERHARD TERSTEEGEN ( 1697-1769 ), one of the latest of the Pietistic hymn-writers of this time, was a poorribbon -weaver, wholived for some years on a bare diet of meal and milk - and -water,and gave away bis savings in alms to people who were even poorerthan himself. He published a collection of poems under the title of ' A Spiritual Flower -Garden ' (1731 ). It has no great variety of thoughts, but contains one fine hymn, of which an imitation rather than a translation was included in the hymn-books published by John and Charles Wesley. The second stanza has been thus translated:Lo! God is here -him , day and night,The united choirs of angels sing;To him, enthroned above all height,Heaven's host their noblest praises bring:Disdain not, Lord, our meaner song,Who praise thee with a stammering tongue.6 JOACHIM NEANDER ( 1610–80 ) was called ' the Paul Gerhardt of the Reformed Church .' JOHANN ANASTASIUS FREYLINGHAUSEN ( 1670–1739) wrote Pietistic hymns, and published in 1704, and afterwards, an extensive collection of hymn - tunes. His bookshows that a change of taste had taken place during the seven teenth century, with regard to the tunes as well as the hymns sung by many congregations. While the hymns were madesentimental, the tunes were highly decorated or disfigured.Several of the more florid and lively melodies given by Freyling bausen would now excite great surprise if introduced in publicworship.If a great prominence has been here given to the hymn -writersof this period, it has been because their writings contain more sincere thought and feeling than can be found in the greater part of the secular poetry of these times. FLEMING , who wrote at thebeginning of the period, and GÜNTHER, whose poems relieved the dulness of its close, mightboth be called poets; but in the intervaldefined by these two names there aro found but few . verse -writers worthy of any extended notice.FLEMING's sonnets, occasional poems, and epistles show poeticalpowers far superior to those of most of his contemporaries. Hewas comparatively free from the common fault of the age - writing for the sake of writing — and his poems have interesting referencesto the events of his times. We find more historical than poeticalL146 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.a value in a versified ' Narrative of the Thirty Years' War ' written by GEORG GREFLINGER, who died in 1682. PHILIPP VON ZESEN ( 1619-89) wrote lively songs and epigrams, but his best services to literature were his writings in favour of the cultivation of hisnative language. He had, however, more to say than JOHANN Rist ( 1607–67), who was little better than a rhymer, though he wrote some hymns that were accepted by the Church. PHILIPPHARSDÖRFFER ( 1607–59 ), who wrote Songs and Conversations inVerse,' may be commended more for his moral purport than for his powers of invention. FRIEDRICH CANITZ ( 1654–99 ) copied the French style of Boileau in several satires. His verses are cold and artificial; but he wrote neatly, and assisted in the reformation begun by Opitz. JOHANN BESSER ( 1654-1729) was a smalllaureate and master of ceremonies at the court of Dresden , and devoted to these offices the studies of his life. Many of his versesare adulatory; others are objectionable in purport, but were praised in their day for their neatness of expression. Among several of the descriptive poets of these times we may select as a representative BARTHOLD BROCKES (1680–1747 ), who wrote poems of no high merit, expressing his delight in the study of nature.A flower-garden might have supplied all the materials requiredfor such poetry as he wrote. He would acknowledge the receipt of a rare tulip by writing a sonnet , or perhaps an ode, on its beauties. He was happy in bis mediocrity, and wrote congratula tory verses addressed to himself on his birthdays. His translations introduced Thomson's “ Seasons ' and Pope's ' Essay on Man'to German readers.All the second or third -rate authors thus briefly noticed weremore respectable than those who belonged to the Second SilesianSchool. Its chief representative,HOFFMANN VON HOFFMANSWALDAU(1618-79) , wrote lyrical and other poems, of which both the purport and the style were extremely objectionable; the former was coarsely sensuous, the latter bombastic and affected. There mightbe found some minor merits, with regard to style, in some of the writers briefly noticed in the preceding paragraphs; but, on thewhole, it may be asserted that they contributed hardly any thoughts to the resources of German literature. At the close of their dullperiod a youth appeared whose writings gavė promise of a brighter day for poetry. CHRISTIAN GÜNTHER (1695–1723) wrote severalpoems founded on the unhappy incidents of his own short life.6 >XI.] DIDACTIC AND SATIRICAL VERSE . 147His early follies had offended his father, who would not forgivebim, and Günther, left without hope, became intemperate. After an attempt at reformation he gained some patronage at the Saxon court, which he soon lost, and later, when, apparently penitent,he returned home to ask for his father's forgiveness, he wasdriven out into the world again . After some wretched wanderings in Silesia he died in miserable circumstances. His poems giveproof of imaginative powers worthy of a better development.Among several didactic and satirical authors of verse FRIEDRICHLOGAU (1604-55 ) was the best. He published a series of epi grams in 1638, and another, more extensive, in 1654. Copies of the latter have now become very rare. Many of his proverbs and epigrams are rather earnest than witty or pointed, and refer totbe political and social circumstances of his time, which he truly describes as deplorable. The following is one of Logau's shortestepigrams:Lutherang, Papists, Calvinjsts abound;But where, I ask , are Christians to be found?6HANS WILMSEN LAUREMBERG (1590–1629) was among theboldest opponents of Opitz, and wrote in praise of the Low German language. One of his chief rules for writing well is, always to call a spade & spade,' and he observes it conscientiously. He writes with great freedom and liveliness, and introduces popular stories to enforce his doctrine. One of his satires is well directedagainst the rhyming mania of his times, but in writing it he was declaiming against himself. Another satirist, JOACHIM RACHEL ( 1618-63 ), & follower of Opitz, feebly imitated Persius and Juvenal. In one of his best pieces, entitled " The Poet,' he pours contempt on the poetasters of his day; but this was better done in a prose satire published by JOHANN RIEMER in 1673. Thefollowing is a specimen of Riemer's advice to the poetasters of his times:To attain facility you must keep your wits in practice by continually making verses on all kinds of trivial subjects; for instance, a sonnet ' on Lisette's new straw bonnet,' or a canzonet on Durandula's bodice.'• Cordelia's nightcap ' may suggest materials enongh to fill a long ode.Acquire the art of producing rhymes for the most uncouth words, and if you are obliged to use nonsense sometimes, say that you did it to produce à certain droll effect. However insignificant your verses may be, never publish them without some high -sounding title, such as • Parnassian Bridal Torches. Never mind about the sense of it, if it is only pompous enough.L 2148 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.Though the subject of your poem may be trivial, take care to write agrand introduction, invoking Apollo and all the nine Muses to come to your assistance in a great work. This style of building a grand entrance to a little house is very good in poetry. When you make a beginning,never care about the end: they will match together in some way, nodoubt. Expletives are too much despised in these times. Fill your verses with them , as they are very cheap. Employ also as many allusions to pagan mythology as you can find; for thus you may fill your pages with numerous' explanatory notes about ancient deities -- Mars, Vulcan, and Venus — which need not be correct, as few readers trouble themselves about such matters. Use two or three words instead of one whenever you can;for instance, style nature our productive mother,' and call your dog ' the barking quadruped.' Never blot out what you have written; for if you do not esteem highly your own productions, who will? Believe all that your friends and admirers say , and praise all who praise you. If a friend declares that you are the Opitz of the age,' immediately return the compliment by styling him the Fleming of his time.'6aCHRISTIAN WERNICKE, who died about 1720, was a critic as well as a satirist, and published a series of epigrams ( 1697), of which several were directed against poetasters. That his pen wasas sharp in the point as Riemer's will be seen in the following brief critique, which might be fairly applied to many of the imitators of Opitz: — Your plan is good, ' says the critic; yourverse, fluent; your rhyme, correct; your grammar, right; ' yourmeaning is nowhere to be found .' BENJAMIN NEUKIRCH ( 1665– 1729), another satirist, wrote even more severely against poet asters; but he betrays the temper of a disappointed man . Hehad written some unsuccessful odes and other lyrical poems.• Writing poetry in these times,' he says, “ is the way to starva tion, as I know well by experience .'The literary aspect of this dull period does not improve when we turn our attention to the drama. ANDREAS GRYPHIUS, already named as a lyric poet, wrote several tragedies: —' Leo Armenius '(1646 ), ' Papinian ' ( 1659), and ‘ Karl Stuart,' which was foundedon the fate of Charles I. of England. These dramas have been regarded as having some importance, on account of the improvements which they introduced in plot and construction; but their literary character is low , and they are full of the gloomy senti ments which have been noticed in the occasional poems of the same author. Yet through all the disguise of false taste we see some evidences of rude, undisciplined power. In his Charles Stuart ' he introduces choruses in which · Religion and other personifications speak. Many of the sentiments put into the66XI. ] THE DRAMA. 149mouths of these imaginary characters are unjust, and betray the writer's ignorance of the state of parties in England; but some of the declamations employed have force and point, such as we find in the following passage:Religion speaks.Being Supremel whose eye all souls can see;Whose service is pure, self-denying love;Why in this world hast thou commanded meTo stay? Receive me in yon realms above!Why 'mid the sons of Mesech must I dwell?Alas that I in Kedar's tents abide!Where evil-minded men would me compelTo aid the:n, and their traitorous schemes to hide.Alas that e'er from heaven I hither came!My robes are stained with earthly spots; my faceNo longer with pure brightness shines; my name Is used for falsehood, covered with disgrace.Open, ye clouds! receive me now , ye skies!I fly from earth , and leave my robe behind,Which still may serve some traitors for disguise:'Tis but a shadow of myself they'll find.( Religion flics from the earth , and drops her robe. )First Zealot. Stay, fairest maid! why hasten you away?Second, I hold you fast. I love your bright array.Third. Nay; she is gone! Her empty robe you hold!Second. Well; this is mine. It's worth can ne'er be told!Fourth . Some portion of it fairly mine I call!First. Your striſe is vain; for I must bave it all.Fijih . The robe is torn .Sirth . No part of it is thine!For it is mine.Seventh And mine!Eighth.And mine!Ninth. . And mine!6Gryphius was a man of gloomy temperament; yet his comedies are better than his tragedies. In his drama oddly entitled Horribiliscribrifax' he gives some portraitures of the rude militarymanners introduced by the war, and ridicules the confusion oftongues that prevailed in his day. One character in the play is aschoolmaster who talks in bad Latin; another mixes Italian withGerman; a third uses French idioms, and a Jew mingles Plattdeutsch with Hebrew . The author's best dramatic writing isfound in the interlude of Dornrose, inserted in his melodramaDas rerliebte Gespenst. His writings are respectable, when con150 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE, [ CH .666trasted with those of a dramatist who must now be brieflynoticed. DANIEL CASPAR VON LOHENSTEIN ( 1635–83 ), one ofthe chief representatives of the Second Silesian School, wrote atrocious and bombastic plays, of which no analysis can be given .A German critic — Prof. Max Müller - has truly said that it is the duty of a literary historian to consign to oblivion the writings of the two chiefs of the Second Silesian School; but Lohenstein'splays — Ibrahim Bassa ' ( 1689 ), ' Cleopatra ' ( 1661), “ Epicharis 'and ' Agrippina ,' the worst of the series — may be pamed as signs of the degradation of the theatre during these times. It may be safely predicted that dramatic entertainments will never fall below the tone of the German theatre in the days of Lohenstein;it'sounded the lowest base-string of humility.' Such curiosities as ' fire - works," " cannonades,' regiments of soldiers in the cos tumes of various nations,' and capital punishment executed on thestage, were admired. Mars, Venus, Apollo, Fame, Peace, Virtue,Vice, France, Spain, and Italy, were introduced as dramaticcharacters. In one piece “ Judas hangs himself on the stage, while Satan sings an aria .' In another opera Nebuchadnezzar exhibitshimself dressed in eagles' feathers .' In Semiramis'the roses inthe royal garden are metamorphosed into ladies. In " Jason ' theship Argo is raised into the heavens, and changed into a constellation. Echo ' was a favourite theatrical character. In one ofLohenstein's pieces the continent of Asia ' is introduced as aperson deploring her calamities.When contrasted with Lohenstein's plays, the dramatic pieces written in prose by CHRISTIAN WEISE ( 1642–1708) might be called respectable. His scenes are derived from real life, but bisstyle is prosaic and trivial. He wrote several romances, in which his didactic purport was more prominent than his inventivepower.These notices of versifiers have told us very little of the thoughts and feelings of the common people, who still had their own lite rature, though it was scantier than in older times. Its chiefmaterials were old jest-books and new prophetic almanacs. The folly satirised by Fischart had increased rather than abated, andwe find popular preachers complaining that the peasantry had more faith in their almanacs than in the Bible. Few of thepeople's songs of the time have been preserved, and these are mostly soldiers' sougs. One of the most characteristic is calledXI. ) POPULAR SONGS AND BALLADS. 1519' The Soldiers' Paternoster,' in which lines of verse are inserted between the short sentences of the Lord's Prayer; so that thewholė reads as a bitter protest against the wrongs inflicted on the peasants by marauders. The only plea that can be offered for thisstrange composition is that there is no levity, but rather sternindignation , in its tone.The most common fault of the historical ballads of the time istheir inordinate length; the writers try to tell everything. Inone of the shortest we have a tragic tale of two soldiers returningfrom the war. One, who brings some booty with him, is unrecognised when he enters bis father's house, a village tavem:The hostess, a woman with coal-black hair,Stood looking out of the window there;He gave to her, before he dined,His heavy belt, with gold well lined .In the morning his corpse was found in the cellar, and hiscomrade thus addressed the landlady:Woman, you know not what you've done The murdered man was - your own son!On hearing this, the wretched woman escaped from the houseand drowned herself, and soon afterwards—Her man in the stable hanged himself.O cursed gold and love of pelf!One of the best of these Soldiers' Songs tells of the exploits of the great Austrian General, Prince Eugène, and is still remem bered by the people.152 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE [Ch. .CHAPTER XII.FIFTH PERIOD. 1625-1725.PROSE FICTION —HISTORY –THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR — TRAVELSLETTERS - DIDACTIC PROSE - PIETISM - LEIBNITZ - WOLF .THE prose written in this period is mostly rugged in style, some times balf - foreign, and deformed by affectation and pedantry; butit contains interesting references to historical events, and some contributions to our knowledge of the state of society in Germany during the darkest years of the seventeenth century.Among a few noticeable books in prose fiction the romance of Simplicissimus (1669) , by HANS JAKOB CHRISTOPI VON GRIMMELSHAUSEN ( 1625-76 ), claims attention, especially for its references to contemporary historical events. In several parts of the story we find interesting, though occasionally rude, pictures of life in Germanyduring the miserable war of thirty years. The author had, during bis youth, served in the army; but he spent his later years at Renchen, in the Baden district of the Black Forest. He had thehumour of assuming several names on the title-pages of his satiri cal stories; so that his real name long remained unknown. Herepresents his hero—the son of a poor Spessart farmer — as a vaga bond who, under the mask of simplicity, satirises the vices of society, especially the demoralisation of military men. There isgenial humour in parts of the story; but the descriptions are often too lengthy, as a passage from the introduction would show, if given without any abridgement. Here the Spessart farmer's son ridicules the pride of many men of higher birth:My father's mansion was built by his own hands, which is more than canbe said for the palaces of princes. In some details of architecture my father had a peculiar taste. For instance , he decorated the exterior of his building with plaster; and for the roof, instead of barren tiles, lead , or copper, he used agood thatch of straw , thus displaying his love of agriculture in a style wonbyXII .]PROSE FICTION . 153of a descendant from the first nobleman who tilled the ground - Adam . In the painting of the interior my father allowed his walls to become slowly darkened with the smoke from our wood' fire. There was an aristocratic reason for this; for the colour requires a long time to produce it in its full tone; and it is certainly one of the most permanent styles of painting .Our windows were all dedicated to St. Noglass; for as it takes a longer time to grow horn than to make glass, my father preferred the former. Ihardly need remind the reader that this preference was in strict accordance with that refined aristocratic taste which values trifles according to the time and trouble required to produce them . My father kept no lackeys,pages, or grooms, but was always surrounded by his faithful dependents;sheep, goats, and swine, all dressed in their natural and becoming suits of livery... In our armoury we had the weapons which my father had often boldly carried to the field; mattocks, hoes, shorels, and hay -forks,such weapons as were employed even by the ancient Romans during times of peace. My father was noted for his science in fortification ' (against his great enemy, hunger) , which was displayed in his distribution of thecontents of the farmyard on the land .... or cleaning out the stalls ofthe cattle. I tell these things, to show that I can be in fashion, and talk like other people when I like; but I assure the reader that I am not puffed up and vain of my glorious ancestry:0aThe Spessart farmer is murdered by a band of plundering soldiers; but Simplicissimus, now only ten years old, escapes, and goes to live with a hermit, from whom he eceives some religious teaching. After the death of the hermit the boy is carried off bySwedish soldiers, and serves for some time as a page to an officer;then runs away and hides himself in a forest. Here he pretendsto be a pious hermit, while he supports himself by means of theft.When these resources have failed, he enters the Imperial army,where he can plunder with impunity. This part of the story de scribes the license of the soldiery and the sufferings of the helpless people, whose stores served as plunder for the Imperial and the Protestant armies, with all their disinterested foreign allies. Our hero next falls as a prisoner into the hands of the Swedes; but here meets with good treatment, and becomes ere long comparatirely rich . Then follows an unfortunate marriage and the loss of all his money, which compel bim to turn quack-doctor and beggar. He returns to Germany, gains some money by dishonesty,buys a little farin and marries — again unhappily. Once more he.becomes a vagabond, and after a series of wanderings and adven tures, that we cannot follow , is at last made quite weary of thepomps and vanities of this world . He retires to a hermit's cell on a desert island , and devotes himself exclusively to the practice ofpiety. He has a chance of escaping from his solitude, when a ship154 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.69 666calls at the island; but he wisely refuses to return to such societyas exists in his native land, and so the tale is ended.This story of a man living on a desert island was published about twenty years before Defoe's tale of " Robinson Crusoe ' appeared in England. The latter romance, however, was the original,imitated in about forty German stories of hermits, that were pub lished between the years 1721 and 1751; such as " The German Robinson ',' ' The Italian, The Silesian , The Moral, The Medical, 'The Invisible Robinson ,' and ' The European Robinsonetta '- thelast telling the adventures of a solitary lady. One of the best ofall these imitations— The Island of Felsenburg,' written byLUDWIG SCENABEL in 1743 — had a remarkable success. Theearliest German story of a hermit like Crusoe is found inMandarell,' written by EBERHARD WERNER HAPPEL, and pub lished in 1682, about thirty -seven years before Defoe's story appeared.The miseries of the war must have been widely spread; for we find them noticed even in such pastoral fantasias as were called Schäfereien — the most unreal of all the productions of the age.Nothing less than the outlines of one of these pastorals could give a notion of their inane character. A sad shepherd, expelled from his home by soldiers, wanders, accompanied only by his faithful dog , along the banks of the river Pegnitz, near Nürnberg. He begins to sing, of course; but his melody is soon interrupted by that of another swain, and arrangements are made for performinga duetto . Enters . Pamela ,' a sad shepherdess, who, as a personification of Germany, sings dolefully of the miseries of warfare.After some vain endeavours to afford consolation to ' Pamela ,' the two shepherds wander away along the banks of the stream , until they come to a paper-mill. Here they sit down and make some very bad verses on the mill- wheel and on the noise of the waterfall. The first swain endeavours to imitate the sounds he hearsand the second composes lines that may be printed in the shape of an anvil. For some reason, not mentioned, they then climb a hill near Nürnberg, and obtain a view over a fertile district. Thegoddess (Fame appears, bringing a wreath of laurel, to crown the maker of the best verses upon the wedding of some young peopleof whom we know nothing. The sad shepherds sing alternately,and when at last it is decided that their effusions are equally good-or bad - Fame flies away, and no more is heard of ' Pamela, the6XII .) PROSE FICTION. 155>6desponding personification ofGermany. Such imaginative attempts as these Schäfereien drive the reader away from fiction, and make him indulgent to even the rudest attempts at describing realities.JOHANN MICHAEL MOSENROSH - otherwise called Moscherosch- ( 1601-69 ), was descended from a noble Spanish family , and lost all his property during the war. His book, entitled TheVisions of Philander ' ( 1642), is partly founded on the Sueños 'of Quevedo; but the last seven visions of Philander, written in 1641-44, are mostly original, and contain severely satirical passages, with sketches from real life during the Thirty Years' War.The writer knew by experience something of the horrors of civil war, and wrote with feelings of personal batred . In one vision Philander is seized by a gang of soldiers, engaged in a forayon their own account, who show no mercy, save to those who buy it with gold. The Croats, Walloons, and other soldiers of the Imperiai army are described in language that cannot be quoted As sheep in the presence of the enemy; as wolves, when they are turned loose to rob the peasantry; as marauders worthy of being led by a rapacious and treacherous adventurer. Writers of fiction could hardly be guilty of exaggeration when describing some of the events of those dreadful years from 1618 to 1648, above all the atrocious sack of Magdeburg. In the space one year - 1646 -& hundred villages were burned down in Bavaria. In thecourse of the long war, the population of Augsburg was reducedfrom eighty thousand to eighteen thousand, while the devastationwas far greater in the Rheinpfalz, where, in some districts, only about a fiftieth part of the former population remained. The events of his time had, possibly, some effect on the ima gination of an inferior writer of fiction, ANDREAS HEINRICHBUCHHOLTZ ( 1607-71 ), who wrote Herkules and Valiska ,' an absurd romance, with scenes laid in almost all the known countries of the world, and full of battles, hardly one of which endswith a loss of less than three hundred thousand men on the sideof the defeated army. Though he described such awful cata strophes, the style of Buchholtz is tame when contrasted with that of his successor, HEINRICH ANSELM ( 1653-97), the Lohen stein of prose. His romance, The Asiatic Banise,' begins with this passage: -May lightning, thunder, and hail—the wrathful instruments of Heaven - crush the splendours of thy gilded towers,and may the vengeance of the gods consume thy wealth, 0 city!156 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CH.>6whose inhabitants were guilty of the overthrow of the Imperial Family! ' This must have been thought fine in that day; for Anselm's book was very popular, and its success encouraged him to write (in 1691) sixteen stories founded on the Old Testament,containing not only the love- letters of Abraham and Sarah ,' butalso such as passed between Adam and Eve!LOHENSTEIN - already noticed as a bombastic dramatist - wrote,in tedious prose, an enormous romance in four parts, filling almost three thousand quarto pages, and entitled “ Arminius and Thus nelda ' (1731) . One of his objects in writing it was to include the whole history of the German people. Its tablo of contents fills ninety - six closely printed quarto pages.It is some relief to turn from such a heavy compilation of fiction to the historical works of Mascov, Birken , Arnold , and Zingref,though these writers were generally inferior to the chroniclers ofearlier times. JOHANN JAKOB Mascov (1689–1761) wrote a ‘ His tory of the German People ' ( 1726–37), which extended no farther than the Merovingian kings. A ' History of the House of Austria ,'compiled by SIGMUND VON BIRKEN ( 1623-81) has some value,though it was written in submission to Imperial authority. Gott FRIED ARNOLD undertook a very difficult task in his " ImpartialChurch History ' ( 1699) . His chief object was to defend severalsects that had been condemned for heresy, and to find out theirreal tenets. Hardly any task could be more hopeless than this.The materials for a history of the Thirty Years' War are but imperfectly supplied by the vernacular literature of this period.PHILIPP VON CHEMNITZ ( 1605-78 ), historiographer to Queen Christina of Sweden, wrote more ably in Latin than in German,and left in manuscript a history of the Swedish War in Ger many, ' which was published at Stockholm in 1855-9. Underthe assumed name of HIPPOLITUS A LAPIDE, he published, in 1640, a remarkable treatise exposing some abuses of Imperial privileges. But we must refer to several comparatively obscure histories, as well as to letters, special memoirs, and works of fiction,to find a popular instead of a political narration of the war that devastated large districts of Germany in 1618-48. One of the most interesting of the special memoirs here referred to is an ac count of The Sack of Magdeburg ,' written, about 1660, by FRIED BICH FRISIUS, an eye- witness of the events which he described.In his story, and in some other historical documents of about theXII.) THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 157same date, we have the horrors of the war brought into a focus and presented as realities, stripped of the disguise that cold, ab stract history supplies. All the public buildings of Magdeburg in flames, except the cathedral and the old convent; hundreds of people of all ages dying in streets heated like an oven by a con flagration, driven on by a strong wind; marauders pouring in at the Hamburg gate --- some carrying bullets in their mouths forready use, and shooting down the people like so many beasts of prey; ' superior officers extorting from fathers of families theirlast dollar; gangs of Walloon and Croatian soldiers bursting into houses with hoarse cries of " Your money! ' and terrified women swiftly turning out their hoards of silver spoons and trinkets, to save their lives; in all the houses everything burst open and cut to pieces;' companies of girls and young women rushing to the bridge over the Elbe, linking their hands together, and leaping down into the river; -these are a few of the scenes broughtbefore our vision by the testimony of eye- witnesses. Thirty thousand people of both sexes and all ages perished in that sack ing of Magdeburg in the spring of 1631.Twice in the course of the war the Emperor had gained a victorious position, and had the power of making peace between the two chief parties; but after that sack of Magdeburg his forces seemed to be controlled by an evil destiny. The Imperial army,guilty of that atrocious massacre, was put to the rout by the King of Sweden, and Tilly, its commander - who had been calledthe winner of thirty -six battles — WAS soon afterwards mortallywounded. He was a man of strict piety, according to his notionsattended mass daily and recited many prayers. The watch -word in his army at the sack of Magdeburg was Jesu, Maria. His fall compelled the Emperor to call out Wallenstein, who formed anew army, but failed to prevent the victory of the Swedes atLützen, where their king was slain in 1632. There also fell Pappenheim , rejoicing when he knew that the heretic ' fromSweden was slain. Pappenheim was the most impetuous and fearless of all the Imperial generals, but as ruthless as he wasbrave. In one month in 1626 he slow forty thousand of thepeasantry, in order to quell an insurrection, and afterwards wrote& calm narrative of the campaign. After the defeat at Lützen the Emperor's army was allowed to remain almost idle, while its commander was negotiating for the sale of his services to the enemy.158 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.Wallenstein's dark plans were interrupted by bis death in 1634,when he fell by the hands of assassins, who were richly rewarded by the Emperor. In the miserable time after Wallenstein's fall thewar became more and more complicated by Swedish and French in terventions. Catholic France aided the Protestants, in order to divide Germany, and at last the Peace of Westphalia ( 1648 ) left the Imperial power prostrate. A Diet, with cumbrous forms,devised to make union for ever hopeless, represented the extinct empire. Petty princes were made absolute. Germany lost twoprovinces and was shut in from the sea . Trade, industry, and education were almost destroyed. Hardly a third part of its former population remained in Bohemia, where the great strife began and ended. The Thirty Years' War had an effect ou thenational life and the literature of the German people so disastrousand permanent, that these few notes must not be regarded as out of place here. They would serve as an apology for the non - appearance of any literature whatever in these sad times.Among the few books of travels and descriptions of foreigncountries produced in this period, the most interesting was written by Adam OLEARIUS ( 1600–71). He attended , as secretary,embassies to Russia and Persia, acquired a knowledge of the Persian language, translated the Gulistân (or " Rose - Garden ' )of Sâdi, and wrote, with care and honesty, an account of his own travels ( 1647).One of the more important collections of letters having an his torical interest contains the correspondence of CHARLOTTE ELIZA BETH, the Duchess of Orleans ( 1652-1722), who lived about fifty years at the court of her brother-in -law , Louis XIV. She describes,in her rude German style, the state of society in France, and predicts that a social disruption must follow the vices of her times.The Duchess was a woman of honest and masculine character,which it was her pleasure to assert by wearing a man's dress when she accompanied the great monarch in his hunting excursions.Of didactic prose -writings — Apart from theology - little can besaid . GEORG SCHOTTEL preceded Wolf as a writer on ethics, andLUDWIG VON SECKENDORF, the author of a book ' On the German Empire, ' was one of the earliest writers on the theory of govern ment. A work on Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting ' by JOACHIM VON SANDRART 1606–88 ) has been commended ratherfor its copper-plate engravings than for its style, and a History ofa. (CE XII.] DIDACTIC PROSE . 159th in 1634,manded byn's fall theFrench inorder to1649) It18 forms,e extinctJost two try, and7 of its strileou theALOUSout ofpperreignittenthe German Language ' ( 1716–20) by AUGUSTIN EGENHOLF can be noticed only as a well - intended attempt. Another writer onphilology - SCHUPP — deserves more attention; for he was one of the earliest protesters against pedantry, and might be described asa pioneer who prepared the way for Thomasius and Wolf.BALTHASAR SCHUPP ( 1610-61 ), a preacher at Hamburg, con demned the half -German and half - Latin language written by men who were called erudite. We cannot be surprised at the povertyof prose -writings in law , ethics, theology, and philosophy when we find Schupp apologising thus for writing and speaking in his own language:Wisdom is not confined to any language; and therefore I ask, Why may I not learn in German how to know, love, and serve God — that is,theology? Or if I wish to study medicine, why may I not learn how to discern and cure diseases as well in German as in Greek and Arabic? TheFrench and the Italians employ their native languages in teaching all the arts and sciences. There are many great cardinals and prelates in Rome who cannot speak Latin; and why may not a man, though ignorant of Latin and Greek, become a good German preacher? I know he may; for when I studied at Leyden, a new preacher was appointed to the pulpit of the Lutheran congregation there. He bad been a painter, and had no advantages of classical education; so many of the genteel students of law made jests on this preacher, because he ventured to ascend the pulpit before he had mastered Latin. However, he understood the Scriptures well, and I was more edified by his plain homilies than by the sermons of manylearned and Latinised professors.Schupp's censure of the German - Roman jargon used in his day,and afterwards, will hardly be understood without a specimen .A short extract from GUNDLING'S ‘ Discourse on History ' (published in 1737) will show that the style condemned by Schupp prevailed for some time after his death . We substitute Englishfor German, and leave the Latin where Gundling inserts it:Not only Cicero, but all sensible men have agreed in saying that historia is magistra scholaque vitæ; for even the stulti, as well as the sapien tes,may profit by this study: the latter may gain by it, ut caveant ab artiticiis stultorum , quæ detegit , aperitque historia. It also supplies practice for logic; versatur enim circa distinguenda vero similia a vero dissimilibus.After this Gundling, with practice, might have pronounced ' aleash of languages at once . For preliminary exercises on twolanguages, he might have found models in the sermons of one of the most popular Roman Catholic preachers of the seventeenth century - ULRICH MEGERLE, otherwise called ABRAHAM A SANTAcheen ' )ܫܪ1 •T,160 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.CLARA ( 1642-1709 ), who preached rery fluently in an odd mixture of German and Latin . His thoughts, like his words, made amedley; for he mingled puns, jokes, and droll stories with very severe admonitions. One of his paragraphs, if rightly punctuated,would fill more than a large octavo page without once coming toa full stop. With all his eccentricity, he was a practical andearnest teacher. His style must be allowed to describe itself.Thus he addresses his hearers on the text, ' Oye foolish Galatians! 'Your preacher is treated now as St. Paul was treated . The Galatians, at one time, regarded him as an earthly angel, and listened to him with delight, as if his voice had been a celestial trumpet. . . But when hebegan to preach severely and to say, O insensati Galatæ! ... then allturned against him; inimicus factus sum vobis veritatem dicens. And so it remains now: as long as your preacher gives you pretty sayings - well decked out and made pleasant with proverbs and stories - you are all well pleased, and you say ,' Vivat Pater! a brave man! I hear him withdelight; ' but when he begins to speak sharply and says ' O insensati Germanil ' he makes enemies for himself and sic facta est veritas in aver.sionen. . .This style was described as “ Mischmasch ' by LEIBNITZ in an essay " On the Improvement of the German Language.' He ad mitted the wealth of his mother-tongue in words for all im pressions derived from the senses, but complained of a poverty of words wanted for writings on law , theology, and philosophy.To supply this want he recommended a development of the in dependent resources of his native language, but at the same timecondemned the extreme purists who would use no words derived from foreign languages.Among those who endeavoured to reduce to practice such rules as were suggested by Leibnitz, one of his contemporaries, CHRIS TIAN THOMASIUS, ( 1655–1728), must be remembered. His con tributions to the culture of a national literature deserve notice;but his reputation does not rest upon them . Literature and lifebad been widely separated in the seventeenth century. Versifiershad studied metaphors and professors had written abstract trea tises in Latin , while the miseries that attended and followed the war had prevailed throughout the land. Among the few writers of books who were also patriots, none was greater than THOMASIUS,a lawyer and an energetic, practical man, an enemy of the pedants and the bigots who were numerous in his day. He defended theXII. ] PIETISM . 161Pietists — especially HERMANN FRANCKE — not for the sake of their tenets, but because they claimed, as he believed, & reasonablefreedom of thought. It must, however, be added that when they had gained it for themselves, they refused to allow others to enjoy it. In his lecture on The Right Way of Imitating the French '( 1687 ) Thomasius contended for the substitution of German for Latin in lectures given in the universities. The persecution to which he was subjected, on account of his defence of the Pietists,had a good result in the foundation of a new university at Halle,where he was appointed professor ( 1694 ) and director (1710) .His German writings include a ' History of Wisdom and Folly '( 1693) and some Short Theorems ' on the witch - trials of bistimes ( 1704 ). In the latter book he successfully denounced cruel persecutions that had too long beenencouraged bythe arguments of theologians and jurists. Trials for the supposed crime of sor cery had been instituted in Germany in the thirteenth century ,but were suspeuded for some time when one of the chief inquisitors had been assassinated . Pope Innocent VIIL revived the crusade against magicians and sorcerers by a bull dated 1484, and soon afterwards persecutions were again instituted, and were main tained , with more or less rigour, for about two centuries. The victims were mostly poor women, from whom absurd confessions were sometimes extorted , which served to confirm the delusion .The miseries that had attended and followed the Thirty Years'War had spread gloom and malevolent suspicion among the people,who, like barbarians, were often disposed to ascribe their mis fortunes to persons rather than to circumstances. SPEE, a bene volent Jesuit, already named as a poet, denounced the so - called trials of witches, and rather later - BEKKER, a theologianof Amsterdam , wrote, for the same purpose, his ' Enchanted World; ' but Thomasius had greater success than these predeces sors, and after the publication of his book people became more and more ashamed of a doctrine that had been advocated by King James the First of England, and by many leamed men in Germany.The controversial and systemntic theology of the period waswritten in Latin. We have, therefore, to notice here only the Pietists, and one of the later Mystics who departed very widelyfrom the principles of such men as Tauler. Of PHILIPP JAKOB SPENER ( 1635–1705 ), author of Pia Desideria and other de->M162 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH,>6> 6votional writings in prose and verse, some account has alreadybeen given. His follower, AUGUST HERMANN FRANCKE ( 1663– 1727), the friend of Christian Thomasius and one of the most popular preachers of his times, is now remembered chiefly onacount of his practical and well-directed benevolence. He founded in 1698 the Orphan Home at Glaucha, near Halle, which hasgreatly increased, and now forms a small town in which the chief buildings are schools. A few years ago they contained more than three thousand boys and girls, who were receiving instructionfrom about one hundred and thirty teachers. Francke was driven to Halle by persecution, and, a few years afterwards, his followers drove the philosopher Wolf from Halle! It is an old story: the Pietists, when successful, made their religion as external and as exclusive as the authority against which they had formerly protested. They insisted on forms of phraseology, and found an im portant difference in the words ' Shibboleth ' and ' Sibboleth. 'Egotism and intolerance can lurk under all forms of doctrine, andare never so formidable as when they act with the assumed sanc tion of religion.One of the later Mystics, JOHANN GEORG GICHTEL ( 1638–1710 )may be named, because his writings show the results of that want of clear practical teaching which we have noticed in the works ofthe earlier Mystics. Gichtel gave to their doctrines an extremely ascetic, practical character, and founded a sect calling themselves

• Angelic Brethren;' who abstained from marriage, and believed that,

by the practice of devotion, they might obtain supernatural powers.Their founder was driven from Germany for his heresy, and after wards lived in Amsterdam , where he edited the first completeedition of Böhme's writings. Gichtel's letters, which were pub lished ( without his consent) in 1701 and later, contain some ex traordinary statements. It is asserted, for instance, that Gichtelalone, by the exercise of faith, and without leaving his chamber,defeated the large army sent against Amsterdam by Louis XIV .in 1672. History, as commonly believed, informs us that theDutch opened their sluices and so defeated the enemy,Two writers who, by birth, belonged to the seventeenth , exerted their influence mostly in the eighteenth century. Leibnitz awakened philosophic thought, and Wolf found expressions for it in his native language. GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNITZ( 1646–1716 ), one of the greatest of scholars and thinkers, wroteXII. ] LEIBNITZ. 163his most important works in French and Latin , though he pleaded well for the culture of his native language. A union of the power of deep thought with versatile talents was the chief characteristicof Leibnitz, who was a philosopher, a mathematician, and astatesman . His life was a contrast to that of a lonely student; he travelled often, maintained an extensive correspondence, and was engaged in important diplomatic services, especially with a view to the prevention of war between Germany and France. During a visit to London he became acquainted with Sir Isaac Newton,with whom he was afterwards involved in a long controversyrespecting the discovery of the differential calculus. It appears clear that both Newton and Leibnitz arrived independently and by distinct processes at the same result. After his return to Germany he lived mostly in Hanover, but frequently visited the Courtof Prussia, and founded , in 1700, the Academy of Sciences at Berlin . His religious opinions were conciliatory, and he corresponded with Bossuet, with a view to mitigate the severity of con troversy. Leibnitz was a man of middle stature, active in body and mind, and remarkably healthy. He was a courtier, and has beenaccused of avarice and vanity; was very careless of his owndomestic affairs, and was never married . His philosophy cannot be fairly analysed, if seen out of its connection with the systems.of other thinkers; but two or three of its leading thoughts maybe here indicated . Leibnitz, in opposition to the doctrine of Spinosa, regarded power, instead of substance, as the basis of all phenomena. Numerous forces (monads) , ever active in their combinations and oppositions, but all serving for the accomplish ment of one design , form the substantial, ideal world . The wholeuniverse is a collection of forces always acting, and no inert substance exists. In opposition to Locke's rejection of innate ideas,Leibnitz asserts that the mind has inpate ideas, but these, he says ,are , when viewed apart from experience, ' virtual' and not explicit. 'In other words, thoughts contain elements not derived from the senses, but developed by means of sensation . In his Théodicée-an essay on Optimism - Leibnitz asserts that the actual worldis the best possible world; that physical evil may be viewed as astimulus for the development of power, and that moral evil is in separable from the freedom of intellectual beings. This freedom is overruled, however, by a pre- established harmony; so that, inthe erd, all the powers that cau deploy themselves are made toM2164 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE [CR. .>work together for good. ' In one of his German essays Leibnitz indicated a comprehensive thought that was, long afterwards, moredistinctly asserted by Fichte: that all the ideas expressed by such words as power,' ' freedom , harmony,' beauty, ' ' love, ' and " happiness ' may be developments from one idea - that of union,or of the subordination of many inferior powers to one higherpower. In other parts of his writings Leibnitz expresses a belief that all philosophy may ultimately be reduced to one system;having all its parts as closely united as the several branches ofmathematics; but his own method — or rather, want of a method -could never lead to such a result. The best systematic view of his speculations has been given by Kuno FISCHER in his History of Modern Philosophy. ' The German writings of Leibnitz were edited by Guhrauer in 1838-40. We append a passage from theessay above referred to:The greatness of any power must be measured by the extent to which it displays itself as an evolution of many from one, and as a subordination of many to one. ... This union in variety is harmony. A subordination of parts one to another, and of all to the whole, produces order; whence arises beauty, and beauty awakens love. Thus we find a close connection between all the ideas wbich we represent by such words as happiness, joy, love, per fection , power, freedom, harmony, and beauty, as they all imply unity in variety . Now when the faculties of the human soul are developed in ac cordance with this law, there is a feeling of consistency, order, freedom ,power, and completeness, which produces an abiding happiness, distinct from all sensuous pleasures, and as it is constant, does not deceive us, and cannot produce future unbappiness, as partial pleasures may. It is always attended by an enlightened reason, and an impulse toward all goodness and virtue. Sensuous, transitory, or partial pleasures may be mistaken for happiness; but they may be clearly distinguished by this mark , that while they gratify the senses, they do not satisfy reason . An unwise indulgencein such pleasures introduces discord in our nature, and thus produces many evils. Pleasure, therefore, must not be regarded as an end, but may be em ployed as one of the means of happiness. It should be viewed as a delicious cate, with a suspicion that it may contain something poisonous. In short,pleasures, like our daily diet, must be regulated by reason . But rationalenjoyment arising out of a general harmonious wellbeing of our nature has in itself an evidence that it is purely good, and can produce no evil in the future. The chief means of promoting such joy must be the enlighten ment of reason , and the exercise of the will in acting in accordance withreason . ...If external advantages and pleasures could produce the happiness I have described, it would certainly be found in the possession of great and rich men. But Christ himself has said, it is very difficult for rich men ' to enter the Kingdom of Heaven,' or, in other words, to attain true happiness.Having around them an abundance of sensuous luxuries, they are disposed to seek satisfaction in joys which must be transitory; or, when they riseXII. ) WOLF. 165above physical pleasures, they generally depend on an ambition to gain honour and applause. But sickness and age will surely take away allsensnous delights, and misfortunes may ruin all the objects of ambition.Thus all external pleasures fail, and those who have depended upon them find that they have been deceived .The devotion of a lifetime would have been demanded toreduce the hypotheses of Leibnitz to a system , but he neverundertook such a task . One of his more important works -- theNew Essays on the Human Understanding '-was first published fifty years after his death . His doctrines were partly reducedto a systematic form by his follower CHRISTIAN WOLF (1679–1745),who threw aside such parts as he could not understand. Wolf was a man of great industry, and wrote an extensive series of works inLatin, and several shorter and clearer expositions of his system inGerman . In all his works he showed a love of order and clearness,which had a very important educational effect in his times, while bis use of his own language greatly developed its resources. Hissystematic writings in German and Latin fill twenty - two quartovolumes. In 1707, and for fifteen years afterwards, he lecturedwith great success on mathematics and natural philosophy atHalle, until he was accused of heresy by some of his colleagueswho were Pietists. The King, Friedrich Wilhelm I., willinglylistened to the accusation; for he hated philosophers, and hadmilitary notions of orthodoxy. It is true he kept at his court one professor, Paul Gundling — the brother of the writer whoseGerman - Latin style has been noticed — but he was kept only as acourt- fool to entertain the King; was introduced, when intoxicated,to amuse the King's friends in their evening smoking -club, and was, at last, buried in a wine - cask . Wolf was driven as acriminal from Prussia in 1723, and did not return until 1740,when Friedrich called the Great mounted the throne. The phi losopher was then re -appointed professor at Halle, where heenjoyed , for some years, a high reputation as a teacher.Method and a clear arrangement of his thoughts were the mostprominent merits of Wolf's writings; but his method was dogmatic, and his system was an aggregate, not an organism . He distinctly labelled his categories, but arranged them without regardto their logical uninn , and did not investigate their origin. Hewrote down such predicates as ' finite ' and ' infinite, simple ' and ' complex,' as if their meaning were self- evident and well understood&9166 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.by everybody. Wolf knew nothingof such doubts as were afterwards introduced into metaphysics by Hume and Kant, and his writings,consequently, served to encourage a self - complacent dogmatism which, in a later time, disguised itself under the name of “ enlightenment. ' In other respects his teaching had very good results, andthe example of his clear style and methodical arrangement wasfollowed by the popular philosophers of the eighteenth century.Without these notices of the writings of Leibnitz and Wolf atransition from the literature of the seventeenth to that of theeighteenth century would seem abrupt. In the period now briefly surveyed ( 1625–1725 ) but little improvement has been noticed ,save in the art of writing verse; in the next period — 1725-70— are found prose -writings that, with regard to - style, muy challengea comparison with the literature of the nineteenth century .We havearrived at the close of a long time of intellectual dul -ness, extending from the later Middle Ages to the end of theseventeenth century. The songs and ballads, the satires, the popular sermons, and the people's jest- books of those times havemuch historical interest; but, if we had noticed books merely for their literary merits, almost four centuries might have been de scribed as.comparatively barren . Latin writers in theology and philology, too numerous to be mentioned, flourished during these sages, and many works of considerable learning were produced;but such labours had no influence on the progress of a national,and especially a poetical literature, of the German people. While Hans Sachs, the writer of homely fables in verse, fairly represented the character of German poetry in the sixteenth century, theElizabethan era of poetical genius was in its lustre in England.Shakspeare wrote his dramas only a few years after the death of Sachs. No fact can more strikingly show how far Germany remained behind England in the cultivation of poetry. If we turn our attention to prose -writers, the contrast is equally remarkable.Not long after Fischart wrote his satires, Richard Hookerwrote his Ecclesiastical Polity ' and Lord Bacon produced his philosophical essays. In the seventeenth century we still find a contrast between the vigour of English and the feeble ness of German literature. Martin Opitz, and the imitators whoregarded him as the “ Horace of his times,' represented German poetry during the age which produced such writers as Milton,Dryden, Barrow , and Tillotson .6 >XIII.) CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TIME. 167CHAPTER XIII.SIXTH PERIOD. 1725-70.CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TIME - LITERARY UNIONS - THE SWISSLEIPZIG CONTROVERSY - GOTTSCHED - BODMER -BREITINGER - THEFABLE - WRITERS - HALLER - HAGEDORN THE SAXON SCHOOL - GLEIMAYD HIS FRIENDS - HYMN -WRITERS - PROSE FICTION .form;The times when WINCKELMANN, KLOPSTOCK, LESSING, and WIELAND wrote seem far removed from the days of Opitz. So great was the progress thathad been made during the lifetime of Wolf( 1679–1764) , that centuries seemed to have passed away when Lessing appeared as the reformer of the literature of the Germanpeople. The title of reformer is, indeed, hardly high enough for Lessing. He gave to literature far more than improvements in he breathed into it a new spirit and inspired it with a new will. It remains no longer imitative, but asserts its own character. No longer does it make a pile of learning for the sake oflearning, but subordinates all studies to one — that of life and progress. While maintaining. its individuality, it becomes comprehensive and sympathetic in its recognition of the world'sliterature. These ideas were expanded by later writers, but theybelong especially to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. He was the foremost man of his time, but he was also the child of the age.His work had been prepared for him , and to explain his successsome circumstances of the times favourable to literary culture must be named . Among them we can hardly include any patronage of literature by the State. Several of the best authors who wrote during the forty -five years 1725-70 belonged to Prussia,and the great historical fact of the time was the marvellous growth of the political power of that State under its two great rulers Friedrich Wilhelm I. and bis son; but no direct connection can be traced between political and literary progress. The latter was168 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.69-ignored by the Court of Berlin. Friedrich Wilhelm I., whose economy and prevision founded his country's power, scorned both philosophy and poetry, and classified literary men and professorswith ' the foreign singers, dancers, and fiddlers,' for whom he entertained a hearty contempt. As before stated, he kept at his court one professor and historiographer, whom he treated as abuffoon. Friedrich II., a great king, and a man of power in bothintellect and will, would not take the trouble to write his own language. In an Essay on German Literature ,' which he wrote in French (1780), he mentioned neither Klopstock nor Lessing,and when an edition of the Nibelungenlied was presented to him ,he declared it was not worth a shot,' and if found in his library,would have been swept out by his orders. Yet the King could bestow praise liberally, at times, for he styled an insignificant versifier - Canitz— The Pope of Germany .' In literature theKing was as truly French as his friend Voltaire . The latter,writing at the Court of Berlin (1750), says: -' I am here still in France . We all talk in our own language, and men educated at Königsberg know many of my poems by heart. German is leftfor soldiers and horses, and we have no need of it except whenwe are travelling .'. The King's own tastes were represented in these words. Yet he indirectly aided the growth of a national Jiterature; for he infused his own energy into the character of his people, and gave them something to be proud of. Think as they might of his opinions, his tastes, and some parts of his policy, they were compelled to honour the man who regarded himself as ' the Servant of the State,' and ' who thought, lived, and died like a king'The revival of national literature in the eighteenth century wasa continuation of the work begun and carried on by Opitz, Tho masius, Schupp, Leibnitz, and Wolf. Political and social circum stances were more favourable to literary culture than they had been. Seventy - five years had passed since the close of the Thirty Years' War, and though the conditions of the Peace of West phalia were unsatisfactory, with regard to their ultimate tendencies,the minds of men now enjoyed a comparative repose. The rancour of religious strife had considerably abated; for the three con fessions were placed on an equal footing with regard to their rela tions with the State. Men, left without any great interest in general politics, and excluded from political power in the severalXIII.] LITERARY UNIONS. 169.6minor States, found in literary culture the occupation and the free ,dom which they could not elsewhere enjoy. Literary unions, withtheir journalism , correspondence, and controversies, supplied means of intercourse between students living in Saxony and Prussia;while Switzerland was reunited with Germany by means ofliterature.The literary unions of the preceding century had not been al together useless, for they had weeded French words out ofGerman verse; but poetry was still a copy made from a copy; forits French models were imitations of the antique. One of theliterary societies of the seventeenth century still survived atLeipzig, and GOTTSCHED, in 1727, gave it a new lease of existence,and partly changed its character for the better. About six years earlier BODMER, & professor of history at Zürich, and his friendBREITINGER, a pastor there, had started a literary journal, chieflywith a view to an improved culture of poetry. This formed the nucleus of the Swiss School. A literary union existing at Halle,in 1734–37, had only two active members — SAMUEL LANGE andJAKOB PYRA — and when they left Halle " the Society for theCulture of Poetry and Rhetoric ' seems to have suddenly dis appeared. A more important association, however, was formed atLeipzig in 1744 by several young men, afterwards known as theSaxon School. They at first obeyed the rules stated by Gott sched , but soon went over to the side of Bodmer. The latterbad hardly any consistent theory of poetry; but he pleaded for afree exercise of the imagination, in opposition to Gottsched'styrannical common sense, and preferred English to French poets.These two schools of Leipzig and Zürich were the highest authorities in poetry and criticism; but other unions of literary men were soon formed -- especially at Berlin and Halberstadt.GLEIM , afterwards well known as the Mecenas of his times,formed , while he was a student at Halle, à coterie consisting at first of the trio GLEIM , Uz, and Götz; and , when two other young poets - KLEIST and RAMLER — had entered this miniatureunion, it became known as the Prussian School . ' Ramler wentto reside in Berlin, where, with the aid of several friends, he founded a literary association, which included Lessing, Mendels sohn , and Nicolai, the publisher of the ‘ Literary Letters ,' to which Lessing contributed.Meanwhile GLBIM maintained a very extensive correspondence6170 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Co.with his literary friends in all the schools, and, moreover, had in his own houses at Halberstadt a select college of young versifiers-JACOBI, MICHAELIS, SCHMIDT, and HEINSE — all destined , as Father Gleim fondly believed , to become great poets in the courseof time.These outlines of the history of several literary unions may serve to explain their relations with each other and their compa rative importance. Their chief representatives may now be noticed.JOHANN CHRISTOPH GOTTSCHED, born in 1700, near Königsberg,came to Leipzig in 1724, and there founded the German Society 'for the culture of a national literature. He began his work well,by criticism directed chiefly against the affectation aud bombast ofthe Second Silesian School. Havingsuccessfully ended this negativeprocess, Gottsched proceeded to lay down strictlaws for the cultivation of poetry. He maintained the three propositions: that poetry must be founded on an imitation of nature; that the understandingmust prevailover the imagination; and that the best models mustbe found in French literature. At this time several translationsfrom English poetry had appeared,, and Milton had many admirersin Germany. Among his admirers no one was so enthusiasticas JOHANN JAKOB BODMER, born near Zürich in 1698, who translated the ‘ Paradise Lost.' In an essay ' On the Marvellous inPoetry ' (1740) he defended Milton from certain charges brought against him by Gottsched, and so began a controversy that served to give animation to criticism , and had other good results. It wasin the midst of this controversy that the new literature of the eighteenth century arose . For a time the critic of Leipzig hadthe advantage on his side, especially with regard to dramaticliterature. Here he found two powerful allies to assist endeavours to preserve the stage from all innovations on French models. Thefirst of his allies was a popular actress, named Caroline Neuber,who refused to appear in any plays in which ' Jack Puddings,' or other low characters condemned by Gottsched, were introduced.The other ally was his wife, LUISE VICTORIA GOTTSCHED, who had talents superior to any possessed by the dictator himself.She translated Pope's ‘ Rape of the Lock, as well as several French dramas; she was the author, too, of comedies and poems in her native tongue. Yet she was one of the best of household managers, and while she regulated her husband's domestic affairs6LXIII.] THE SWISS - LEIPZIG CONTROVERSY . 171>assisted him not a little in his literary labour. With these and inferior allies, Gottsched maintained well, for some time, his contest with the Swiss literary heretics; but his dominion was overthrown at last by himself when, in the pride of his power, hewent so far as to condemn Klopstock, then rising into popularity .The Leipzig critic declared that the Messias was a very irregularand worthless poem, and could not for a moment be compared with * Hermann,' a new epic by CHRISTOPH OTTO SCHÖNAICH; but the public, as well as many critics, condemned the latter as intolerably dull and unreadable. In dramatic literature the critic found aformidable opponent in CHRISTIAN FELIX WEISE ( 1726-1804 ),who endeavoured to make innovations on the stage, especiallyby introducing light comic operas and melodramas, to supersede such heavy tragedies as Gottsched's own ' Dying Cato .' The dic tator was so seriously offended by the performance of one of Weise's operas The Devil is loose '—that he regarded it as apersonal insult offered to himself. Nor was this the last of hissad roverses of fortune. His wife_onch his faithful literary assistant - went over to the side of the innovators, and the popularactress, Caroline Neuber, having also joined the new party, wasan accomplice in the shameful act of representing a caricature ofthe dictator himself on the Leipzig stage! When Gottsched was thus prostrated, everyone, of course, was ready to strike him. OneRost, the author of some licentious poems, wrote an abusive letter- From the Devil to Gottsched ' - and distributed copies 80that, wherever the critic went, be found the odious epistle.

• Fallen from his high estate, ' deprived of all his literary authority,

derided by the aetress who had once been bis loyal subject, andworse than all - censured by his wife, as if he had lived beyond his time, the great critic of Leipzig finally retired into deep shades.He had done good service in his day, if it was nothing more than putting down Lobenstein . This one fact ought to save Gottsched'sDame from contempt. His Critical Theory of Poetry ’ (1730)says nothing true of poetry itself, but contains some good remarkson diction and versification. He was a reformer of the externalsof literature, and was a respectable writer when contrasted withthe leading men of the Second Silesian School.BODMER and his friends were- like their enemy, Gottschedmore successful on the negative than on the positive side, when they wrote on their own theory of poetry . They declared, truly,172 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.6<6that French models were not final, and that a contempt of Milton was no proof of a critic's good judgment; but when they went on further, to assert their own theory of poetry, they were but alittle less Darrow than Gottsched . They agreed that poetry mustbe an imitation of nature - must be, in fact, a kind of painting in words '-and that its purport must be useful. Still they con tended that the wonderful, and even the impossible, must be admitted as elements of poetry. These two latter conditions might seem to be irreconcileable; but they were found united in Æsop's Fables, which were, indeed, 'marvellous ' in their incidents, but useful' in their moral purport. Hence the Æsopian fable must be estimated as holding a very high place in poeticalliterature. In obedience to this odd dictum of the Swiss critics,several men of respectable talents - Gellert, Lichtwer, and Pfeffel- wrote many fables in verse, and sincerely endeavoured to beinstructive.CHRISTIAN FURCHTEGOTT GELLERT ( 1716–69), a very amiableman, had great success as a writer of fables, hymns, and a fewother poems. His language was clear and correct, though popular, and his didactic purport was always good; but he had no high imaginative powers. The people accepted his writings with anenthusiastic approval, and their feelings were shared by the higherclasses. Gellert, who was modest and retiring, found himselfcelebrated , while he was trying mostly to be useful. His famemust have been great, for it reached the Court of Berlin . Friedrich II. sought an interview with the writer of popular fables, andwas well pleased with his conversation . ' He is one of the mostrational of German professors,' said the King. But the fabulist'sadmirers were found among men of all classes. A story is told ofa peasant who brought to the poet's house a cart - load of firewood, as a thanksgiving for pleasure received in reading Gellert'sfables. Good morals and piety were more noticeable than geniusin Gellert; but he had humour, and his piety was not narrow . Inone of his fables a man afflicted with rheumatism endeavours tocure it by an odd charm, recommended by a superstitious woman:be must wash bis hands in morning dew found on the grave ofsome good and holy man . Guided by fine epitaphs, the patientfirst tries dew from the grave of one who lived a perfect modelof faith and good works,' and who died lamented by Church andState. No cure follows, and the patient next tries an obscureXIII.) THE FABLE -WRITERS. 1736-8agrave without a name. When his rheumatic pains have abated ,he makes some enquiry respecting the tenant of the grave. " Sir,'replies the sexton, ' they would hardly give him Christian burial.He was a heretic — a writer of poems and comedies—a good -for nothing .' It is obvious that the satire here intended is ambiguous;for either the piety of the saint or the virtue of the charm mightbe unreal.another writer of fables, MAGNUS GOTTFRIED LICHTWER (171983), followed the example of Gellert in making imagination subservient to didactic utility, and hardly more can be said in favour of the fables and poetical narratives ' written by GOTTFRIED KONRAD PFEFFEL ( 1736–1809 ), who was afflicted with a total lo88 of eyesight during the greater part of his long life. This was notallowed to interrupt his literary and other labours. He was asuccessful schoolmaster, and discharged faithfully the duties of several public offices. His satirical and didactic verses are very mild, excepting when he refers to the outbreak of the FrenchRevolution, of which he always speaks bitterly. This will beexcused when it is added that the Revolution compelled theblind map to shut up his school at Colmar in Elsass. The ex ample of his industrious life is more valuable than all the morals appended to his fables.The writers of fables had more success than Bodmer eitherenjoyed or deserved, when he turned away from criticism andæsthetic controversy to write epics. It is enough to mention one, ' The Noachide,' which tells the story of Noah and the Deluge.Bodmer's attempted sublimity is sometimes ridiculous, as when he ascribes the flood to the collision of a watery comet with the earth. His best services to literature consisted in his oppositionto Gottsched's bigotry, and in his attempts to revive the study of old German literature. He edited a part of the Nibelungenlied( 1757) and a collection of Minnelieder (1758). These services attracted little attention until some years after his death, which took place in 1783. His friend JOHANN JAKOB BREITINGER ( 1701-76) published, in 1740, " A Critical Study of the Poetic Art,' written correctly, but too closely limited in its definition of poetry. The author was a respectable, well- educated man , lesscontroversial than Bodmer and Gottsched, and caring more for truth than for conquest. Some of his remarks — especially those given near the close of his book - go beyond his own theory. He174 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ Сн,expresses doubts whether a mere descriptive piece in verse oughtto be called a poem, and suggests that the true object of poetry -narrative, lyrical, or dramatic - should be to represent human life in all its diversities of characters and passions.The Swiss -Leipzig controversy served to awaken an interest inpoetical literature, and called forth the high critical powers of Lessing. Both Klopstock and Wieland were partly indebted to Bodmer, who found delight in encouraging the development of talents greater than his own. Hence it is easy to trace a connection between a controversy of which the details are now mostly forgotten and the rise of a new literature, of which Lessingwas the founder. This fact alone gives importance to the names of Gottsched and Bodmer.Two verse -writers, who had hardly any interest in the contro versy above noticed, wrote in the earlier part ofthis period, and contributed to the improvement of style that followed . ALBRECHT VONHALLER ( 1708-77 ), an accomplished scholar, whose studies were mostly devoted to anatomy and physiology, wrote several odes, and other lyrical poems, characterised by dignity and thoughtfulness;several didactic poems and satires, and a descriptive poem on . The Alps' ( 1732) , which is one of the best of its class. That Hallerdid not admit the more advanced doctrine of Breitinger is shown in a didactic romance Fabius and Cato ' (1744 ) —which is, in fact, a disquisition on the respective merit of several forms ofgovernment. In one of his odes ~ ' An Address to Eternity '-ho shows great vigour and dignity of language; but the subject is abstract, and the sublimity of the thoughts is not of the highest order, if we except one line, noticed by HEGEL as better than all the rest. It is the last line of the following passage:Eternity! -o'er numbers vest,O’er millions upon millions cast And multiplied a thousandth time;O'er worlds on worlds I still must climb,In vain , to reach the boundless thought;For still I am no nearer brought;The highest powers of numbers make no part ofthine infinitude: at last,I sweep them all away — and there Thou art.A lighter and more graceful tone of lyrical poetry was introduced by FRIEDRICH VON HAGEDORN ( 1708–54 ), a native of Hamburg,who was for some time secretary to the Danish embassy in Lon9XIII .] THE SAXON SCHOOL. 1756>don. The topics of his songs are wine, friendship, and practical wisdom as understood by Horace. In his fables and hisnarrative poems Hagedorn partly followed Lafontaine and otherFrench writers. But English authors were now taking theplace of French , as models for imitative writers. ARNOLD EBERT(1723-95 ), who translated Young's ' Night Thoughts , some of Richardson's novels, and Macpherson's ' Ossian,' helped to spreada literary epidemic styled Anglomania. It is amusing to readthat the Night Thoughts of Young cherished , in Germany, adisposition to melancholy and sentimental verse -writing. Somegood influence must be ascribed to translations from Milton,Pope, and Thomson. Pope's best work, ‘ The Rape of the Lock,'suggested some mock - heroic epics written by WILHELM ZACHARIÄ( 1726–77), and Thomson's ' Seasons ' encouraged several writers of descriptive poems. One of the best of these was EWALD CHRISTIÁN VON KLEIST ( 1715-59), a major in the Prussian army, whofell in the campaign of 1758–59. His poem on ' Spring ,' whichwas once remarkably popular, has partly an epic character, and is made interesting by the expression of true feelings arising fromthe writer's experience of the miseries of war.With the exception of Haller, Hagedorn, and Kleist, it will,perhaps, be sufficient to notice most of the minor poets of the period in groups, rather than individually; for though not destituteof merit with regard to their diction , they had little distinctivegenius. The schools, or coteries, to which they belonged were not imaginary — not like the Lake School,' invented by reviewerswho could not see the difference between Wordsworth andSouthey. Members of German literary societies in the eighteenth century were really united, though not always formally. Versifiers of the Saxon School, for example, were mostly associated not only as members of the literary union founded by KARL GÄRTNER( 1712–91), but also as students sent out from the best classicalschools of Saxony -- the Fürstenschulen , which had been endowedout of the revenues of several suppressed convents. Aliterary journal entitled Die Bremer Beiträge was the organ of this Saxon School, which included among its members — besides Gärtner,Gellert, Zachariä, and Ebert, already named — such men as Elias SCHLEGEL (1718-49), a dramatist, who was opposed to artificial rules; his brother, ADOLF SCHLEGEL, the father of two song whose names eclipsed his own; CRAMER, a pastor, who wrote a6176 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE [ Ch. .version of the Psalms; KÄSTNER, the satirist; and the dramatists 'CRONEGK and AYRENHOFF. One of the more noticeable men ofthe Saxon School was GOTTLIEB RABENER ( 1714-71 ), a mildsatirist, who was described by Goethe as a man of remarkable good humour. Rabener held an inferior office under government,and, during the siege of Dresden (1760), his house was bu eddown. In a letter to a friend he describes his own misfortunesthus:My servant came and informed me that my house was burned down,that part of my property had been destroyed by bombshells, and that the remaining portion had been plundered by soldiers who had been sent to quench the fire. Sad news! All my property , furniture, clothing, books,manuscripts — all the pleasant letters from yourself and other friends which I bad preserved so carefully - all destroyed! Of property worth, as Icounted it, some three thousand dollars, scarcely the value of ten dollars remaining! My wardrobe is thus suddenly reduced to an old stuff frock and an obsolete peruke - item , a bedgown! All my witty manuscripts,which, as I once expected, would make such a sensation after my decease all turned to smoke! Really, I have now no motive for dying, and shall therefore live as long and as well as I can!6In one instance, at least, Rabener's satire is well directed; forit caricatures the tedious style of certain historical books. He gives a review of a supposed voluminous history of an obscurehamlet called ' Querlequitsch. Its historian begins thus: - ' If we carry back our researches to the beginning of the world, we shall find that it was at first inhabited by only one married couple,named respectively Adam and Eve. ' He then goes on, with in sufferable tediousness, through the history of the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans- not forgetting the Longobards — and at last expresses his thankful ness that he has found his way back to his subject, the obscure hamlet of Querlequitsch.The self-complacency, often characteristic of men of smallcapacity, is found nowhere more complete than in the versifyingcoterie over which ' Father Gleim ’ presided at Halberstadt.JOHANN WILHELM GLEIM ( 1719-1803 ), a good -natured manand a bachelor in easy circumstances, kept in his own house &nursery for young poets. He first formed, as has been said , alittle coterie at Halle, of which JOHANN PETER Uz ( 1720-96)and Johann NIKOLAUS Götz (1721-81) , were members — bothversifiers whose merits consisted mostly in their diction. The6XIII . ) GLEIM AND HIS FRIENDS . 1776best of Gleim's own poenis are his patriotic songs. He wrote,beside many lyrical pieces, a didactic poem -— ' Halladat,' or ' The Red Book .' ' From my early days,' says the author, “ I have had the thought of writing a book like the Bible. ' (! ) The result ofthis presumptuous design was a book full of common -places on virtue, and containing hardly one original thought. Gleim mustbe kindly remembered as a friend of literary men, though not as apoet. The society of small versifiers — with , here and there, aman of higher powers — cheered the bachelor's house at Halberstadt, where, in one large room , he kept one hundred and eighteenportraits of relatives and literary friends. No great poet over had,in this world, a life as happy as that of father Gleim. ' He never found faults in any poems written by his friends or dependents.All their works were beautiful! He would patronise anybodywho would write a few verses, either daily or weekly. One of the least fortunate of the objects of his patronage wasAnna LUISE KABSCH, the daughter of a peasant. She married unhappily when sie was sixteen years old, and her second husband was an intemperate tailor, whose thirst consumed all that the poetess could earn by making verses. Having escaped from his tyranny, she went to Berlin and thence to Halberstadt, where father Gleimassisted her in publishing her poems, which produced for her alittle fortune of about three hundred pounds. This was soon consumed by her rapacious relatives, and then the poor woman made an application for help to the king. Friedrich II. gave her six shillings, which she contemptuously returned to him. His successor patronised the poetess, whose misfortunes had nowgained for her a name at Berlin . A nobleman granted her a small annuity, and the king gave her a newly-built house. She was 80 delighted with this change of fortune, that she would not wait until the walls were dry, and, soon after taking possession of hernew abode, she fell ill, and died in 1791. Her verses give someproofs of imaginative energy; but her genius was injured , rather than improved, by the patronage she received. – Father Gleim had a better reward for the services he rendered to two or three youngpoets, already named. JOHANN GEORG JACOBI ( 1740-1814 ),wrote, at first, on very trivial themes, but made great improve inent afterwards, when he imitated the style of a junior cotem porary - Goethe. The versification of Jacobi's lyrical poems is melodious. - Another of Gleim's more successful friends was KARLN178 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CH.WILHELM RAMLER ( 1725–98 ), who chose Horace for his model,and wrote odes and other lyrical poems which were praised byGoethe. Ramler was, for some years, a teacher in the Cadets'School at Berlin, and there wrote odes to celebrate the militarysuccesses of the king, who, however, took no notice of the poet.These odes, and some other poems by Ramler have now but little interest apart from their versification. His imitations of antique metres were carefully studied, and served as models for Voss and other translators. Lessing sometimes submitted his ownverses to Ramler's criticism .Several writers of odes and hymns, who were mostly imitators,may be left unnamed here. A translation of the Psalms byJOHANN ANDREAS CRAMER (1723-88), one of the members of theSaxon School, has greater merit than his original hymns. Otherhymn -writers belonged mostly to two schools;-the didactic, inwhich Gellert's example prevailed, and the Pietistic, including thewriters of hymns for the services of the United Brethren. A tendency to give prominence to natural theology is found in thehymns, as in the prose writings, of CHRISTOPI STURM ( 1740–86 ),a pastor at Hamburg, who might, perhaps, be classed with Klopstock's imitators. His best work in prose, entitled Meditationson the Works of God ’ (1779), was translated into English, andother languages, and enjoyed remarkable popularity. The mostproductive of all the Pietistic hymn-writers, was NIKOLAUS LUD WIG, GRAF VON ZINZENDORF ( 1700-60 ), who founded thesocieties of the United Brothren, otherwise called Moravians.He gave to the Moravian brethren, who, to escape from persecution had left their native land, a settlement on his own estate, at aplace afterwards called Herrnhut. Here he presided over his" little church in the great church , ' as he called it, which becamea centre from which missionary companies went forth into manyparts of the world. Many of the hymns written by Zinzendorfare marked by extreme simplicity; others have a quasi-amatorycharacter, of which the writer, in his later years, expressed his owndisapprobation.Several other names of minor poets might be mentioned with out serving to indicate any progress, either in thought or in diction. When we turn from verse to fictions written in prose,Wieland's romances are almost the only productions deservingnotice. JOHANN TIMOTHEUS HERMES ( 1738–1821), an imitator>3XIII. ] PROSE FICTION . 179of Richardson, wrote the first German story - Sophia's Journey --giving descriptions of the life of the middle classes. In otherrespects the book is insignificant. Salomon GESSNER ( 1730-86 ),a landscape-painter, endeavoured to do with his pen work thatwould have been better done with a brush. He found delight in writing descriptions, of which his stories mostly consist. His

• Death of Abel ' gained great popularity in England as well as in Germany. A short passage from one of his essays may indicate his style:

6If Heaven woald fulfil the wish long cherished in my heart, I would escape into the country and live far away from towns. You should find me hidden from the world, and contented , in a little cottage embowered among hazels and other trees, with a trellised vine in the front, and a cool spring bubbling near my door. On the little grass-plot my doves would often alight and please me with their graceful movements, or receive from my hand the crumbs left on my table. There chanticleer too should proudly strut at the head of his family. And in a sheltered corner I would have my hives of bees, that the sweetness of my flowers might be treasured up,and that I might be often reminded that even in solitude I must be indus trious. Bebind the cottage you should find my garden for fruit and flowers,surrounded with a hedge of hazels, and with a bower at each corner . Here I would employ art, not to cut nature into grotesque forms, but gently to co -operate with her workings, and to unfold her beauty. Here would be my place in pleasant weather, where I could enjoy alternately exercise and meditation. Then imagine a little green pasture near the garden, and agentle rill Aowing beside my plantation , and spreading at one point in its course into a miniature lake, having an island and a pleasant bower in the middle; and add to this rural inventory a little vineyard, and one little field of yellow corn; and then what king would be richer than I?It is only in accordance with the most popular definition of poetry, that several rersifiers of the schools of Leipzig, Halle and Halberstadt can be called poets. Some diminutive, ratherless abusive than poetaster, would be a better name for them .Having little or nothing to say, they often said it neatly; but too many of their poems were mere exercises in versification on worn topics and sentiments derived from French or English sources.All the forms of poetry were tried — the lyrical, the epic, and the dramatic — and some forms that sbould hardly be tolerated; suchas didactic and prosaic treatises in verse , on such themes as " The Irrigation of Meadows,' and ' The Rights of Reason .' Commonplace is too often made the theme of lyrical poetry, of which the true element should be individuality; here we find , again and again , trite sayings on friendship, wine, and the beauties ofX 2180 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CH.Nature, with little true variety in all their variations. Innarrative poetry many fables are good, as far as they go,and, having some meaning, are better than the idylls in whichinane shepherds and shepherdesses appear. Pope's fine work of fancy, " The Rape of the Lock, ' made imitative mock-heroicpoems fashionable for a time. Some improvements -- among themthe use of iambic verse — were introduced into the drama by Weisse, Nicolai, and one of the Schlegels, before the time when Lessing introduced a national drama. The rules of versificationlaid down by Opitz were mostly obeyed and partly extended, and in their search for variety of forms, versifiers attempted imitationsof antique classical metres, and introduced a prosody partly founded on quantity. These services rendered to the culture of language are valuable; but they cannot claim for imitative versi fiers a place among the poets who have united artistic forms ofexpression with great thoughts or important actions and passions.XIV . ] FREDERICK II. OF PRUSSLA . · 181CHAPTER XIV .SIXTH PERIOD. 1725-70.FREDERICK II . OF PRUSSIA --HISTORIANS - POPULAR PHILOSOPHERSRATIONALISTS_WRITERS ON ÆSTHETICS - WINCKELMANN ,66The prose -writers of the reign of FRIEDRICA II. of Prussia hadmostly something to say, while too many of their versifying cotemporaries were putting trifles into rhyme; but few historiansor publicists were found capable of writing worthily of suchevents as were then taking place. Many good essays on moralsand on social life, were written by authors belonging to theschool of popular philosophy, and, in the department of art.criticism , two of the most important works in the world's literature-the History of Ancient Art,' and " The Laokoon ,'— were written during this period. Moral philosophy and æsthetics arethe departments in which the best prose writings of the time arefound.One of the more valuable historical works written in German,was a history of the petty state of Osnabrück — a bishopric whichceased to exist in 1803. It seems strange that German historiansand writers on politics wrote bardly anything noticeable of the greatest events that had taken place since the Reformation. Butliterary men knew very little of the importance of such movementsas the Silesian wars, and to find any worthy account of them wemust refer to the king's own writings;-his Contributions to aHistory of Brandenburg,' the History of the Seven Years' War,'and the History of his own Times. These works, written bythe great king and military commander, who saved Germany from destruction, are written in French! They are, however, so far connected with national literature, that they may serve as some apology for the king's neglect of literary men. With suchwork as he had imposed upon him , he might, with good reason ,6182 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.66have neglected far greater men. While authors were discussingæsthetical questions, Austria and France - one power as foreign as the other — were plotting in order that ' the German body,' as theycalled it, might never have a soul;; or might never be guided by a head. Meanwhile, some of the petty princes — as they mightbe styled, without regard to the areas of their domains - wereready to sacrifice nationality to their meanest personal interests.It had been resolved, at Versailles and Vienna, that the power ofPrussia must be first destroyed, and that then the body ' should be dissected, according to a plan of which all the details had beenconcerted . To give the highest sanction to the'work of destroyingPrussia and all Germany, the warfare against FRIEDRICH II. was to be waged as a holy crusade against an infidel. It was to be astrictly religious war, and directed by immediate inspirationreceived from such an odd source as Madame de Pompadour!When FRIEDRICH II. marched into Saxony to defeat this conspi racy, he was acting strictly on the defensive and in favour of theestablishment of peace. That he gave no aid to Germanliterature,' has been made a grave topic of complaint; but it may be added that, without the hard work of his life, neither the Ger man people nor their literature would have had much to boast ofin 1870.When compared with the king's writings, other historical andpolitical works of his times have but a meagre interest. An exception must be noticed, however, in the history of a petty statealready named. Justus MÖSER, the author, was born at Osna- ,brück in 1720. He studied law at Göttingen , and practised, forsome years, as an advocate, in his native place. For about twentyyears after 1763, when the see of Osnabrück belonged to Friedrich ,the infant son of George III. of England, Möser acted as prime minister in all the political affairs of the bishopric. His personal character was singularly well expressed in his stately figure, and his grave but amiable aspect. Literature for Möser was an implement to be used in the service of the state. His chief work,the Osnabrück History ' ( 1765–80 ), is full of proofs of the writer's intelligence, research and patriotism . He seizes every opportunity of exposing the errors of centralization. The maximof all maxims for Möser is that political institutions must grow upout of the history of a people. He will hear nothing in favour of abstract theories, or of governments made upon paper, and imposedXIV.] HISTORIANS. 1836on & people by some external power. All such schemes hedenounces again and again as mechanical and despotic, while headvocates self -government, carried out as far as possible, and based on history and old custom. Möser would have all laws developedfrom ancient facts. He often writes with genial humour and effective satire; for example in the essay against the use of money.• Throw it into the sea ,' he says, or give it to your enemies, as ameans of punishing them . It can never be introduced into any state without bringing incalculable evils with it! ' A reader whostops before he comes to the end of the essay, may imagine the writer to be a fanatic; but Möser briefly explains his purport bysaying; such are the arguments that may be used by sophists Against the principles of religion .'With reference to his moral aims, the range of his topics andthe independent character impressed on every page of his writings,Justus Möser may be described as the model of a writer for thepeople. It is impossible to read many passages of the OsnabrückHistory, ' or of the Patriotic Fantasies,' without understandingwhy Goethe spoke of Möser as ' an incomparable man .' The lastnamed of his works is a miscellany of articles published at first ina newspaper, and contains many short essays and tales mostly devoted to utilitarian purposes. He was a decided enemy of all the French fashions which were gaining ground in his time, as maybe seen in the outline of one of his stories. Selinde, the heroine,is an industrious German maiden, educated in the ancient homelyfashion . Her evenings are passed in the spinning -room , whereall her father's family and servants are assembled, while constantoccupation leaves no room for such a word.as ennui. But ayoung neighbour, Arist, who pays his addresses to Selinde, is anadmirer of refinement and fashion, and loves to indulge in ridicule against the antiquated spinning -room . He marries Selinde,and improves her taste. The young couple become very fashionable, neglect the concerns of their household, and endeavour to amuse themselves with me ngless trifles. But time passesnow more tediously than in the spinning -room . Arist sees that his wife is unhappy, though she will not confess it. At last he confesses that there is more happiness in useful occupation than in frivolity. Selinde hears this confession with delight:the spinning-room is restored; and the old style triumphs overthe new.184 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.66It is merely with respect for his patriotic character that FRIEDRICH CARL MÖSER (1723-98 ), can be named here. He was a very industrious publicist, but the style of his works has noattractions. He would insert anything in any place, and in thisway he rambled through more than a hundred books and pamphlets on such topics as 'German Nationality,' ' Political Truths, ' and• Master and Servant.' Möser, whose knowledge of courts waspartly founded on his own observations, described a cotemporary political writer, as the good, gentle, amiable, republican ISELIN ,who knows princes only by engravings of their portraits . This isone of the livelier examples of Möser's satirical vein. The histo rical writer thus censured, ISAAC ISELIN ( 1728-82), wrote a series of Conjectures on the History of Mankind ,' and a ‘ Discourse on Patriotism ,' which have been commended as indicating a philoso phical treatment of history, such as was afterwards suggested andpartly carried out by Herder. Iselin was not afraid of extensive problems; for he attempted to explain ' the true causes of the decline of Greek and Roman civilisation . His argument may becalled tautological; for he tells us little more than that ancientcivilisation was not permanent because it was not founded onpermanent virtues.Several prose- writers who wrote on history and politics inthese times, were associated by their common tendency towards utilitarian doctrines. THOMAS ABBT ( 1738–66 ), especially demanded that all literature should be devoted to utility. Writefor the people, ' was his rule, and it was obeyed by JOHANN HIR ZEL ( 1725–1803), who wrote a book entitled “ The Economy of a Philosophical Peasant , partly founded on the true personal his tory of a Bauer, or small farmer, of whom the writer made a ruralSocrates. Though his writings were partly historical, HIRZEL might be classed with the so - called ' popular philosophers ' of histimes. They were mostly men of talent, without genius, who wrote with clearness and sobriety, and generally with some useful purport.Their views on religion and on the foundations of morals, weregenerally such as at a rather later time were called rationalistic;but they hardly understood ail the results of their own principles.In this respect they were like the earlier rationalists of theeighteenth century.One of the best of the popular philosophers was Moses MENDELS SOHN ( 1729-86 ), an Israelite, already named as Lessing's friend .XIV . ) POPULAR PHILOSOPHERS. 185He wrote several didactic works, including • Phaedon, ' a dialogueon the immortality of the soul, which was partly a free translationfrom Plato, but gave some expansion to the original argument.When Lavater, the Pietist, rudely endeavoured to convert Mendelssohn to Christianity, there were not a few who suspected that theIsraelite was capable of giving lessons on true religion to Lavater.The author of Phaedon ’ contended, that the highest utility mustbe found in moral philosophy. ' I cannot read,' he says, 'without pity the opinion of a French writer that “ the efforts of Reaumurto preserve carpets and tapestry from the ravages of moths, weremore worthy of admiration than all the moral speculations ofLeibnitz! ” Is not this saying that the vain luxuries of our housesare of more importance than our own souls, or even than thehonour of the Divine character, which may be misrepresented bya false philosophy? On the other side, I would assert that, evenif the alchymists had succeeded in their efforts, and had turnedevery stone on the earth's surface into gold, they would havemade an absurd mistake if they had regarded such a feat as thecompletion and final triumph of philosophy.'CHRISTIAN GARVE (1742-98 ), another of the popular philoso phers, was, with regard to his style, one of the best of all theprose-writers of the eighteenth century. He wrote mostly shortessays on morals and on literary culture - especially on style — andwas employed by FRIEDRICI II. to translate Cicero's treatise onthe Duties of Life. The king gave some suggestions for theannotations appended to the work , and bestowed on Garve a small peosion of two hundred dollars. Garve was remarkable for thepatience with which he endured a long affliction, and for his modesty. With reference to Kant's writings, he said; -' I do not find myself at home in the higher regions of philosophy; Imust have some practical object in view. ' He would writeonly on such subjects as he could clearly understand. In apleasant essay on the Scenery of Mountainous Countries, ' he says nothing of Kant's new æsthetic doctrines; nothing of the sublime effect of vast physical objects in exciting a consciousness of ' amoral power stronger than all nature.' One of the chief causes ofthe impressive character of mountain scenery, says Garve, is that we see more objects on the side of a mountain than could be seenon a plain of the same extent.One of the best rivals of Garve, in the use of a clear and popular6186 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.<style, was JAKOB ENGEL (1741-1802), the author of ' LorenzStark,' a domestic novel, and of other stories, all intended to con vey moral instruction . He published, in 1775-77, his ' Philosopher for the World ,' a series of essays, sketches and stories, to which Mendelssohn, Garve, and Eberhard contributed . Though the dates of his works extend a few years beyond 1770, Engel be longed to the school of popular philosophers, and ably represented their practical purport, their sobriety, and their self-complacency.Engel's prose rises to an eloquent strain in his Eulogium of Friedrich II.It is rather difficult to define the school of popular philosophy;for it might include such theologians as GEORG JOACHIM ZOLLIKO FER (1730-88 ), an excellent preacher and writer on practicalreligion;JOHANN EDERIARD (1739–1809), who, in his " Apology of So crates ’ ( 1772), opposed the doctrine that the souls of heathenmen must be excluded from heaven; and JOHANN SPALDING ( 1714-1804), who might be also classed with the earlier rational ists, as he wrote against Pietism and described ethics as the basis of religion. GELLERT, already noticed as a poet, wrote in a popu lar style on moral philosophy, and may therefore be named here.Another author, sometimes classed with this school, JOHANN ZIMMERMANN ( 1728-95 ), was a physician at the court of Hanover.He gained bis popularity by a bookOn Solitude,' and disgraced himself by writing to display his own egotism and vanity under apretence of giving some account of the last days of Friedrich II.of Prussia. Zimmermann was one of the physicians in attendance on the king, during his last illness, and seized the opportunity of making a bad book! Such men as Zimmermann and Lavater could know nothing of the king's latest thoughts. He has been com monly described as an atheist; but some expressions found in his later letters might support the assertion, that his belief respecting a First Cause was not altogether unlike Kant's doctrine;—Where reason fails, the voice of conscience alone must be accepted as arevelation.The assertion of the rights of free inquiry and the rise of theearlier rationalistic theology of these times can hardly be describedas taking place in any well- defined period. They had been pre ceded by the study of French and English writings on natural religion (so-called ) when HERMANN SAMUEL REIMARUS ( 1694– 1768), author of " The Wolfenbüttel Fragments,' edited by LesXIV .] RATIONALISTS. 187sing, wrote ( 1754 ) his ' Principles of Natural Religion ,'which was followed, in 1760, by a more interesting work on ‘ The Instinctsof Animals.' In the latter, he reasons in favour of the immortality of the soul, and evidently places great trust in his arguments founded on analogy. Having noticed a harmony between the instincts of animals and their destinies, he continues thus;It is as natural in us to look forward beyond this world, as it is in the lower animals to remain satisfied with their present life. Their nature is confined within certain bounds; our own is distinguished by its capacity of continual development; and a desire for such development has been planted in us by our Creator.Now where do we find instincts falsified in the plan of nature? Where do we see an instance of a creature endowed with an instinct craving acertain kind of food in a world where no such food can be found? Are the swallows deceived by their instinct when they fly away from clouds andstorms to find a warmer country? Do they not find a milder climate beyond the water? When the May - flies and other aquatic insects leavetheir husks, expand their wings, and soar from the water into the air, do they not find an atmosphere fitted to sustain them in a new stage of life?Certainly. The voice of nature does not utter false prophecies. It is the call, the invitation of the Creator addressed to his creatures. And if this istrue with regard to the impulses of physical life, why should it not be true with regard to the superior instincts of the human soul?Confidence in such reasonings as are expressed in the above paragraphs was a characteristic of both the popular philosophers and the rationalists of the eighteenth century. For them history,or any other external authority, could hardly be more than an echo of a verdict pronounced by reason . They were not altogethernegative in their aims; the tenets which they held as true - such as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul - wereheld firmly, while the arguments used to support them were mostly dogmatic. Several of their expositions of natural theology were shallow and optimistic; they neither looked on the dark side of nature, nor tested the logic on which their physico-theological arguments were founded. That such a thinker as KANTmight come, some day, and olish their proofs for the threechief tenets of natural religion was a possibility hardly dreamed of by the earlier rationalists. Their general negative tendencyw89 to reject, or to explain away, all statements of miraculous events, and their attempts to explain, rather than reject, such statements were, in several instances, ridiculous in the extreme.In their zeal for enlightenment, they separated light from warmth,188 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE [CH. .5and their cold intellectual and ethical system - devised as a substitute for religion - excluded both feeling and imagination. Thecommon intuitions found in the highest poetry, as well as inthe superstitions of all peoples, were treated as empty fictions.Philosophical speculation was ridiculed if it contained anythingbetter than commonplace. Truth that did not seem obvious toNICOLAI, the enlightened bookseller at Berlin, or to DR. BAHRDT(1741-92), was set at nought.These and other charges may be justly preferred against several of the more negative writers on theology. But the earlier ration alists must, by no means, be described as writers who strictly belonged to one school. The last -named author stood almostalone as an indecent, burlesque polemic. It was with reference to men who only remotely resembled Babrdt, that Lessing said of Berlin , ' all the liberty you enjoy there is that of publishing stupidjokes against religion .' This may suffice to indicate the fact,that there was an upper and a lower school of rationalism . Tothe former belonged such men as WILHELM ABRAHAM TELLER ( 1734-1804 ), who published, in 1764, a Manual of RationalChristianity ,' and anot representative representative of the upper school might be found in JOHANN FRIEDRICH JERUSALEM (1709–89) , a man ofhigh culture and one of the best preachers of his time. The affliction by which his old age was overshadowed-his son's suicide -gave rise to the publication of Goethe's " Sorrows of Werther .'Apart from their negative criticism and from their special tenets,the more thoughtful men among the earlier rationalists keptin view, more or less distinctly, a common object. It was to assert,that the essentials of practical religion may be distinguished from all the traditional forms through which they have been conveyed,and may be maintained and promulgated without any aid derived from a systematic orthodoxy, or from an infallible church.In Ecclesiastical history a very extensive work was partly issued in this period— The History of the Christian Church, ' by JOHANN MATTIIAS SCHRÖCKH ( 1733-1808) . The whole work, in thirty five volumes, was completed in 1803. The name of JOHANNLORENZ MOSHEIM (1694-1755), reminds us that, in his times, the old prejudices of learned men against the use of their nativetongue had not disappeared . He was an excellent preacher, andcould write well in German; but his chief work-a History ofthe Christian Church '-was written in Latin . In the same6XIV . ] WRITERS ON ÆSTHETICS, 1896language JAKOB BRUCKER ( 1696–1770), wrote " A Critical History of Philosophy ,' which is chiefly remarkable for the extentof its erudition . It appeared in an English translation by Enfieldin 1791.The historical and didactic works already noticed are mostlycharacterised by the reformatory tendency of the times. A discontent with the past, like that then growing formidable in France, existed also in Germany, near the close of the eighteenth century, but here found more subdued forms of utterance in attempts to renovate the style of German Literature . Of all theseendeavours the most sucessful, on the whole, are found in works belonging to the department of Æsthetics, including the theoryand the criticism of poetry and art. One of the earliest critics of the eighteenth century, CHRISTIAN LUDWIG LIscow ( 1701-60 ),wrote satires on several of the obscure writers of his times. Hisown prose - style was pure and vigorous. —The objects of æstheticstudies were defined in a Latin treatise entitled " Æsthetica '( 1750), written by ALEXANDER GOTTLIEB BAUMGARTEN (1714 62) . His disciple FRIEDRICH MEIER ( 1718–77), wrote, about the same time, a German treatise on " The First Principles of the Fine Arts. ' Several years later, JOHANN GEORG SULZER (1720-79),published ' A Theory of the Fine Arts; ' but made hardly any innovation on the doctrines already asserted by Bodmer and his friend Breitinger. These theoretical works were mostly bothformal and arbitrary. Their theory did not include any trueanalysis of the best works of art, and their rules were not derived from any extensive survey of art and literature.Lessing's writings must be noticed apart from those of theminor critics above named; but his friend CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICHNICOLAI ( 1733-1811) , may be classed with minor writers onEsthetics. In the capacity of a bookseller and as the friend of Lessing, Nicolai rendered to literature services far more importantthan any to be found in his own writings. His ‘ Library of Belles Lettres ' ( 1757 ) , the Literary Letters,' to which Lessing contri huted ( 1759–66 ), and the new "General German Library,' ex tending to fifty - six volumes — all contributed to the literary progress made in his times; but in his own books, Nicolai made him self ridiculous as an intolerant and shallow declaimer againstphilosophy. He wrote scornfully of everything that he could not easily understand - Kant's works for example - and set up his own6190 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.notions as the final standard of common sense. It must be allowedthat he did not write severely without some provocation, caused by the literary revolution that took place during his later years.When ' The Sorrows of Werther ' had appeared and had spread asentimental epidemic, the sarcastic bookseller issued his ' Joys of Werther ' — not to ridicule Goethe, but to suggest a cure for themonomania of the times. It was Nicolai's misfortune that helived beyond his own period into the times when wild young poets,with Goethe at their head, were asserting unheard -of claims tooriginal genius. To ridicule their extravagance, Nicolai wrotehis absurd Story of a Fat Man.? His best work, the description of ' A Journey through Germany and Switzerland,' contains his own opinions on literature and politics. In his Sebaldus Nothanker (1773-76 ), he wrote mostly against orthodoxy and Pietism . Onthe whole, Nicolai was fairly described as a shallow burlesque crcaricature of Lessing. At the close of the eighteenth and in theopening of the nineteenth century, when such men as Hamann,Herder, and Goethe were looking onwards for the dawn of a newepoch, a critic like the Berlin Bookseller was as obsolete as an old fossil. His extinction was not so sudden as that of Gottsched, thegreat Leipzig critic; but it was equally complete.None of the critics above named - always excepting Lessinghad either the genius or the learning required for writing on the theory of Art and Poetry. Their definitions and their criticisms were formal, narrow and arbitrary, and they judged works of genius before they had learned to read them . But there wasliving in their times, an obscure man who, while struggling with extreme poverty, was preparing himself to establish a new schoolof wsthetic criticism; nay, to do far more than that to give life to the dry bones that had been labelled archeology ' and ' philo logy. He wrote, at first, of ancient sculptures; but his works introduced a new epoch in æsthetic theory and criticism , and have still a living interest in connection with the study of philology.JOHANN JOACHIM WINCKELMANN, the son of a poor shoemaker,was born at Stendal in the Altmark in 1717. He educated himself, in the midst of great privations and hardships, and, during his youth, could scarcely gain the means of subsistence. When thirty -one years old, he was engaged as secretary and assistantlibrarian at Dresden, where the treasures of the Art Gallery aided his studies, but did not satisfy his desire to explore the history ofXIV .] WINCKELMANN . 1916ancient art. This was the one great object of his ambition , and hewas ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to attain it. For himRome was the centre of the world , because the richest stores of art were there collected. Willing not only to leave home but to for sake the fatherland where he had suffered so much privation, he endeavoured to gain an appointment as librarian to Cardinal Passionei, the owner of the most extensive private library in Rome.One condition indispensable for his success was that Winckelmannshould change his creed . It may be fairly doubted, whether he ever had any creed, except bis firm belief in the beauty of ancientGreek sculptures. He had been formally a Protestant, but his friends had commonly regarded him as a free - thinker. However,after some years of hesitation and with a heavy heart ' (as he said ), he fulfilled the condition, went over to the Roman Church,and made himself an Italian, in order that he might study ancient works of art. By this conversion he gained the patronage of thegreat cardinal, Alexander Albani, one of the wealthiest collectorsof works of art in Rome, who was then busy in enriching the galleries of his fine villa at Porta Salara . Winckelmann lived inthe cardinal's palace, and was treated as a friend; but received no great salary. He, however, had abundant leisure for collecting materials for his great work on ancient art. In 1763 he was appointed præfect of antiquities and, in this capacity , he oftenacted as Cicerone to distinguished visitors in Rome. His learninghad widely extended his reputation among Italian and German students of archaeology, and he received many invitations to visit friends in the cold northern clime where he had suffered so manyhardships in his youth. He hesitated; but at last, was seized with a longing to see his native land once more. Accordingly he left Romo in 1768 and, accompanied by an Italian sculptor named Cavaceppi, travelled towards the north . When they reached the Tyrolese mountains, Winckelmann seemed oppressed by melan choly forebodings, and expressed his earnest desire to return toItaly. With difficulty he was induced to continue his journey.He seemed to be, for a time, almost deprived of reason and possessed by one fixed thought, that he must return to Rome.When further persuasion was found useless, bis fellow - traveller left him in Vienna where he was introduced to the Empress Maria Theresia, from whom he received a present in gold coins of con siderablo value. He then travelled towards Trieste, intending to>192 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Сн.66embark.there for Venice. On his way to Trieste, as some accounts say, or in an hotel there, he became acquainted with an Italian convict named Arcangeli recently discharged from a prison. The cupidity of this miscreant was excited, it seems, by a sight of the gold coins brought from Vienna. On June 8, 1768, Winckel mann, stabbed in five places, was found dying in his chamber.The criminal, Arcangeli, was so soon detected that he failed to carry off his booty. He was executed a fortnight afterwards.Winckelmann's first work, his Thoughts on the Imitation of Grecian Paintings and Sculptures' (1755) , contained the germsof the ideas that were at last developed in his History of AncientArt,' written during his residence in Rome and printed at Dresdenin 1764. Its publication was the beginning of a new epoch in the history and criticism of ancient art. The work soon acquired aEuropean reputation , and was accepted as a theory as well as ahistory of Grecian sculpture. Its erudition and its graceful stylewere generally admired, and its disquisitions on the union of an cient art with social, political, and religious institutions, suggesteda new style of treating general archæology. The treatise is divided into four sections, of which the first is introductory andexplains several circumstances that were favourable to the cultureof Grecian art. Its essential characteristics are described in thesecond part, and its growth and decline in the third . The fourthsection is devoted to the mechanism of art, and is followed by anaccount of ancient painting. Among external causes of the excel lence of Greek artists, the influence of a fine climate is noticed-;. but more attention is bestowed on the moral and intellectualqualities of the Hellenic people and on their forms of government.Winckelmann was an enthusiast in his admiration of the ancientGreeks, and, in describing their character and their institutions,he hardly throws any shade into the picture. He tells, with apparent delight, how they harmonised their physical with theirmental culture; how every power was developed in theirsystem of education and especially in their public festivals; howmen of genius contended for the palm in athletic exercises, and knew nothing of that contempt of physical life which was introduced in monastic times. Plato was once a wrestler in theIsthmian games; Pythagoras gained a prize at Elis, and acted asthe trainer of Eurymenes; homage was paid to the statue of Euthymus, one of the greatest of all the victors at Elis; thenobleXIV. ] ANCIENT ART, 193>faculties of men were not confined by minute divisions of labour;a sculptor might rise to command an army; the emperor Marcus Aurelius received lessons in moral philosophy from a painter;these are some of the facts of which the historian of ancient artwrites with enthusiasm . The following brief passages may serveto suggest some contrasts between ancient and modern times:One great consequence of the general appreciation of beauty among the Greeks , was that the artist was not condemned to work to gratify the pride,vanity, or caprice of any one noble patron; but was supported and en couraged in the efforts of genius by the general voice of the people. And this people was not a rude, untaught democracy, but was under the direc tion of the wisest minds. The honours which were awarded by public as semblies to competitors in art, were in general fairly and intelligently distributed . In the time of Phidias, there was at Corinth, as also at Delphi,a public exhibition of paintings, over which the post competent judges presided. Here Panaenus, the relative of Phidias, contended for a prize with Timagoras of Chalcis, when the latter prored victorious. Before such competent adjudicators Aetion produced his painting of Alexander'sMarriage with Roxana ,' and Proxenides, the judge who pronounced the decision , was so well pleased with the work , that he gave his daughter in marriage to the painter. Universal fame did not unfairly prevail over rising merit. At Samos, in the exhibition , of several paintings of the " Weapons of Achilles,' the renowned Parthasius was defeated by a com petitor named Timanthes . ... Art was chiefly devoted to its highest objects — the exposition of religious ideas or of the nobler developments of human life and did not stoop to make trivial playthings, or to furnish the private houses of rich men withostentations luxuries; for rich citizens in the best days of Athens lived in houses modestly and sparingly furnished , while they subscribed munificently to raise costly and beautiful statues in the public temples. Miltiades,Themistocles, Aristides, and Cimon , the chieftains and deliverers of their country, did not distinguish themselves from their fellow - citizens by dwell ing in grand and expensive houses.Winckelmann's theory of ancient Greek sculpture is ideal.He maintains that the artist studied the intention as well as theindividual expressions of nature, and that his aim was to make allreal forms and actions subordinate to a general idea of beauty.Thus the critic explains the repose and the simplicity of thefinest ancient sculptures; their flowing line of contour, to which all minor features are made subservient, and their quiet dignitywhen action is represented.The effects of Winckelmann's theory and criticism have not been confined to the department of sculpture. He gave a new life to the study of archæology. Some of the best thoughts in Lessing's essay , " The Laokoon ,' were suggested by the first 50194 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE [ CH . .historian of art. His observations on the union of art with the social institutions of ancient Greece are partly applicable toliterature, as well as to art, and suggest an ideal towards whichmodern culture should direct its endeavours. . Grecian literaturewas a literature of life: it was intimately blended with the life,the progress, the actual interests of the people. Poets sung, and historians wrote, as sculptors and painters worked, not for a few students, but for the people. Even the highest philosophy as expounded by Plato, was not purely abstract; but was interwoven with human sympathies and social interests. The physical and the intellectual powers of human nature were harmoniously culti vated. The man , in his full and complete definition, was not sacrificed in order to make a poet, or a musician, or an historian;but poetry, philosophy, history, and all the fine arts were em ployed to produce the most complete and beautiful developmentof human nature . This was the aim which prevailed through thewhole of Grecian culture; and it is a noble object to restore such a purpose to modern cultivation .The writings of Klopstock, Lessing and Wieland unite the literature of the eighteenth with that of the nineteenth century . KlopSTOCK expressed one great idea; that of a union of Christianity with a national poetry, and if he failed to realise it, the failure was nobler than any commonplace success. LESSING developedthe ideal of a national literature, founded on a union of poetry and speculation, and expressed in artistic forms. WIELAND, by thevariety of his subjects and the clearness and fluency of his diction,distinguished himself from the crowd of minor authors who livedin his times. His success , in extending among the higher classesof society - especially in the south of Germany --& taste for imaginative literature, gives to his writings some historical importance.It is only with a regard to the extent of their power and influence,that Klopstock, Lessing and Wieland, are classed together in thenext chapter.aXV.]KLOPSTOCK . 195CHAPTER XV.SIXTH PERIOD. 1725-1770.KLOPSTOCK - LESSING - WIELAND ,FRIEDRICH GOTTLIEB KLOPSTOCK , born at Quedlinburg in 1724,studied at Schulpforte (one of the best classical schools in Saxony),where he read not only Greek and Roman authors, but alsoTrosu and Milton . In 1745 he went to Jena to complete his education, and there made a sketch in prose of some part of his epic,«The Messias .' In the course of the next year he went to Leipzig,where he enjoyed the friendship of several of the contributors to the Bremer Beiträge. In 1748 there appeared in that literary journal the first three cantos of ' The Messias ,' a poem in hexameter verse. The author's name was not given; but it was soon known. Bodmer, the Swiss critic, hailed the work , as a realisation of his own notions of what poetry ought to be, and invited.the writer to come and stay at Zürich. After staying some months in Switzerland, Klopstock was looking out for a situation as a teacher, when he received a small pension from Friedrich V.king of Denmark, and went to live at Copenhagen, with nothingto do there but to complete his epic. On his journey, he stayed a few days at Hamburg, and there became acquainted with MetaMoller, a young woman of considerable literary attainments, whomhe soon afterwards married. Their union was remarkably happy,and her death, in 1768, was the greatest sorrow in all the expe rience of Klopstock. His pension helped him to live free fromcares and to devote his thoughts to poetry; yet his progress in .writing the twenty -one cantos of his epic was very slow . Hebegan his work when he was only twenty - one years old, but did not finish it until he was forty -six. The fourth and fifth cantos appeared in 1751; six more were published after an interval of seven years and the last five cantos. were coldly received by the02196 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CA.public in 1773. It had become more and more apparent, that the author bad written without a preconceived plan. The sufferingsand the death of the Messias occupied hardly more than half thework, and in this part a want of continuous narrativo interest was ill supplied by long speeches and conversations. The authorgained a European reputation; but his poem was not read as awhole. Goethe tells us, that one of his father's friends used toread through the first ten cantos of The Messias ' once in every year,in the week preceding Easter; but the wonder is lessened whenit is known that he read hardly any other author, and could therefore concentrate his attention and patience. in that week .Moreover, these ten cantos are the best half of the epic.In 1792 Klopstock married a widow lady, who had long beennumbered among his best friends. His later years were passed incomfortable retirement at Hamburg where he died in 1803. He was buried , with an imposing ceremonial, under a fine linden tree,and close to the remains of his first wife— Meta?—in the village churchyard of Ottensen, near Altona. No German poet had ever before received such funeral honours. All the bells of Hamburgand Altona were tolling, and 126 carriages followed the hearse.A second Shakspere would hardly now receive like honours.His piety and virtue, as well as his genius and heart - felt enthusiasm , conspired with thę circumstances of his times to cast a halo round the name of Klopstock. He was like a star, brightin itself, and having the advantage of rising in the darkest hourbefore daybreak. True; German poetry had already greatly im proved in style, but it wanted significance, and Klopstock came to make it at once national and Christian, as well as to give morevariety to its forms. From his youth he had felt confidence inhis own genius; hence his bold choice of so high a theme as The Messias. His ambition seems to bave had an elevatingeffect on his own character, for he generally maintained a dignity becoming the author of an epic on the greatest of all possible themes; yet he was neither a severe pedant nor an ascetic. His work was the result of true enthusiasm; its prevailing spirit was religious, and had a deep effect on the character of German literature . In his employment of hexameter verse Klopstockdeveloped the resources of the German language, especially with regard to its middle quantities and its secondary accents, and he must be named with Ramler as having introduced a new style for6XV.) KLOPSTOCK . 197translations and imitations of Greek and Roman poets. But the genius of Klopstock was lyrical and not epic. Neither the men nor the angels whom he introduces in the ' Messias,' have any true individuality, and, to supply their want of action , they talk ,argue and indulge in long monologues, yet without telling any thing of their own characters. Some of the best parts of the nor rather the series of poems arefound in descriptions and similes,but these, too often, have a life of their own , and are not duly subordinated to the general narration . For example, it is said that Satan, when he comes to tempt Judas, approaches like a pestilence:So at the midnight hour a fatal plague Comes down on cities lying all asleep;Their people are at rest; though, here and there,A student reads beside his burning lampAnd, here and there, where ruddy wine is glowing,Good friends are waking; some in shadowy bowers,Talk of their hopes of an immortal life None dreaming of a coming day of grief When brides, too soon made widows, will be wailing And mothers weeping over orphan babesHere the simile is so far extended that both Judes and Satanare forgotten. In many passages that might be selected from theearlier cantos, descriptive sketches, and similes occur, remarkablefor power and originality of conception. Judas is tempted bya spirit who, appearing to him in a dream , presents to him avision of some fair earthly domains to be divided among the chieffollowers of the Messias.' Then the portion of land allotted tothe traitor is described as—6 >A narrow desolate tract of hills and crags,Wild and unpeopled, overgrown with briars;Night, veiled in chilly ever -weeping clouds,Hangs o'er the land, and in its barren clefts The drifted snows of winter linger long;There birds of night, condemned for aye to share That solitude with thee, Ait through the gloomAnd wail among the trees by thunders riven .That desert, Judas, is to be thine own!When the traitor has conceived his plan, and has resolved to execute it, the triumph of his tempter is thus described:With a silent pride,Satan looked down upon him . O'er the flood198 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .So towers some dreadful cliff, and from the clouds,Looks down upon the waves , all strewn with wrecks And corpses.But if isolated passages of interesting narrative or impassionedconversation were far more numerous than they are, they could not make the 'Messias,' — viewed in its completeness as an epic poem-worthy of its theme. Klopstock failed where every poet must fail. Poetic genius is one of the highest powers of the mind; but it is not the highest. No imagination, however exalted andpowerful, can do justice to such a theme as was chosen by Klopstock. For poetical uses better materials may be found in histo ries of comparatively trivial purport. When viewed historically and externally, the evangelical narrative is a story of rather more than a year spent in travelling and preaching on the shores of theSea of Galilee. Then follow persecutions directed by the doctors of the Church; the people at one time bail, at another forsake their Messias; he is falsely accused of insurrection, is deliveredinto the power of the Romans, and is put to death. A poet must be very presumptuous, if he changes any of these facts, and whatcan he add to them that will not seem out of place? The external facts are too scanty for a poet's use; but the thought expressed inthem transcends all powers of imagination. Profound humilia tion, united with a calm assertion of boundless authority andpower; predictions that might seem to have been suggested by adream fulfilling themselves in the world; then kingdoms, religions,philosophies, fading away, and the events of nineteen centuriesserving to fulfil such prophecies; -here are wonders that can never be made more marvellous or more interesting by any array of mythological imagery. They transcend the resources of poetry .Klopstock's genius was lyrical, and his best poems are found in his odes and hymns; epecially in those written in his earlier years, or before he allowed his study of antique metres to lead himtoo far in the use of inversions of the common order of words andsentences. In several of his later odes, written in Sapphic, Alcaic,and other ancient classic metres, his style is involved and obscure.The best odes defy translation; for their poetical value depends,in a great measure, on their form . The elegies and several of theodes addressed to friends are too sentimental; but this was the prevailing fault of many writers of the poet's time. They tell us far too much of their sighs and of their weeping eyes ,' which 6XV. ] KLOPSTOCK . 199aseem to hare been ready for use on all occasions, however insignificant.Klopstock's dramas deserve notice chiefly on account of his good intentions. He wished to introduce a national German drama, to take the place of imitations, and, as he would not accept Friedrich II. for a hero, he went back into the cloudy times ofremote German antiquity, selected Hermann as a hero, and endeavoured to make the old Northern serve instead of Greekmythology, Confusing the fictions of Macpherson's " Ossian ' withthe statements of Tacitus, Klopstock began to talk about an ancient guild of bards ' who never existed , and this fancy gave rise to several odd rhapsodies written by the modern bards; KARL FRIEDRICH KRETSCHMANN (1738–1809 ), and JOHANN MICHAEL DENIS ( 1729-1800 ). The former, who styled himself . The bard Rhingulph,' wrote a ridiculous treatise on The Poetry of the Bards. ' He seems to have been well acquainted with them; butwhere he found facts to support his bold assertions remains still a profound secret. His friend DENIS, a Jesuit, but a zealous admirer of Klopstock, was a patriotic man as well as " a bard ,' and rendered valuable services to the culture of national literature inAustria. He was a librarian at Vienna, and was allowed to retainhis place after the suppression of his order. When his friends expressed their surprise that a Jesuit could be the friend of the Protestant Klopstock, Denis replied to the effect, that he could see notbing remarkuble in the fact.These " barde,' as they called themselves, were not the truefollowers of Klopstock. To estimate the influence of his life and bis writings, we must study the literature of times later than hisHis epic ceased to be read; but his patriotic feelings and his Christian sentiments remained operative. The poet's own lifeagreed well with his belief, that the practice of a literary man should harmonise with his teaching. He endeavoured to abolish the notion of treating poetry as a plaything. Though his attemptsto introduce an old national hero and the old German mythologyfailed , they afforded proofs of his independence and his patriotism .No man ever loved his own native language more than did Klop stock . He seems almost too proud of it when he says:living tongue venture to enter the lists with the German! As it was in the oldest times, when Tacitus wrote of us, so it still remains - solitary, unmixed, and incomparable! ' When the poet,Own .- let no200 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CA.in one of his odes, boldly censured Friedrich II. for his neglect ofGerman poetry, the king might have replied, that a national existence must precede a national literature. Klopstock could have no adequate notion of the studies that occupied the attention of the king. With France and Austria plotting against him , he might well be excused if he did not read German poetry. Klopstock's indignation was more justly directed against the idleluxurious princes,' whom he describes as obscure in their own day and, afterwards, still more obscure .' The poet's love of freedom led him to hail the American War of Independence andthe early proclamations of the French Revolution. Forgive me,Oye Franks,' he says, in one of his odes, if I ever cautioned mycountrymen against following your example; for now I am urging them to imitate you. ' He was about sixty years old when hewrote in this vein, but he lived long enough to find his hopes dis appointed, and seems to have been deeply grieved. The verses in which he gives expressions to his feelings on the failure of his hopes of liberty are earnest but rather prosaic.Among the odes devoted to friendship and love, there may be found, besides a few weak and sentimental specimens already referred to, several of a higher character; but their merits are so far formal as to defy translation. The following attempt to trans late one of the shorter of the odes — ' Early Graves ' - written in antique metres and without rhyme, can give only the sentiment ofthe original stanzas:Welcome, O moon, with silver light,Fair, still companion of the night!O, friend of lonely meditation , stay!While clouds drift o'er thy face, and pass away .Still fairer than this summer nightIs young May morning, glad and bright,When sparkling dew -drops from his tresses flow ,And all the eastern hills like roses glow.O Friends, whose tombs, with moss o'ergrown,Remind me, I am left alone,How sweet for me - ere you were called away ,Were shades of night and gleams of breaking day!Among the best of Klopstock's odes, with regard to their antique metres, one in Alcaic strophes, beginning with the line:Der, welcher nie freundschaftliche Bande brach ,6XV.] LESSING . 201and another, in Asclepiadean verse, beginning thus,Schön ist, Mutter Natur, deiner Erfindung Pracht,may be noticed as examples of the poet's more studious versification. Such odes may, without difficulty, be put into Latin; forthe sentiments they express, as well as their metres, have anantique dignity. In some of his later odes the poet employs constructions of words and sentences so intricate that they may affordpractice for advanced students of logical analysis, and may suitthe purpose of examiners who wish to puzzle competitors in translations from German verse.• Klopstock ,' says Hegel, ' was great in his thoughts of nationality, freedom , love, friendship and religion. His genius was, insome respects, limited by the circumstances of his times; but, as an earnest, independent and manly character, he remained withouta rival until the time when SCHILLER appeared .' This was saidat the conclusion of a lecture on lyrical poetry, and it is evidentthat the great critic confined his attention to writers in that department of literature. If he had been speaking of the whole ofthe German literature of the eighteenth century , he must have thought of another earnest, manly, and independent characterLessing.GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM LESSING, the son of a Lutheran pastor residing at Kamenz in Oberlausitz, was born there, on January22, 1729. His studies, commenced at the classical school at Meissen ( 1741), were continued at Leipzig (1746), and at Berlin in 1748. During these seven years, his reading was very exten sive; but he found leisure for recreation, and indulged his tastefor the theatre. In 1753-60 he resided mostly in Leipzig and inBerlin , where in 1760, he was elected a member of the Academy.Soon afterwards, he gained an appointment as secretary to theGovernor of Silesia, and went to reside at Breslau. His life therewas so little like that of a book -worm that some plausibility was given to a false report that he had almost forsaken his studies andhad turned gambler. But during the five years passed at Breslau,he produced his play of Minna von Barnhelm , and prepared the materials for other works. In 1767 he went to Hamburg, to assist inan endeavour to establish a national drama, and there wrote his Dramaturgie, at first published in the form of a theatrical journal.His project of a reformation of the theatre failed, and he was glad202 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .61853;to leave Hamburg, when he received an appointment as librarian at Wolfenbüttel. The resources of the great library there gavefull scope to his powers of research, and one of the earlier resultswas the publication of a supposed lost treatise on the Eucharistby Berengar of Tours. In 1776 Lessing married an amiable widow , with whom he had become acquainted at Hamburg. Her death in 1778 w: one of the greatest sorrows of his life. Hispublication of some fragments written by Reimarus, a Rationalistdivine, brought Lessing into the arena of a theological controversyby which his later years were embittered. To assert his own doctrine of toleration he wrote his drama of ' Nathan ’ ( published in 1779 ), and his essay " On the Education of Mankind ' ( 1780) ,which still remains the clearest manifesto ever written in favourof the principles of a free theology. His latest studies, and especially his polemical contests had an unfavourable effect on hishealth. His cheerfulness and sociality declined, and, after severalsevere attacks of illness, he died on February 15, 1781. A statueof the great critic was placed near the library at Wolfenbüttel in 1796, and another, of colossal size, was erected at Brunswick inbut Lessing's true monument is seen in the best German Literature of the nineteenth century. It may be safely said, that the works of other great men belong partly to him. His own col lected writings were first published at Berlin in 1771-94, and abetter edition appeared in 1838–40.Lessing's personal character, which was made the object of ungenerous censures during his life and after his decease, is shown clearly enough in his works and in his letters. In the latter are found evidences that he was a good brother, a kind husband and a faithful friend. As ' a literary reformer, he stood alone in histimes, and lived in the world of his own thoughts, remote from the narrow interests of the book-worms and the abstract andspecialist professors of his day. That he was, sometimes, too severe in his polemicalwritings, may be freely admitted; but he was a disinterested inquirer for truth, and his criticism was mostly directed against errors and not against persons.Lessing's best works may be classified as dramatic, critical anddidactic. The first of his more important dramas, ' Miss Sara Sampson (1755), is chiefly noticeable for the introduction ofscenes from real life in the middle classes. Minna von Barnhelm (1763), was the first truly national drama that appeared on7XV.) LESSING'S DRAMAS. 203the German stage. Its background is supplied by the events of the Seven Years' War, and its purport is generous and conciliatory.Of a narrow provincial patriotism Lessing would know nothing;his tone throughout the drama is friendly towards both Saxonsand Prussians. Tellheim , the hero, is a Prussian officer who is engaged in levying war contributions in a poor district of Saxony,and who pities and spares the people, for whom he pays moneyout of his own resources . After the conclusion of peace, he is accused of dishonest dealings with the enemy,is prosecuted and fallsinto poverty and military disgrace. His conduct has, however, won more than the admiration of Minna, a Saxon lady, to whom he has been betrothed during the war. She now comes forwardto aid him; but he will not allow her to share in his disgrace andpoverty. Minna endeavours to change his resolution, at first byreasonings, but, afterwards, by the stratagem of pretending to be in needy circumstances andinwant of adefender. It is hardlynecessary to add, that her plot has a successful conclusion. The exposition ofthe drama is clear, and its action - though too much retarded inthe third act — moves on well in other parts; while several minor incidents are skilfully made useful in leading to the result. Itmust be regretted that the author did not write more dramas ofthis class. His next important work is of another type. He had planned, before 1760, a tragedy on the old Roman story of Virginia, and this work, modernised and otherwise changed, so as to serve a concealed purpose, appeared as the tragedy of ' EmiliaGalotti,' in 1772. Its scenes are laid in Italy; but the purport isan exposure of the vices and the tyranny of a corrupted aristocracy, wherever found . The style is laconic, realistic, and often made very powerful by condensation . Nothing can be more painful than the conclusion; but the exposition and the development ofthe crisis make the catastrophe inevitable. The innocent victimis first made to appear guilty of a crime of which she never dreamed; she is deprived of liberty, and is artfully surrounded by deadly intrigues planned by a creature — Marinelli — for the licentious Prince who employs him. At this moment, Odoardo, the father of the heroine, gains a brief interview with his daughter, Emilia , for whom there is now only one way of escape:Odoardo. The thought that under a show of law and justice the nfernal mockery!-they will tear you from my bosom - carry you away to the house of Grimaldi!204 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE , [ Cn .Emilia. They will tear me away, you say — to carry me thither? They will, you say, as if, father, we had no will!Odoardo. It made me mad; I seized this (he shows a dagger) to pierce oneof the two!.Emilia , Give the steel to me father.Odoardo. Child , this is no hair - pin to play with .Emilia. Give it to me father. Now give it me!Odoardo. There! I give it — there![ She is about to stab herself, when he snatches away the dagger.She plucks a rose from her head - dress andtears it to pieces, while she speaks in a bit ter tone .)Emilia . In the old times, there lived a father who, to save his child, buried the steel in her bosom, and so gave her life a second time. It is an old story!Such fathers once lived; but there are none like them now!Odoardo. Yes, yes, there is, at least, one- ( he stabs Emilia )—God! what have I done? ( She falls into his arms.)Emilia . Broken off the rose before it was blighted. Let me kiss that father's hand.[ The Prince and Marinelli enter the room .)Prince. What is here! Emilia - what has hurt her?Odoardo. She is well - quite well.Prince. (stepping nearer to Odoardo.)Terrible I what is this!Marinelli, Oh!Prince. Horrible father! what is this you've done?Odoardo. I've culled a rose before the storm could blight it. Is it not so my daughter?Emilia . Not you, father - I myself Odoardo. Not so, daughter - say not that as you leave this world . ' Twas your father |-- 'Twas your own miserable father![ She dies; he gently lays her corpse on the floor.)Now Prince, step hither! Look there! . . . You expect that I shall conclude this, like a common tragedy, by burying this steel in my own heart.You mistake me.There! (He flings down the weapon .) There lies the red dened witness of the crime. And now to the dungeon — and then to my trial, with you, Prince, for my judge! and then - yonder! -I summon you to appear before the Judge of all mankind.7The attack on bad princes and a corrupt aristocracy was partly concealed in the tragedy of ' Emilia Galotti.' The purport of Lessing's last drama, ' Nathan the Wise ' (1779), was so evident and attracted so much attention that it served to cast into theshade the artistic merits of the plot. Among the leading charac ters, Saladin, the Mussulman, Nathan the Jew, and a ChristianTemplar — all separated by their creeds — are bound together bymutual good services. The interest of the drama concentrates itself in the story of The Three Rings '- borrowed from a novelXV. ) NATHAN . 205.>by Boccaccio — which is made to serve as a text from which topreach the duty of universal religious toleration. Nathan ' wasthe result of Lessing's own experience of theological controversy,and this explains the fact that its purport is too manifest. It may be doubted whether, apart from such experience, his own critical judgment would have commended such a prevalence of the didactic element as is found in this drama. He was so earnest inhis wishes for its success that he wrote health and happiness for the place where “ Nathan ” shall, first, be represented! 'Nothing more can be said here of the doctrine implied in ' Nathan;' but a quotation may show something of its dramatic power. In the fifth scene of the third act, Nathan, a liberal Israelite, famous for his wisdom , is summoned to appear before the Sultan, Saladin , in his palace. The Israelite expects that some loan of money will be demanded, and is, therefore, surprised, when he finds that the Sultan wishes to talk of the three creeds pro fessed in Palestine. Of these three only one can be true ,' saysSaladin, who now commands Nathan to state, in confidence, his own sincere belief. The Israelite, requests that, before he givesa direct answer, he may be allowed to recite & parable, and when permission has been given, he thus proceeds::In the oldest times, and in an eastern land,There lived a man who had a precious ring.This gem-an opal of a hundred tintsHad such a virtue as would make the wearerWho trusted it, beloved by God and man.What wonder, if the man who had this ringPreserved it well, and, by his will, declaredIt should for ever in his house remain?At last when death came near, he called the son Whom he loved best, and gave to him the ring,With one strict charge;—My son , when you must die,Let this be given to your own darling child The son whom you love best - without regard To any rights of birth .'— ' Twas thus the ring Was always passed on to the best -beloved .Sultaùn! you understand me?Saladin . Yea. Go on!Nathan. A father, who, at last possessed this ring Had three dear sons - all dutiful and trueAll three alike beloved . - But, at one time,This son, and then another, seemed most dear Most worthy of the ring; and it was given ,By promise, first to this son, then to that,206 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.a!Until it might be claimed by all the three.At last, when death drew nigh, the father feltHis heart distracted by the doubt to whom The ring was due. He could not favour oneAnd leave two sons in grief! How did he act?He called a goldsmith in , gave him the gem ,And bade him make exactly of that form ,Two other rings, and spare nor cost nor pains To make all three alike. And this was doneSo well, the owner of the first, true ring Could find no shade of difference in the three.And now he called his sons - one at a timeHe gave to each a blessing and a ring One of the three - and diedSaladin . Well, well. Go on .Nathan . My tale is ended . · You may guess the sequelThe father dies; immediately each son Comes forward with his ring, and asks to be Proclaimed as head and ruler of the house;All three assert one claim , and show their rings All made alike. To find the first - the trueIt was as great a puzzle as for usTo find the one true faith .Saladin . Is that, then, all the answer I must have?Nathan. ' Tis my apology, if I declineTo act as judge, or to select the ring The one, true gem, of three all made alike;All given by one Saladin . There! talk no more of rings.' The three religions that, at first, were named Are all distinct - aye, down to dress - food - drink Nathan . Just so! and yet their claims are all alike,As founded upon history, on facts Believed, and handed down from sire to son,Uniting them in faith . Can we — the Jews Distrust the testimony of our race? ' Distrust the men who gave us birth , whose love Did ne'er deceive us; but, when we were babes,Taught us, by means of fables, for our good?Must you distrust your own true ancestors,To flatter mine? -or must a Christian doubtHis father's words, and so agree with ours?Saladin . Allah ( the Israelite is speaking truth,And I am silencedNathan . Let me name the rings Once more 1 - The sons at last, in bitter strife,Appeared before a judge, and each declared Hehad the one true gem, given by his father;All said the same, and all three spoke the truth;Each, rather than suspect his father's word ,Accused his brethren of a fraud6XV. ) NATHAN . 207Saladin . What then?What sentence could the judge pronounce? -Go on.Nathan. Thus said the judge; -' go, bring your father here;Let him come forth! or I dismiss the case .Must I sit guessing riddles!—must I waitTill the true ring shall speak out for itself?But stay | -'twas said that the authentic gemHad virtue that could make its wearer lovedBy God and man. That shall decide the case.Tell me who of the three is best belovedBy his two brethren . Silent? —Then the ring Hath lost its charm I - Each claimant loves himself,But wins no love. The rings are forgeries;' Tis plain, the first, authentic gem was lost;To keep his word with you, and hide his loss,Your father had these three rings made — these three Instead of one 'Saladin . Well spoken , judge, at last!Nathan . “ But stay,' the judge continued; —hear one word The best advice I have to give; then go.Let each still trust the ring given by his father! -It might be, he would show no partial love;He loved all three, and, therefore, would not give The ring to one and grieve the other two.Go, emulate your father's equal love.Let each first test his ring and show its power;But aid it, while you test; be merciful,Forbearing, kind to all men, and submitYour will to God. Such virtues shall increaseWhatever powers the rings themselves may have;When these, among your late posterity,Have shown their virtuemin some future time,A thousand thousand years away from now Then hither come again!-A wiser man Than one now sitting here will hear you then ,And will pronounce the sentence Saladin . Allah! Allah!Nathan. Now , Saladin , art thou that wiser man?Art thou the judge who will, at last, pronounce The sentence?( Saladin grasps Nathan's hand, and holds itto the end of the con versation . )Saladin . I the judge?—I'm dust! I'm nothing!' Tis Allah! -- Nathan , now I understand;The thousand thousand years have not yet passed;The Judge is not yet come; I must not placeupon His throne! I understand Farewell, dear Natban! Go.-Be still my friend .Myselfwriters LESSINGwas one of the greatest of critics and and polemical . He had the power of placing himself fairly in the208 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Ch.position of his antagonist, and could make a true analysis of an antithesis serve as a development of his own thesis. The style ofhis critical writings is not a dress put upon his thoughts, but amedium so transparent, that we never think of it. It is dialecticand dramatic; thoughts arise one after another, in an inevitableorder, and converse together, or contend, until the strongest gains the mastery, and asserts itself clearly as the victor. The opposites of all the faults commonly found in writers on metaphysics and æsthetics are found in Lessing's prose.Of the contents of his critical works it is hard to give, withinour limits, any fair summary. He began with an exposure of theerrors of critics who had confounded poetry with descriptive and didactic writings, and he assigned to such fables as Bodmer and others had praised too highly their proper, subordinate place.Lessing's own fables are remarkably concise, and so clear that they want no appendices. Here, for example, is one of the shortest,which he addressed to imitative writers:• Name any animal so clever that I cannot imitate him , ' said the ape tothe fox . “ Tell me, ' said the fox , where is there any animal so contempti.ble, that he would think of imitating you.'In Virgil's story of the Priest Laokoon and his sons, the father,while he wrestles with the python, utters loud cries; but in the well -known work of sculpture representing the dreadful crisis, the central figure has no distortion of the face. Lessing, in hisLaokoon, makes use of these facts to show the difference betweenpoetry on one side, and sculpture and painting on the other. Epicpoetry, he contends, must narrate events; painting and sculpturerepresent co-existent objects. In poetry the expression of extreme pain may be allowed , for it passes away; in sculpture, where itwould be fixed for ever, it is out of place. Hence repose is theessential characteristic of ancient sculpture, as Winckelmann hadalready contended . Painting may indicate action, when the artist,though representing one moment in a series of events, suggests its antecedent and its result. So far painting may resemble poetry.Again, as the poet speaks of bodies as well as of actions, he may touch on the province of painting, when he applies to objects their descriptive epithets; but he must not dwell on descriptions.In other words, he must not try to do in words and tones what the painter can do, far more successfully, in outlines, shades andXV.) POETRY AND PAINTING , 209>colours. The two arts are sisters; but they must ever be clearly distinguished. " I should have no faith in my theory,' says Lessing,' if I did not find it confirmed by Homer's practice. The critic then analyses the epic style of the Diad, and especially noticesthat while events are fully narrated no long descriptions are givenof the objects connected with the story . A ship, for ex ample, is mentioned as " the black ship,' the ' hollow ,' or ' the well - rowed black ship ' Of the stationary object Homer says nomore; but when he speaks of an action , or of a series of actions,connected with a ship - such as rowing, embarking, or landing he tells its story 80 fully that, if a painter would represent the whole, he must divide it into five or six pictures. When the poet would give us a notion of Agamemnon's dress, he makes theking clothe himself, putting on one garment after another and, at last, grasping bis sceptre; and how is the sceptre introduced? --Does Homer try to paint, in words, its golden studs and its carvings? No; he gives its history, and tells us how it first came from the forge of Vulcan; how it then shone in the hand of Zeus,and was handed down by Hernies to the warlike, Pelops, and so,at last, came into the possession of Atreus, the shepherd of hispeople.Such notes as the above, may indicate the character of Lessing's theory of epic poetry. His contributions to the criticism of thedrama are not less valuable. In his Hamburgische Dramaturgie ( 1767-68 ), which was started as a theatrical journal and review,Lessing exposes the errors of theorists who had misconceivedAristotle's doctrine of the three unities. He shows that the unitiesof time and place were not always observed by the best Greekdramatists, while he establishes' his own doctrines on the authority of Aristotle and on examples taken from the Greek dramatists, and from Shakspero and Calderon . He denounces imitations ofFrench models; but by no means speaks altogether contemptuouslyof the French theatre . Its best writers might have attained the highest honours in tragedy, he says, if they had not regarded them as already attained . Of French comedy Lessing writes with afull appreciation of its excellence.These outlines give no adequate notion of the grasp of thought,the wide research and the extensive reading found in the criticalworks on which Lessing's reputation is founded. He denouncedthe poetry of adjectives cultivated by descriptive versifiers; heP210 [CH.OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE..6exposed the dogmatic character of Gottsched's theory; the decla mation issued as criticism by Bodmer; the sentimentalism andwant of artistic form in Klopstock's epic, and the prosing of thefabulists, who wished to make a pulpit of poetry; but in all thisapparently negative work, his purport was neither satirical nor destructive: he was building while he was pulling down, he at attracted the attention of readers to the surpassing genius of Shakspere and, while denouncing slavish imitation , he demandeda profound respect for the great works of antiquity. In a word,he gave to literature an inspiring idea which has been already partly developed, and is still going on towards its full realisation.• Every great work that has been done in the world, ' says Hegel,' has been done through the might of an idea.' The labours of Lessing supply strong proofs of that doctrine.Soon after the Laokoon was published ( 1766) , it was reviewed by Prof. Klotz, a man of extensive attainments in history, who had written a treatise on " The Uses of Antique Gems. ' Lessing,in his reply to the reviewer, attacked - unjustly, as erudite specialists have said — the reviewer's book on antique gems, and wrote several polemical lectures addressed to Klotz, which were afterwards collected as · Antiquarian Letters ' ( 1768–69 ). Their tone is, sometimes, very severe; but it should be remembered thatKlotz was an abusive critic. In reviewing a book, he had described the author as a fraudulent and intemperate wine merchant, who had run away from his creditors, and had beenreduced to starvation .Shut out from the discussion of politics, German professors in Leasing's day too often expressed in their literary controversies such angry feelings as now find a vent in the strife of factions. Ithas been regretted that Lessing expended his energy on unworthy topics and was not allowed to write freely on political affairs.Some indications of what he might have done in this way may be found in the interesting conversations which appeared under the title, ' Ernst and Falk ' ( 1778). Falk is a freemason, and pleadsfor the formation of an International Union, intended to supply the defects of all local forms of government and to prevent war.States, he argues, must have their boundaries and their severaltendencies to make themselves insular. Their relations with eachother are, therefore, constantly in danger of assuming a hostilecharacter. What is wanted, to lessen the harshness of theira>XV .] LESSING . 211adivisions, is a union of catholic men , whose sympathies have no local bounds, and whose good will embraces the world. It might be thought, that religion should supply such a bond of nations;but instead of religion, says Falk , we have religions, and it is too well-known, that they have made wider the separation of onepeople from another. Hence the want of a free union of men,meeting, not as German , French and English , but as men, and united, not by. sympathy alone'as in an invisible Church ' - butalso by an organisation founded on catholic ideas. This argu ment is very skilfully conducted by Falk; especially in the second dialogue in which Ernst is unconsciously led round to assert,at last, the doctrine which he denied when the discussion wascommenced .The controversy in which Lessing was engaged during thelater years of his life, excited him to write the series of elevenletters entitled ' Anti-Goetze ' ( addressed to a pastor named Goetz,residing at Hamburg), and the philosophical essay “ On the Education of Mankind .' The claim of Lessing to the authorshipof this work has been recently disputed; but no ground hasbeen shewn for believing that any other man of the eighteenth century could have written it. If it is briefly noticed here, it is because, though the style is concise, the speculative purport is fartoo extensive to be fairly treated within any narrow limits. The hundred paragraphs of which the essay consists contain thoughtsthat might be beaten out into as many volumes. Indeed, this work bas been done by the German writers who represent theschool offree theology; but the original essay may still be viewed as the best and clearest manifesto of their school. All the religious controversies of Germany appear to be reducing themselves to one; between the principles of toleration maintained in thisessay and the claims of a personal infallibility, asserted by theJesuits.When viewed apart from its advocacy of religious toleration,Lessing's brief treatise is still important; for it contains the germs of several far more extensive, but not more luminous, works on tue philosophy of history. The honour ascribed to Herder, of having first opened that field of research must be restored to Lessing . His practical purport is to contend for & toleration of all differences of opinions, to recommend the exercise of patience in the midst of religious and other errors, and, lastly, to assertP2212 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.his own trust in a slow but sure progression of the human race,in both knowledge and virtue. A gradual revelation of truth ,he argues, is the best possible education for mankind. The process may be slow; but the straight line, says Lessing, is not always practically the shortest. How do we know all that Providence has to do with men besides leading them onwards? Howdo we know , that seeming deviations from the direct line of pro gress, and even some retrogressions, may not be necessary? Thenarises the question; for the men whose lot it has been to live inthe darker times of a progressive revelation, what consolation can there be found in the belief that, for others, the daylight will, at last, appear? To this Lessing replies by a bold suggestion, that men may possibly be allowed to return to this world, in order toamend their errors and to fulfil their best aspirations. To console those who deplore the time apparently lost by mankind, in their pursuit of errors, Lessing - speaking as a representative of the human race - declares finally, that the time so lost can be well afforded; ‘ for ,' says he, ' is not the whole of eternity stillours? 'In this, his last work, Lessing stands on his own ground, and must not be vaguely classed with the Rationalists of theeighteenth century. When he refers to three of the doctrines oforthodoxy which have often been described as opposed to reason,he suggests that these may, some day, be made clear. He speakswith respect even of the mystics of the fourteenth century, and of some visionaries who have looked for a speedy Millennium , he has nothing more severe to say than that they had a prophetic dream, and expected , too impatiently, its fulfilment.Lessing had not entered the arena of controversy with impunity.• Candide ' and other works by Voltaire hardly brought on their writer such reprobation as fell on the author of Nathan ' in the last two years of his life . Gossips went from house to houseamong his friends, and warned them to shun his errors, and after hisdeath, his friends had to suffer for their respect to his memory .FRIEDRICH HEINRICH JACOBI, who had a taste for polemical excitement, though he wrote in a sentimental style, founded onsome words ascribed to Lessing a charge of ' pantheism .' Les sing's friend Mendelssohn, whose character suggested that of • Nathan ,' was an invalid at the time; but he came forward torepel the charge, exhausted his strength in the controversy, andXV. ] WIELAND. 213asacrificed his life to his respect for the memory of LESSING.Among the prose-writers and moralists of his times, there was hardly a character more amiable than that of Mendelssohn. The gratitude of his Israelite friends for his efforts in their behalf especially in favour of a more liberal education - was rather ex travagantly expressed when they said; ' from Moses to Mosesthere was none like Moses. ' Three of his sons were eminent men,and one of his grandsons was the accomplished and amiable musician Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.Klopstock was a poet, but he knew little of the rules of poetic art. Lessing was not a poet, in the higher sense of the name;but he was a true and genial critic. If the genius of Klopstock had been always guided by Lessing's judgment, a greater poemthan The Messias, ' might have been produced in the eighteenth century. Klopstock and Lessing were literary reformers. The writer of " The Messias ' kindled enthusiasm; the author of the Laokoon , wrote to unite deep thought with artistic beauty. These men represented the kindred powers of warmth and light; of life and order. Klopstock suggested that poets should employ their powers on worthy themes, and Lessing taught them how to write. The inspiration of the poet and the enlightenment of the critic were derived from one source and employed to one end.They were ideal men, and had thoughts that united their labours with the interests of a future literature.No such ideas inspired WIELAND. The chief duty of a literary man, as he understood it, was to amuse his readers, and to fulfil ithe must be, in the first place, conciliatory; he must adapt both his subject and his style to the fashion of his times. The taste ofmany readers in the higher classes of society was still Frenchwhen Wieland began to write fictions. German literature had been cultivated, and its style had been improved , but its topicsmust be changed, in order that it might be introduced to courts and to the higher circles. Wieland saw the necessity of this change, and while he wrote with gracefulness and vivacity in verse and prose, he extended greatly the range of topics found in light literature. He borrowed his materials from ancient andmediæval times, and from modern European fiction, and treated them in a style adapted to the tastes of the upper classes. For them the enthusiasm and the Christian sentiment of Klopstockwere tiresome, and they complained, not without a cause, of his214 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CA.pompous and sometimes intricate style. No faults could be found in Lessing's style; but the great critic was a close thinker and wished to make his readers think. This was in itself intolerable,and, moreover, he had the fault of refusing to write on such topics as the aristocracy cared for. A restoration of the ancient cha racter of the theatre, as a national institution , and a union of old and true forms of art with the growth of modern literature; -- these were not subjects to attract the attention of many among the refined classes. Wieland understood their prejudices, and he wrote to suit them. He had been educated partly under the influence of pietism; but he had liberated himself from its re straints, and had become as free in the treatment as in the choice of subjects. This change in both style and purport took place,apparently, so suddenly that it excited sone surprise among . literary men. Severe critics even called the new writer a Parisianof the time of Lovis XV.CHRISTOPH MARTIN WIELAND, the son of a Lutheran pastor,was born near Biberach in 1733. During his course of studies,at a school near Magdeburg and at the University of Tubingen, heread extensively in French and English , as well as in ancientliterature, and wrote verses. His love of poetry gained for himan introduction to Bodmer of Zürich , in whose house he lived twoyears, devoting his time mostly to verse -writing on serious themes.He began one epic on Cyrus,' and completed another on " TheTrial of Abraham .' At this time, he was, formally, Pietistic, andwrote, in a work called ' The Sentiments of a Christian ,' somesevere criticisms on light literature . But, after leaving Zürich,Wieland seemed to forget all the teachings of Bodmer and otherserious advisers. The society to which the young poet gainedaccess, when he went to live at Biberach, included several friendswhose tastes in literature were opposed to everything severe orPietistic. Wieland now read French romances, became more conversant with English literature, translated fuently several ofShakspero's plays, and began to write fiction in a style that was new in German literaturo. In his tale of Don Sylvio ' (1764), hecast ridicule on professors of Pietism, which he now called fanaticism . He still had a didactic purport; but it was no longerserious, for he pleaded in favour of a well -regulated Epicureanpractice, founded on such philosophy as might be stated in a fewHoratian stanzas. He wrote playfully against severity and dogXV .] WIELAND'S WORKS. 2156matism and, especially , exposed the danger of extremes in opinions or in practice. In his " Aspasia ' he suggested thatAscetic piety might lead to sensuality. These views were ex pressed in a style so new and lively that it was said, ' Wieland'smuse had cast off her nun's attire and had dressed herself as afashionable dame.' Lessing jocosely said that she had forsaken heaven.In 1772 Wieland went to Weimar, where he was engaged as tutor to the sons of the Duchess. He established there hisliterary journal, The German Mercury,' which wassoon regarded as an authority and had a long success. In his later years Wieland still wrote on industriously, though his popularity wasopposed by the poets of the Hainbund, and by the ( 80- called )men of original genius.? The tendencies already indicated in hispoems Musarion ' and ' The New Amadis,' were continued in the prose romances written during his long residence in and nearWeimar. Here, surrounded by literary friends and placed in easy circumstances, he maintained his literary activity to an ad vanced age, and died in 1813. Goethe, as a member of the Amelia Lodge, pronounced a masonic eulogium on the character of Wieland, who had been generally respected for his kindly temper, his tact and his conciliatory address. Friedrich Jacobiasserted that, of all the literary men of the time, ' Wieland was the only one who was not envious of Goethe's superiority .'This statement could hardly be true in its full extent; but it in dicated one of the best traits in Wieland's personal character.His literary industry was extraordinary, and the quantity of work he performed made the care in polishing his style remarkable. To say nothing of his earlier works, he wrote, after 1772, his best poem ' Oberon ,' his Stories and Fairy Tales,' the Wintermärchenand the Sommermärchen, and several other productions in fluent verse , besides his prose romances Agathon,' “ The Abderites,• Aristippus,' and two others which, though written when he was seventy years old, are good specimens of his style. In 1793 and later, he published his collected works in forty - two volumes. He translated the epistles and satires of Ilorace, the whole of the works of Lucian , Cicero's Letters and several of the comedies of Aristophanes.Thoughts may be characterised by an inane depth as well as by an inane expansion ,' says Hegel. From the first of these de626 166216 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. (CH.>686fects Wieland is comparatively free, for he seldom attempts to be profound; but he is too often verbose. His purport is clear and 80 easily understood, that his prolix repetitions of attempts to ex plain his meaning are tedious. Though he is seldom severe, he is didactic, and he too often comes forward to interrupt his ownork as a story -teller. If he is ever earnest, it is in warning his readers of the unhappy tendencies of Pietism . He hardly could forgive the teachers who led him to study in a severe school during his youth, and the object of several of his works is to ex expose the errors of that school. In his poems, 'Musarion,' "' theGraces ' and ' Lamented Love, ' he repeats, again and again, hiscensure of ascetic notions of virtue. In the last-named of thesepoems, Cupid is expelled from heaven, and the Graces go withhim; but the place is found so dull without them , that they are soon urged to return . " Musarion ' (1768 ), is less prolix than some of Wieland's early works. Goethe read it with delight,when he was hardly twenty years old. It tells the story of ayouth who, by severe early discipline, is led to retire fromsociety, but soon finds out that he is not well qualified for hermit's life. In ' The New Amadis '-another work in versethe difficulty of finding wisdom and beauty united in one person is playfully described, and the hero, after a vain search for such perfection, marries a plain and intelligent wife. This conclusion,however dull, is the most edifying part of the story, of which some details are treated with great licence.The tendency of ' Agathon,' a romance in prose, is polemical aswell as didactic, and the style is in some parts tiresomely verbose.The writer is severe, but only against severity, and again de nounces the stern doctrines which had been impressed on his memory in early life. These are now represented by the teachingsof an antique philosophy. Agathon, a Greek youth, is educated atDelphi and, afterwards, lives at the court of Dionysius, where helearns to regard as impracticable all the moral theories of his earlyteachers. The lessons conveyed by the story are often given in adirect form , so as to interrupt the narrative .Wieland's best and most artistic work - Oberon ,' a romantic poem - has its scenes in the East and in Fairy Land. Three dis tinct stories are well united so as to form a whole; for each depends on the others. The adventures of the hero and the'heroine--Hüon and Rezia — are skilfully blended with the story of6XV .] WIELAND'S WORKS. 217666the quarrel and the reconciliation of Oberon and Titania, and the whole plot, though complicated, is made clear. Goethe said; ' as long as gold is gold, and crystal is crystal, Oberon will be admired .'On the other side, severer critics have described the poem asmerely fantastic and destitute of strong interest in its motives.The author, it is said, treated mediæval and romantic legends andfairy tales in a superficial and ironical manner, and gained his popularity by assuming a light, mock-heroic style.In his antique romance " The Abderites ' ( 1774 ), Wieland chose a subject in harmony with his playful style. He made here no pretence of truly describing life in ancient Greece, but em ployed an assumed antiquity as a mere veil for light satire on the petty interests and the foibles of provincial life. In his account of Abdera he made use, probably, of his own recollections of Biberach, his native place. The Abderites are people ironically styled wise; they erect & fountain, with costly sculptures, where there is no water, and place a beautiful statue of Venus, of life size, on a pedestal eighty feet high, so that it may be well seenby all travellers coming towards the town.' They were notsolitary in this latter absurdity. One of the best parts of the story describes the theatrical tastes of the Abderites. The readeris introduced to their theatre when the ' Andromeda ' of Euri pides is represented as an opera , and with a text reduced andmodified to suit the music and the singers.' The composer hasiven free tickets to all his relatives, who applaud every part ofhis work . The tenor, who takes the part of Perseus, is cheered80 loudly that he loses the key, forgets the melody, and wins applause again by substituting an aria from the Cyclops. The soprano, Eukolpis, represents Andromeda, and when bound to therock and exposed to the anger of the Nereids, repeats her sad monologue thrice, in order to introduce again and again some florid passages supposed to be like the notes of a nightingale.• Whatever she has to express — laughter or weeping, grief oranger, hope or fear — the nightingale's notes and trills must always be introduced and they are always sure of winning an encore. 'But the long account of the great law - guit at Abdera is the mostamusing part of the story, and is as good as anything written by Wieland. He tells us that, in Abdera, there was only onesurgeon -dentist. He had an extensive practice in the neighbour hood, and travelled, in a lowly fashion, from place to place. On666218 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Ch.6 66one occasion, he hired an ass and its driver to carry his small baggage across a wide heath . It was a hot and bright summer's day;there was neither tree nor bush to cast a foot of shade anywhere,and the weary surgeon - dentist was glad to sit down and rest awhile in the shadow cast from the figure of the ass . Against this appropriation of a shade the driver, who was also the owner of the ass, made a protest, to the effect, that he had sold the services of theass and his own; but that nothing had been said in the bargainabout any such use of the shadow! The dentist must, therefore,either come out of the shade, or pay something extra for its use .As he refused to do so , a law - suit followed; the best lawyers of Abdera were employed on each side; both the claimant and the defendant were strongly supported by their respective friends, and the whole population of the town was soon divided into two parties, styled respectively, " Asses ' and ' Shadows.' So bitterwas their enmity, that an “ Ass ' would not sit down at the same table with a ' Shadow .' The conclusion may be found in the twentieth volume of Wieland's collected works. His account ofthe process occupies half the volume; but prolixity may here beexcused; for the humour of the report consists partly in its length,and a satire on the tediousness of law - suits can hardly be exaggerated.Wieland's opinions on society and government are expressedmost fully in his ' Golden Mirror ' (1772). Its politics are borrowed from Rousseau and Voltaire, and its form is partly an imitation of one of Crebillon's works. The French Revolution madean end of Wieland's notions of easily establishing an Utopia on anegative basis. All the evils of society, he says, ' havo arisenfrom tyranny and superstition;' but of the origin of these parentevils he has little to tell. In ' Peregrinus Proteus, ' he ridiculedfanatics and had, it is said, an especial reference to Lavater, whoseodd and difficult character he does not fairly describe. The taleis narrated in the form of a dialogue between Peregrinus andLucian, who meet in Hades. The fanatic tells the adventures ofhis life, and Lucian listens with ironical interest, or adds, now andthen, a satirical commentary. In ' Aristippus,' a romance writtenin the form of letters, Lais is one of the leading characters introduced. The author makes here some attempts to write in anantique tone, but gives us, once more, his own worn and too familiar doctrines on the art of enjoying life. He represents utilityXV. ] WIELAND'S CRITICS. 21966 96as the test of truth, and pleasure as the object to be sought by virtue. In morals he still dislikes severity, and he especiallycensures dogmatism . If a man could be found as old as Nestor,'says Wieland, and seven times as wise as all the seven sages,' he would deliver his opinions with a tone of caution , ' which might,perhaps, be condemned as too much like scepticism .'Wieland's writings have been praised by the critics who havechiefly regarded his fluent and easy style, while his moral pur port has been severely censured by writers of another class.There are German authors who would describe as obsolete suchpoems and romances as Musarion ' and ' Agathon, ' which, how ever, have still some historical interest, as they afford evidence of the taste prevailing at the time when they were admired. The traits most worthy of reprobation in Wieland's stories are clearly enough indicated by a critic who, most probably, represents theopinions of not a few readers:— Wieland ,' says Dr. Vilmar, ' WAS the man of his time, for readers infected with the subtle andsweet poison of the French literature then current; especially for the higher classes, to whom thinking was tedious and enthusiasmridiculous. To such people, who had formerly been dependent on the French , Wieland introduced a German literature well suited to their taste, and it is merely by their interest in the materials of his works that we now understand why he received, during his life,such praises as were hardly bestowed on Klopstock and never onLessing .' This is only the lighter part of the critic's reprobationof Wieland's moral tendencies. A censure almost as severe isimplied in few words by another critic — Prof. Max Müller. Heobserves that the severe judgments pronounced by German critics on Lohenstein are hardly to be reconciled with their praises still bestowed on the writings of Wieland. ' It may be added, thatsome of the works to which these censures are especially applicable have not been named here. Their tendency was made tooevident in the licentious writings of such men as Scheffner and Heinse, who greatly annoyed Wieland by professing to be his followers.Wieland's important contributions to the culture of the German language will not be forgotten. Goethe was partly indebted to the writer of Oberon ,' and the Romantic School borrowed some suggestions from his medieval fictions. It may be pleaded, that some of his offences against good taste arose from a rather vague6220 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.notion of the extent to which playfulness might be indulged infiction . He extended the culture of German literature in thesouthern states, and enlarged, for many readers, the boundaries oftheir imaginative world . Though he borrowed his fables from many sources, he was not a slavish imitator of any foreign literature. The censure that he misrepresented life in ancient timesespecially in Greece — is hardly called for, as he never professed towrite fictions correct in their archeological details. He usedantique places and names, as he employed old tales of fairy - land,in order to gain freedom for the exercise of imagination and for the expression of such light and playful satire as is found in hisstory of the wise people of Abdera.A transition from the humour and playfulness of Wieland to therhapsodies of the times of ' Sturm und Drang ,' would seem abrupt, if it were not noticed that Wieland continued writing and translating for some years after he had lost his popularity. Like other authors who have lived eighty years, he found himself, in hisold age, surrounded by young men who had no sympathy with him. The poets of the Hainbund wished to be patriotic, and werepartly followers of Klopstock, while the wild ' men of original genius, ' despised Wieland's poetry as tame, imitative and obsolete.He reciprocated their contempt, and not altogether without reason, as the following chapter may perhaps show .6XVI.] GOETHE'S YOUTH. 221CHAPTER XVI.1SEVENTH PERIOD. 1770-1830.ishe TIE TIME OF GOETHE'S YOUTH—RELIGION , POLITICS AND LITERATURESTURM UND DRANG ' - HAMANN - JACOBI - HERDER.amandikebisolete.thoutTHE SEVENTH PERIOD of German literature including sixtyyears almost the whole time of GOETHE's literary activity - is sofull of important movements and interests that it must be sub divided . In this and in the following chapter we shall attempt todescribe the more important circumstances of the times in whichGOETHE passed his youth. These notices may serve to explain not a few of the most remarkable traits in his imaginativewritings; for they are all, more or less, autobiographical and arefull of references to the times of which we have now to tell .JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE was born at Frankfurt am Mainon August 28, 1749. His ancestry on the father's side has beenclearly traced to Hans Christian Goethe, a shoeing - smith wholived at Artern in Thuringia. Friedrich George, the son of Hans, was a tailor and went to live at Frankfurt. There he soonrose in the world and especially improved his circumstances in 1705, when he married the almost wealthy landlady of the hotel " Zum Weidenbof . His son, Johann Kaspar, the poet's father, aman of respectable education, gained the titles of Rath andDoctor of Laws, but was content to live in easy circumstances and without the cares of office. He was a lover of order, a man offirm will, and conservative or old - fashioned , as irreverence might say — in his tastes and prejudices. He would not hear of Klop stock as a poet, because the “ Messias ' was not written in rhyme.The boy Wolfgang was, however, one of the enthusiasts who not only read the Messias ' but learned by heart some of its long222 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.6speeches, and his sister Cornelia helped him in getting up the furious dialogue of " Satan and Adramelech .' ' We were de lighted ' says the poet, in his recollections of boyhood — withthe violent reproaches and retorts which we thus learned to hurlagainst each other, and whenever we had an opportunity we ex changed such compliments as “ monster ” and “ traitor. ” ' Hisvisits to the theatre and his intercourse with several Frenchofficers, during the occupation of Frankfurt in the course of the Seven Years' War, were circumstances of some importance in Goethe's early education . In 1765, when sixteen years old, hewent to Leipzig to study law at the university; but paid more at tention to poetry and light literature than to law . He read the pedantic critical treatises of Gottsched and Bodmer: and failing to find in them any guidance for a genius, he followed the instinct of his own heart. At this early age he began to put into verse his own thoughts and feelings suggested by real circumstances and,long afterwards, hefaithfully adhered to his principle of finding realities thò motives of his poems. ' I have never been guilty ofaffectation in my poetry,' he once said to his friend, Eckermann;' for example, I have not written songs of hatred against the French, simply because I did not hate them. .. How could Ihate the people to whom I owed a great part of my education?But I was thankful to God when we were rid of them! Atanother time he described his numerous occasional poems as allforming parts of .one long confession .' These remarks maypartly serve to explain the levity of two dramatic sketches - DieLaune des Verliebten and Die Mitschuldigen — written by the poet when he was about nineteen years old. They were the results of a youth's observation of society, and were expressed in a style suggested by readings in French literature.The influence of Klopstock was still felt in German literature,the critical power of Lessing was respected, and Wieland - now writing industriously - found many readers in the higher classes ofsociety; but admiration of Shakspere's genius was, at the com mencement of this period, the chief source of inspiration for am bitious young poets. They wanted new and stirring themes.Lessing could tell them well how to construct dramas; butof what subject should they write was the question to whichthey wanted a reply. A general discontent with the past and a vague and restless ambition with regard to the future, characterOXVI.] RATIONALISM . 223Dengactund6ும்TOPמתised the class of young students to which Goethe at this time belonged.Religious, political and social circumstances were all closely connected with the changes taking place in literature; especially in poetry. The preceding period had been, on the whole,a time of reformation; this was a time of revolution. A move ment that might be fairly called a literary revolution took placein Germany some years before the time when attempts to realise abstract principles destroyed social order and led to a militarydespotism in France. It would be a long task to tell why revo lutionary axioms that had such formidable results in France weremostly, confined to literature in Germany; but that the same essential principles were prevalent in Prussia and in Paris in the latter part of the eighteenth century is a fact .The first of these principles was a general contempt of the past,with its history, its church authority and all its moral and theg logical definitions. For all their views respecting the character and the destiny of mankind, the popular philosophers' and the Rationalists in Germany — like the politicians in France - referred not to history, but to their own reasonings. What they thought of the claims of any historical and authoritative institutions of morals or religion can hardly be stated clearly; for theyregarded all such claims as hardly worthy of consideration . They did not deeply inquire how it had ever come to pass that men had been so long misguided by priestcraft. It was enough to know that this had been done in the dark ages,' which included the whole of the past.Another characteristic of these enlightened men was theirenormous belief in the moral power of education. Their theory was that men are born with minds like blank paper, and to write good axioms on this paper was all that was required to make a new world. Hence the bold hopes expressed in the eloquent books of Rousseau and copied in the writings of his humble German imi tators, Basedow and Pestalozzi. The faith of the popular philo sophers, though very narrow , wasas energetic as their denialof all assertions except their own. They had not the least doubt that they were able to demoustrate to all the world such truths as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, and they were,consequently, astounded when Kant told them that their argu ments on these points were good for nothing. They had neverouldIol ' di328 ]6 rks Dayhos - Dy the pzetrsuisdiin a styla literatur,ieland- 007 Lerclaimsof

atthe

ouationfor sm rringthemesdramas

but tion

to which>ĩ the past anduture,car224 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.dreamed that any one would be audacious enough to treat them us disrespectfully as they had treated the past. It did not matter when an obscure mystic - HAMANN — Spoke contemptuously of their logic; but it was to be wondered at when Hume and Kant destroyed all the positive faith of the enlightened men.' However, Nicolai, the Berlin bookseller, was by no means daunted,but declared that Kant hardly knew what he was talking about.Nicolai's dogmatism was characteristic of the school to which he belonged, though he was its extreme representative. His friends could not see that, if all the world had been in absolute error before their time, it was possible that they — even the men of Berlin - might be in error; or that, if they might despise and overthrow everything they called obsolete, others might arise who,with equal authority , would demolish such doctrines as seemedinfallible at Berlin in 1770 and afterwards.This anti-religious and quasi-philosophical excitement was more closely connected with the progress of literature, than, at first sight, might appear probable. The attacks of the men of en lightenment, were mostly directed against so - called ' mysticism; 'but under this term of reproach they included all expressions of faith or feeling, that could not be understood as easily as ' two and two make four.' One form of mysticism lurked , it was said,under a Protestant disguise; the other had & Romanisingtendency, and both were suspected as means made use of by the Jesuits. The members of this order were supposed to be stillactive everywhere in Germany, although their missions were suppressed there in 1773. Most probably, more than half the machinations ascribed to their industry were purely imaginary;for the Berlin men of light would not believe that any man could be religious unless he had been corrupted by Jesuits, or Mystics.The school of mysticism included such men as Hamann, who spoke like an oracle, Lavater, the dreamy and credulous writer on physiognomy, Jacobi, the declamatory philosopher, and the brothers Stolberg, who were third - rate poets.The methods employed to defend common sense and rationalism were remarkably shallow . It was thought advisable to spread enlightened opinions by the use of such secret means as had beenascribed to the Jesuits. The order of The Illuminati ' was, atfirst, openly instituted by Adam Weishaupt, a professor of law at Ingolstadt, but his followers were accused of making use of secretXVI.] RELIGION . 2256diplomacy in spreading their principles; especially among thebrotherhoods of the freemasons. Their doctrine included littlemore than a few abstract assertions respectivg the existenceof a Supreme Being, the advantages of republican government, andthe duties of a cosmopolitan philanthropy. A more fantasticclass of dreamers - ' the Rosicrucians ' - also intruded themselvesinto the masons' lodges of this time. These ' brethren of the rosycross ' professed to be the followers of a mythical sage - Rosenkreutz — who had lived, they said, in the fourteenth century andhad studied the occult sciences in India and in the pyramids ofEgypt! The facts concealed under this fiction were these;Valentin Andreæ , a divine of the seventeenth century, whom we have named among the versifiers of his time, had sometimesamused himself by writing religious allegories, or rather sketchesof a Christian Utopia. One of his books, the ' Fama FraternitatisR.C.' (1614), seems to have suggested to the brethren of the rosycross ' their scheme of turning a dream into a reality. Theirsymbol was a Saint Andrew's cross, above a rose encircled withthorns; their tenets it is not so easy to explain. Like others,they were suspected of being Jesuits in disguise, and many scandals and controversies took place in the masons' lodges. Amember of the enlightened order, when engaged in conversationwith one of the brethren of the rosy cross ' felt by no means surethat he was not dealing with a Jesuit, or with some alchemical swindler -- perhaps, with Cagliostro himselfl -- for the masoniclodges were at this time overrun by adventurers, visionaries,grand templars ,' Egyptian necromancers, and disciples of allkinds of Schwärmerei. That one word — for which there is noEnglish equivalent - expresses, at once, two characteristics of thetimes; a fanatical devotion to mere theories and a love of makingnew sects. One of the more noticeable of the illuminati,' ADOLFvon KNIGGE, wrote a book worth reading on ' Social Intercourse ,'giving rules for making friends and for keeping out of the wayof enemies; but he was unfortunate in the practice of his ownmaxims, and often involved himself in quarrels. Scandals and disputes among other enlightened men led to the suppression of their order and to a reformation of the masons' lodges. Variousreports of their abuses had been carried to Rome, and had called forth several papal allocutions against masonry. These weremostly founded on a want of information respecting the true66226 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH,origin of the abuses introduced in the eighteenth century.Goethe, who was a freemason , always retained the notion of spreading new doctrinesespecially on education and general culture by means of brotherhoods or secret and benevolentsocieties including none but men of high character and training.Such brotherhoods are represented in the two didactic romances,Wilhelm Meister's Lehrjahre and Wanderjahre.The revolutionary spirit of the times could hope for no immediate success in German politics. There were two reasons that madeinnovation hopeless. In the first place, the power of the rulers in the several states had been firmly established on the division of the empire. In the second place, the German liberals were too often vague and unpractical theorists. Liberty is the exercise of power,and the result must wholly depend on the character of the powerthat is set free. The main cause of the failure of hopes of political liberation at the close of the eighteenth century was that they were borrowed; the French were indebted for them to theAmericans and the German Illuminati borrowed all their ideasfrom French theorists. Goethe's dislike of hasty political changeswas founded on his observation of public events in the years 1770-93. Of the French Revolution he said, ' I see that something different from the past must be the result; but I cannot besure that the change will be an improvement.' Of imitative and artificial revolutions he said—at a later time ' nothing is goodfor a nation save what grows up out of its own life and its ownwants and this must be quite distinct from any imitation of foreign examples. All attempts to import foreign innovationswhen there is no felt want of them in the national life, are therefore foolish, and all revolutions concerted in that way must be unsuccessful; for such bad workmanship as that can never have God's approbation .'Political dreamers with whom Goethe was acquainted during his youth had suggested these conclusions. He remembered that the emperor Joseph II. bad written in 1789 the words:—nowwe shall have universal peace in Europe,' and the failure of that prophecy made a profound impression. But we must refer to some specimen of the dreamy patriots of the times in order tounderstand fully the poet's so - called political indifference .”Among his earlier friends he numbered the two brothers Von Stolborg — already named as writers of verse — with whom he madea6XVI.) POLITICS. 2276>a tour in Switzerland in 1776. Christian, the elder brother, wasa weak imitator of the younger, FRIEDRICH LEOPOLD GRAF VON STOLBERG ( 1750-1819 ), who deserves to be noticed because his writings throw some light on the characteristics of his times.He was the most energetic of all the singers of liberty; but his enthusiasm was as unreal as it was violent. Nothing could exceed the extravagant ravings of his odes on freedom and freethinking. They were like ' tales told by an idiot, ' full of sound and fury ,' and they signified nothing. In the song of afreethinker be calls on a tempest to come and be his companion,and next inrites ' a whirlpool' to his embraces! Then he ascends into the sky and beyond the orbit of Arcturus, whence he lookeforth upon ' torrents of annihilation rusbing down upon globes and suns shivered to atoms. ' Finally, the poet - laughing with abitter scorn-Alings himself down from Arcturus upon the fragments of the universe and there lies covered with midnight, ruins and horror! ' This surely rivals Bottom's specimen of ' Ercles'vein; ' but, incredible as it may seem, Von Stolberg could write even worse nonsense than this. His climax is found in a ' Song of Freedom ' which contains passages too absurd and extravagantto be quoted. The worst still remains to be told; for this violent declamation about liberty and drinking ' the blood of tyrants 'was, after all, a mere dreamery and affectation. When divinefreedom for which Von Stolberg had been calling, seemed likely to come and to take away from him his title and his estate, he declined, at once, the embraces of the goddess, sought shelter inthe Romish Church and thence hurled forth an anathema on allJacobins, Illuminati and levellers. He had never dreamed that the men beyond the Rhine had some practical meaning in their talk about equality, and as soon as he discovered his error, hehastened, with the zeal of a convert, to make an apology to thetyrants whom he had denounced .To return from politics to literature — here also revolutionary notions prevailed , and were asserted as claims of men possessing original genius too powerful to be shackled by authority or criticism . The original geniuses of the age - including Goethewho were loud in their declaration of independence and bold intheir defiance of criticism , had soune passable logic on their side.If the Berlin men of light might base their teachiny on athorough contempt for all the past, then surely inspired young602228 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Ch .6poets such men as Heinse, Goethe, Müller, Klinger and Lenz,who were then all classed together as equals — might be allowedto invent even a new kind of poetry, without paying respect either to the example of a Klopstock or the theory of a Lessing.Innovation, excluded from political life, had already attacked morals, manners, and religion, and might now be allowed to invade the realm of imaginative literature. So it was decreed,that the poetry of the past must be cast aside as a worn - out sort ofmanufacture. " It was made, not inspired ,' said Mauvillon and Unzer, two of the critics of the times, and their judgment wasconfirmed by Merck and Schlosser - both friends of Goethe. All the young men of genius were agreed, that what was now wanted was a something new - wonderful - never dreamed of before inthe world! Such men as Lenz, Müller and Klinger undertook tosupply the poetry wanted for the future, and wrote quite enough of it. In 1776 Klinger — who afterwards became rational - wrote a wild play called ' Sturm und Drang, ' and these two words,(meaning Storm and Pressure), were accepted as the name of the period — also knownas the time of the original geniuses .' One of its odd features was the familiarity with which poetasters spoke oftheir brother -genius - Shakspere!' If bis true ghost had ap peared to them - AS Wieland suggested — they might possibly havebeen frightened into modesty. When they said that the poetry of the old times, ' was made, and not inspired , they seemed to forget that their own was for the most part neither inspired nor made. In several instances their lives were as wild as theirnotions of genius and poetry. Abstinence from reading and study and a disregard for the decencies of life were proofs of originalgenius. Some of the wildest of the poets rambled about, half dressed, refused to comb their hair and — as Jean Paul said thought it a disgrace to be seen in a library.' They were in their own estimate, sound, healthy children of nature, and as free asnature first made man .'It is difficult now-in Germany, where ' thu stern realities oflife ' are talked of as seriously as in England — to revive, even in imagination, the characteristics of that time of ' Sturm und Drang ,'when writing wild poetry was regarded as the object of life.Imaginative literature, which now supplies an occasional recreationfor the student, then formed the chief bond of social intercourse for many young dreamers living in the neighbourhood of Weimar-.66XVI.) ' STURM UND DRANG ' 2293AenSPand Jena. How they were supported, while wasting their timein dreams, we are left to guess; for of realities their poetry tells little. In what practical results their reveries ended we know too well in some cases of tragic failure of all the promises of youth .Hardships and misfortunes are everywhere ready to find victimsamong men who study the ideal before they have fought with the real, and it has been said of true poets, who, in their youth, 'begin with gladness ,' that the end thereof is oft despondency and madness; ' but the history of the time of ' Sturm und Drang ' was especially gloomy.Several instances of failure in practical life, among young menwho began their career with literary ambition, might be ascribed to the character of the mental excitement that prevailed. Thatinfluence did not soon pass away, but remained in the days of the Romantic School. If we named here all the imaginative writers of the period 1770-1820 who died in their youth, or were especially unhappy in their lives; those who fell into deep melancholy, andthose who perished by suicide; the number would be dismally large. The reflections suggested by this history of a literature out of harmony with practical life, having hardly any basis inreligion, and uncontrolled by a patient study of art, are too important to be dwelt upon here. It required a strong man , like Goethe, to come out, but slightly injured, from the excitement ofthat time of rash innovation. As we have said, he was thenknown only as one wild young poet among others, and such writers as the painter Müller, Lenz, Wagner, and Klinger were his friends or his rivals. A solitary tragedy written by Leisewitz, and awork by Wezel — one of the most miserable of the geniuses - were both ascribed to Goethe, and he was classified with Heinse, thelicentious and weak follower of Wieland. In his drama of Götzvon Berlichingen ' and in his . Sorrows of Werther ' Goethe madehimself responsible for some of the literary and moral errors of his times; but his genius, even then, raised him far above his youngcotemporaries. He had another advantage; he was teachable,and when he went to Strassburg in 1770, he found a teacher in Herder who, with regard to some of his progressive but rather vague notions of the destiny of literature, might be classed with the men of the stormy time. Herder was not original inpoetry, and for the germs of his philosophy he was indebted to Hamann. In order to trace to its source the new intellectualaretofolorTRUsundr1,hat?6said

intheir

1: foraalitiesofCerchindDranz' it de lesl recreativointercoursedofTaman230 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE, [CH.-2movement of the period we must refer to Goethe's ' Dichtung undWahrheit,' especially to his account of the teaching he received from Herder at the university of Strassburg.Here we find, in 1770, the most teachable of the young poets of the day, receiving instruction from an inferior mind-one whose genius is receptive rather than creative. The teacher is a man withrounded features, a bold forehead, dark eyes and a mouth ofpleasant expression , when he smiles. He would be, on the whole,good - looking, but he is suffering from a fistula in one of his eyes,for which he is expecting to undergo an operation. He wears &clerical dress, and too often speaks in the dictatorial tone of aschoolmaster, though he is only five years older than his pupil —a young Apollo, with fine features and eyes of remarkable power, as may be seen even in the shade of the invalid's chamber.The teacher now twenty -six years old , has had a hard struggle with poverty during youth. His father, a very poor schoolmaster,could not afford to send him to a university; but he studied surgery and then went to Königsberg, where he attended Kant'slectures. Since then , he has been engaged as a schoolmaster and as a preacher; but his favourite studies are poetry, literary history,and the history of culture. He is an enthusiastic believer inprogress , and loves to preach about cosmopolitan philanthropy.It is one of his characteristics that, in his earnestness, he assumesan oracular tone which he does not put aside, though talkingnow , to no ordinary student, but to Johann Wolfgang Goethe,one of the original geniuses of the age. The latter is studying law at Strassburg; but what is there that he has not studied?Besides Latin and Greek, he reads French, knows something of Hebrew , and has read many books. on pietism , mysticism ,chemistry, alchemy, and the fine arts. Not long ago, he injured his health by his efforts to master the art of etching on copper.His genius requires concentration, and Herder advises him todevote himself to the study of the popular poetry of all nations!What we want,' says Herder, " is a poetry in barmony with the voices of the peoples ” and with the whole heart of mankind.Our studies must be cosmopolitan, and must include the popular poetry of the Hebrews, the Arabs, the medieval Franks, Germans,Italians and Spaniards, and even the songs and ballads of half savage races. We must go back to the earliest times to educateourselves, so that we may write poetry, not for a school, nor for a6XVI.] HAMANN 1. 231We see,1certain period, but for all men and for all time.'in these ideas, that Herder belongs to the time of ' Sturm und Drang.' There must be a putting away of old things, and all things must be made new .Such teaching is rather vague, though Goethe listens to it with deep interest; but when he asks for clear details he is not satisfied .Herder wishes to stimulate rather than to instruct his pupil.Several tracts, dingily printed on bad paper, are lying on thetable; they have odd titles, such as Æsthetica in Nuce (1762),and Socratic Memorabilia ( 1759) . But who, among the youngpoetical readers of the day, ever heard of the author's nameJohann George Hamann? When Goethe has opened one of theseodd tracts, and has tried to read it, he finds something that attracts attention, but he cannot understand it, and begs his friend to act as interpreter. Herder only laughs and says:' you must read on , and you will come the meaning .' Goethe isteachable; so he carries away Hamann's rhapsodies and studies them . He soon finds in them some of Herder's own vaguethoughts, but still more vaguely expressed. If they containthe elements of a future poetry, it is only as the mists andclouds of February may be said to enfold the germs of a latentsummer . But Goethe reads on through the rhapsody on ästhetics,and is not seriously discouraged even by such passages as the following:Poetry is the mother tongue of the human race, and is older than prosc, as gardening is older than agriculture, and painting older than writing; or as song, parable, and barter are older than declamation, syllogism , and com A deep sleep was the rest of our primeval ancestors, and their exercise was awild bacchanal dance. Seven days they would sit in the silence of thought or wonder, and then they opened their mouths and uttered inspired words. . . . Let the blame lie where it may - outside or inside of us -we find now in nature nothing more than sybilline leaves scattered, here and there — disjecti membra poete .' To collect them is the work of the scientific man; the philosopher has to interpret them; the poet must imitate them or - a bolder aim! -must try to reduce them to harmony. Thebook of creation contains examples of universal thoughts revealed from God to his creatures by means of ' creatures, and the books of the covenant con tain examples of the deeper wisdom which God is pleased to reveal to men by men. The unity of the Author is reflected in the several dialects of his works; in all, what a tone of unmeasured height and depth!merce ,Through other passages even more obscure than these Goethe must read patiently, in order to find out Hamann's meaning. But232 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH..6as thesomething more must be said here of a writer to whom Herderand Goethe were indebted.JOHANN GEORG HAMANN, born in 1730 at Königsberg, was forsome years engaged as a clerk, as a private tutor and as a com mercial agent. He was unfortunate in the last -named capacity,and, after long enduring poverty, he gained a subordinate officeunder government and a small pension. His life was marked by strong contrasts. He was deeply religious; but was not always correct in his morals. His principles were by no means ascetic.His faith, though strangely expressed, was orthodox, and he was &firm believer in the doctrine of the forgiveness of sing. While he was engaged as a commercial traveller, he visited London, wherevexation on account of some unfortunate transactions led him intodissipated habits. He recovered his moral strength by reading the Bible; or as he says in a letter to his friend Jacobi), he was lifted out of despair by means of a few despised texts,prophet Jeremiah was raised from his dungeon by the aid of some cords and old rags.' Hamann's subsequent misfortunes were partlythe result of his own imprudence; for he was privately married to & poor village girl, while he was still in very needy circumstances,and he was heavily afflicted by the cares of his family. In his later years, several good friends — including Jacobi and theprincess Galitzin -- assisted him; but their aid came late, when he was worn out by the adversities of his life. He died in 1788, at the house of the princess Galitzin, near Munster, and was buried in her garden, where a stone was erected to his memory. His friends and disciples styled him'the Magus of the North .' Though he wrote mostly in an oracular style, such men as Herder, Goethe,Jacobi and Jean Paul Richter were numbered among his readers,and he was respected by Lessing, Moses Mendelssohn, and Kant.The main purport of his teaching may be briefly stated:-Ha mann was an enemy to the cold rationalism that prevailed in his day; but he did not attempt to refute it by logic. He appealed to his own feelings and intuitions, and, therefore, must be classed with mystics. For him nature, the written word, and history, were the three forms of one revelation , and must be all studied in theirconcords. Hamann respected Kant, but rejected his expositionof religion as rationalistic or merely ethical, and on the same ground, he denounced the Berlin philosophy which, in fact, was nothing more than the deism of Voltaire put into German. TheXVI.) HAMANN . 2333enlightened ' had opposed and ridiculed everything thatwas notcommonplace. They disliked all such men as Hamann, Herder,and Jacobi, who talked of sentiments and inspiration. ForLessing, the Berlin men were compelled to feel some respect; but in his later years, he cared very little for their good opinion, and was by no means satisfied with their negative notions about religion. Hamann was the boldest opponent of the Berlin school, and though he uttered his protests in a rhapsodical style, his words had a good purport. He denounced self - conceit, negation and abstraction, and would have neither old traditions nor intuitions sucrificed to a logic based upon dogmatism . His views of theorigin and the purport of poetry found an interpreter in Herder, and some of his religious principles may be seen reflected in the works ofhis friend, FRIEDRICH HEINRICH JACOBI, a writer who has been classed with German philosophers, though he had neither a system nor a method. His chief works — the letters on Spinoza's Theory,'and the Essays on . David Hume' and ' on Divine Things and theirRevelation ' -are mostly controversial, but may be reduced to the assertion , that the truths of morals and religion are known only by intuition, or faith . Jacobi wrote also two imaginative worksEdward Allwill's Letters' and ' Woldemar ' - both rather didacticand sentimental than narrative. The purport of the latter is to show that a high and pure friendship may exist between persons of opposite sexes. As one of the early friends of Goethe and of otheryoung literary men of the age, Jacobi exerted some importantinfluence in his day. The respectful reserve and caution for which Goethe was remarkable in his references to the religious questionsand interests of his times, and his dislike of theological and meta physical controversies, may be partly ascribed to his acquaintance with Jacobi. It is, however, far clearer that Goethe, during hisyouth, was indebted to Herder, of whose theories and writingssome further account must be given here.JOHANN GOTTFRIED HERDER, born in 1744, passed his youth inthe needy circumstances already mentioned; but gained a more favourable position in 1776, when Goethe recommended him to the Duke Karl August of Weimar, by whom he was appointed chaplain to the court and superintendent of the church district of Weimar. Here he mostly resided until his death, which took place in 1803. Some years afterwards the Duke erected, in memory of Herder, a monumental tablet with the inscription,234 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Ch .63" Light, Love, Life .' During the years when Goethe and Herderlived as neighbours in the metropolis of German literature, their friendship gradually declined; for throughout his life , Herder never succeeded in laying aside the schoolmaster - like tone that had sometimes made his conversation disagreeable at Strassburg.His later years were overshadowed by melancholy, and after all his studies and his contributions to literature, he often sighed," Ah, my wasted life!!Herder's was a receptive genius and his sympathies were catholic. If any proof were wanted of Wordsworth's theorythat a great poet differs from other imaginative men chiefly in the degree of his energy of imagination — it might be found in Herder.He was a poet who required considerable aids from other minds,and his original poems are inferior to his versions of poems from many sources . By his “ Voices of the Peoples ' - a series of freetranslations of the popular songs and ballads of several nations and by his Spirit of Hebrew Poetry ' ( 1782) he awakened acosmopolitan taste in imaginative literature. In theology he was liberal, but less negative than the rationalists. His so - called philosophy, like that of his friends Hamann and Jacobi, was founded on faith and feeling, but it had no method, and he was quite out of his depth when he attempted to refute Kant. In his unfinished work, ‘ Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Man kind ' (1784-91) he suggested the aims and the outlines of thatcomprehensive study; but his knowledge, though very extensive in some departments, was not equal to the task of filling up the out lines of such a philosophy. His best work — the popular songsand ballads of many nations — is divided into six books, containing respectively, songs from the North , from the South , and from theNorth -west, Scandinavian lyrics, old German songs and some specimens of the poetry of half - savage tribes. It was characteristicof Herder that he accepted as genuine the poems ascribed toOssian. In other translations and imitations he directed theattention of his readers to oriental poetry. The whole aim of hisliterary labours seemed to be to make the Germans forget thedistinctive character of their own land and recognise themselves as citizens of the world. Such teaching was too readily accepted byGoethe. National literature,' said he, ' is of little importance:the age of a world - literature is at hand, and every one ought to work in order to accelerate the coming of this new era. There is>6XVI.)HERDER .235some truth in this; but it may be maintained also that distinct national literatures are wanted to make a true world - Literature ,just as distinct outlines and colours are required for a painting,however harmonious. A whole in which all the parts are absorbed .and lost can have no life. Lessing, it is said , reformed style and made German poetry artistic; but Herder inspired it with a new spirit and purport. This does not fairly and fully describe the difference between the two men. Lessing endeavoured - at least in his " Minna von Barnhelm ' - to make poetic literature national,and it would have been well if that example had been followed .Whatever may be the advantages of cosmopolitan studies for the historian or the philosopher, they have a subordinate value in poetry. Who is there that would sacrifice one of Wordsworth's local poems closely attached for ever to one of his haunts in Westmoreland and Cumberland, for the sake of any versions that he might have given us of oriental legends? Why should not every nation, while cultivating an acquaintance with foreign literature,preserve its own distinct character; or why should the expressions of poetic genius in various countries be less diversified than theirclimates and their vegetation? We do not go to India to see the trees and the grasses of English valleys. A man who would do anything good in art,' says Goethe, must hold himself within his proper bounds; ' and so must a nation. These are considerations that may, perhaps, tend to limit praises bestowed on the vague universalism of Herder. In his times German poetry had awide enough field to wander in without travelling into all the four quarters of the globe in search of topics. For how little had been told of a land where the enthusiasm of the crusades, thecontests of Rome with the Empire, the struggle of the towns with the barons, and such events as occupied the centuries from the thirteenth to the seventeenth, had been hardly described , save by dry chroniclers. From all this life and reality Herder turned attention away to meditations on universal history , and his ex ample had a considerable effect on his cotemporaries and his followers.With regard to his style, Herder cannot, for a moment, be compared with Lessing. It must be allowed, that in treating of such themes as the spirit and purport of poetry , he was more exposedto the danger of falling into vagueness than Lessing could bewhen writing of form and construction; but, even when he6236 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Ch.professes to be critical, Herder is too often declamatory. He is apreacher who appeals to his own feelings for a proof that he rightly interprets the scriptures. His sentiments will not allowhis thoughts to develope themselves clearly. His views are very wide, but, like pictures cast on a screen by a magic lantern, theylose in light and definition as much as they gain in extent. Her der was chiefly remarkable for the animating influence he exerted on the minds of several of his cotemporaries.XVII.] ' GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN .' 237CHAPTER XVII.SEVENTH PERIOD . - 1770-1830.• GÖTZ VON BERLICHINGEN WERTHER'S LEIDEN ' -THE MEN OFSTURM UND DRANG ' - TU HAINBUND - PROSE WRITERS.6IN 1773, the drama of ' Götz von Berlichingen ' was published without the author's name, and was generally received with enthusiastic admiration . In several respects it realised the ideal desiderated by the originals ,' or the literary men of revolutionarytendencies. It was a national drama, and the character of itshero, Götz of the iron band, one of the latest survivors of the old Ritterthum (knighthood ), was not too remote from popular sympathies. He had supported the Reformation, and had given proofs of manly generosity during the Peasants' War. In his biography written by himself, he describes in a tone of childlike innocence such exploits as would now be called robberies, and the frank and kind expression of the author's portrait can leave no doubt of his sincerity. He lived in the days when the princes weremaking use of the Reformation as a pretext for exalting them selves on the ruins of the Ritterthum , and he fought, as hebelieved , for the right. Goethe departed rather widely from the facts of his hero's autobiography, and gave expression in Götz to some of the revolutionary notions prevalent when the drama ap peared. The play was written in defiance of the rules of the French drama, and therefore was hailed as being in accordance with Lessing's theory and Klopstock's patriotism; while the originals ' —the men who would derive all their morality from crude nature - were charmed by the scene in which brotherMartin ' declaims against monasticism . On the other hand, Götz gave offence to all admirers of the French theatre, including the king, who spoke of the new national drama as ' a detestable imita238 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.66romance .tion of bad English plays,' and ' full of disgusting platitudes.'This critique might have been fairly applied, in all its severity,to a series of wild, shapeless ' Ritter dramas,' called into existenceby the success of Götz. Nothing indeed can be said in favour ofthe model itself as a work of art; for it is only a series of scenes,each having a separate life and interest. Its greatest and mostpermanent merit is found in its truly popular style.. A still greater success followed the publication of the senti mental romance, “ The Sorrows of Werther,' which first appeared,without the author's name, in 1774, and being soon translated into several languages was circulated throughout Europe. Some parts of the work were, doubtless, founded on the writer's own experience; but it must be remembered that he was a Proteus in his sympathies. The fate of Jerusalem , a young man with whom Goethe had had but a slight acquaintance, was described in con nection with several fictitious circumstances. The heroine Charlotte-one of Goethe's friends when he lived at Wetzlar - wasafterwards married to a man whose character was falsely supposedto be represented by that of ‘ Albert,' the weak husband in theThe public accepted the " Sorrows of Werther ' as &faithful biography of Jerusalem , and for a time, the incidents of the story were talked of as well -known facts that had taken place at Wetzlar. " Lotte ' - afterwards, Frau Kestner - became celebrated as a heroine, while her husband felt annoyed because itimagined that he had been described under the disguise of Albert. Travellers came to Wetzlar to find some relics of themelancholy man who died for love, and the landlord of an inn there, to please his visitors, raised a small mound of earth in hisgarden, and, for a trifling gratuity, exhibited it as the grave ofthe unfortunate Werther.' All the blame of this extravagancemust not be cast on Goethe. His sentimental romance was theeffect of a literary epidemic that might be traced back at least as far as to the English novels of Richardson, whose influence hadbeen very extensive in Germany. Even such a recluse meta physician as Kant had loved to read of the sorrows of Pamela 'and Clarissa Harlowe.' Many of the enthusiastic admirers ofWerther ' were readers who thought Ossian a greater poet than Homer. A dreamy sentimentality prevailed, and Goethe sympathised with the feeling. The epidemic was spread, but was notcreated, by Goethe's romance. It was a dream of his youth67XVI .] WERTHER: 2396>26-798osedn thea morbid dream . Schopenhauer, the arch cynic, regrets that Goethe employed his genius so often to write of love, but admits that the topic is hardly to be avoided; for, says he gravely, ' itwill intrude itself everywhere, disturbing the plans of statesmen,and the meditations of philosophers .' Wolfram von Eschenbach,in his Titurel,' had long before made the same apology, but in afar more poetical style.It must be admitted, however, that the tendency of Goethe'searliest romance was enervating, and he was soon convinced ofhis error. He then wrote his Triumph of Sentimentality' asà satirical antidote to Werther; ' but the medicine had no greateffect. The romance had been recommended, not only by itspurport, but also by its excellent style, of which one proof is thefacility with which it may be translated into French.It is hardly necessary to add that. Werther ' was followed by å crowd of iinitations barely worth mentioning. Among them the tedious romance of " Siegwart ' by JOHANN MARTIN MILLER,might be referred to as one that enjoyed a remarkable popularity.We notice a few other inferior writers of fiction in these times,because their productions serve to show by contrast the merits of Goethe and Schiller, whose best works were written in defiance of the degraded taste that prevailed in their days. We cannot fairly estimate such works as ' Iphigenia ' and ' Wilhelm Tell,' if we know little or nothing of the lower poetical literature that found numerous admirers, from the days of Klinger and Lenz to the times when Iffland and Kotzebue had possession of the German stage.Goethe's young cotemporaries belonged to two classes — the men of the Göttingen School (the ' Hainbund ' ), and the originals ,'already generally described . It is among the latter that we findthe more prominent characteristics of the imaginative literature ofage . Its worst errors may be sufficiently indicated by a briefreference to the writings of WILHELM HEINSE (1749–1803), who in his youth was patronised by father Gleim, and afterwards was an imitator of Wieland. It is enough to mention his romance of Ardinghello and the Fortunate Islanda ' as a specimen of debased fiction, of which the contents are as impure as the treatment is unartistic. The less offensive parts of the book consist of some dreamy attempts to describe works of art. To pass over all the worst parts of the story - its sentimentality on the subject ofotsoflav66coloauseitਦਾਕੇ3 ofthe6f an inn ihin hisgrareofroreguccathece wasther at leasiesuencebutclusemeisoof 'Pamels'admireasoferpoetthisoethe synaps,butwassoofhis sous240 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [Сн.6friendship may be noticed as one of the errors from which even the early writings of Goethe are comparatively free. There is nothing real and manly in Heinse's notions of friendship, and hislanguage is so full of bad taste that it can hardly be quoted. This is the style in which he represents the sudden formation of an everlasting bond of friendship’'-' he sprang up from his chair soviolently that the glasses were knocked off the table, as he exclaimed; “ Oh happy, singular, wonderful coincidence! so young,so handsome, and so full of good sense and experience , we mustbe friends for evermore! nothing shall part us — darling of mysoul! " ,When we turn to notice another prevalent fault - the taste for such violent, unartistic writing as is now called " sensational 'we see at once, the distance existing between Goethe and hisyoung cotemporaries, the dramatic authors, Lenz and Klinger.About the time when he was writing ' Götz von Berlichingen ,'Goethe became acquainted with these sensational playwrights.They had read Shakspere, and had been carried away by the vehemence of his dramatic power, but had learned nothing of the art by which that power was controlled . The result was that they wrote some deplorable dramas, which, however, found ad mirers . ,JOHANN REINHOLD LENZ, born in 1750, studied at Königsberg,and was for some time employed as a private tutor before he cameto Weimar. There he made himself noticeable for his defiance ofthe conventions of polite society, and was soon compelled to leave the town. He afterwards lived at Zürich and in Russia, wasafflicted with insanity, and died in very miserable circumstancesin 1792. In his dramas — such as ' Der Hofmeister ,' and ` Die Soldaten ' (1774–76 ) -he mingled comedy with tragedy, and treated with an equal contempt the rules of art, and those of decency. His cotemporary FRIEDRICH MAXIMILIAN VON KLINGER,born in 1752, was a far stronger man in intellect and character, and bis worst personal eccentricity, during youth, seems to have beenhis dislike of a complete suit of clothes. But this is only what was said by Wieland who was the enemy of all men of Klinger'sschool. After visiting Weimar, where Goethe treated himkindly , Klinger was engaged for some time in writing for the Leipzig theatre. His dramas ' Sturm und Drang,' ' Die Zwillinge,• Konradin ,' ' Der Günstling ' and others are, with regard to their>6XVII.] KLINGER . 241.aoffences against good taste, worse than his didactic romancesthough these are also destitute of moderation and sobriety. His purport in most of his prose - fictions is severely moral; but he thinks it necessary to teach ethics by exposing crimes and miseries in all their bare deformity, and by the use of unchastened language,such as we find in ' Faust's Life, Actions and Doom. ' Klinger'sbest romance — the Man of the World, and the Poet ’ (1798 ) -- ismorose and misanthropic in its tone, but contains useful warnings for idle dreamers. In his ' Meditations and Thoughts on theWorld and on Literature (1802), he gives his severe notions on ethics in a style legs tedious than that of his romances. Of theseit will be enough to notice very briefly one - Faust ' - as aspecimen of the taste for demonology prevalent in Klinger's day,When Faust is summoned to his doom, he defies the arch enemy in words go daring that, says Klinger: ' never since Pandemonium was founded, was there such a silence as now reigned throughout the abodes of everlasting lamentation! ' In short, Faust frightened all the demons. In another passage, when the tempter appears inhis true form before his victim , the scene is thus described: ' Satantowers up to a gigantic height; his eyes glow like thunder - clouds from which the beams of the setting sun are reflected; hisbreathings are like the sighings of a tempest throughchasms, when the crust of the earth is burst open; the earth groans beneath hisfeet, and his hair, through which a storm is raving, floats around his head like the tail of a threatening comet! ' Another of the young men classed with the originals ,' the painter, FRIEDRICH MÜLLER (1750–1823) treated the same subject in his Faust ' buthardly with such energy as Klinger displayed . In Genoveva ,' adrama, and in several of his ballads and idylls, Müller wrote in anatural and popular style, and , in some respects, anticipated the tendencies of the Romantic School in poetical literature.FRIEDRICH DANIEL SCHUBART, born in 1739, may be mentioned here; for though he was not personally associated with the writersabore named , his characteristics belong mostly to the time of Sturm und Drang. He was a Suabian schoolmaster, and a man of versatile abilities. At one time he supported himself as ateacher of music, then as a public reciter of poetry, and lastly ,As the editor of a newspaper die Deutsche Chronik, notorious for its audacity. Writers of Schubart's biography hare described him ,on one side, as a dissolute man, on the other, as a patriot. He hadR242 OUTLINES OF . GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.good talents for music and poetical declamation and was often well paid for his services; buthe had everywhere the misfortune of finding or making enemies. He was expelled from his place as organist at Ludwigsburg for writing a parody on the litany. After that he was patronised at Mannheim , but soon made himself unwelcomethere, and his usual bad fortune haunted him when he went to München. Then he started the German Chronicle'at Augsburg,where he had a brilliant success as a reciter of poetry. Again hemade enemies, and was driven away to Ulm, where he continued to publish his paper. Having given offence to the Duke ofWürtemberg, the editor of the chronicle was enticed into thedomains of that ruler and there was sentenced, without any formof trial, to suffer ten years' imprisonment. In his own account of this transaction he wrote, with some pathos, of his separation from his family; but he forgot to confess that he had been a careless husband and father. The imprisonment was a most despotic act;but it should be added that Schubart's faithful wife and his family ·were better cared for while he was kept in confinement than theyhad been sometimes when he was at liberty to provide for their wants. After his release, he returned to his old habits of dissipation, and died in 1791. In literature he partly represents a taste for the grotesque and horrible, expressed in ballads beginning with such lines as:

• See you the blood - stain on the wall? '

or,Ha! here's one bone and here's another! '6Goethe, in his grotesque ballad, ' the Skeletons' Dance ,' showed that, if he chose, he could excel Schubart in this sensationalstyle:• Then ah! what a dance in the churchyard lone!And oh! what a clatter of bone upon bone. 'Schubart's poem, entitled ' the Vault of the Princes ' was generally admired in his day. A few verses may serve to show anotherliterary trait of the times, declamation on the wickedness of rulingfamilies:• And here they lie! these ashes of proud princes,Once clad in bright array;Here lie their bones — all in the dismal glimmer Of the pale dying day.XVII.] THE HAINBUND .' 243And their old coffins in the vault are gleamingLike rotten timber, side by side;And silver family -shields are faintly shining -Their last display of pride.Oh, wake them not the scourges of their race,Earth has for them no room!Soon , soon cnough will over them be rattling The thunders of their doom .'àThough their offences against good taste, morals and rules of art were hardly pardonable, the sensational poets, already sooften referred to, were progressive in some of their innovations,and an excuse may be found for their extravagance when it is contrasted with the tameness of the so - called poetry of theHainbund .' This union, the latest of formal associations of literarymen in the times of Klopstock, was formed by several youngstudents of Göttingen, and in a manner suited to their sentimentaltaste. They were assembled one evening, near a clump of oaktrees in a field , while the moon was shining clearly. Here theyagreed together to form a school for the culture of patriotic poetry ,and pledged themselves to act honestly towards each other in theirexchanges of criticism . Their meeting ended with the ceremony of crowning themselves with oak - leaves. In nationality theyendeavoured to make themselves worthy followers of Klopstock. Onthe anniversary of his birthday (1773) they assembled to honourtheir master, and on the same occasion , they burned Wieland'sportrait and some of his writings. Both the ‘ Hainbund ' men andthe men of Sturm und Drang disliked Wieland; the former, becausehe had introduced a foreign and licentious taste; the latter, becausehe cared for rules of art and had common - sense enough to knowthat Klinger was not a second Shakspere. On the whole, theGöttingen men of the ' Hainbund ' were conservatives in poetry ,and their representative, Voss, wrote bitterly against all the inno vations of the original geniuses and against those of their successors,the Romantic School, But the ' Hainbund ' produced no greatpoets. Bürger, the most powerful of the men associated with the union, was not, strictly speaking, one of its members. Withregard to his cultivation of a popular style in ballads, he might bereckoned among Herder's disciples, while in other respects, he wasassociated with the sensational school.GOTTFRIED AUGUST BÜRGER, born on the first day of 1748,R2244 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.6studied at Halle and Göttingen, and, during his youth , was attracted by the charms of English poetry; especially by Shak spere's plays and Percy's ballads. Of the latter he translatedseveral, but deviated considerably from their simplicity, in order to suit a taste for so - called poetic diction. Bürger's practical life was irregular and unhappy. However great his sins might have been, he was severely punished in his third marriage. A sentimental and frivolous woman pretended to be fascinated by some of his poems, and wrote to him in verse, offering her services as amother to his three children . He was weak enough to accept theoffer, but he soon bitterly repented. This third wife made himwretched for two years and then left him, about the time when hisliterary reputation was attacked by the severest criticism everwritten by Schiller. There was only one consolation left forBürger - bis death , which took place in 1794. It was a miserable spectacle to see the woman who had embittered his last fouryears, when, after his decease, she travelled about the country andmade small profits by reciting his ballads with affected pathos.Bürger had great merits of style and versification . His wild ,spectral ballad of ' Leonora ' was rapidly spread through Germany and soon translated into several languages. An English versionwas Sir Walter Scott's first publication. Other ballads, such as * Lenardo and Blandine ' and ' the Pastor's Daughter of Tauben hain ' were generally admired for their graphic and popular style,though in some respects they were severely criticised. Several of Bürger's songs are good, and his sonnets are excellent. The opinions of critics have been divided respecting the poet's general merits. Those who have praised him highly have spoken chiefly of his best ballads and of a few of bis lyrical poems, while they have studied rather the style than the purport of his poetical works. Others, who have viewed his poems as a whole, and have had regard to their purport, as well as to their fluent versification ,have censured the poet for his want of refinement, and for such passages of inflation or bad taste as are found in his Ritter Karl von Eichenhorst, Frau Schnips, the Rape of Europa,' and eren in one of his prettiest lyrical poems, ' the Hamlet.' But however critics may differ on the general merits of Bürger, they must agree in praising his melodious versification which, though it has the characteristics of ease and simplicity, was the result of careful study. Klopstock, in his old age, when talking with Wordsworth ,96XVII.) VOSS. 2456expressed his belief that Bürger was & more genuine poet than either Goethe or Schiller. This strange judgment was pronouncedin 1798, when Schiller had published his finest ballads.JOHANN HEINRICH Voss ( 1751-1826) the best schular among the men of the . Hainbund ,' was far more respectable as a trans lator of Homer than as an original poet. He wrote in tedioushexameter verses long idyll-epic called “ Luise ' (1784), whichsuggested to Goethe the form of his Hermann and Dorothea .'In other respects, these two poems should hardly be named on onepage. It has been absurdly said that the notion of domestic comfort ' is peculiarly English, but the whole purport of one of the idylls of Voss is to espatiate on the snug and southing circun stances of a country parson . Voss was a great enemy of allromance and mysticism, and admired a clear, didactic tendency,such as is well adapted for catechisms and reading - books in elementary schocls. He was an industrious man of highly respect able character and scholarship, but was intensely prosaic, and avoided, not only everything that could be called fantastic andunreal, but almost every thought that would rise above the levelof commonplace. His rural epic • Luise,' is divided into threeidylls:—in the first, a walk through a wood is described; then the pastor of Grünau-the heroine's father - joins his family in apic -nic party on the bank of a stream , and, when every minute incident of the excursion has been tediously described, all the insipid characters return to the vicarage. The second idyll is hardly more lively, for here a young man named Walter (of whomwe know nothing more than that he is betrothed to Luise) pays &visit to the old parson of Grünau and finds Luise fast asleep. In the third idyll Walter and Luise are married . No reason what ever is assigned why the reader should feel sympathy with any of the characters introduced , for they are hardly distinguished bymore than their names, and they all talk the same commonplaces.Voss was proud of this idyll-epic, and preferred his own creation,' Luise,' to Goethe's heroine, ‘ Dorothea. ' They may say whatthey please in favour of Dorothea, ' said Voss, she is not my Luise ,' a statement afterwards universally accepted , though not in the sense the author intended . Voss was the representative of a class of versifiers, including such names as Neuffer, Kosegarten and Schmidt, whose chief characteristic was their extreme home liness. Take away all the poetry, humour and sentiment from

6 66246 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ C ..6&6some passages of Goldsmith's ' Deserted Village' and the “ Vicar of Wakefield ,' and leave only some descriptions of homely articles of furniture, and the result might be something like the idyllswritten by Voss. As they must be ranked thus low in art, it is pleasant to say anything in favour of their moral purport. They express contentment in circumstances of moderate prosperity, and such natural piety as is likely to be fostered by a general sense ofcomfort.The names of a few other associates of the ' Hainbund ' might be mentioned here, but it is enough to say that they bardly rose abovemediocrity. There might be found one or two exceptions to thisstatement. JOHANN ANTON LEISEWITZ ( 1752-1806 ) wrote onetragedy, Julius von Tarent, which was praised by Lessing andcontained some passages of powerful pathos. MATTHIAS CLAUDIUS,( 1740–1815 ) known also byhis pseudonym Asmus, ' wrote several good lyrics expressive of simple pious feelings, such as are foundin his ' Evening Hymn ' and his ' Peasant's Evening Song. ' His Rheinweinlicd is national and popular.Enough has been said of inferior poetical writers to indicate the literary tendencies of the times when Goethe was educating him self as a poet. A fow years passed away, and the author of ' Götz 'and the Sorrows of Werther ' had left far behind him the wildnature- worship of his youth, and had produced such true works of art as Iphigenia,' ' Egmont," " Tasso,' as well as some parts of • Taust ' and many beautiful lyrical poems and ballads. Before we attempt to give an account of this second period in Goethe's literary biography, it may be well to notice the works of a fewprose-writers belonging to the earlier part of the period 1770-1830 .Among writers of harmless and amusing fictions JOHANN MUSæus(1735–87 ), the author of many stories founded on old popular legends may be mentioned with some praise of his lively and fluent style, though his best work, a series of Fairy Tales, has been cast into the shade by the later collections of old popular myths, edited,as Kinder - und Hausmärchen, by the brothers Grimm . On the ground that harmless fairy tales are better than misrepresentatious of real life, we may leave unnamed many empty novels and wild romances containing neither truth nor poetry. A romance writtenin the form of Travels in the South of France ’ by MORITZ AUGUST VON THÜMMEL ( 1738-1817 ) was distinguished from the crowd by its lively style, and by some true observations of life in France,6XVII.) PROSE WRITERS. 24766but it was partly based on Wieland's notions of morals and contained some imitations of Sterne's " Sentimental Journey.'Another imitator of Sterne was TIEODOR GOTTLIEB VON HIPPEL( 1741-96 ), the writer of some books partly narrative and auto biographical but mostly didactic, in which there is no want of versatile talent, though order and clearness of arrangement areutterly neglected . If we may trust Hippel's biographers, his life was a series of contradictions and in its want of logical sequencewas like his writings. To gain the means of supporting himself and a wife, he studied law , and with such industry and success that he gained what might be called wealth in his times, but instead of marrying, as he had intended, he contented himself with writing a book ' On Matrimony ,' in which he laid down rules for the conduct of husbands and wives. It is noticeable as being oneof the earliest arguments in favour of the emancipation of women.'Imitation of Sterne is found merely in the erratic form of Hippel'sworks. His best thoughts were borrowed from Kant, whose lectures he had attended. The eccentricity of Sterne was moreclosely imitated in . Tobias Knaut, ' a strange romance, at one timefalsely ascribed to Wieland, who did however write a favourablereview of it. The author, JOHANN KARL WEZEL, who wrote several other fictions and some plays, was afflicted , in 1786, with a delusion of the most extraordinary nature. He placed over aseries of his own works in his library the inscription Opera Dei Wezelii, retired from society into profound solitude, and remained in this state of mind until his death, which took place in 1819.It was characteristic of the times that one of Wezel's works wasascribed to Goethe.Many examples might be quoted from the novelists and romance writers, of morbid thought and sentiment, of license supposing itself to be liberty, and of extravagance mistaken for a proof of genius. The chief characteristic of numerous productions in prose fiction was their total want of union with practical life and its realities. The words sobriety and moderation, when applied toliterature, were in these times regarded as severe terms of reproach .One of the most extravagant and absurd fictions, the Adventures of Baron Münchhausen ,' may be named here, because its authorship has been falsely ascribed to the poet Bürger. The true author,Rudolf Erich Raspe ( 1737–94) was a librarian who, after com mitting a robbery at Cassel, escaped in 1775 to London, where he6248 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ Ch .7wrote in English, beside other books, the above -named extravaganza, which was translated into German by Bürger in 1787.In leaving the department of prose- fiction and passing to that of didactic prose, we may mention a narrative writer whose works,though partly imaginative, were doubtless founded on realities.JOHANN HEINRICH JUNG, otherwise known as STILLING, the son of a poor tailor and schoolmaster, was born in 1740. After enduring many privations, he went to Strassburg, where he becameacquainted with Goethe, from whom he probably received some help in the authorship of the book entitled ' Heinrich Stilling's Youth .' It was so successful that it was soon followed by severalother stories of the same class, all mostly founded on the earlyexperiences of the writer. There may be some doubt where fact ends and fiction begins in these stories, but the individuality of several of the characters introduced leaves no doubt of theirreality. The village pastor who studies alchemy, and becomesmelancholy in his old age; his opposite, the surly and proud parson who keeps a ferocious dog, and calls his parishioners clodhoppers and boors; Johann Stilling, the genius of the family,who ponders long on the quadrature of the circle, and grandfather Stilling, who, in extreme old age, climbs cherry - trees and helps to thatch cottages; these are no literary inventions, but true recollections of the author's youthful days. The trust in Divine Providence so often expressed in the stories of the Stilling Familywas the chief trait in the author's own character. His misfortunesserved only to confirm his faith . When his failures in some otherendeavours had led him to study ophthalmic surgery and when he became celebrated for his successes in operating for cataract, he felt sure that Heaven had led him to his choice of a profession.Though a Pietist, he was neither narrow nor bigoted. With regard to both his breadth of sympathy and his childlike credulity,he might be classed with another of Goethe's early friends, theeccentric mystic, pietist, gossip, preacher, patriot and physiognomist, Lavater.JOHANN KASPAR LAVATER, born in 1741 at Zürich, was an enthusiastic preacher, who gained his literary reputation chiefly by his treatise on the supposed science of ' Physiognomy.' His.lively and declamatory style and his firm belief in his own skill in detecting the characters of men made his book amusing. As theshrewd satirist Lichtenberg said, ' Lavater could find more senseXVII.] LAVATER . 2496in the noses of several authors than the public could find in all their books. ' He was as hardy in his assertions as in fulfilling hisduties as a pastor and a patriot. When Zürich was occupied by French troops, Lavater preached boldly against the tyranny of theDirectory and published the substance of his discourses. He was engaged in reproving the violence of the soldiery in the streets of that town, in 1799, when he was shot by a French grenadier.The patriot's sufferings were severe, and he was not released by death until 1801. It was characteristic of the times that Lavater,on account of his enthusiastic piety, was suspected of being associated with the Jesuits. No charge could be more absurd . His errors belonged to the head and not to the heart. He wasexceedingly credulous and was fond of gossip. His religious works,of which an indescribable treatise called ' Pontius Pilate ' is thechief, are written in a fluent but incoherent style. Perhaps themost amusing of all his books is bis (so- called) ' Private Diary,'published in 1772, full of confessions of such sins as wasting his time on light literature and in gossiping, followed , here and there,by such a reflection as, ' Do you call this living for eternity?!Lavater was acquainted with almost all the leading literary men of his times, except Lessing , and loved to give aid and encourage ment to every good movement. He was, in short, a fanaticutterly destitute of the passion of hatred, and , if only on thataccount, would deserve to be remembered. This pious man was made a butt of ridicule by a clever and humorous writer, alreadynamed, GEORGE LICHTENBERG (1742–19) author of a commentary on the works of our great painter Hogarth. Lichtenberg's chiefstudies were scientific, and his light and fragmentary essays were merely his recreations. ' I once lived,' he says, “ in a house whereone of the windows looked into a narrow shady lane running fromone street to another. There I noticed that passengers, on stepping out of the strong daylight of the street into the dusky little thoroughfare, would suddenly change their expression. The manwho had been smiling in the street would look grave when be stepped into the shade of the lane, or the demure tradesman wouldsmile slyly, as if he had just gained the advantage in a bargain .Here was a puzzle for Lavater. Would he trust the face in thestreet or the face in the lane? ' This may serve as a specimen ofthe satire levelled agninst Lavater's new science of physiognomy.He certainly deserved ridicule, for nothing could be more presumpa250 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH .tuous and arbitrary than many of his assertions; for example, the following on the features of Jesuits:Let a Jesuit disguise himself as he may , a skilful physiognomist will easily detect him by three sigus - the forehead, the nose, and the chin .The first is generally boldy convex and not angular, but rather capacious;the nose is commonly large, more or less Roman, and has a strong cartilage;the chin is rounded and prominent. .. It is a remarkable fact thatamong so many Jesuits who are men of great erudition, you will hardly find one truly philosophical head..Among the writers of criticism who were associated with Herderand Goethe two may be mentioned, with regard rather to their personal influence than to the value of their writings. JOHANNGEORG SCHLOSSER, born in 1739, the friend and brother - in - law ofGoethe, edited a critical journal published at Frankfort ( in 1772and afterwards) to which Herder and Goethe were contributors.JOHANN HEINRICH MERCK, born in 1741, maintained an extensivecorrespondence with the chief literary men of his times, and exercised the influence of a teacher over his junior friend Goethe, onwhom he impressed one maxim, never forgotten — that a man ofgenius needs education. Merck was very unfortunate in hisdomestic and financial affairs in the later years of his life, and perished by his own hand in 1791.Of the merits of the greatest among didactic authors in these times, IMMANUEL KANT, born in 1724 at Königsberg, no adequateestimate can be given in these outlines of general literature. His metaphysical doctrines belong to a closely connected system of reasonings begun by Hume and ended, as some writers have said,by Hegel. By the publication of his lectures on morals and æsthetics, Kunt made a great impression on the general literature of the decennium following 1781. In opposition to the doctrine that would base all morality upon calculations of utility, he asserted the authoritative character of the moral principle in theconscience of man . It is, as he contended as superior to all ourlikings and our interests, as the law that rules the solar system issuperior to the masses which it governs. " Two things,' said Kant,fill the soul with wonder and reverence, increasing evermore as Imeditate more closely upon them; the starry heavens above me,and the moral law within me. ' He goes on to argue, that if themoral law is authoritative, it implies the existence of a moral governor, and postulates the immortality of the soul and a future>6XVII.] KANT. 251state of rewards and punishments. Hence religion is inseparablyunited with ethics, and in the ratio of his own rise or fall as a moralagent, a man's faith in God must rise or fall. The substance of Kant's ethical doctrine may be found in the sermons of JosephButler, Bishop of Durham. Wordsworth, in his sublime ' Ode to Duty ,' had probably some recollection of the passage above quoted when he wrote the lines:Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,And the most ancient heavens through Thee are fresh and strong.6 6The didactic writings of Kant served to refute some popular arguments in favour of natural theology which had been employed by Reimarus and other authors of the rationalistic school. Man cannot, either by the logic of his own understanding, or by his searchings throughout nature, ' find out God, ' said Kant, as the writer of the book of Job bad said in old times. This doctrine was entirely opposite to the teaching of many rationalists and natural tbeologians. They had taught that clear, religious know ledge might be obtained by a study of nature, and that duty was only a name for self - interest well understood . Hence Kant'sethical teaching excited in Berlin and elsewhere the controversy to which we have already referred . Of his three chief works;the Critique of Pure Reason ' ( 1781), the Critique of Practical Reason ' (1787), and the Critique of the Faculty of Judgment'(1790), the last is, perhaps, the best example of his style. Kant's life was that of a retired thinker, but his principles were not ascetic. ' Act so that men might induce from your example auniversal rule of action ,' is the summary of his ethics. The teacher who laid down that law was eminently truthful and honourable in his own practical life, and was as remarkable for his content ment. He was never married , and hardly ever left his native town, where he possessed a small house and a garden in a quiet street. He had no large library, though he was a very extensivereader, especially in works of travels and geography. His patience could grapple with the long novels of Richardson, and he admired Rousseau's writings. After a life of almost uninterrupted health and quietude, Kant died in his native place, February 12, 1804.6a252 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [Сн.CHAPTER XVIII.SEVENTH PERIOD . - 1770-1830 .EGMONT'L'IPHIGEXIA ' -- ' TASSO ' HERMANN AND DOROTHEA .'Not soon will the world see again such a union of poetry andart with practical life as existed during the half-century of Goethe's residence at Weimar. The town and its neighbourhood were improved and beautified; abuses in the administration of law were removed, and several good plans of political reform were converted into facts; men of genius and learning were saved from their hard struggle for bread; the university of Jena was made great and celebrated, and the poverty left by war was relieved. Then art and literature appeared in their true place, not A3 substitutes for work , but as its reward, and as attendants of hours of leisure afforded by a faithful fulfilment of duties.GOETHE had already obtained a wide reputation when he accepted, in 1775, from the young prince KARL August of Saxe Weimar an invitation to his court, where, in the following year,he was appointed Counsellor of the Embassy, with a seat and avote in the privy council. Thus began a friendship which endured for fifty years. Weimar, with its pleasant valley of the Ilm, itspark and garden at Belvedere, and its rural retreat at Ilmenau, was acharming residence for a poet who loved both work and repose.Here, placed in independent circumstances, he could develope his plan of writing only for his own satisfaction and of waiting patiently for the world's expression of its judgment. How much beth Goethe and Schiller owed to the retreat and quietude they enjoyedat Weimar can hardly be estimated. The former, though no servile courtier, valued highly these advantages of his position. " What has made Germany great,' he says, “ but the culture which is spread through the whole country in such a marvellous manner and perXVIII.) ' EGMONT ' 2536vades all parts of the realm? And does not this culture emanate from the numerous courts which grant it support and patronage? 'There are many Germans who would dissent from Goethe's conclusions. They must, however, admit that the best works ofGoethe and Schiller were not, at first, patronised by the German people, but were written in defiance of a popular taste which was satisfied with the dramatic writings of Kotzebue and Iffland, to say nothing of ' Rinaldo Rinaldini' and the rest of the deplorable robber -romances ' of the time.Soon after he had removed to Weimar, Goethe began to write the drama of Egmont,' founded on passages in the history of the revolt of the Netherlands. It has, in some parts, strong popularand political interest, but its chief attraction for many readers is in the scenes where Egmont appears with the heroine Clärchen.These must be simply described as charming, and were evidently suggested by the poet's own experience. The defect of the dramais that Clärchen calls the attention of the reader away from the idea of liberty to which the hero's life is sacrificed. A conciliation of the two chief motives of the play takes place, however, in the last scene, where Clärchen appears as the Spirit of Liberty and arrayed in all the charms of youth and beauty; but the mode in which this is effected is, as Schiller observed, more suitable for anopera than for a tragedy. Egmont, sentenced to death, falls intoa deep sleep in the dungeon. In his dream , the walls expand, the place is filled with radiance, and the brave and beautiful maiden appears, to cheer the prisoner with a prophecy that, by his death,he shall win freedom for his native land . This dream , externallyrepresented as a vision, is seen by the spectators, at the same time when it appears to the sleeper. In spite of its operatic conclusion ,• Egmont ' is one of the most popular of the poet's dramaticwritings.In the course of rather more than ten years after he began to write ' Egmont , Goethe produced, beside comedies, operettas,lyrical poems and ballads, the greater part of the didactic romance Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, and the dramas " Iphigenia ' and“ Tasso .' Among numerous proofs of the poet's breadth of sympathy, hardly any can be found more remarkable, than that he published the Sorrowsof Werther'in 1774 and wrote ' Iphigenia '( in prose ), in 1779. It was first acted in the Duke's privatetheatre at Weimar; Goethe took the part of Orestes, and Thoas254 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Ch.and Pylades were respectively represented by Von Knebel and the Duke Karl August. The drama was not completed in verse until 1786 , when the poet was travelling in Italy.Apart from all considerations of popularity or fitness for then trical representation, ' Iphigenia 'may be described as the author's most artistic drama. All its parts are closely united, its motives are clearly developed, and one consistent tone of dignity and repose prevails from the beginning to the end. But readers whoexpect stirring incidents and loud passion in a play may find thecoldness of Greek sculpture , as well as its repose, in this modern antique drama. The plot chosen by Euripides in treating the same subject is considerably modified by Goethe. He does notmake Orestes the bearer of tho statue of Diana from Tauris toDelphi, for this would bave required supernatural agency . Orestes comes to liberate his own sister and succeeds by means of hertruthfulness and magnanimity. The heroine is a woman of almost perfect character. At one moment, she is tempted to deceive her friend, King Thoas; but she soon displays the truth and thegratitude that belongto her character, and this noble self-assertion at first threatening to bring ruin on herself and her brother - leadsto the conciliation with which the drama concludes.To those who demand vigorous action arising from external causes, ' Iphigenia ' must seem too quiet. The thoughts andemotions of the heroine in exile take the place of action, andare expressed rather with epic repose than with dramatic energy.As the solitary priestess of Diana, she mourns, but utters no loud lamentation . Her first soliloquy expresses the repose ofgrief and resignation, by which the whole of the drama is pervaded:Into your shadows, 'neath your tremulous boughs,Old consecrated grove!—from ancient timesMade sacred to the goddess whom I serve I come, not fearless, but as if to -day I stepp'd, for the first time, into this gloom;My soul is still an exile in the land Where, through long years, and far from all I love,A will above mine own hath bound me fast.She deplores her destiny, as one separated from all whom sheloves, and stands, lonely, on the sea -shore, where only the lowroar of the tide gives a reply to her sighs. ' I would not argueXVIII.]6TASSO 255with the gods,' she says, when tempted to envy the power and theliberty enjoyed by man:Within the state and on the battle - fieldHe rules, and far from home, can aid himself;Possession cheers him , victory crowns his strife,Or death for him is made the way to fameWith such a destiny she contrasts her own long sufferings, and her words rise in energy, but still her grief is dignified, even when she addresses to Diana the prayer:Deliver me, whom thou hast saved from death ,Now from this second death-my lonely life!666The self - control blended with grief expressed in these openingsentences, governs the whole progress of the drama and lends toits beautiful conclusion.In 1789 · Iphigenin’ was followed by another psychological drama, Tasso,' at first written in prose (1780–81), and completed in iambic verse in 1789, when the poet was forty years old. Its general purport was the extreme opposite of all that had been believed in the wild days of Sturm und Drang. " Tasso ' represents the important truth, that the highest genius wants a moral as well as an intellectual education. A hundred times, ' says Goethe, ' I have heard artists boast, that they owed everything to themselves, and I have been often provoked to reply, Yes, and the result is just what might have been expected. ” ' The centralcharacter of the drama, Tasso, represents enthusiasm and imagin ative genius, wanting education , in the highest sense of the word .The thoughts and feelings of the poet take the place of external incidents; in other words, the action of the drama is intellectual and emotional. This limits the interest of the work, but not sonarrowly as might be supposed. For the laws of moral education to which even genius must be obedient are general, and, therefore,are applicable to men who are neither poets nor artists.Tasso was twenty - two years old when he came to Ferrara, at the time of the duke's wedding -festival. Here Lucrezia and Leonora, the duke's sisters, treated the poet with great kindness,and encouraged him to devote himself to the completion of his epic poem . The patronage enjoyed by the poet excited the envy of inferior men, but their whisperings could not have hurt him, if256 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH,his own too -active imagination, excited by a suspicious temper,had not created for him foes who had no real existence. Afterthe completion of his epic, and during a visit to Rome, he yielded more and more to morbid suspicion , believing himself to be everywhere surrounded by enemies, or spies sent out by the Inquisition . Thus in the noon -day of his fame, dark clouds swept across his intellect, and the gloom grow deeper and deeper. On his return to Ferrara, after aimless wanderings in Mantua, Padua and Venice, he found himself, as he believed, treated with cold contempt. This so excited his anger that he spoke violently against the duke and his court, and, soon afterwards, was declared to be insane. He was placed in confinement in the hospital of St. Anna, where he remained seven years. Though he regainedthe use of his faculties and wrote sometimes calmly and well,during his imprisonment, the duke harshly refused to grant arelease until 1586, and then it came too late; the malady that might, perhaps, have yielded to a milder treatment had been made incurable. Tasso, after his release, wandered about, like a spectre,in Rome, Florence, Mantua, and Naples, nowhere finding a place that he could call his home, nowhere a friend in whom he could confide. When his majestic figure, with pale face and lustrous eyes, passed through the Italian towns, the people gazed upon him, and said, ' See, that is Tasso, ' He died in the convent of San Onofrio, in 1595.The story of the drama includes only one passage in the earlier life of Tasso at the court of Ferrara, & misunderstanding existingbetween the poet and Antonio, who represents a man of the world And a politician. The drama opens with a pleasing scene in the duke's garden, where his highness's sisters are making wreaths of flowers to crown the busts of Virgil and Ariosto. The duke joinsthem , and goon afterwards, Tasso enters, bringing the complete copy of his epic, 'Goffredo,' as it was entitled in 1675.aTasso gives the book to Alfonso .Alfonso. You bring me, Tasso, with this gift delight,And make this beauteous day a festival,At last, I have the poem in my hand And in a certain sense, may call it mine.Tasso. If you are satisfied the work is done;The whole belongs to you. When I regard The labour of the hand alone, ' tis mine;XVIII.] • TASSO 257But when I ask what gave my epic songAll that it has of inner worth and beauty,I see it clearly; ' twas bestowed by you.Though nature gave to me the power of song,How easily might contradicting fateHave hid from me the face of this fair world!The poverty of parents might have cast A dismal gloom apon my youthful soul,And if my lips had opened then to sing,A mournful elegy had issued forth In tones too well according with my fate.You saved me from the sorrows of my homeAnd freed my soul from care, that in full flow My song might pour forth all its melody;All that I have your bounty gave to me,And, like a heavenly genius, you delight In me to let the world behold yourself.Alfonso. The beauteous crown, the poet's meed, I see Here on the forehead of your ancestor;He points to Virgil's bust.Has chance, or some good genius placed it here?Methinks I hear old Virgil saying now:Why deck, with verdant coronals, the dead?My marble image is adorned enough.The living crown becomes the living poet.'Alfonso beckons his sister, who takes the crown from Virgil's bust, and approaches Tasso, who steps back .Leonora. Why hesitate? Whose hand bestows the crown?Tasso. How , after such a moment shall I live!Princess. You will allow me, Tasso, the delight To tell you , without words, all - all I think .He kneels down, while the Princess places the crown upon his head, and Leonora applauds.Tasso. Oh, take it off, ye gods! and, glorified,There let it hang, suspended in the heavens,High, inaccessible!-let all my life Be a continual aiming at that mark!At this moment of the poet's triumph , when the princess has crowned bim as her laureate, the statesman Antonio arrives at Ferrara, and, with coldness and caution , declines to share in the enthusiasm of the moment, but takes the opportunity of expressingan admiration of Ariosto . When Tasso contrasts his own character with that of the man of practical understanding, he feelstoo painfully his own inferiority. The princess, meanwhile, has resolved to unite Tasso and Antonio in firm friendship, and thepoet is ready to obey her wishes, though he is not patient enough8258 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ C # .to make use of the means required for winning the confidence of the calm and cautious politician. The secret of Tasso's failure is that he is not contented in his own realm of poetry. Genius for him is not, like virtue, its own reward, but is accompanied withan ambition to gain honours in society. This weakness is betrayedwhen, in the course of a conversation with the princess, he describes the impressions received on his first arrival at the court of Ferrara:An inexperienced youth, I hither came,Just at that time when bright festivitiesMade this Ferrara glory's central light.O what a spectacle I then beheld!A circle here was formed around the space Where knights in armour shone - a ring so bright The sun will never see the like again!The fairest ladies and the bravest menSat, all assembled, in that glorious ring.Then when the lists were opened, how the steeds Stamped! shields and helmets glittered in the sun,While piercingly the trumpet's blast went forth;Then lances cracked, and shields and helmets rang ,And whirling clouds of dust arose, to hideThe fallen hero and the victor's pride.O let the curtain fall upon a sceneThat makes me know my own obscurity!The princess speaks of her own recollections of that time, whichare well contrasted with Tasso's glowing description:That glorious festival I did not see;But in a lonely room, where died away The last faint echoes of all sounds ofjoy,I sat in pain, with many pensive thoughts,And, with broad wings, before me hovered thenThe form of Death, and covered from my sight The scenes of all the varied living world .By slow degrees, the dark cloud passed away,And once again I saw , as through a veil,The varied hues of life shine faintly out,And living forms about me gently moved .When the princess first advises Tasso to cultivate the friendshipof Antonio, the poet thus replies:Though all the gods assembled to bring gifts Around the cradle of this sapient man ,Alas! the Graces surely stayed away And he who has not their endearing giftsXVIII. )259 6• TASSO .'May a be a wise and prudent counsellor;But he can never be our boson - friend.After other expressions of the poet's intolerance and defect of sympathy, the princess warns him of the danger of yielding to amood of mind that will drive him into solitude:In this mood, Tasso, you will never find Companionship among your fellow -men .This way will lead you through the lonely woods,Through the still valleys of secluded thought,Wheremore and more, the mind falls out of tuneWith all the world around, and strives in vain To find within itself that golden timeWhich in the outward world is never found.Tasso. O what a word my Princess speaks to me!That golden time — ah! wbither has it fled?For which the heart so often yearns in vain!When o'er the cheerful earth the sons of menIn joyous companies with freedom strayed;When in the flowery field the ancient tree Shaded the shepherd and the shepherdess;When o'er the purest sands the water -nymphs Guided at will the clear and gentle rills;The harmless snake wound through the grass his way;The daring fawn, by the brave youth attacked,Fled to the wood, and every creature roaming,And every bird that carolled in the air,Proclaimed to men — Live freely as you please!'Princess. My friend, the Golden Age has passed away,And yet true souls can bring it back again ,Yea, to confess to you my firm belief,That golden time of which the poets singWas never more a truth than it is now.Or, if it ever was, ' twas only 80That it may always be restored again .Still close together true congenial souls,And share the joys of all this beauteous world .But let me slightly change your law , my friend,And let it be- Live truly , as you ought.'A common tradition tells us that Tasso's unhappiness arose from an affection inspired by the princess. The drama partly combines this romantic story with the true biography of the poet, but the princess is represented as addressing Tasso only as an intimate friend. Goethe doubtless remembered that she was no longer inher youth, when he represented her as speaking thus of a friendship superior to any passion::s 2260 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE, [ CH.Beauty is perishable: that alone You seem to honour; all that can endure Is dead for you, without that transient charm .Ifmen could only learn to know and prizeAll the dear treasury of love and truth The bosom of a woman can enfold:If true remembrance might renew past joys;If but your glance, which seems at times so keen ,Could pierce the veil that age or sickness casts O'er beauty; if you would but rest contented ,Then happy days might soon for us appearAnd we should celebrate our golden time.A bright world expands itself before the poet, who sees all things coloured by the radiance of his genius. Assured of the affectionate regard which the princess cherishes for him , he feels himself restored to confidence and good-will, and he is ready toembrace even his suspected foes. But though a splendid poet, he is still an uneducated man. He knows not how to make prudence the friend and supporter of genius. Whatever he does he must do as he writes poetry, by inspiration, disregarding the cold rules of actual life. He forgets that all men are not just now in the glow of enthusiasm which he feels after the completion of his poem andhis conversation with the princess. Determined to obey her wishes, he resolves to make an offer of friendship to Antonio. The politician receives the poet coldly, hesitates to return the offer of friendship, and refuses the hand stretched out. Tasso's feelings are outraged by this reception; and, after the exchange of some satirical remarks, the poet draws his sword, when the duke steps forward and prevents a duel.The princess repents of her plan of making a friendship between the statesman and the poet, and Antonio describes Tasso as an intolerant enthusiast: - At one time,' says the statesman, ' heforgets all around him and lives in the world of his own thoughts;at another, he would suddenly make all the world obedient to theimpulses of his own mind.' Tasso speaks as severely of the states man , whom he describes as a stiff pedagogue: ~ I hate, ' says the poet, ' the imperious tone with which he tells knowwell already.' In the sequel Tasso, suspecting that the duke and his sisters are in conspiracy with Antonio, resolves to leave Ferrara; his anger finds expression in declamation against his best friends, and confirms their belief that he has lost self - control. Heyou wbat youXVIII.] GOETHE AND POLITICS . 261thus consoles himself in the desolation in which , as he imagines,he is to be left for ever:One gift alone remains Nature bestowed on man the fount of tears,The cry of anguish, to relieve the heart,When more it cannot suffer; and to meShe gave, with all my sorrows, poetry,To tell the deepest fulness of my woe;And while in anguish other men are dumb,She gives me power to tell the grief I feel.6܂ ܐAt this moment, Antonio, coming forward, grasps the hand of Tasso, and with the sudden reconciliation the drama concludes.In writing these two dramas, ' Iphigenia ' and ' Tasso ,' the poetliberated himself from the errors of the first period in his development, and amended the crude defects of form which are foundin his first drama, ' Götz von Berlichingen .' This, however, with allits faults, was recommended by its national character, and it was a disappointment for many readers when Goethe selected antiqueand foreign themes.Critics who accuse Goethe of political indifference,' during thetime of the French Revolution, should remember the fact, that he endeavoured to understand it, though he could not be hopeful respecting its results. He was neither ' an apostle of liberty ,' nor a blind worshipper of rulers, but belonged to the third party, if wemay so name the men who held a position thus described byhimself: - I am no more a friend of the revolutionists than I amof such a king as Louis XV. I hate every violent overthrow ,because as much good is destroyed as is gained by it. I dislike those who achieve it, as well as those who give cause for it. 'In accordance with his habit of putting into some form , more or less poetical, all the events that were parts of his own experience,Goethe wrote several dramatic works having reference to the political movements of the age. In the Gross - Cophtha ( 1789 ) he exposed the corruption of the upper classes in France, and in the Citizen - General ' (1793) , he referred to the influence of the French Revolution on men of weak and imitative minds inGermany. An untinished drama entitled Die Aufgeregten (“ The Agitated ,' in a political sense), published in 1793, expressed the writer's belief that such an outburst of the lowest passions as had occurred in Paris could never have been made possible save by262 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Ch.a ... Revoprevious unjust government. That " play,' said Goethe, 'may be regarded, in some measure, as my political confession of faith at the time. ... It is true that I could be no friend to the FrenchRevolution, for its horrors were too near me and shocked me daily and hourly, whilst its beneficial results were not then to be disco vered . But I was as little a friend to arbitrary rule.lutions are utterly impossible as long as governments are constantly just and vigilant.‘ Eugenie, or the Natural Daughter ' ( 1801) —a drama founded on the memoirs of the Princess Stephanie de Bourbon -Conti, wasintended to form the first part of a trilogy - a circumstance that explains its slow progression and want of dramatic effect. Thewhole design, of which only a part was completed, would have included an exposition of the writer's views of the movement of 1789. The plan was left unfulfilled, says Madame de Staël, when it was found that the story of the princess was discredited; more probably, the reason was, that the poet was not in love with thesubject.In order to place several dramatic works in an unbroken series,we have deferred a notice of one of the poet's best productions.It is an epic - idyll, and with regard to its extent may be styled aminiature, but its interest is both general and national." HERMANN AND DOROTIEA ' ( 1796–7 ) is a poem in which asimple story of domestic but universal interest is united withnational events arising from the war of the French Revolution.These incidents are well placed in the background, and thereserve as dark shadows in a picture. The characters are few andclearly drawn, and one ruling thought, the triumph of love andcourage, is well developed throughout the story. Its foregroundscenery includes only a small rural town and its neighbourhood ,but in the background are - seen, in shade, bands of the retreatingFrench soldiery, who, on their way through the district of theUpper Rhine, plunder farm -houses and drive peasants from theirdwellings. A great historical event is thus connected with theplot, and gives both interest and importance to the story, while itsleading characters are worthy of such an association with nationalevents. For HERMANN, the hero, is honest and brave, though hischaracter is bardly defined before the time when he meetsDOROTHEA, the heroine, whose goodness is made more prominentthan her personal beauty, while her misfortunes develope virtues6XVIII.] * HERMANN AND DOROTHEA .' 263atruly heroic, yet womanlike. In mentioning one trait of her character, her courage, shown in slaying a marauding soldier, the poet was probably guided by a recollection of facts. This is oneexception to the rule otherwise observed well throughout thepoem, of keeping scenes of warfare in the background, and coveredby a cloud . Out of the darkness of that cloud the character ofthe heroine shines forth with the brightness of a rainbow ,The beauty of the style and the poetry of the idyll must be lost when it is reduced to a succinct analysis in prose, but this willconvey a better notion of the story than could be expressed by abstract criticism . We give therefore the following outlines ofthis epic in miniature.The harvest is ripe for the sickle in a fertile valley near the Rhine, where a band of emigrants, driven from their homes in the Upper Rhine district, are arriving. They are led by a venerable old man, and stay to rest themselves in a village a few miles distant from a little market- town. Among the leading men of this town the host of the Golden Lion ' is a prominent figure.He is sitting at the doorway of his house, in the market- place, and though grieved by the tale he has heard of the emigrants and their distresses, he solaces himself by thoughts of his own prosperity.' ' Tis rare fine harvest- weather,' he says to his wife; " we shall getin the wheat, I hope, as well as we secured the hay. There is not a cloud in the sky, and a soft wind is blowing. We shall begin reaping to - morrow . I never before saw the streetsand the market-place of our town so empty. Hardly fifty people seem to be left in the town, so many have gone, in the heat of theday, to see these emigrants from the Upper Rhine. Well, for my part, I will not move from my place to see their misery .' But the landlord is not destitute of sympathy; he has sent out his only son, Hermann, to carry food and clothing to the poor people. One of his neighbours, an apothecary, though a man of narrow sympathies, has been out to see the refugees, and now comes back to describe their wretched circumstances. He is an egotist, and soonbetrays himself, for he cannot tell the story without a prefatory reference to his own discomfort in seeing misery. This feeling isshared by the host. ' I am glad ,' he says, ' that I did not gomyself, for I cannot bear the sight of distress . The landlord, with his friends, the apothecary and the curate, refresh themselves with a flask of Rhine-wine, enjoyed in the shade of a cool back -parlour,6à264 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE [ CH. .where ' no flies intrude ’ (as mine host says ), and their talk is of the events of the times.When Hermann comes home, he tells his story of the pitiablecondition of the emigrants. ' On my way, ' he says, ' I overtook awaggon drawn by a yoke of oxen, and guided by a brave young maiden who came towards me and prayed for assistance, not for herself, but for a poor woman lying upon straw in the waggon ,and clasping an infant to her breast. I gave the maiden both foodand clothing, and , when she thanked me, she said, “ It is only in such misery as ours that we see clearly the hand of God directing good men to relieve the sufferings of the unfortunate . " ' The tale told by Hermann suggests timid thoughts to the apothecary,who is a snug bachelor. “ Happy ,' says he, ' is the man who, in these days of trouble, has neither wife nor children to care for!I am glad that I have already packed away the most valuable part of my property. No one runs away from danger so easily as a single man. Against this timid sentiment Hermann makes an earnest protest. ' I do not agree with you, ' he says, ' for many agood maiden, in these days, needs a protecting husband. How can a man live and think only of himself? ' This bold speech gives pleasure to the good hostess of the Golden Lion ,' who tells the story of her own marriage in times of pecuniary difficulty. In the conversation that follows, it appears that the host, like a man who has risen in the world and wishes his son to rise higher, hascherished a hope that Hermann may select as a wife the daughter of the wealthiest tradesman in the town. “ Yes, Hermann,' says the father, you will be a comfort to my old age,if you bring mea daughter - in - law from a certain house, not far off; you know it well. 'Unhappily, the father and the son have never been able toagree on the merits of this project. The son frankly confesses thathe fails to appreciate the advantages of the proposed union, and speaks with disrespect of the showy education of the rich tradesman's daughters. This arouses the father's despotism , and theconversation soon becomes so unpleasant that Hermann leaves the house. " Go, ' says the landlord, ' headstrong as you are. Go andsee to the farm - yard, for which, by the bye, I do not thank you.But think not to bring here any low country maiden for mydaughter- in - law! I will have a respectable daughter, one who can play the pianoforte, and I will have all such respectable company66XVIII.] HERMANN AND DOROTHEA .' 26586>as my neighbour has on Sundays; mind that! " When Hermannhas gone out the father's temper becomes cooler, and he solaceshimself by preaching to his friends on the important duty of constantly studying how to rise in the world. What mustbecome of a house, or of a town,' he says, ' if each generation doesnot try to make improvements on the old? ' Then follow severeremarks on the son's want of laudable ambition, and these callinto exercise the eloquence of the hostess, wbo bravely defendsthe character of her son; – I will not have my Hermann abused,she says, ' I know he has a good heart, and that he will rise to bean honourable man and a pattern for our townspeople.' So saying,she leaves her husband to continue his long discourse on respectability,' and goes to find her son and solace him with kindwords.The conversation continues in the cool back - parlour, and theapothecary, studious to avoid anything that might offend, ventures,nevertheless, to say something in favour of moderating ambition .Ho prefers repose to ' respectability ,' and speaks with terror ofincreasingly expensive habits. ' In old - fashioned times ,' he says,' my pleasure - garden was talked of all through the neighbourhood;every stranger stayed to look through the palisades at the twostone figures and the painted dwarfs there. My grotto, too , whereI often took my coffee, was greatly admired, for I had decoratedthe walls with artistically arranged shells, corals and spars; butwho cares for such old - fashioned things now? I should like to go with the times, but I fear to make any changes, for, when youbegin, who knows how many work -people you will soon haveabout your house? I have had thoughts of gilding the figures ofMichael and the Dragon, in front of my shop, but I shall leave them brown, just as they are . The cost of gilding is so frightful .'So ends the speech of the cautious and conservative apothecary.Meanwhile, the hostess has sought her son in the garden and in the vineyard, and finds him in the adjoining field, seated in the shade of a pear - tree, and looking towards the distant blue hills.He looks stern, and, in reply to soothing words, talks of the war and of the miseries of the emigrants. • What I have seenand heard this moming has touched my heart,' says he; -' shall aGerman stay at home and hope to escape the ruin that threatens us all? I am grieved that I escaped from the last drawing for soldiers. I will go now, to live or die for fatherland, and to set a266 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.agood example to other youths. I will return to our house nomore. From this place I go to give to our army my hand and my heart, to fight for our native land, and then let my father say again , that I have not a spark of honourable pride in my bosom! 'The sagacious hostess hears all this and more to the same purpose, and admires her son's enthusiasm , but she will not believe that he is inspired only by patriotism . With tact and kindness she leads him to make a fuller confession of his motives for disobeying his father's wishes. The result of the visit to the emi grants' camp has been more than sympathy with their misfortunes;Hermann cannot forget that brave maiden who prayed that he would have compassion on her companion. When the mother feels assured that this is no drenm , but an impression so strongthat it has already changed her son's character, she resolves, that the domestic warfare impending shall be waged frankly and boldly. Having returned to the room where her husband and hisfriends are still drinking Rhine-wine and talking, she tells them all the truth respecting Hermann's sudden resolution . The father listens with silent astonishment, while the curate takes the mother's part and deprecates opposition. “ A moment like this,' he says ,• often decides a man's destiny. ' ' Make haste slowly!' says the timid apothecary, who proposes that a deputation should be sent to make enquiries respecting the heroine.Accordingly, the curate and the apothecary sally forth to the village, where they find a venerable man, the leader and the rulerof the company of refugees. ' He is like a Moses leading the wandering people through the wilderness,' says the curate . Theold man tells his story and that of his friends, and thus the plotof the epic is connected with history. The villages from which the people were driven were plundered by u retreating army.• Vanquished soldiers,' says the old man , “ involved all things in their own ruin. May I never live to see again men so maddened and so miserable! Let no man talk again of freedom until he issure that he can govern himself! ' In the course of further con versation , the veteran tells the story of a German maiden , who,left alone to guard children in a farm -house, repelled severalmarauders and cut down one of them with a sabre.Meanwhile, the apothecary has been wandering about, until he has found a maiden answering to the description given of Dorothea.66XVIII. )8HERMANN AND DOROTHEA .' 2676 1She is seated under the shade of an 'apple- tree, and is engaged inpreparing for destitute children some articles of clothing given byHermann. " That,' says the old man , “ is the maiden who guarded the farm -house, and she is as good as she is brave and beautiful.'The curate and his friend return to the town, bearing a highlyfavourable report of the results of their enquiry, and soon afterwards, Hermann , unattended, again visits the encampment of therefugees.As he approaches a clear fountain, on the side of the roadleading to the village, he sees Dorothea coming to draw water,that she may carry a refreshing draught to the invalid woman.Thoughtless people,' says the maiden, ' have allowed their cattleto disturb the stream that flows through the village, but I am glad that I have come so far to find pure water,' she adds frankly,' for it does the heart good to see the face of a friend .' While shois speaking, Hermann notices the golden ring upon her finger thattells him she is already betrothed . She explains that she is leftdesolate in the world, and that when she has done all that shecan for her friends, she would be glad to find any home where shemight be serviceable. The result of all that she tells and ofHermann's fear to confess the whole truth is, that Dorothearesolves to accept an engagement as domestic servant at theGolden Lion . She bids farewell to the mother whom she hasnursed . • When you look on your child ,' says Dorothea , ' whenyou see him wrapped in this comfortable robe, and press him toyour bosom, think of the generous youth who gave us tbe clothing,and who now takes me to a home where I may be useful andhappy.' Then Dorothea kneels down, kisses the woman recliningon the bed of straw , and receives a whispered blessing.Meanwhile, the report given by the curate, and the pleadings of the hostess, have had such an effect on the landlord of the ' Golden Lion, ' that he can, at least, tolerate the thought that Dorotheamay some day be accepted as a daughter. He is again sitting inhis retired parlour and talking with his neighbours, while the hostess impatiently awaits her son's arrival. When Hermanncomes home, he calls the curate aside and explains that theemigrant maiden enters the house at present as a servant. This explanation is, however, too late to prevent the pain already given by a remark made by the host, as soon as the maidon steps6268 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. ( CH .66into the room. He suddenly expresses admiration of her beauty,and an approval of Hermann's choice in that respect. Your son ,sir,' says Dorothea, did not prepare me for this reception. I have no doubt that I stand here before a good and a respectable man,but you have not such pity as you ought to have for the poor, or you would not thus remind me how far my destiny has placed me beneath your family. I come to you as a poor maiden, with all my property in this small bundle. Is it noble, by an untimely jest, to drive away one who would have served you faithfully? 'In vain the curate interposes and prays Dorothea not to be offended by a joke. It is not a mere jest that has so deeplywounded her feelings. She has been more than grateful towards the youth whom she calls the saviour of her friends, and herfeelings have made her too ready to accept service at the 'GoldenLion .' Now she sees clearly the false position into which such sentiments might lead her, and is resolved to stay no longer in thehouse. A storm has suddenly gathered, and the rain is heavily talling, but she hastens to the door and is turning to say ' farewell ,'when Hermann steps forward and makes a full confession . The curate has, meanwhile, explained the misunderstanding and now offers his services for the betrothal of Hermann and Dorothea.But Hermann again looks at the pledge on the maiden's finger and still fears that he may be rejected, until Dorothea is persuadedby the curate to tell all the mystery of the ring. The brave youthwho gave it me, some years ago,' says she, ' went away to Paris,there ( as he believed ) to fight for freedom , and there he fell.“ Farewell! ” said he, when he left me, " all things are movingnow; laws and possessions are changing; friend is severed fromfriend; we are but pilgrims on the earth — more so now than ever!”I thought of his words when I lost all my own property, and Ithink of them again now, when a new life seems beginning for me.Forgive me, if I tremble now , my friend , while I hang upon your I feel like the sailor, when he escapes from a storm , and first steps upon the land .'• Thou art mine, Dorothea ,' says Hermann, ' and all that is mineseems now more my own than ever it was before, and I will keep it, not with care and anxiety, but with strength and courage. So let all Germans say, “ This is ours, " and boldly assert their rights!6arm .XVIII .]

• HERMANN AND DOROTHEA.' 269

And, if all are of my mind, we shall, with resolute hearts, opposethe foe, and our native land shall have peace. 'Thus the poem concludes, as it opened, with a reference tonational events, and the union of the hero and the heroine isassociated with the prospect of national unity. If the poet had ever incurred just censure by neglecting to write in a patriotic spirit, he made & good apology by writing Hermann and Dorothea.270 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.CHAPTER XIX .SEVENTH PERIOD . 1770-1830,GOETHE'S LYRICAL AND OCCASIONAL POEMS - SONGS- BALLADS - REFERENCES TO AUTOBIOGRAPHY — ODES - FLEGIES - EPIGRAMS ANDOTHER DIDACTIC POEMS.6THE object of this chapter can hardly be more than to indicate the extraordinary variety of themes and modes of treatment found inGoethe's minor poems. If it were desirable to add anything to the voluminous criticism already bestowed on the poet, it could not be reasonably attempted within our limits. For any general remarks which we may venture to make respecting the genius ofGoethe, the reader is referred to a subsequent chapter. Preceding analyses have already told something of the wide range of subjects treated by the poet. How remarkable the transition from Götz vigorous, but destitute of artistic form - or from the “ Sorrows ofWerther,' to the dignity of ‘ Iphigenia’ and the cheerful epic tone of Hermann and Dorothea '! Yet only a few phases of the poet'svariety have been shown; we have still to mention his ballads and lyrical poems and his unique drama, " Faust.'There is great difficulty in the attempt to represent in any form of English translation the melody and the charm of the balladsand lyrical poems, for they have all the ease and freedom of naturein their happy union of thought and expression. There is no apparent effort and no rhetoric in these poems. Among the songs are found several so closely united with music that they must be sung to be appreciated. They are melodious expressions of lifewith its common joys and sorrows, and as life is often simple andlowly, several of these lyrics have the same character. For a tasteso confused as to ask for dramatic effects and didactic points in alyrical poem, Goethe's songs were not written, and they wouldXIX .] GOETHE'S POEMS. 27166certainly have failed to please the extinct critics who ridiculed Wordsworth for using in poetry the language of common life.Several early occasional poems on art have a reference to thepoet's own attempts in painting and engraving. His boyhood was partly spent in an atelier in his father's house at Frankfort, where painters and other artists were frequent visitors. For some years afterwards, in Leipzig, Dresden and elsewhere, the poet continued his studies in drawing, etching and painting, until, as he tells us,he felt convinced that he could rise to the rank of a master in only one art, that of writing German verse and prose.All Goethe's minor poems may be called occasional,' in his own free sense of the word, and several are so far autobiographicalthat they require annotations to make clear their numerous refer ences to facts in the poet's life. For example, a poem composedduring a journey in the Harz Mountains, in winter ( 1776), ' mightat first sight seem like a fiction, but its individuality soon assures us that it is founded on facts. The poet, wishing to inspect somemines and also to pay a visit to a friend in depressed health ,availed himself of an opportunity of joining a winter hunting party. Leaving his companions to pursue their sport, he under took a lonely journey over the Brocken, which he describes in thepoem:Stormy winds around him blowing Serve to cheer him, upwards going,The torrent, as it roars along,Makes music for a matin -song,And for a lofty altar, lo!The haunted Blocksberg, capp'd with snow ,Where, as boors and miners dream ,Wild spectres in the moonlight gleam.Other parts of the poem would be hardly intelligible without the biographical facts above stated . It is important therefore that this Harzreise im Winter , with other occasional poems of the sameclass, should not be given without notes, as is often the case in selections of poetry intended for general use.Several early lyrical poems, including not a few amatory songs,may be passed by with the remark that their defects, or rather their excesses, belonged to the days of Sturm und Drang, when Goethe wrote also bis wild dithyrambic ' Storm -song,' described by himself as a half-crazy ' production. The following is an imitation of the opening lines:61272 OUTLINES. OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH,Genius! while by thee attended,Neither rain nor storm can daunt me,Fears no longer haunt me.Genius! while by thee befriended,Singing still, I face rough weather,Clouds of thunder piled together:Singing still,As over the hill,The lark is singing!aFor a full interpretation of this rhapsody the reader is referred tothe poet's autobiography. He tells us that, to quell the sorrow he felt after leaving Strassburg and Sesenheim , he took long walks in the country, without regard for stormy weather. The quasiPindaric effusion was the result of a walk under heavy rain . Notlong after writing that ' Wanderer's Storm - song ,' the poet wrote a dialogue called “ The Wanderer,' remarkable for its antique dignity. In several other poems of about the same date ( 1771-4 )he delights to view life as a stormy journey and in one of them he calls “ Time ' a'postilion ,' and bids him ply whip and spurs,that life's carriage may roll on swiftly, over the mountain and down into the valley, and by villages and lonely hostelries, wherethe traveller refuses to stay, though youth and beauty invite him.This rhapsody has all the vigour without the coarseness of thedays of Sturm und Drang.The dithyrambic audacity of that Storm - song ' is exceeded inanother poem, ‘ Prometheus,' the result of the young poet's reading of some of Spinosa's works. It must be understood that thesedefiant words are addressed by Prometheus only to Zeus, the despot, an imaginary creature of Greek mythology:Cover thy sky with cloudsAnd - like a boy who smites The heads of thistlesDisplay thy might on oaks and mountain peaks!Still Thou must leave for meThe earth; my hut - not built by Thee!And this my glowing hearth; its cheerful flame Excites thine envy!6Here sit I, forming men on mine own plan,A race, like me, to suffer and to weep;But they shall also prosper and rejoice,And - like myself - care nought for Thee!That the solitary and defiant mood expressed in these unrhymedXIX .] OCCASIONAL POEMS. 2736lines was only temporary, is easily shown by a reference to the hymns entitled respectively The Divine,' and the ' Boundaries ofHumanity.' The latter is an expression of humility, the former asserts only what Kant and Hegel taught, that religion must be founded, not on natural theology (80 called ), but on morality. In the following passage no attempt is made to follow closely the original rhythm:Let man be magnanimous, generous and kind!Such virtues alone can make him distinctFrom all other beings of whom we have knowledge.With reverence be named the Higher Powers Unknown, of whose nature we have but forebodings,In whom man alone can make as believers .For Nature, around us, is cold and unfeeling;The sun shines alike on the good and the evil;The moon and the stars light the criminal's path,as well as the way of the just.The themes chosen by Goethe for his songs are often as old as the hills, but, like the hills, are ever new for poets. The forsaken shepherd stands on the hill- side and looks down on adeserted cottage. The poet tells all the shepherd's sorrow without the use of poetic diction; ' in other words, just as the swain would have told it, had he possessed the power of making metre and rhyme:All down the slope descending, and following my sheep,Along the valley wending, as walking in my sleep,I roam along the meadow , all gay in summer bloom;The fairest flowers I'm culling, and hardly know for whom;Or shelter'd from the weather, there, in a misty gleam,I see a hut deserted, ' tis all but like a dreamAndo'er the roof a rainbow for others bright and fair,But not for me! the maiden , no longer dwelling there,Has wander'd o'er the mountain, it may be, o'er the sea!Sheep I leave the flowery meadow; ' tis sorrowful for me!In another song, the Jägers Abendlied, we have the same theme,but treated with new harmonies, for it is now the hunter who tells his sorrow , and, instead of the meadow in the valley, the tree and the deserted cottage in the rainbow's gleam , we have,T274 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.for scenery , the still moon shining on the ridge where the game easily escapes from the dreaming Jäger:As, lone and wild , along the fell In search of game I stray ,The form , the face I love so well Attend me on my way . .::Dost Thou behold in dreams the manWho wanders, east and west,And, while so far away from thee.Can find no place of rest?Another song may be briefly noticed as an example of Goethe'ssimplest lyrical poems written for music. It is hardly treatedwith fairness when taken out of its place in the operetta ' Erwinand Elmire .' There it is sung by Erwin in a garden where theroses are blighted.I remember, love, with sadness,When, to win a smile from you,Every morn, I brought with gladness Roses wet with morning dew. ..Now, no more your charms displaying,Flowers my love refused to wear!Roses - ah , so soon decaying Fade and die! for I despair.7Among other lyrical poems that partly lose their effect when given in an isolated form , Mignon's Song, ' Know'st Thou the Land? ' (in Wilhelm Meister) may be noticed. It strictly belongs to the story of an exiled Italian girl, wandering about with strolling players in the cold North and longing for her home. We must know something of the singer before we can feel all thepathos of such words as these:Know you the land where citron - trees are growing?In leafy shade the golden orange glows,A softer wind is from the blue sky blowing,And near the bay the Jowlier myrtle grows.Know you the land?' Tis there! ' tis there!That I would go with thee, my love! — ' tis there!Goethe's occasional poems include songs, dithyrambic odes,elegies, ballads, epigrams, and parables. With regard to theirsubjects, it may be asserted, that a selection containing only a few1XIX .] GOETHE'S VARIETY . 275&>poems from each of the above classes would include such avariety of thoughts and sentiments as could hardly be foundelsewhere in so small a compass. For here we have the many moods of mind characteristic of a writer who was, at once , a poet,a man of science, an observer of practical life, and a lover of art.The varied metres and forms of his minor poems accord with thevariety of their themes. Here lyrics as simple as the songs already noticed are followed by odes of antique grandeur, and by balladsranging in style from wild romance or caricature to epic interestand dignity. Of the ballads and other poems written to satirizeliterary follies one or two specimens may be noticed. There wasa time, near the close of the last century, when German fictioncould not be mentioned without suggesting robber - romances,ballads of diablerie ' and tales of terror. We have seen howrapidly Bürger's wild ballad of ' Leonora ,' masterly in its kind ,won a wide popularity , and that far inferior pieces were read withavidity. On the whole, Goethe in early life, showed a wholesomeaversion from the horrors of powerful sensational writing, and toturn them into ridicule wrote two or three such caricatures as• The Skeletons' Dance .' A few lines are enough to show that he might, perhaps, have excelled both Schubart and Bürger in thisodd department of literature. However absurd, it must be repre sented here, and Goethe's caricature may serve to set aside ,quotations from inferior writers:6a6The warder looks down from tbe tower at night,On the churchyard asleep in the moon's pale light. ...Ha! can it be real? —the graves open all,And the skeletons come to their midnight ball!Bone clatters to bone; legs find their own feet,And balls with their sockets all readily meet;For dancing the shrouds are too lengthy and wide,So, to make tripping easy and steady,On tombstones and graves they are all cast aside,And now for the ball we are ready.Then , ha! what a dance in the churchyard lone!And oh, what a clatter of bone upon bone! ...The warder grows merry; he runs down below And one of their winding -sheets seizes. ...T 2276 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Cx.One misses his shroud. There it hangs on the tower!He must have it before the bell tolls the next hour, .He clinibs up the turret on crocket and scroll ( ' Twas Gothic with rich decoration )He climbs like a spider; the warder, poor soul!Is quaking in dire perturbation;For up comes the skeleton! sure not to stop Until his claws grapple the thief on the top .With terror the warder is white as a smock ,When luck the poor fellow releases;The bell thunders one,' and - thrown down by the shock The skeleton tumbles to pieces!<Another caricature, ' Muses and Graces in the Mark ,' a sort of pastoral, should be mentioned, as it serves to explain our brevity in noticing several writers of homely idylls. They belonged to aschool of which Voss was the head -master, while Schmidt ( a ruralpastor who lived in a district called the Mark ) was one of themore advanced pupils. He was a lover of extreme simplicity and lowliness of both thought and expression . Without this reference to the class of poems satirized in the pastoral above named, itmight seem strange to find among Goethe's lyrical poems such astanza as this:By their rules let critics try us,Still we never care a jot;For ' we're natural and pious,And contented with our lot..Several of Schmidt's own poems are more ridiculous than this.It is, indeed, more like a fair imitation than a parody of the style in which the good pastor in the Mark wrote of the pleasures of rural life. For satire in a better style we may turn to a ballad entitled Der Zauberlehrling (" The Magician's Apprentice '), anexcellent union of apparent levity with good teaching. There isnothing directly didactic in the story, but the thought suggestedhas importance both for life and art. The tale, borrowed from Lucian's pinoyevońc, tells that Eukrates, a pupil in magic, whose master was Pankrates, stole by eavesdropping half of one of the master's secrets, a formula of incantation by which a besom may be suddenly converted into a kobold or sprite who is employed asa water - carrier. When his services are no longer required, three words can, at once, reduce him to his primitive condition. The sequel shows the danger attending & half -knowledge of anyaXIX .] BALLADS. 277business. Eukrates, left alone, calls into activity the water carrier, whose services are only too zealous. He fills the bath, butstill pours in one pail of water after another until the house is flooded. The apprentice has, like a demagogue, excited a movement over which he has no control, and, for want of skill, has now recourse to violence. He seizes a sabre and cuts the kobold intwain, but this only makes the case worse, for there are now two kobolds, both pouring water into the house as fast as they can, until Eukrates screams out in his despair:See them running, coming, going,Pouring water, fast and faster!Over all the rooms ' tis flowing,And they'll drown me. O good master!Hear me; and in this disaster,Help me!-Sprites compelled to aid me Thus, in spite, have disobeyed me.6> 6As examples of the poet's most artistic ballads, two written in 1797, The Bride of Corinth,' and ' The God and the Bayadere ,'must, at least, be mentioned. The painful subject of the first wastaken from the . Wonderful Stories ' of Trallianus, a Greek writerof the second century. This choice of a subject, the story of avampire, has been severely censured , and it has been especially noticed as inconsistent that a writer who condemned the mediævallegend of ' Poor Henry ,' the leper, should select a more repulsivenarrative. «The God and the Bayadere ' is a Hindoo legend, and,as treated by Grethe, is remarkable for the dramatic interest of the story and the varied melody of the versification .The best of the ballads are those of which an artistic translationis difficult. It would be comparatively easy to give the substance of a few of the more didactic poems written in the poet's decliningyears, but these cannot serve as fair examples of his powers as alyrical writer. The ballad of the Treasure- Digger ' may bepointed out as a medium between the free and sometimes wildpoetry of youth and the didactic sobriety of age. Here the storybas a moral, one of the best in the world, but the narrative interestis not sacrificed to the moral, and the latter is not repeated like amaxim in a boy's copybook. Urged to desperation by extremepoverty, the treasure -digger comes, at the dark hour of midnight,to make a contract with the enemy ' so often encountered inGerman ballads. The magic circle is duly drawn, and the requi6278 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Ch.site incantations are chanted, when, instead of the fiend, a bright light appears, and in the midst of it a boy, the Genius of Industry,cheerful and rosy as Cupid. He brings a bowl filled with arefreshing beverage, and thus advises the misguided digger forhidden treasure:Drink! and now , prepared for labour,You shall learn your true vocation:Come no more with vain endeavour,Here to try your incantation;Dig no more for hidden treasure!Better far than conjurationWeeks of care with days of pleasure,Toil relieved by recreation!The following verses should, perhaps, hardly be classed withthe ic, for their moral is as latent as the little flower ofwhich they tell a story:As in the wood I stray'd, a flower I chanc'd to spy;Within the leafy shade, ' twas like a deep -blue eye.• I'll gather you, ' I said; the violet seem'd to say,• Ah , why so soon must I be cull'd and thrown away??• I'll take your rootlets fine, and in my garden, near My cottage, you'll be mine, and bloom for many a year. 'The youthful period in the development of Goethe's poetic genius may be said to have closed about 1783, when he wrote hismeditative poem on · Ilmenau,' a place in the neighbourhood ofWeimar to which the poet and his friend the archduke loved toretreat from the cares of public life. In this interesting retro spective soliloquy Goethe speaks of the excitements of formeryears as if they belonged to a remote past. The love of repose that prevails throughout the poem is more concisely expressed in an impromptu of about the same date. It was at first writtenwith a pencil in a summer -house on the Kikelhabn, a high hill near the Ilmenau valley. The following is a paraphrase:Hush'd now is every wild bird's layIn the day's calm close;The trees are all asleep; how still Is the light green leaf on the topmost spray!And, list as you will, you hear not a trill In the woodland lone.O wait, my soul! and soon , repose Like this will be your own.XIX .]ELEGIES. 2796When it is said that the poem on ' Ilmenau ' marks a transition from youthful inspiration to studious and artistic writing, the assertion must not be too strictly understood, for the poet gaveproofs of a studious and refined taste before 1783; witness the dialogue entitled “ The Wanderer,' written in 1772. On the other hand, it must be noticed that the transition made wa not one ofan extreme character. It affected the form and the style more than the essential character of the poet's writings. NeitherGoethe nor Schiller ever forgot all the sensual and sentimental tendencies of the literature belonging to the days of Sturm undDrang. Schiller's play of Wallenstein is injured by the long and sentimental love-episode of Max and Thecla . With regard toGoethe's more sensuous poetry, we can only briefly refer to the blame incurred by the freedom of expression found in some of hisminor poems, especially in the ' Roman Elegies,' written in 1788-9,after his second visit to Italy. In other respects, they belong tothe poet's classical works, and may be compared with the elegies of Propertius and Tibullus. These · Roman Elegies ,' so named with respect to their form and versification, though their tone is cheerful, are at once antique and original. To their antique formthe writer ascribes no inconsiderable virtue, for he confesses that' if they had been written in the metre and the style of Byron's “ Don Juan, ” their import would have been thought infamous.'No apology of that kind is required for three beautiful elegies,' Alexis and Dora,' ' Amyntas,' and ' Euphrosyne,' all written in1796–7. The first is truly described by Schiller as one of the finest of Goethe's poems. The third was written on the decease of Christiane Becker, an actress who had lived at Weimar, andhad been educated under the care of Goethe, while he was director of the theatre there. The elegy . Amyntas' may be noticed as agood specimen of antique versification .The classic, elegiac metres to which such a powerful charm wasascribed by the poet were also employed in the ' Venetian Epigrams,' written in 1790, when he went to Venice, to accompanythe Duchess Amalia on her homeward journey from Italy. These epigrams are less cheerful than the Roman Elegies . ' I havenever since been so happy as I was in Italy in 1786–7,' said Goethe. In Rome, at that time, he forgot both Germany and France, with all their unhappy politics; in Venico he expresses awant of sympathy with the grand movement of the age, and6 >666280 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH., rails against the apostles of freedom ,' and other visionaries, butalso against priests and rulers. Several of these Venetian epigramsare as audacious as anything written by the poet. It is hard togive well - translated specimens, for their metres and their meaningscapnot coincide in English. The import of two or three of thesemay, therefore, be given in prose:Why talk you, O Poet, of vagabonds,tumblers, and beggars, as if you knew nothing of good society? ' — ' I have seen, in the course of my life, respecta ble people, suggesting no thought for an epigram or for a sonnet .'The fanatic gains many disciples and stirs up the people; the moderate,rational man may count all his friends on his fingers. Wonder-working pictures (of saints ) are mostly vile daubs; fine works of genius and art arenot for the many .• All may be clearly explained ,-80 ' a student tells me by a new theorytaught by our master to- day: ' - ' When you have hammered together the beams of your croes, then you can torture thercon whatever body you choose.66Other epigrams, collectively entitled ' The Predictions of Bakis '(1798), and a series given under the title of " The Four Seasons,'may be named here. The former are rather mysterious; the latterinclude one of the finest of the poet's epigrams, which is placed last in the following translations:When the clouds burst, as freely streams the rain On the bare rock as on the grassy plain ,The field is soon revived, the rock soon dried;With life alone the gifts of God abide.• Why am I transitory, O Zeus? ' asked BEAUTY, and he replied -Be:cause I make only that beautiful which is transitory .' When Love, andthe FLOWERS, and the DEw , and Youth beard the sentence, all went away weeping from the Olympian throne.• What is holy? ' — That which unites many souls as one, though it binds them as lightly as a rush binds a garland. • What is boliest? ' - Thatwbich, to - day and for ever, more and more deeply felt, more and more closely unites the souls of men.6This last epigram is a summary of Goethe's notions of religion.In 1796–7 Goethe and Schiller were partners in writing four series of epigrams. The first- entitled Tabulæ Votive - containsmaxims and results of experience in life and art; the second, col lected under the inscription l'ielen , and the third - at first, inXIX .] EPIGRAMS. 2816scribed Einer in Schiller's Musenalmanach were both insertedby Goethe in his own collected works, under the title, The Four Seasons. This was done in accordance with an agreement madewith Schiller. The fourth series — the Xenien — includes manysatirical and personal epigrams written as replies to some un favourable critiques on articles published in Schiller's Literary journal, Die Horen . The two friends wrote their epigrams on aplan of such close co -operation, that it is impossible to select all the Xenien that belong to Goethe. Such men as Lavater, Nicolai,Manso, Friedrich Schlegel, and some dull commentators on Kant's philosophy, were chosen as objects of satire, and, in some of the epigrams bearing the names of German towns and rivers,the supposed characteristics of the people of several districts arenoticed.The minor poems of Goethe which were written during hisyouth are as original and vigorous as those that belong to his second period — that of his middle life — when he paid more at tention to rules of art. In his later years he becomes didactic,and reminds us often, that the night cometh when no man can work; ' but his meditations on mortality are not gloomy.• Remember to live ,' is the maxim he makes most prominent, evenwhen his topics are mutability and death. It is to recommendthe culture of art, that he thus writes of the transitions ofnature:With every shower the valleys change;You cross the selfsame brook no more;The river, in another bed ,Is gliding by another shore!The castled crags, the palace walls No longer can your wonder raise;No longer with a youthful eye Along their battlements you gaze;And where is now the rosy lipThat stole the kiss — the first - So sweet?And where the foot that, on the hill,Was, like the wild - goat's, sure and fleet?6We have still to notice one more striking example of the poet's versatility_his West- East Divan, ' written mostly in 1814,and suggested by Hammer's translations from the Persian poet Hafiz. As the title indicates, the ' Divan ' is a union of European282 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [Ch.thoughts with Oriental forms of poetry. It was hardly to be wondered at, that Goethe, when almost seventy years old, found recreation and repose in this new style of writing; but it was absurd that such young poets as Rückert and Platen could findin all Goethe's writings, nothing more worthy of imitation than the West- East Divan .'6>XX .] " FAUST. 283CHAPTER XX .SEVENTH PERIOD . 1770-1830.6 FAUST .'aTHERE are a few poems that are as remarkable for the attractivepower of their subjects as for their literary merits. The master thought of ' Prometheus Bound ' might have given success to aplay written by a poet inferior to Æschylus. Without a word todetract from the poetic merits of Cervantes, it may be said thatthe world -wide fame of his great romance is partly owing to thehappy choice of a subject. But a theme of far wider and deeperinterest — the myth of Faust - haunted the mind of Goethe fromyouth to old age. Had he treated the story with less power, itmight still have been successful; for, while its form and many of itsdetails are intensely German, its interest is universal. It isfounded on a fact — the duality of human nature .The poet wrote some parts of Faust as early as 1774, and, in the following year, read them to Klopstock, who liked them well. Other scenes were added in 1777-80; in 1790 the first part was published as a fragment, and in 1806 as completed. The second part - begun as early as 1780 — was not completed until 1831 - a few months before the close of the poet's earthlylife .Differences of critical opinions and controversies, to which parts of the drama bave given rise, must be merely alluded for any attempt to interpret such obscurities as may be found in the second part would far exceed the limits of these outlines. It is therefore, to the principal subject, and to those scenes that are most closely connected with it, that our attention must be confined .The common notion of Faust, the magician, which was cirhere;284 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Cu.culated by the crude old legend and the Puppenspiel (bothnoticed ante in Chapter X.) must be here dismissed. Faust, as Goethe has represented him, is, both originally and finally, aman of noble and generous aspirations, and throughout a series of trials, is represented as guilty of only one dark sin . His repen tance is not described at length, but is both expressed and implied.The deaths of Valentine and the heroine's mother are results of aplot in which Faust is an unconscious accomplice. These points in the story should be noticed; otherwise, readers who exaggerate the guilt of Faust, as implied in the first part of the drama, might regard the earlier scenes of the second part as both inconsequent and heartless. In the first scene of the play, the hero shows the better side of his character. He has found out that the sup posed sciences to which he has devoted his studies are mere delusions and can afford no aid to mankind; he therefore de nounces them at once, and will teach them no longer. If the pedant Wagner (who is introduced as a contrast to Faust) had had the wit to make the same discovery, he would have kept it asecret, and ' for a profit' ( to use his own words) would have per sisted in • leading poor students by the nose. 'In dismissing the common notion of Faust's depravity, we must not err on the other side, or imagine that he is - like Joba perfect man .' He is an egotist, though he does not even sus pect it. His egotism is, however, by no means of the baser kind,but assumes the form of intellectual pride and ambition . Two souls, ' he says, are striving in my breast; each from the otherlonging to be free .' The first includes the common passions of men; the second is a vague and restless aspiration for the pos session of unbounded knowledge and power. When pride and ambition, however refined , are admitted into the heart, envy and hatred will not long be absent; but Faust never succumbs to the power of these lower passions. They are kept separate from the essence of his character, and this separation is powerfully re presented by the poet, by calling into existence a distinct character-Mephistopheles (or Mephisto, as he is called in the old legend ).Stripped of all his grotesque features and his mythological dis guise, he is simply an intensely bad man; one in whom envy and hatred are predominant. In truth, Faust and Mephistopheles are one, just as, in ancient Persian mythology, Ormuzd and Arimanes were one before time existed; but, for poetic purposes,a-XX .] ' FAUST: 285ܪthe light and the darkness are separated, and the higher nature ofFaust is placed in clear opposition to the lower nature represented in the person of Mephistopheles. In the exposition of the drama,Faust binds himself to his own lower nature; in the development,he strives more and more to liberate himself, and he at last succeeds. As he rises towards freedom , the distance between his own character and that of his companion ' -80 he calls bis enemy - increases, until death makes the separation perfect and everlasting. On the other hand, the character of Mephistopheles,as it is made more and more distinct from that of Faust, becomesalso more and more darkly shaded. The fiend appears, at first,as a cynical satirist, and not without humour; but as the story proceeds, he is described as a juggler, a sorcerer, and a murderer.He is Satan , without any disguise, in the midst of infernal revelson the Blocksberg, and, at the close of the drama, his characterappears still worse; though this might seem impossible. He is,at last, what a man remains when every noble aspiration has lefthim.These preliminary notes on the two chief characters of thedrama may help to render the following outlines of the storyclear. For the sake of brevity, the ‘ Prelude in the Theatremust be passed over with few words, though it contains bothhumorous and beautiful passages, and clearly indicates the poet'spersonal sympathy with the destiny of Faust. The Theatre Poet is an idealist, with an ambition above his vocation; hewould write for posterity,' of whom the manager wishes never to hear another word . Both he and his friend, the Merryman,Are realists and practical men, who insist upon it that the Poetshall insert in the play a considerable amount of folly, in order toamuse the multitude, and increase the profits of the theatre. Thehumour of this prelude is strongly contrasted with the beginning of the ' Prologue in Heaven ,' which immediately follows.The prologue opens with a song in heaven , where three arch angels Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael - sing severally, and then unite in harmony with the music of the spheres.' This form of introduction is obviously founded on the opening of the book of Job, and the song, with its chorus, was probably suggested by the text (in chapter xxxviii. of that book), speaking of the time when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.' The three archangels describe the sun and the planets26286 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Cu .as ever pouring forth divine harmony while carried along around their eternal centre. The translation of this song into English presents a problem which has led to several laudable attempts, but hardly to one perfect success. The solution may be impossible,when the highest artistic form of translation is demanded . If it be required that a version , exactly representing the meaning of the original, shall also have corresponding metre and rhymes, and shall seem to be so easily done as to read like original verse, the problem becomes too complex. The last-named condition, the art concealing art, is indispensable, yet can hardly be fulfilled without a sacrifice of some minor merits. The following stanzas give nothing better than a paraphrase of the original:RAPHAEL.With pace of thunder rolls along The Sun , in concord never ending Still chanting a primeval song ,With tones from all the planets blending;The Angels from the glorious sightDerive their power and inspiration,And all the wondrous works are bright As in the morning of creation .GABRIELThere rolls the earth — so swift and bright!And changeful day and night attend her,As out of gloom of awful night She turns to Paradisian splendour;While foams the sea - broad waves upthrowingOn rocky barriers deep and strong And rocks and billows, onward going,Are carried with the spheres along;MICHAEL.And tempests blow , in emulation,From sea to land and o'er the main ,And form , through all their perturbation ,A circling, energetic chain;There flames the lightning's devastation,And thunders roll along its way;But we, O LORD, with veneration ,Behold thy calmly -changeful day.THE THREE ARCHANGELS.The vision gives us inspiration,Though no one comprehend THEE may ,And all the works of thy creation Are bright as in the Primal Day.xx.) " FAUST: 28766>This grand declaration of Eternal Divine Power is followed by its extreme opposite.Among the heavenly host, assembled to proclaim that all the works of the Lord are glorious, there presents himself the spirit whose bad will leads only to negation and destruction; the Arimanes ' of old Persian mythology, the " Satan ' of the vene rable book of Job. He will say nothing against the glory of the sun and the stars, but he asserts that Man, with all his pride of intellect and his restless discontent, is a mere disgrace to theuniverse in which he lives. In the conversation that follows thisassertion, the leading thought of the drama, that evil is permitted to exist only as a condition , sine quâ non , of energetic life, is expressed. Mephistopheles, the genius of envy and negation,receives full permission to tempt Faust, but the final defeat of the tempter is predicted.We now descend to the earth . Here Faust, a gray professor ina German university, is seated at his desk in a narrow and highvaulted gothic chamber, while the moon pours her light through the window . He is surrounded by books, old, dusty parchments,And some instruments of science, on which he looks with wearinessand disgust. For he has arrived at the stage of thought when hedespairs of the power of study. It is from powers of which man is unconscious that all the wonders of creation proceed. Whencontrasted with those powers, all our studies are nothing more thana ' vanity of vanities .' Law, medicine, theology - Faust describesthem all as dry abstractions and dead formulæ , having no unionwith life and reality, and conferring on the student no powereither to control or to enjoy the boundless energies and resourcesof nature. His ambition is partly sensuous and mostly egotistic.True, he complains in one part of his monologue that he finds inhis studies nothing that can confer benefits on mankind, but fromother expressions we learn that he longs chiefly for power andenjoyment. It is indeed nothing less than theurgic power, orwhatGoethecalled ' demonic energy,' for which Faust is craving.That the object of thougḥt should be to make this finite world appear untrue, that the aim of life and of study should be to obtain rest, not excitement, that the destiny of man is to rise above hisown nature, and to subdue all its passions, its contentions andcravings; this is not Faust's belief. Such philosophy is for him a realm of shadows. He would explore, he says, ' the fountains288 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .whence flows life throughout creation ,' he would refresh himselfin their streams. To gain such power and enjoyment, he tries the processes of magic that were recommended by old Nostrodamus(a magician or astrologer who is said to have lived in the sixteenthcentury ), but after some deceptive indications of success, dis couragement follows, and Faust is interrupted by & visit fromWagner, his Famulus or attendant- student, who is a very dull pe dant. All that Faust disdains as the ' dry bones and mere lumber oferudition ' is choice meat and drink for the intellectual constitutionof Wagner. No amount of our modern preparations for exami nation could have been too great for him . He is charmed withdead formulæ and cannot have too many of them impressed uponhis memory. His notion of the object of life is that his ' mind 'may be stored with an infinite number of rules of grammar, prosody,formal logic, and barren rhetoric, and he regrets that life is too short ' to allow the most diligent student to master thoroughly such a study as Greek prosody. The character of this dry -as dust ' pedant is admirably contrasted with that of Faust.Wagner, after receiving a bint that his presence is becoming tiresome , goes away to pore on the dead letter ' of prosody, orsomething of that kind, but his master, despairing of ever knowingmore than mere forms and words without power, resolves to dierather than live, a melancholy inane pedant. There stands, near him, on one of the dusty shelves of his library , an old brown goblet, an heir - loom from his father, and often of yore filled with Rhino- wine at happy family festivals. Faust has filled it nowwith laudanum , and is lifting the poison to his lips when his resolution is suddenly disturbed by a melodious peal of bells, and by the choral hymn sung in a neighbouring church:>6Christ hath arisen Out of death's prison;for it is now Easter morning, and all the old Christian associations of the time are at once recalled by that peal of church bells and that cheerful hymn. " Oh, heavenly tones! ' he ex claims:Ye call me back to life again , sweet bells!Ye call to mind the time when Sabbath peaceFell on my spirit like a kiss from heaven .Later in the morning, Faust and · dry -as -dust' Wagner take &walk into the fields, where all the ambition and melancholy ofXX .]' FAUST. ' 289>Faust are brought into vivid contrast with the gladness of common life that beams from the faces of peasants and townspeople — all intheir holiday dress and coming forth into the sunshine. Theircheerfulness for a moment imparts itself to Faust. But when oneof the older men among the peasants recognises the doctor,' and thanks him for aid received during affliction, the incident suggests only a contemptuous remark on the uncertainty of medicalscience.It is characteristic of Wagner that he can find no pleasure in looking on the crowd of people enjoying their Easter holiday.They do not help him in the sole aim of his life - reading to gain honours at the University! He has come out, even on Easter Sunday, solely to derive some ' profit,' as he says, from conversation with his superior in learning. All this skittle - playing,fiddling, and singing ( as they call it) is, for me, simply detestable,says Wagner. — His master, however, can forget, for a few moments,his own melancholy, while he looks upon the merry people of whom he thus speaks:With joy they celebrate the day,For they themselves have burst away ,As out of prison, or from the tomb,From many a workshop's dusty gloom;From many a narrow , crowded streetThey come, each other here to greet,Or from the minster's solemn nightThey wander forth into the light.When evening comes on, the master looks on the burningwestern heavens, and expresses a vague longing to follow thecourse of the sun:To drink at the eternal source of light,And leave behind, for evermore, the night!Wagner frankly owns that he has no sympathy with any suchaspiration, and that he cares little for the beauties of nature. For him there are better attractions in a snug, warm , and well-lighted study. " There winter -evenings are very pleasant,' he says;And, when some precious parchment you unroll,You have all Paradise in your own soul!Faust spends the holiday with Wagner, and retires after sunset into the solitude of the old Gothic chamber. Here he is visitedby Mephistopheles ' the spirit who always denies .' Ostensiblyए66290 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Сн .6the demon has been compelled to appear by Faust's magic; but in truth he is only the expression of Faust's own discontent and egotism . • Every man is tempted by himself,' and the evil that seems to come from without comes from within . · Instead of thespirit who can reveal to the aspirant the mysteries of life and creation, it is the demon who would deny and destroy that nowappears in a human form . It is, indeed , the man's own worse selfthat arises and stands before him.With a bitter sense of the duality of his own existence of thecontrast between his ambition and its results - Faust describeswhat he would call, in his medieval Latin , his whole curriculumvitæ as a failure and disappointinent. He denounces all attractionsthat bind him to life, and closes a dreadful formula of imprecation by execrating the highest virtues - hope, faith, and patience. Whenthe utterance of the curse is concluded , a chorus of invisible spirits utter a lamentation:Woe, woe for thee!-a world how fairHast thou destroyed in thy despair!To the dark void the wreck we bear,.O mighty one, thou earth -born son!In thine own soul build up, once more,The world, so fair, that we deplore!The reply that Mephisto gives to the lamentation is very subtle.He suggests that the best way to build up a new life is to renounceall philosophy and to seize such sensual pleasures as the world affords. In the course of the conversation that follows, Faust more deliberately renounces all the hopes of his moral and intel lectual nature, while the demon undertakes to supply the want ofthem by such wretched excitements as a sensual life can afford .Faust denies that the fiend, by means of all the pomps andvanity of this world ,' can ever give satisfaction to the soul of man;' If ever,' says he, ' I am so charmed with any earthly pleasure that I say to any present moment, “ Stay; thou art so fair! " thenI yield myself, as your prisoner and slave, to suffer any doom thatmay be inflicted upon me .'— This is the substance of the bond between Faust and Mephistopheles, which is forthwith signed inhis own blood by Faust.Meanwhile, a young student has come to present letters of introduction to the professor. The genius of negation puts on6XX .] ' FAUST .' 291Faust's cap and gown and jocosely takes his seat in the professor'schair. A conversation follows in which the student talks withthe old savant on the respective merits of several studies. Of logic, natural philosophy, and chemistry Mephistopheles speaks contemptuously, and of metaphysics and theology he presents to the student grotesque caricatures. The youth will hear nothing of law , and even the arch - sophist finds little to say in its favour; but he strongly recommends the study of medicine: not, however, forits merits as a science. The student listens with abject submission to some very bad advice, and then presents to the pseudo -philcom sopher, a little book of blank paper, begging that he will write in it some pithy motto, to serve as a memorandum of this interpiór ..Mephistopheles writes down the words - eritis sicut Deus, scientes:bonum et malum , and the student departs, well ' satisfied, as if he.had found a treasure.In the next scene an abrupt transition takes place from the professor's study to Auerbach's wine cellar in Leipzig, where Faust is introduced to anumber of jovial fellows who are drinking,singing and quarrelling. Their buffoonery is distasteful to Faust,who will not accept their easiest of all solutions of life's problems.Though, he has recently denounced abstruse philosophy, he is not 80 soon prepared to enjoy its extreme opposite. It is evident that he must be tempted by attractions somewhat more refined thau such as are to be found in Auerbach's wine- cellar, and in order that he may be conquered, he must be made young again .Now follow scenes of enchantment in the witch's kitchen,'where a charm is prepared by which Faust is suddenly restored tothe enjoyment of youth. The gray hair, the deep wrinkles andthe stooping figure of the weary student are abolished, and allthat experience had gained is also cast aside with the signs of oldage. A vigorous, handsome and enterprising youth takes theplace of the old professor of metaphysics.Faust - under the guidance of Mephisto - becomes, for a short time, a materialist of the most advanced school; he renounces the ideal, or all that cannot be made real and enjoyable. It is contrived by the enemy that his dupe, while in this mood of mind, sball meet the heroine of the drama - Margaret, whom. we can hardly describe otherwise than as a representative of Nature herself, in all the innocence imagined by poets and mystics. Her presence makes the contrast between Faust and his Companion '602292 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [Ch..more apparent than ever before; in the former all the nobleraspirations of his youth are revived, while the latter becomes more and more cynical. The poet writes here in perfect accordance with a maxim given by Leopold Schefer: - a man's honourmust be estimated according to his own estimate of women .'Such a maxim would have excited all the satirical power ofMephisto. H alks of Margaret so as to expose his own extremedegradation , and succeeds, for a time, in making Faust a slave to passion. Meanwhile, their intended victim is dreaming only of an affection as pure and faithful as that told of in the simple ballad she is singing:There lived a king in Thulè who was faithful to the grave;His love, when she was dying, to him a beaker gave.More prized than all his treasure that cup of gold remain'd;His eyes with tears would glisten when he the goblet drain'd .When he was old and dying, his wealth he reckon'd up,And gave all to the princes - except that golden cup!And to his knights, all loyal, as were the men of yore,He gave a banquet royal in his castle on the shore.There stood the old king, drinking one long deep health - the last Then down among the billows that sacred cup he cast;And as the cup was sinking he closed his eyes; no more He drank the wine all rosy in his castle on the shore!The evil Companion ' has cast aside his mediæval encum brances - hoof, horns, and tail - and, in a low but common sense of the word, is a gentleman! smart with scarlet mantle, a cock's feather on his hat, and a rapier at his side. A slight halt in the left foot might be concealed, but his sneer betrays him to Margaret's insight. She tells his character in a few simplewords:You see that he with no soul sympathizes;' Tis written on his face - he never loved.Whenever he comes near, I cannot pray.Faust, under the influence of these suggestions, learns to abhor his Companion,' and, in a soliloquy, expresses a longing to befreed from contact with him:6with this new joy that bringsMe near and nearer Heaven, was given to meXX. ] " FAUST 293This man for my companion '!-- He degrades My nature, and with cold and insolent breathTurns Heaven's best gifts to mockeries!Meanwhile, with a foreboding of coming sorrow , Margaret,sitting alone at her spinning -wheel, is singing:My heart is heavy, my peace is o'er;I shall find it never; oh, never more!Subsequent scenes in the drama blend together the most dis cordant elements the highest passion and the lowest cynicism ,ideal aspiration and the coarsest materialism , mysticism and prosaic common -place, ethereal, religious poetry, and the mostprofane caricature; all are strangely mingled. The highest in terest throughout belongs to the beautiful character of Margaret,whose innocent love is made the means of urging her on to crime,misery, and insanity. It may remain a question whether the poet's power is more evident in the creation of this heroine, or inthe embodiment of all that is cynical, envious and malignant inthe person of Mephistopheles. The fiend is seen in a light ofcontrast that makes him more and more revolting , and Faust who once despised, now hates yet dreads, the tempter-his destined companion through life! By the blind passion of Faust and bythe machinations of the demon, Margaret is surrounded with acloud of guilt and disgrace, which becomes darker and darker;though it can never be truly said to belong to her character. Hermother, her brother, and lastly her own child have been destroyed,and of two of these crimes she has been made an unconsciousinstrument. Without the use of sophistry or any palliation ofguilt, she is made to appear innocent - even when she is condemned to die.But her soul is, nevertheless, tormented by the terrors of the guilt that belongs to others, and she seeks refuge in the cathedral,where she used to pray when a child. There an Evil Spirithaunts her as a voice -- while the tunes of the organ and thechoir, singing the Dies ire , threaten final condemnation:Evil Spirit. Ah, bappier in her childhood's day Margaret in innocence would come to pray,And, kneeling here, beside the altar-stairs,With tiny book in hand, lisped out her prayers,While thinking half of Heaven and half of play!294 QUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [Cr.Would'st thou pray now for thine own mother's soul Sent by thyself into her long, last sleep?Margaret. Woei WoeiWere I but freeFrom these bad thoughts that follow me And threaten me, where'er I go!CAOIR. Dies iræ, dies illa Solvet sæclum in favilla .Evil Spirit speaks while chords are prolonged on the organ.Terrors seize thee!The trumpet sounds!The graves are opening, and thy heart,As out of slumber in the dustAwakening into fiery pain ,Quivers!Margaret. Oh were I but away from here!The organ takes away my breath;The singing breaks my heart.CHOIR . Judex ergo quum sedebit,Quidquid latet adparebit,Nil inultum remanebit.Margaret. Oh for one breath of air!These pillars clasp meround;The roof comes down on me;Air! give me room to breathe!Evil Spirit. Would'st hide thyself? -but sin and shameCan never long be hidden.Air? -light? -- for thee?Woel- Woe!CHOIR. Quid sum miser tunc dicturus,Quem patronum rogaturus?Cum vixjustus sit securus.Evil Spirit. The angels turn their faces from thee!The saints all shudder to stretch their handsTowards such a sinner | _Woe!CHOIR . Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?Margaret utters a call for aid and falls senseless. Soon after· Wards she is arrested. It was a devotion that became insanitywhich led her to yield herself an instrument in the perpetration of crimes of which Mephistopheles is really guilty.Without any attempt to explain the scenes of diablerie on theBlocksberg, a haunted ' summit of the Harz Mountains, to whichXX .] " FAUST.' 2956Faust is led by his Companion ,' - while Margaret is left pining in prison - one sequence may be noticed, namely, that guilt is fol lowed by prostration of both the will and the intellect. Amidst wild rovels in which he seems to have no pleasure, the trans gressor is haunted by a vision of une whom he has left, in her deepest misery, imprisoned in a dungeon . - Save her! liberate her! or woe upon thee! ' he exclaimsfiercely to his Companion ,'who coldly replies: ' Did I, or didst thou, thrust her down to destruction??The sentence of death has been passed upon her, when Faust Heinrich as she calls him — comes, before daybreak, to the prison,to snatch her away from the sword of the executioner. But it isnot life, it is the innocence and happiness of past days that Margaret demands; and as they can never be restored to her inthis world, she is willing to leave it. She will die rather than escape from prison to live in ignominy with Faust, and she ishorrified by finding him, once more, in the company of his evil genius:Faust. ' Tis dawning, love! no tarrying; haste away!Margaret 1 . Yes, it grows light; it brings to me the day That is to be my last! —and ' twas to be The morning for my wedding!!Ah! see the crowd is gathering; but how still The streets I the square!It cannot hold the thousands that are there;The bell is tolling; now they bind me fast They hurry me along; there shines the sword To fall upon no neck but mine -How dumbAll the world lies around me, like the grave!Faust. Oh that I never had been born![ Mephistopheles appears and speaks to Faust.] Away!You perish if you loiter now . See there!My horses are shuddering in the chilly air;The day is dawning. Come!Margaret. What rises from the earth? — ' Tis he! ' Tis he!How dares HE to come hither? -Drive him forth!This is a sacred place; dares he to come Hither for me?Faust. No; thou shalt lire!296 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.Margaret. Thou Judge of all I to Thee myself I give!Mephistopheles. Come! or I leave you with her — both to perish!-But this is a vain threat with regard to one of the intendedvictims. The Spirit who denies and destroys has lost, for ever,his power over the soul of Margaret! — She is judged I'he exclaims, in his fierce anger and disappointment; but a voice fromAbove replies, ' SHE IS SAVED. ' Her last thought is of Faust.Though the sword is ready to fall upon her neck, it is not for herself that she has any fears, but for the destiny of Faust, who is now hurried away - whither? For the last time, she looks on his face and says:Heinrich! I shudder as I look on thee.Mephistopheles to Faust. Here! hither to me![ Vanishes with Faust. ][A voice from within, dying away .] Heinrich! Heinrich!The clearest harmony between this First Part of the drama and the Second is found in their concluding scenes. That patheticlast word uttered the truth, that Margaret could not be happy,if saved alone.Some considerable space of time must be supposed to elapsebetween the close of the First and the opening of the Second Part. The hero — whose repentance has been fully implied, thoughit is not expressed here — is found awaking, at the dawn of day.All things around him are symbolical of his own resolution tobegin a new life. His first monologue gives a fine description of the effects of sunrise in an Alpine valley:.In glimmering sheen the world is wrapt around,A thousand carols through the woodland sound;Along the dale the misty streaks are drawn,Yet in the deepest gorge are signs of dawn;The leafy twigs from misty cleſts shine out;On buds and blooms fresh pearls are dropt about;Hue after hue gleams from the dusky ground,And Paradise is opening all around.Upwards my glance! the mountain -peaks are glowing,For us the signs of nearer daybreak showing;XX .] " FAUST . 297They earlier enjoy the eternal light That later beams upon our dazzled sight.Now a bright glance displays the mountain's green ,Now spreads the light till all the dale is seen ,And now the sun! and, blinded by the day,With aching sight I turn myself away.So let the sun , unseen , behind me blaze,While bere I meet his fair, reflected rays;Yon waterfall I see with new delight,Burst through the rocky cleft, and from the height Falling — a thousand streams at once outpouring,Mid spray clouds over spray clouds lightly soaring.How glorivus, beaming through the misty air,The changeful yet abiding rainbow there,Now clear outshining, fading now away,Lost for a moment in the cloud of spray!Well shows the varying bow our life's endeavour;For ever changing and the same for ever!Passing orer many other scenes - shifted from land to land, as in a phantasmagoria — we find a more direct connection with the chief interest of the First Part on arriving at the fourth act of the Second Part. Here Faust, who has been active in politics, warfare, and the culture of art, but has found no satisfaction in any of his endeavours, devotes himself, finally , to a great philanthropicand industrial undertaking. The king whom he has served, hasgiven him a wide waste of land on the sea-shore, which he has resolved to save from the devastation spread by the ocean . Thisfinal enterprise has been condemned as forming a prosaic conclusion to the drama; but it should be observed that the heronow represented as very old — is contemplating, in all his plans for drainage and embankment, nothing less than the creation of anew land, to be inhabited by a free and industrious people. Notfor the indulgence of either luxury or ambition, but for the pro motion of victorious industry, and for the development of rationalliberty, Faust labours on; while his sneering Companion '—though 80 mewhat humbled now - derides all such honest, hard work, and proposes to build, instead of dams and sluices, ' a magnificent Versailles ,' with all the appendages that could be desired by amodern Sardanapalus! Faust scorns the demon’s notion of life.In spite of all satire and evil suggestion, the gray old manformerly known as " Dr. Faustus ' - goes on bravely, working for other men; for many generations of men says. , as he298 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH .It has been suggested that the general design of some passagesin this Second Part of the drama is to show that neither philo sophy, art, nor literature can afford satisfaction and rest to the enterprising spirit of modern times. May we not understand the poet as telling us, that our destiny is to pass through great social changes and industrial and economic reforms into a new era ,where the elements of our life, both physical and intellectual,shall be more harmoniously developed than in our present civiliza tion? - This is the conclusion to which we are led by comparing several passages in ‘ Faust ' with the writer's “ Social Romances.'Such a conclusion may be called ' prosaic, but it is, at the same time, noble; for the workman must be judged by hismotive .For want of more work like that which occupied the close of the ex -magician's career, our refinements of civilization - our art,music and poetry; even our religion, so far as it is unpractical are but glittering pinnacles on an edifice without a safe foundation.Is there no danger of our being rudely called away from art and literature, from philosophy and meditative theology, to the dis cussion of hard social questions respecting disorganised labour,and the strife of classes? May not such strife possibly be foundsymbolised in ‘ that coast wasted by the sea waves, ' against whichFaust waged warfare? —He grappled with the first ditficulty of civilization; the organisation of labour for the subjugation ofnature - including, under that word, the crude human nature thatmust be subdued in all of 118. We cannot therefore see that sucha conclusion of a drama is deficient in moral dignity.To pass to the Filth Act — here ' four gray women ' - ' Poverty,'" Guilt,' ' Destitution ,' and Care ' - all come to disturb the oldworkman; but all excepting ' Care ' are expelled from the land governed by an industrial ' king of men. ' Care ' must remainwith him; for she is as Leopold Schefer says - of divine origin ,and a personage worthy of dwelling with rulers in palaces. Inhis extreme old age, and stricken with blindness — he is about ahundred years old—the man battles with the rude elements ofnature to the last, and then enjoys, in dying, an anticipation of future resulta. Thus he speaks of his work:6 6 6>Freedom , like Life , must be deserved by toilHere men shall live, and, on this fertile soil,Begirt with dangers, shall, from youth to age,Their constant warfare with the ocean wage.XX .]' FAUST .299.O could I see my followers I – Might I standAmong free people on my own free land!To such a moment of intense delightI'd, fearless, say- stay!—thou art so bright!Anticipating all that future bliss,I have it now.-- That moment's here! _ ' Tis THIS!06So saying, the fighter with the sea reclines upon the soil which he has bravely won from the waves, and in full contentment ex pires. By his last words, he has (if the letter of the old bond .holds good) forfeited his soul to Mephisto, who is here, ready to show the bond. " Here lies the body,' says he, ' and now, if the spirit tries to escape, I meet him, at once, with this document.'The enemy who led young Faust into sin now makes a protestagainst the doctrine of the forgiveness of sins, ' which, as he declares, is a modern innovation and utterly heterodox. 6 Inthe ancient times,' says he, there was no trouble such as we have now in catching the souls of men. We were then sure ofour victims when once they had signed; but now there are so many new ways of saving them! ' - This zeal for orthodox andconservative principles seems very strange, when the character of the speaker is considered.Meanwhile, companies of angels appear to welcome the soul of Faust, as one of their own communion, and to lead him up to the place where a Spirit once named ' Margaret' is waiting for him.By his devotion to a grand, benevolent aim , by living for the whole and for the better world to come, he has been prepared forcommunion with the unseen inhabitants of that world .The demon summons all his subordinates to assist in preventingthe escape of the intended victim . Passages of most grotesquehumour are here placed in contrast with some beautiful thoughts and their imagery. Angels and demons contend for the pos session of the soul, while Margaret is waiting in heaven for thearrival of the Spirit whom she once called ' Heinrich .' Transub stantiated and endowed with everlasting youth, he rises toheaven, while the angels who attend him are singing:This member of our heavenly quire Is saved from evil powers;Let evermore a soul aspire,And we can make him ours.300 OUTLINES OF. GERMAN LITERATURE. [Ch.CHAPTER XXI.SEVENTH PERIOD. 1770-1830.SCHILLER' He was a seer - a prophet. . . . A century has passed since his birth ,and we revere him as one of the first among the spiritual heroes of humanity.A hundred years may roll away; another and yet another; still from century to century his name shall be celebrated , and at last there shall comea festival when men will say: - “ See! there was truth in his ideal anticipations of freedom and civilization . " )FRIEDRICH VISCHER's Speech at the Centenary Festival of Schiller's Birthday (1859).6For the sake of placing together notices of several of Goethe's works, so as to show both their union and their variety, we havedeviated from the order of time, to whichwe now return .In 1781, when Goethe wrote (in prose) his quiet drama of * Tasso ,' a contrast to that work appeared in a wild and violent play called “ The Robbers,' which produced an excitement now hardly conceivable as the result of such a tragedy.It was anunartistic, dramatic rhapsody, written in favour of anarchy, which was described as propitious to the development of ' genius ' and strength of character. The praise and the censure bestowed on this crude drama were alike unbounded. If Germany is ever to have a Shakspeare, here he is! ' said one fanatical critic - referring to the author of The Robbers.' ' If I might create a world ,said another and more ridiculous fanatic, on the condition that“ The Robbers” should appear in that world, I would not create it! ' The play thus absurdly spoken of was Friedrich Schiller'scontribution to the sensational literature already described inChapters XVI. and XVII. The errors of the play belonged to the time when it appeared. The extreme bad taste then prevalenthas been sufficiently nuticed.>XXI.] SCHILLER . 3016JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH (von) SCHILLER Was born at the little town of Marbach, situate on the Neckar, on November10, 1759. His father, a lieutenant in the army of Würtemberg,held also an appointment as park -keeper at " The Solitude,' acountry - seat where the Duke of Würtemberg, in 1771, established a military academy, afterwards removed to Stuttgart. In this school the young poet received his education. Here he readGoethe's drama, ' Götz, ' several inferior German plays and poems,and some translations from Shakspeare. He thus found solace in aworld of imagination, revealing itself to him in startling contrastwith the school - world of hard routine in which he was confined .His dislike of law studies extended itself to civilised life, and drove his imagination to the haunts of bandits in forests. After forsaking law and slightly studying medicine, he was appointed as a regimental surgeon . His pay was despicable, and his style of hospital practice more drastic and heroic than judicious. Mean while his thoughts were occupied with the success of " The Robbers 'at Mannheim , and, without leave of absence, he quitted hispatients and went to enjoy the popularity of his own play. For this offence he suffered a fortnight's arrest, and received some admonition from the Duke of Würtemberg.A deep impression had been made on the poet's mind by hisacquaintance with the history of Daniel Schubart, (see Chapter XVII. ), who, on account of some irreverent writings, had endured in Würtemberg an imprisonment of ten years! Calling to mind that fact, the author of The Robbers' was resolved to escape from Stuttgart, and a favourable opportunity soon presented itself. TheGrand Duke Paul of Russia visited Stuttgart, and the authorities of the place were too busy in preparing illuminations in honour of their guest to notice the departure of a young regimental surgeon.Schiller rode, at midnight, by " The Solitude,' lit up with athousand candles, and the Stuttgart people did not dream that aman was leaving their town that night of whom they would somo day be prouder than they were of the Grand Duke's visit. Thatyal visit is now remembered only on account of the fact that,at the time of its occurrence, the poet went to Mannheim .When he arrived in the town, he alarmed the theatre-manager,Meyer, by making a confession to the effect that the duke's authority had been defied, and that his own pecuniary resources wereslender, while his hopes of success were founded on a manuscriptc302 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .play called " Fiesco .' At first the manager disliked this newdraina, and would hardly believe that it had been written by the author of ' The Robbers .' Afterwards, Meyer thought better of

• Fiesco ,' but time was wanted to adapt it to the stage, and the poet's resources meanwhile were failing. Wishing to place himself at a greater distance from his former patron, the duke, Schiller soon left Mannheim and went to Frankfort. On the journey his strength was exhausted, and he lay down to rest in a

wood, while one faithful friend — a poor musician named Streicher -watched over him. They left Frankfort ere long; for the poet's hope of receiving aid from the director of the Mannheim theatrewas disappointed. The travellers next found a more obscure retreat in a village where Schiller wrote a part of Kabale und Liebe * Intrigue and Love ') in a miserable chamber where the damp wind of November was blowing through a crazy window patched with prper. Here Streicher was compelled to leave bis companion in distress, who, dressed in a light coat and destituteof winter clothing, was carrying all his worldly goods in a small portmanteau. He now gladly availed himself of an invitationwhich he had received from a lady - Frau von Wolzogen - the mother of some young men who had been fellow - students withthe poet at Stuttgart. In her house at the lonely village of Bauerbach, near Meiningen, he found welcome shelter during the winter of 1782-3, and there completed his third drama. In 1783he gained a small salary by his services as poet to the theatre at Mannheim , and this poor appointment brought to a conclusion the sensational furor in the development of his genius. His next drama, Don Carlos, is full of enthusiasm for freedom , and ex presses some traits in the poet's character; especially his wish tomake the theatre serve as an educational institution.His firm belief in the possibility of making the stage a great moral power in society explains his earnest devotion to dramaticstudies. In a clear and eloquent lecture, delivered at Mannheim ,in 1784, he contends that a superior drama may, powerfully though indirectly, assist the laws of a nation for the support of morality. He argues that, even where the moral condition of apeople'is low, they can be made to feel a wholesome dread ofcrime when the poet brings on the stage the wife of Macbeth ,muttering, in her perturbed sleep: -" All the perfumes of Arabir will not sweeten this little hand! ” . Such theatrical impressions'6XXI.] THE MORAL POWER OF THE STAGE. 303>-says Schiller - cannot be esteemed good substitutes for moraltenching; but they are strong and durable upon the minds of the common people, and must have some value.' Could any lecture or essay on the hateful nature of ingratitude produce the effect of Lear's exclamation to his daughters— “ I gave you all ”? But there are many minor virtues and vices, pleasing qualities and foibles in human nature, which religion and law cannot condescend to notice; yet worthy of observation , and without any personalityor malice, these are placed before us in legitimate comedy. In this mirror we see defects and inconsistencies found in our owncharacters, and, without having to submit to personal reproof, we may be secretly thankful to the comic dramatist for giving us wholesome hints, while he raises a laugh at the expense of an imaginary character. If against these observations it is argued that practical life contradicts them; that spectators can witness representations of the best moral dramas, and feel no wholesome influence; that the “ Harpagon ” of Molière has not made extor tioners ashamed of their practices; that the suicide of “ Beverley "has not proved an effectual warning to all gamblers; or that the tragical end of “ Karl Moor ” has not frightened all robbers, and made our highways safe - still, admitting the force of these objections, I would say that the drama must not be condemned for having failed, as other institutions have hitherto failed, to produce a complete reformation in society. Thus Schiller rea soned — his conclusions all depending on the supposition that alegitimate and moral drama can be maintained .Almost all that can be said for and against the moral power ofthe stage may be found in this lecture, and in an essay on the same eubject by a Catholic writer, named Ignaz Wessenberg.“ The drama, ' says this author, ' however noble its character, must not give its lessons in a didactic style, but must place before us,in fair contrasts, the lights and the shadows of human nature;must make us acquainted with the wise, the virtuous, and also with the foolish and the unworthy. And characters must be naturally drawn. The goodness which accompanies evil must claim our notice. The moral or general purport of a drama cannot appear in every part; but must ' result from a fair view of thewhole. Can we hope, even if a drama is in itself good, that all the spectators will take a fair view of the whole? Jf a rogue is introduced on the stage, he must be made interesting; his good6а304 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CA.humour, his cleverness, his temporary successes, must be fairly exhibited. This will not lead a discriminating mind into error;but many young and untrained minds will admire the hero, and forget that he is a rogue. His cleverness and success captivate their attention;; their sympathies are enlisted on his side, and they feel, not satisfaction , but regret when they see the failure ofbis cunning plot. I see no way of avoiding this evil; for if you make the drama a school for popular instruction, you injure itscharacter as a work of art.'It can hardly be said that Schiller fairly met these practical objections. His own ideal theory, which led both to the defectsof his Don Carlos and to the success of his Wilhelm Tell, was notrealised at Mannheim . Several disagreeable circumstances there induced him to leave the town in 1785. He was then thinking offorsaking poetry, and of devoting his attention to law studies,when he received aid from one of the best of friends - Körner, thefather of the young poet who fell in the war of liberation. It was one of the finest traits of these times that men who had literary taste but no great mental power found delight in aiding men of genius. Such friends of poets we have already seen in Bodmerand father Gleim, and Körner was one of the noblest men of thisclass. Wherever the name of Schiller is known, that of Körerwill not be forgotten. It was by the aid of this friend that thepoet was enabled to live and pursue his studies in the neighbour hoods of Leipzig and Dresden, from 1785 to 1787, when he wentto Weimar. Here he was kindly received by Herder and Wieland.Goethe was then travelling in Italy, but, soor after his return,gained for Schiller an appointment ( at first, without any salary)as professor of history at Jena. There was no remarkable kindnessin this action; Goethe was, at that time, no admirer of Schiller's writings, and, for several years afterwards, the two poets, though meeting now and then , remained almost strangers to each other.Jena, the common University for fire little stntes, could not then afford to pay an extra professor of history; although, underthe Duke of Weimar's care, the place was becoming celebrated as a centre of learning. It had been, in old times, noted for the poverty of professors, and the rude manners of students. Young Göttingen ( founded in 1734) was the most orderly of the universities, because the students there had no rules; ' in other words,no bad, old traditions. At Jena amusing stories were told of6XXI.] • DIE HOREN .' 305>students “ in the good old times;' of their scanty wardrobes; of their dressing up one old professor so as to make him like a scarecrow ,and of their duels fought in the market-place, close to the town hall, where the magistrates were sitting. Some traces of thesemanners remained in Schiller's time and afterwards, until the sturdy patriot and philosopher, FICHTE, came as a reformer to Jena,and then, some unruly spirits gave trouble to the man whosewill was as firm as steel. But Jena, near the close of the century ,was assuming an advanced position in learning and philosophy,and, in the course of a few years, there came hither such men as Woltmann, Schelling, Hegel, the brothers Schlegel, and thebrothers Humboldt. Here the Romantic School, of which we have soon to tell, was founded , and here was fostered the desirefor national unity and independence that had for its result the war of liberation. Schiller might well feel anxious about thereception of his first lecture; for he vas modest enough to believe that his own knowledge of history hardly equalled what might befound among the students. His fears were, however, soon dissi pated; the lecture - room engaged for his use was found too small;the largest hall in Jena was crowded and the students gave aserenade to cheer the new professor.At Jena the poet devoted his days (and too great a part of his nights) to historical and philosophical studies, which were relieved by holidays spent at Rudolstadt, where he became acquainted withCharlotte von Lengenfeld whom he married in 1790. He had now obtained a small salary and had hopes of improving his circumstances. His happiness was interrupted in 1793 by afailure of health, which compelled him to seek repose in a visit to his parents - still living near Stuttgart.In 1794 Schiller issued the prospectus of a new literary journal Die Horen — and invited the aid of many contributors, including Goethe, Garve, Engel, Herder, and the venerable septuagenarians,Kant and Klopstock . The editor was disappointed in some of his expectations when the journal appeared in 1795. The literature of Die Horen was too good for the public, and Schiller's philoso phical articles were too far advanced to suit the taste of minor literary men. Schiller soon heard disrespectful remarks on his enterprise and read unfavourable criticisms on his own contri butions. Of these matters he conversed often with Goethe, (whosefriendship he had gained in 1794), and the two poets resolved to6YX306 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.reply by publishing the Xenien , a series of epigrams briefly noticedin a preceding chapter. They were planned in 1795 and appeared in Schiller's new journal, the Musenalmanach, in 1797. Theallied poets - now converted into satirists - gained, at the time, more fame by these epigrams than by their better writings, and wererespected, because they were feared . Among all the literary menwho were offended by the Xenien the most respectable writer was Herder. He had, for some time, lived apart from close sympathy with Goethe, and had no cordial liking for Schiller. The Venien,though they now seem mild specimens of satire, were so offensive to . Herder that he never forgave the writers. The sense of theimportance of literature and of the dignity of men of genius thatonce prevailed in Weimar, Jena, and other places seems now to belong to a world that has passed away. It was a genial time when the Xenien appeared; but a tone of youthful exaggerationin praising one another prerailed among literary men. They cared more for sentiments than for what are called the sternrealities of life, and they would accept compliments that now appear too much like irony. Men who could be pleased by gross flattery were easily mortified by such satire as the Venien contained .Schiller remained an invalid during the later years of his life,and this fact makes his success in literature more remarkable.His consciousness of a duality in his existence - of warfare betweenthe mind and body — is reflected in several of his letters. There was a discord in his life that would be resolved only in the grave.He expressed it when he exclaimed , Miserable man! withthoughts and hopes soaring to the heavens, yet tied down to thisclod of earth; this tiresome clock -work of the body! '- In one of his letters to Goethe he writes: -Now I have attained suchintellectual clearness and have established in my mind suchprinciples of art, that I might — if spared - do something great andgood, my physical constitution is threatened by decay. Well; if itmust be so - if the se must fall to ruins-- I have escued fromthe fall all that is worth saving .'Goethe and Schiller were as strongly contrasted in their physicalas in their intellectual characteristics. The former, though he had his share of work and care, controlled his literary and uther labours, so that they harmonized with health. His life was, onthe whole, a summer's day; Schiller's careerwasvexed with clouds-XXI.] MADAME DE STAËL. 3076and storms. Goethe travelled along a smooth road , and the quiet scenery of his journey was mirrored in the repose of his features.Schiller was a striving man, and his harsh and worn countenance told of the time when the world was not his friend . Goethe foundpoetry as if it had been already created for his enjoyment, when ever he had leisure for contemplation. Nature seemed to bestow upon him all that he asked for. Schiller had to work and fight to attain his ideal objects, and the strife gave a stern expression to his face. ' Except the eyes, there is nothing soft or gentle in his face ,' said Goethe. But, however differing in these and other respect, the two poets were firm friends, and their friendship had better results than could have followed rivalry.In 1795–1800 Schiller wrote his finest ballads, each inspired bysome noble idea, and his most elaborate drama, Wallenstein. In 1800 he went to reside at Weimar, and, in the same year, wrotethe drama ' Maria Stuart,' which was followed by The Maid ofOrleans' ( 1801 ). " The Bride of Messina ' appeared in 1803. In the same year, the poet was occupied on his drama of TVilhelmTell and went, sometimes, with Goethe to Jena, where they often met Hegel, for whose character and powers of mind Schiller had a high respect. " I can excuse,' he said, ' Hegel's want of facility in expression, on account of his depth and earnestness .'In the winter of the same year, Schiller received modestly the homage paid to him by Madame de Staël, during her visit to Weimar. As Goethe was indisposed at the time, his friend was called upon to exercise his slight ability in French conversation ,in order to entertain the most fluent, vivacious, and controversial of all talkers -80? the poet described his visitor. ' In her company,'said he, the whole man ought to be converted into an organ of hearing, in order to keep pace with her.'... She wouldexplain , see through , measure and define everything.'....Sheknows nothing whatever of poetry, in our sense of the word .'• Where her torch can cast no light, there is nothing existing forher. ' ... " She made me more contented than ever to remain aGerman .'Of Schiller's talents in conversation Madame de Staël wrote thus: — He reads French very well; but he has never been accus ,tomed to talk in our language. I warmly asserted the superiurityof our own dramatic system over all others. He had to contend with a slow utterance and a difficulty in finding French words to? 666x 2308 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CE.express his ideas; but without fearing the opinions of the audience,which were opposed to his own, he was ready to meet me in controversy; indeed, his earnest convictions compelled him to speak. At first I used against him our French weapons - vivacity and pleasantry — but I soon discovered such a fulness of thought amid all the embarrassment of his words; I was so much impressed by the simplicity of character that led a man of genius to enter into a dispute, though he wanted language to express bimself; Ifound him so modest; so careless about his own success in the argument, but so firm and animated in the defence of what he believed to be true that I devoted to him, at once, a friendship full of admiration.'— Was this friendship anything more than asensation of triumph in the exhibition of a fluent eloquence?Six years later, Madame de Staël published, in her work De l'Allemagne, her observations on Germany, its general literature,poetry, fine arts, morals, manners, religion and systems of philo sophy. In the compilation of this book she was, no doubt, greatly indebted to her friend August Wilhelm von Schlegel, who, for several years, resided or travelled with her. A glance at the chapters on pbilosophy and on classical and romantic poetry may suffice to show that Madame de Staël was not the sole author ofthe book. To prove that she might have been , it has been said (and, no doubt, truly ) that she often contradicted Schlegel, and controverted his judgments on departments of literature and philosophy with which he was very well acquainted. But it is obvious that she might do all this, and, at the same time, use very freely the resources of his extensive reading. Her book - noticeable as the first that offered to French readers a tolerably fair account of German literature — was seized by the police of Napoleon I. in 1810, and the writer received orders to quit France at a day's notice. The agent in this transaction addressed to the authoress a note containing these remarks -It: appears to me that the air of our country does not agree well with you; and on our part it may be added, that we are not yet reduced to the necessity oflooking for models among the people whom you admire. Your Inst work is not French . I have confiscated the whole impression,and am sorry that this must be a loss to your publisher; but it is impossible for me to allow the book to appear.'To return to Schiller - in 1804, while in failing health, hecompleted his last and most successful play, Wilhelm Tell. TheXXI.) LIBERTY . 309acclamations with which it was received seem exaggerated toEnglish readers; for men who have never been weary of a long night cannot know how beautiful the first streak of dawn appears .What did the poet say for national freedom? —Nothing more than what had been said before. But the question should be rather JVhen did he say it? -In 1804 — near the midnight -hour ofpational degradation ( 1806) . To say nothing of the petty states -the want of union between Prussia and Austria had destroyedall hopes of liberty. In Austria the liberal measures of Joseph II.had been repealed , and ignorance and bigotry were inade the bases of a restored despotism . In Prussia men were resting un der the shadow of a name - Friedrich II.; but the spirit of the king had left the land. There were men who called themselves patriots; but their plans had no practical value. Others -- like the rhetorical historian, Müller - were easily made' apostates, and bestowed adulation on the despot, while there wereenthusiasts who, even then, had hardly awakened from theirdreams of enjoying liberty without national honour.Literary men had talked wildly of a Utopia coming from theclouds - or from Paris — and students at universities had amusedthemselves by planting dead trees of liberty .' A tale was told in 1793, that Schelling and Hegel, then young philosophers at Tübingen, planted one of the barren emblems in a meadow by theNeckar! Another version asserts that Hegel — a grim Jacobin,only twenty -two years old - performed, with the aid of his friend ,Hölderlin , a frantic dance about a liberty -tree set up for the occasion in the market-place at Tübingen.Schiller also dreamed in his youth; but he awakened early.

• The French Republic will pass away,' said he, ' s suddenly as it It will pass into anarchy, and this will end in submission

to a despot, who will extend his sway over the greater part of Europe.'- It may be suggested that, possibly, the poet's wife, whorecorded this prediction, might make some mistake with regard toits date; for she quotes the words as if they had been uttered in .1794. Yet Schiller had then read enough of Kant's moral pbilosophy to know that freedom must be founded on morality and that morality must be founded on religion. In his later years hewas a true enthusiast in the service of freedom . He had seen theerrors of a vapid cosmopolitanism , and hnd learned that good -will for men of all nations must have its centre at home, and bearose .310 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CA.united with a supreme care for national honour. His later works maintain the doctrine that virtue, patriotism and true freedom are inseparable. Synpathy with his patriotic enthusiasm conspired with admiration of his poetic genius to make his name more and more popular near the close of his life and after bisdecease. His fellow - countrymen then understood the tendency of his best works, to cherish a love of unitire freedom andnational honour. People had called him ' an idealist ' and ' avisionary .' He was, indeed, possessed by two or three ideas; butthese were so true and so powerful that they insisted on being converted into realities. The idea of liberty, pronounced, at first,so crudely in • The Robbers,' was more and more purified and ennobled, as it passed through other forms of expression , -in Fiesco, Kabale und Liebe, Don Carlos, Wallenstein and " The Maid of Orleans '-until, at last, it shone forth splendidly in Wilhelm Tell, as a prophecy of coming liberation .• Thousands who trembled not when the earth groaned underthe weight of the despot's mailed cavalry; men who, with fearless hearts , confronted the thunders of his artillery; thousands who fell to be mingled with the ensanguined soil, on so many battle fields;-all carried with them into the struggle the enthusiasm kindled by Schiller's poetry; his songs were on their lips, and his Spirit fought along with them! -And if the time come again when such sacrifices shall be demanded — for Fatherland, for morals and laws, for truth - the poetry of Schiller shall once more inspire us, and his burning words shall be our battle-cry! 'The above quotation from a speech delivered by Friedrich Vischer, at the centenary festival of Schiller's birthday ( 1859 ),may serve to express the enthusiasm awakened in Germany by thepatriotism and poetic genius so well united in the poet's last drama.In the spring of 1804 and after a visit to Berlin, the poet suf fered again from a severe attack of his constitutional malady,pulmonary consumption, from which he only faintly rallied; and,about a year afterwards, the disease returned with fatal power.On April 28, 1805, he was seized with fever, and lay for about aweek, still cherishing hopes of life. On May 6 he fell into de lirium . On the 7th he seemed restored to self-possession, andbegan to converse with his sister- in - law on the nature of tragedy.'Fearing the excitement of his ruling passion, she exhorted him to-6XXI.] SCHILLER'S DEATH . 311666be quiet. True, ' he replied , ' now , when no one understands me, and I no more understand myself, it is better that I should be silent .'At the beginning of this illness he had regretted the interrup tion it must occasion to his projected tragedy of . Demetrius.' On ,the night of the 7th , the servant, watching by his bed , heard himreciting several lines from the drama upon which his mind was still engaged. In the morning, he called for his infant daughter,gazed upon her face, kissed her, and wept bitterly. In the even ing of the same day, when his sister - in - law asked him how hefelt, he answered, “ Better and more cheerful.' Then he longed to behold, once more, the setting sun; they drew aside the curtains and he looked, for the last time, with a poet's sympathy,on the great light. As after a cloudy afternoon there comes,sometimes, a short season of splendour, just before sunset; so it seemed, on Schiller's death -bed , that the character of the man ,the father, and the poet was allowed to shine out for a few moments between the clouds of delirium and the darkness ofdeath. The next day he was exhausted and speechless, and in the evening he breathed his last.Goethe was ill at the time of his friend's departure, and none .durst tell the news. He observed the embarrassment of his friends and servants, and feared to demand the whole truth . Themembers of his household heard their master, 80 remarkable forhis control of feeling, secretly weeping. On the next morning beasked, ' Was not Schiller very ill yesterday?? A silence followed .' He is dead 1 ' said Goethe, and covered his eyes with his hands.So died Friedrich Schiller, aged forty - five years. His life was short; but it was a life, not a sleep. He had devoted himself to a great object, to win a high place among the poets and intellec tual heroes of his country; he used the means of attaining this end; he studied long and felt deeply, esteeming bis vocation more than his earthly life — and he gained his object; he was crowned with more than the admiratioņ, with the love of his people, and died as he touched the goal." He lived as a Man , and as a mature Man he departed from us.In that form in which one leaves the earth he still lives andmoves for us in the world of spirits. Achilles is, for us, still present as an ever-striving youth. That Schiller went awayearly is for us also a gain . From his tomb there comes to6312 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .us an impulse, strengthening us, as with the breath of his ownmight, and awakening a most earnest longing to fulfil, lovinglyand more and more, the work that he began. So, in all that hewilled to do, and in all that he fulfilled, he shall live on, for өтет,for his own nation and for mankind .'Thus GOETIE spoke of his departed friend , SCHILLER.The question sometimes discussed by young students, ' Whether Schiller or Goethe is the greater poet? ' was long ago answered by the younger poet, who was ' too clear- sighted and modest ' ( as Nr. Carlyle has observed ) to claim equality with his friend. Thebreadth of mind and the comprehensive sympathy of Goethe were -we might almost venture to say — excessive. In Schiller's mind the height is more remarkable than the expanse . In Goethe'sbest poems art and nature, thought and its symbol, are united ,fused and welded together. In Schiller's poetry we find division;there is a visible strife between the thought and its symbol. Theidea seems to be discontented with its incorporation, and endea vours, again and again, to assert itself in an abstract form . Thopoet first fixes his attention on some noble thought, and then proceeds to find imagery for its expression; but, after all bis· endeavour, the thought is left too often solitary or abstract, as if too pure and high to be incorporated. This abstract elevationmay be seen in the drama of Don Carlos; especially in the con versation between Philip II. and the Marquis of Posa. Here, as in many other passages, we are reminded, that the writer wasnot contented with his vocation as a poet; he wished to analyse and systematise his thoughts, and he had an earnest desire toteach .How loſty his thoughts of his own duty were, may be seen ina passage from his Letters on Æsthetic Education ' which hasbeen often quoted, but is too characteristic to be omitted here:• The Artist is the son of his time, but it is not good for him thathe should be its pupil or even its favourite. Let some beneficent divinity snatch him , while he is a suckling, from the maternal bosom , that, under a distant, Grecian sky, he may be nurtured with the milk of a better time. And when he has arrived at maturity,let him return to his own century and appear there, not to give pleasure to his cotemporaries, but-liko Agamemnon's son-- tochasten and to purify them .'- To understand the force of theseexpressions we must refer to the low literature of the times when>XXI.) SCHILLER'S IDEALISM . 3136Kotzebue ruled in the theatre and Clauren supplied novels andromances for crowds of readers.Schiller's endeavour to avoid all that is common and mean ledhim to the opposite extreme of ideal abstraction. His views ofhuman life were lofty, but were not comprehensive. If he did notdespise, he neglected to study, many common, lowly realities. Hispoetry is therefore the antithesis of such poetry as was written byour English realist - George Crabbe. ' Nature's sternest paintercould look on life with a poet's eye-as his story of ' The Lover's Journey ' might provo - but he would not describe either anArcadia or a Utopia as possible in a world like this. As hetravelled through life, he stayed to look into workhouses, prisons,and ' the buts where poor men lie , ' and he became so much interested in his duties as an inspector of miseries, that he forgotall about Utopia. His poor people hardly ever look up to· heaven. Crabbe lived in the present, and looked around on theobjects — the bard facts - presented by every -day life; Schiller looked around him, but more frequently, upwards and onwards,as we see him in one of bis portraits. He despised, or he defiedlow rcalities, and boldly uttered his belief that, after all thefailures of which history is the record, men shall enjoy, first moral,then political and social freedom . The poet who will pass through all Crabbe's realism and arrive at Schiller's idealism will be a newphenomenon in literature.The differences of intellect and character existing betweenSchiller and Goethe have been accurately described by Germancritics; but the agreement of the two poets in their thoughts of the vocation of literature has bardly received due attention. Oneof the objects professed by the writers of the Roniantic School,who made themselves prominent near the close of Schiller's life,was to assert that literature and art ( including poetry ) should be closely united with a religious faith and with the institutions ofpractical life. To find such a uvion, they proposed to do that which was utterly impossible — to return to the social circum stances of the middle ages. Both Goethe and Schiller hadthoughts and hopes of a more harmonious world than the present;but they looked forward and into the future for the realisationof their hopes. Their views of the progress of society were far in advance of the notions prevalent in their times. Apathy had,too generally, followed the great failure of the Revolution and,314 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [Ch.266(as Schiller said ) men who had been terrified by freedom assert ing itself as negation and destruction were too ready to fall into the arms of any protecting despotism . But, against all the dis couragements of that age, the poet of freedom maintained his ownfaith, and there was more sobriety in bis doctrine than in such as had been taught by some philosophers' of the eighteenth century;for he held that freedom could never come from without to any man or to any nation . So lofty, however, was the poet's notion of the culture which he styled æsthetic that he made it - though not asubstitute for morality — a most important aid for the renovation of society. It may be asked , Did Schiller give due attention tothe historical fact, that the idea of freedom for all men was first introduced to the world by the Christian Religion? Howeverthat may be, the poet - like his friend Goethe - had no faith inany such changes as can be produced by external and superficial politics. He was, after all that has been said of his idealism ,more practical than some gravo men who have talked derisivelyof dreamers.' The writer of such poems as the " Eleusinian Festival ' and the Song of the Bell ' suggested a future poetry in harmony with life and culture. He endeavoured to widen bisown sympathies, when he came near to the close of his career and was fully conscious of his own defects.From his philosophical essays and letters, bis poems and hislife, there shines out a noble ideal of a poet's mission. He must not be content (as we understand Schiller ) either with dreams or with the so - called realities of the present, and he must not think that his duty is fulfilled by declamation against the errors and miseries of the world. He must feel that the genius whichinspires him is the true catholic element of human nature and penetrates the souls of all. He must be content to see those visionsof beauty which his songs anticipate - not coming with suddenand triumphant fulfilment of the hopes and desires of prophets in all nges; but slowly breaking through the clouds of dark and painful realities, beaming forth gently as the morning light, and shining more and more to the perfect day. He must neither forfeit the real nor the ideal; but must see good in the contradic tion between them, as it is the condition of faith, constancy,activity, and enterprise. He must not hope to live in a region of indolent contemplation , where beauty and poetry and truth will7XXI.] SCHILLER'S INFLUENCE . 315be found ready-made all around him; but he must feel that heis called to be a maker - toStifle the contradictions of his fate,And to one purpose cleave - his being's godlike mate.The influence of a sincere and genial literature is wanted to soften the contradictions which exist between our poetry and ouractual life, our best faith and our practice; and, to fulfil his duty in promoting such a literature, the man endowed withthe gift of song must add to the power of imagination the virtues of faith, fortitude, and patience, and, in short, must strive to be agood man as well as a great poet. That endeavour made Schillernoble.To conclude — he was eminently an ideal poet, but facts shouldreprove the error of taking the word ideal as always a synonymefor unpractical. The true ideal is spiritual and operative. In tense thoughts are just as expansive as they are intense, and lofty aims are like lights on high towers — seen at a great distance.To descend to facts -- the influence of Schiller's poetry, on the characters of young men in Germany has been so important, and is so closely united with the memory of his life, that this sketch of his biography can hardly be out of place here. There is no modern writer to whom the young men of the German Empire are so much indebted as to FRIEDRICH SCOILLER .316 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Co.CHAPTER XXII.SEVENTH PERIOD . 1770-1830.. SCHILLER'S WRITINGS: - THE ROBBERS ' -- ' FIESCO '-'INTRIGUE ANDLOVE ' -- ' DON CARLOS'-HISTORICAL STUDIES --ÆSTHETICS - BALLADS-LYRICAL POEMS - POEMS ON THE HISTORY OF CULTURE -- LATERDRAMAS: - WALLENSTEIN ' -- ' MARIA STUART' --THE MAID OF ORLEANS' -- ' THE BRIDE OF MESSINA'- WILHELM TELL.'6 6SCHILLER's writings belong respectively to three periods in his short life:-youth, middle life, and the last decennium . The lyrical poems and the dramas of his early life are his weakestproductions. After years of wandering and striving against poverty,he cast poetry aside and studied history and philosophy. Thenfollowed a happier time — the last ten or eleven years of his life--- during which he wrote his best dramas and the well- known seriesof ballads.Schiller sympathised, as we have said, with the revolutionary tendency of the time in which his youth was passed. Like some older men, he protested against all existing institutions and gained popularity by the use of violent declamation. There was no truthin the characters described in his first three dramas. Men wereabsurdly divided into two classes; -noble spirits on the right hand, and fiends on the left. A wild craving for negative liberty is the most remarkable trait in “ The Robbers ' and in Fiesco,'and the success of Kabale und Liebe (' Intrigue and Love ' ) waspartly gained by its attacks on the aristocracy. These three playsmust be judged as the productions of a youth.In the play of ' Don Carlos — written at various times in 1784 87 — the poet moderated his revolutionary fervour and expressed A wish to build up rather than to destroy. Though defective in unity and unfaithful to history, the drama, by its representation+XXII. ] DON CARLOS.' 317of a noble but ideal character — the Marquis of Posa - won the admiration of many young readers.The story of Don Carlos? departs widely from historical facts and is founded mostly on a French work by Saint- Réal, which is nothing more than an historical romance. The Marquis of Posa is an.entirely fictitious character, invented to give expression to the poet's own sentiments on civil and religious liberty. In a long conversation (Act iï . scene 10) Posa delivers, without interruptionand in the presence of Philip II. of Spain, a series of lectures on the evil effects of tyranny. This is a gross improbability; for itis quite certain that the hard and narrow bigot who caused thedeath of his own son would not have listened for one moment tosuch language as is here used by the advocate of liberty . Thus,for example, the enthusiastic Marquis of Posa ventures to express his sentiments (or rather Schiller's ) in the presence of Philip II.:My home! my fatherland!—There's none for me.Spain all belongs to you, and not to Spaniards;' Tis the gigantic body for one mind Your own - throughout that body you alone,As omnipresent, think and work to makeYourself a mighty name; you flourish here And none can grow besides you. What you give Is but the food to gladiators given To make them strong to fight for you.Souls here can merely vegetate and die;Genius and virtue grow to be cut down,As corn grows yellow for the reaper's scythe.In this direct style the Marquis ( or rather Schiller placing hinself in the sixteenth century ) lectures the king for the spaceof about an hour, and Philip II. of Spain -marvellous tosay - listens very patiently and is greatly edified! When he hasheard the whole of the long sermon, he graciously extends. hishand to be kissed by the faithful preacher, and invites him to callagain as soon as possible. There could hardly be a grosser con tradiction of historical facts. The play contains eloquent andenthusiastic passages of declamation; but wants dramatic life andunity . The interest which, in the first three acts, has a centre inDon Carlos is afterwards transferred to the imaginary character ofthe Marquis of Posa .Schiller's youthful and vague enthusiasm for liberty was mode rated by his historical studies, of which the results appeared in a3+318 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ Cu .>6• History of the Revolt in the Netherlands ' (1788) and in aHistory of the Thirty Years' War ' ( 1791-93). These writingsgive no proof of laborious research; but advocate civil and re ligious freedom , and have a tendency to support the doctrine, thatthe History of the World is the Judginent of the World . Thepoet could hardly have chosen a more difficult historical subject than the Thirty Years' War.After his appointment at Jena (1789) Schiller devoted not alittle of his time to a study of Kant's philosophical works, and theresults of such reading and meditation appeared, in Letters on Æsthetic Education ,' in the Essays . On Grace and Dignity,' ' Onthe Sublime,' and ' On Naive and Sentimental Poetry,' and in the didactic poem entitled " The Artists. One of the poet's own doctrines is, that the study of beauty, as revealed in art,while it must not be made a substitute for moral training, mayrender essential service as an ally. The object of ethical education is to convert the obedience due to an apparently stern law into afree expression of love. As the ideas of goodness and beauty are united, though distinct, there must be a natural connection between ethical and artistic training, however they may be separatedby the errors and the frailties of individuals. Schiller extended to other departments of art his faith in the educational power of the drama, which he had professed in the lecture delivered at Mannheim in 1784. That faith he maintained, even while Kotze bue reigned in the theatre. Schiller still asserted his own ideal and hopeful doctrine, and would not be discouraged by looking on realities. It must be added, that his philosophical writings want systematic arrangement. He criticised them fairly when he said:"My poetry interferes with my philosophy.'He returned to poetry soon after 1794, and his finest ballads (written in 1797-8) combined successfully his inevitable didactic tendency with a study of artistic form .; Almost every one of the series of ballads produced at this time serves to express andillustrate some important thought or precept. The Diver ’may perhaps be mentioned as an exception; for we would not extort from it such a common - place maxim as " be not too venturesome.'The whole story serves, however, as a symbol of perfect courage;for the Diver, after hy has explored the horrors of the whirlpool,and has been alone among the monsters of the deep, plunges asecond time into the waves and returns no more. In the equally6XXII.) BALLADS. 3196>well- known ballad , The Fight with the Dragon,' the noble illustration given of self - conquest, as the greatest heroism , might have saved the poet from the reproach, that he knew nothing of Christianity. The story told in this ballad is too well known to be again narrated except in the briefest form; but it should be noticed as showing that the poet of liberty could write powerfully of Christian humility and obedience — the bonds of society and the necessary attendants of true freedom.One of the Knights of St. John ( 'named Dieu - Donné de Gozon ,'says Vertot, in bis history of the Order) had, without receiving or asking permission from the Grand Master ( Helion de Ville neuve) sallied forth to attack a huge dragon which had spreaddevastation over a large district near Rhodes. Dieu - Donné had employed every precaution to insure success in his bold adventure.To train his charger and his hounds for the combat, he employedan artist to make an image of the monster, and, when the dogswere accustomed to attack the hideous effigy, they were led out against the dragon . The Knight returned victorious, dragging behind him the slain enemy, and accompanied by crowds of peopleloudly hailing their deliverer. Meanwhile, the Knights of theOrder were assembled in conclave in their hall, and, when the hero appeared before them, he received from the Grand Master astern reprimand for disobedience, and a command to divest himself of his badge and to surrender all claims to the honours ofChristian knighthood. The crowd of people who have pressed into the ball, expecting to see some great reward bestowed on their hero, stand in niute amazement when this heavy censurefalls upon him , and some of his brethren come forward to plead for grace; but the penitent meekly submits, takes off his badge,and, before be turns away, kisses the hand of the Grand Master.Here! to my heart! ' the Master cries;Come back!-by deeds of valour done,You only risked the Christian's prize Which now your lowliness bath won . 'The lesson artistically conveyed in “ The Cranes of Ibycus ' has & true and profound meaning. The Nemesis described as haunt ing the transgressor is irseparably united with himself; a man'smoral destiny is an evolution of his own character; the Euminides are mere sbadows for all eare guilty consciences. This truth was320 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Ch.2never more finely uttered in poetry than by Schiller. He found in Plutarch a story which might be treated so as to make it serve a higher purpose than that for which it was at first narrated .Plutarch, after telling the story of Ibycus, appends to it a shal low moral, to the effect, that the murderers of the poet werebetrayed, not by the cranes, but by their own garrulity. Ibycus,a Greek lyric poet (of whose writings some fragments have been preserved ), was trarelling, we are told, from his native place,Rhegium , to Corinth, there to take part in the IsthmianFestival. He was near the end of his journey, and was passingthrough the dark pine -wood consecrated to Neptune, when he was attacked by robbers, who murdered him for the sake of suchsmall booty as a poet could carry with him. Ibycus, left alone and dying, looks up and seés, in the sky, a long flight of cranes,migrating to the south:• Ye Cranes! bear witness how I fall ,'Said Ibýcus, with failing breath;“ If human tongues are silent all,Fly!-tell the story of my death .'The poet's corpse is found in the wood, and the news of his melancholy fate is soon spread among the people assembled at the games. Meanwhile, a tragedy in which the Furies appear is to be performed in the great roofiless theatre, where all the tiers of seats are crowded with spectators, including many who knew and loved the murdered poet.Out of the dim background of the stage there come forth -- likeremembered sins rising out of the gloom of a bad conscience the terrible forms of the Furies, the detectors and avengers ofcrime:Dark robes about their loins are flowing,And in their fleshless hands they bearTheir torches, dimly, redly glowing;Their cheeks are bloodless, and for hair Instead of such as, soft andlithe,About a human forehead bangsSee dusky snakes and vipers writhe And twist, and show their deadly fangs.Then, with their rhythm of long and slow paces, the Furies going round about on the stage, sing, with hoarse voices,How blest the man unstained by crime,Who keepeth clean both heart and hand!XXI .] BALLADS. 321He travels, free, through every clime,His steps we track not o'er the land;· But woe to him who from the light Would hide a murder in bis breast!Tre Furies — daughters of the night Will follow him and give no rest;Will follow! Ay — on pinions fleet,We follow; we are everywhere;The criminal, in swift retreat,Can only run into a snare;And when he falls, ' tis vain for graceTo pray to us — forgiving never- Down to the Shades, our dwelling- place,We drag the wretch - our own for ever!The silence that follows this terrible denunciation is suddenlybroken by a strange outcry from the highest tier of the rooflesstheatre. A long flight of cranes is passing over and blackeningthe sky. The Furies have vanished into the dark background ofthe stage; but the natural accident of the cranes appearing atthis moment is made effectual for the detection of the twocriminals. Nature and art conspire together to alarm & guiltyconscience:" There! ' - sounding from the loftiest tier A voice is heard:- Timótheus, see!The cranes of Ibýcus are here! '6" Why should a flight of cranes be associated with the name of Ibycus? say the people, and their suspicions soon become convic tions:• Of Ibýcus 1 '- in accents low The people talk , and through the crowd,Like spreading waves, the murmurs go,Until they grow to voices loudOf Ibýcus, whom we deplore,Who fell beneath a guilty hand,What have the cranes to tell?-Say more!Speak out, that we may understand .'6As by the lightning's flash revealed,The crimeappears in open day;' ' Twas murder; could not be concealed;He has confessed! ’ the people say;Seize there the murderer, self -betrayed ,And him to whom the words were said -- The Furies have their power displayed ,And Justice will avenge the dead '322 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.

6Several other ballads written by Schiller during the years 1799–1803 (when he was chiefly employed in dramatic literature ),are so well known that this brief reference may suffice.Of the early lyrical poems included in an ' Anthology (pub lished in 1781), it may be enough to repeat what has been said of the early dramas —— they mustbe viewed as the crude produc tions ofyouth . The ' Song to Joy ' belongs to the close of the poet's youthful time, and the poem ' Resignation ' has a biographicalinterest, and speaks of hopes unwillingly resigned. Another poem ,Der Kampf ( “ The Combat '), contains only a part of an earlier andfar wilder expression of passion. Both may be referred to as confessions that the poet, in his youthful time, longed for theso - called physical freedom ' which was, often enough, asserted in life as well as in poetry. But it must be added, that the subordination of passion to duty and the reconciliation of duty with happiness of which he speaks so well in his · Letters on ÆstheticEducation ' were fully realised in his own life after 1790, when he married Charlotte von Lengefeld . Another poem of biogra phical interest, Das Glück (“ Good Fortune ' ), may be named, be cause it has been falsely imagined that it expresses some envy of Goethe's success in life. This supposition has in its favour only afew words in one of Schiller's letters to Körner, and the poem isclear enough in itself, without any reference to that letter.As one of the best examples of Schiller's ideal lyric poetry, thepoem originally entitled " The Realm of Shadows, ' and, afterwards,The Ideal and Life,' deserves more attention than can be given here. It describes life as a battle - field where duty and inclination struggle, and where æsthetic culture may afford an impor tant aid in effecting a reconciliation of the contending powers.The true idea of freedom is expressed in this fine poem, and is again found in " The Power of Song,' which blends lyrical enthu siasm with true philosopby.Schiller bad studied history, and was no cold spectator of the events taking place in his owu times. He had a strong tendency to generalise, or to reduce to forms of pure thought, the results of his observations, yet, at the same time, he could not rest con tented with this process, but wished to clothe his thoughts in poetic imagery. These characteristics are all united in a series ofpoems still to be noticed . The Song of the Bell, ' completed in 1799, belongs to this series, which includes also “ The Walk ,' and66XXII.] THE WALK , 325" The Eleusinian Festival.' In these poems the writer gives, in animaginative form , his thoughts on the history of culture . In thefirst (which is well known everywhere ), the various uses of theBell call up, in the poet's mind, a succession of scenes in human life, and the progress of the individual is traced from the cradleto the grave. Then thoughts of the political movement of his own times lead the poet into a digression on the French Revolution ,and the Song closes with a prayer for the advent of peace ." The Walk ' is a fine poem of its class, in which thoughts on history and some reflective passages are well combined with aseries of varied landscapes through which the poet wanders. Cultivated fields and gardens are left behind him, as he enters into apastoral seclusion where dreams of Arcadia and of the Golden Age are suggested; but a glimpso of some hamlets and scattereddwellings of men turns his thoughts to the growth of cities and to the history of civilisation. He describes its advantages and its splendours; but his contentment is suddenly interrupted by aremembrance of the recent reign of terror. Meanwhile, lost in · grave meditation , he has left behind him the valleys, with alltheir sights and sounds of rural life, and has ascended a mountain,where he is glad to find himself alone and yet, as he says, not solitary. The poem is thus concluded:..But where am 1? My path is lost. I find Myself alone on wild and rocky ground:Gardens and hedge- rows all are left behind;No trace of human life or toil is found;But rude, uncultured hills about me stand,And piles of rock await the builder's hand .The torrent from the mountain's melted snowFoams over rocks and roots of trees laid bare,And pours its waters in the dell below;While o'er the desolate place, in the lone air,The eagle hangs, with outspread wings, on high,And knits the savage landscape to the sky.No winds can hither waft the faintest soundOf human joys or cares. Alone I seem,And yet am not alone. 'Thy arms surround Thy child, maternal Nature! ' Twas a dream Of human woes that led me far astray;But now thy presence drives my fears away;From thee I drink once more a purer life;The hopes of youth revive within my breast.Y2324 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CA.The minds of men, in a perpetual strife,Revolve from age to age, and find no rest;While nature, in unfading youth and beauty,Obeys one everlasting law of duty;Upon her constant bosom, ever green ,Beneath her sky of never-fading blue,Lived all the generations who have been,And still her children find her fresh and new.And the same sun that, o'er some Grecian hill,Homer beheld, is shining on us still!While Iffland and Kotzebue were gaining popularity by writing common -place dramas, Schiller remained faithful, as we have said ,to his noble idea of making the theatre a school for the people.The last six years of his life were mostly devoted to the fulfilment of this design . In his drama of Wallenstein ( completed in 1799),the poet chose a very difficult subject; but it is national, and is connected with historical events of great interest. When, in the prologue, the hero is described as “ a Creator of Armies ' and 'Scourge of the Nations,' as ' unsatisfied, though he had attained the highest pinnacle of honour, ' and as ' falling, at last, a victim to his own unbounded ambition,' the words seem more fairly applicable to Napoleon I. than to Wallenstein, who could hardly be more selfish than his secret and his open foes, and who,after all his ambition , was raised only to the rank of a Duke of Friedland. The drama is arranged as a Trilogy; but the Second Part is not independent. The First Part gives a succession of scenes among the rude soldiery-Croats, Walloons, and others - inWallenstein's camp. In one scene their revels are suddenly in terrupted by the arrival of a Capuchin Friar, who takes his stand among them and preaches boldly against their vices. His style consisting of a crude mixture of German with Latin , and garnished with puns — might seem too absurd to be used even in a caricature;but it is, in fact, a faithful representation of such sermons as were preached by the Augustine friar, Ulrich Megerle, of whom abrief notice has been given in our twelfth chapter. This is only one of many amples of Schiller's careful historical study of hissubject. There are many passages in Mogerlo's sermons more eccentric than the following in the Friar's homily, as given bythe poet:Neminem concutiatis!( Violent hands on no'man loy; )а.XXII.)! WALLENSTEIN ' 325Neque calumniam faciatis!(Never a word of slander say;)Contenti estote (be content)Stipendiis vestris ( with your pay )And of your evil ways repent!When the preacher proceeds to rail violently against their Commander-in - Chief, and to call him ' a heretic ' and ' a Nebu chadnezzar,' the sermon is promptly brought to an end amid the loud outcries and threats of his soldiers, and the screaming friaris driven from the field .The impression left by these scenes in the Camp accords as well with facts as with Wallenstein's own estimate of his army,and affects our estimate of his subsequent conduct. In the ThirdPart of the drama, he gives his own account of the soldiery em ployed as defenders of the faith .' Their Commander is heretalking with a Swedish Protestant general:Your Lutherans are fighting for their Bible;They are in earnest to defend their faith.There's nothing of the kind among these men . . . .' Tis true, the Austrian has a fatherland,He loves it well, and not without a cause;But this so - called · Imperial Army' here Has neither faith, nor church, nor any home.It is but refuse, sent from foreign lands Into Bohemia .6The Second Part Die Piccolomini-:-serves as an exposition tothe Third – The Death of Wallenstein . The character of thebero, as described by historians, is complex and mysterious. Hewas the leader of vast armies, over whom he exercised a marvellous personal control. He had resolved to revolt against theEmperor, and had grounds for justifying such a resolution; buthis indecision or procrastination in carrying his designs into execution was fatal. Ascribing both his fortunes and his misfortunes tothe iniuence of the planets, he was guided partly by the advice of anItalian astrologer. Thus too many motives are brought into actionin the unfolding of the plot. The hero is represented as believing that the war-policy of the bigot Emperor - Ferdinand II. -wouldbe ruinous to Germany, and if he held such a belief, he had some grounds for it. While these traits win sympathy for Wallenstein,there is little to be said in favour of his enemies, who secretly used against him the power he had conferred upon them What!326 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .cares the reader for Ferdinand the Second; for Octavio Piccolomini; or for the hirelings Buttler and Gordon, who assassinatedtheir General? The weakness of the drama is that it ends witha negation; there is nothing that can be otherwise described inthe triumph of Wallenstein's enemies.The theory may be entertained that he was a mercenary traitor;but this is not stated in the tragedy. His character is left as mysterious here as in history. His trust in astrology and in his own power; his indecision , and his revolt;—all lead to his downfall. For two years he hesitates to act so as to punish imperial ingratitude; then , when the deed is done, when he has formed analliance with the Swedes, he gives his enemies time to conspireagainst him . For this neglect of precaution against foes there is,however, a noble excuse — he believed them to be friends, and it was not his nature to mistrust them. He gives to his opponentPiccolomini the command of the Spanish forces, and trusts in the honour and friendship of the mercenary Buttler.Wallenstein is thus surrounded by danger, while dwelling in arepose founded not only upon self -confidence and astrological predictions, but also on a belief in the sincerity of friends, when - like crash after crash of a thunderstorm following a dead calm - tidingsof the failure of his plans and the defection of his friends are brought to him . But nought can break down his proud spirit.He is only roused to self -confidence when the worst news reaches that his friend ' - Octavio - has, with all the Spanish forces under his command, decided to fight for the Emperor. All is lost for Wallenstein, who thus boldly encounters the ruin of hisplans:I am as desolate as I was leftAfter that diet held at Regensburg,When I possessed myself and nothing more;But, since then , I have shown you what a man May do, when left alone. - Strike off the twigs!Yet here stand I — the trunk - and in the pith There's still creative energy, to makeA new world all around me!-You have known How I was, once, an army in myself. ... I am the same man still, and strong as ever. It is the spirit that builds up the body;FRIEDLAND will fill his camp with followers.Lead on your thousands! -- men once led by me To victories, but arrayed against me now They're but the limbs, and soon shall know their fate,When they rebel against the Head!him;XXII.]' WALLENSTEIN .' 327The hero, while speaking thus undauntedly, knows enough to crush the bravest spirit; yet he knows not all. He suspects not that one of his most trusted followers - Buttler --while seeming faithful to his master in adversity, is in fact the confidential agent of the Emperor. The enemies of Wallenstein have surrounded him on all sides; his plan for effecting a junction with the Swedes is too late in its execution , and when he advances to Eger, to fulfil his design, he only marches into a prison prepared for him.At the midnight hour, when without suspicion of treachery hehas retired to rest, he is slain by assassins led on by Buttler, andpaid by the Emperor. If the act was just, it was lamentable thatit should assume such a cowardly character.The circumstances attending Wallenstein's death would - even if he were clearly shown to have been a selfish traitor - make im possible any sympathy with his enemies. Whatever his transgression may have been, he is represented, in this drama, as agreat man, and such a man ought not to fall before a mean faction.If it be said that he falls because he has too blindly confided in his own power; it may be true, but it is not stated in the drama.Nor is the indecision that, at times, was so remarkable, describedhere clearly as the cause of his ruin . If he falls simply as atraitor who meets such punishment as he deserves, the conclusion is rational; but it is also common -place, and it does not agreewith the exposition of the drama.We are left, then, without a satisfactory reply to the query ,Who is the conqueror at the close of this tragedy? — It is, ' says Hegel, “ the fall of a great man under a destiny both deaf and dumb. . . . Wallenstein is represented as a man who, by his in dividual energy, holds command over a vast army; for his inde finite greatness of character even such aims as the restoration of peace to Germany, the winning of a sovereignty for himself, andgreat rewards for his followers;-all seem insufficient objects of ambition . Aspiring beyond earthly boundaries, he seeks guidance from Heaven, and would read his destiny in the stars. This vaguely ambitious character finds himself surrounded by smaller men of definite aims; he becomes involved in their strategies, andbe falls .' • The close of the tragedy is unsatisfactory,' saysHegel;-life against life! —but here we have death against life,and - incredible! detestable -death has the victory over life .'The diction of the drama is chaste, appropriate, and dignified.-328 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Ch .He enThe long episode containing the love- story of Max and Thecla has been highly admired by many young readers, and has beautyand purity in itself; but it must be condemned as having - with the exception of onė passage — but little connection with the evolution of the chief dramatic interest.After completing Wallenstein ,' the poet selected asthe subject of his next drama another difficult historical character- MariaStuart.' Her imputed guilt is implied; but is cast into the shadeby sympathy with her sorrows; while the unbappiness of herlater years is represented as a penance patiently endured.The motive of Schiller's next play deserved success.deavoured to defend the character of the Maid of Orleans?against the satire of Voltaire in La Pucelle. The poet could believe what the enlightened philosopher could not imagine; thatan ardent hatred of oppression may, without fraud, assume the character of inspiration. Historical probability and a generousinterpretation of facts are both on the side of Schiller; but it mustbe regretted that, after he had clearly distinguished the trueheroine from the mean caricature in La Pucelle, he partly contradicted his own noble design by the arbitrary invention of an attachment existing between the heroic maiden and the English man, Lionel—the enemy of France! Why should such a weakness have been thought possible? The poet Platen might wellprotest against this sentimental episode. In the Bride of Messina ' we find such passages of splendiddiction as were never surpassed by Schiller; but his endeavour tointroduce in this drama the form of the antique Greek Chorus is afailure. The indistinct notion of fate expressed in some parts ofthe drama suggested the deplorable fate -tragedies ' written by Werner, Müllner, and Grillparzer; but Schiller must not be held accountable for their absurdities.Schiller's first play was a wild rhapsody against law and order;his last play - Wilhelm Tell ' — was a true prophecy of freedom .While writing of'Gessler ' the poet was thinking ofNapoleon I. ' I would like him if I could ,' said Schiller, but I cannot; his character is the extreme opposite of my own. True; for if the poet had one fixed idea it was that of national freedom .In Wilhelm Tell ' nothing is said in favour of that negativeand destructive liberty of which Franz Moor declaimed so wildlyin " The Robbers.' It is of freedom united with order, and de>66XXII. ] • WILHELM TELL .' 329fended by venerable traditions, that the poet writes in his last completed play. For this freedom Schiller spoke out boldly in 1804, while his native land was in a disgraceful state .of bondage.It was of Germany, divided against itself and trodden down, that ho was thinking, more than of Switzerland, when he wrote the last words of the Swiss patriarch - Attinghausen:Therefore, hold fast together!—firm for ever Let no free place be foreign to another;Set warders, to look forth from all your hills,To call your Bund together, and, in the fight,Let all be ONE - ONE - ONEаSchiller once thought of writing something in the shape of anapology for the literary sin of his youth. He was then in lovewith a shadow. In his later years he fixed his affections on trueliberty — the companion of national honour and of intellectual andmoral culture — and to this pure love he remained faithful. Thushe especially won the hearts of the German people.It is but too probable that peither Tell, the hero of the drama,nor his antagonist — the despot Gessler-- ever existed, except in fiction. The story of Tell, as given by the chronicler Etterlin,is not supported by earlier writers, whose silence would have beenhardly less than miraculous if such a hero had lived, or had beentalked of before their times.These facts, however depressing to both students of history and lovers of romance, do not decrease the value of Schiller's drama.Its subject is the assertion of their national independence by theSwiss people, who, in fact, take the place of the hero in the drama.An earnest wish to justify the assassination of Gessler - jn the fourth act seemsto have led the poet to add a fifth act, wbichmay be described as an appendix. The same motive may bare induced him to dwell so long on the principal scene in the thirdact, where Tell shoots at the apple placed on the head of his son Walther. We subjoin a quotation from this part of the play:( WALTHER Tell, the son , stands under a linden -tree; the apple is placed upon his head .]Tell ( bends the cross bow and places a bolt in the groove ).Make clear the way there!Stauffacher. Tell! you will never venture it - o never!See!-- your knees tremble, and your hand is shaking.330 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE , [CH.Tell ( lowering the cross- bow ). All swims before my sightLandvogt! O spare me this!-Here is my heart [ He bares his breast. Call here your horsemen; let them tread me down Gessler. Your life is safe, when I have seen this shot ,What!-Men say you fear nothing, Tell; your hand Can hold the rudder firm against the storm ,As well as bend the bow. No tempests daunt youWhen you would aid the Switzers. Help them now!Ay, in one moment save yourself and all![ Tell, in an agony of doubt, and with hands quivering, looks first at the LANDVOGT, then to heaven; then suddenly takes from the quiver another bolt. The LANDVOGT watches TELL's movements.]Walther Tell. Shoot, father! I am not afraid -Tell. I must![ He collects himself and takes aim.Rudenz ( stepping forwards ].Landvogt, no more of this!-You cannot mean it;' Twas but a trial of the man's submission ,And now your end is gained; your purpose, urged Too far, must contradict itself; the bow Too violently strained asunder snaps Gessler. Pray, save your words till they are wanted, sir.Rudenz. But I will speak, sir! and without a fear The Emperor's bonour and the government That you would make detestable, for me Are sacred still, and, fearless, I declareThis is not ALBRECHT's will! -his people hereShall not be made your victims!—I denyYour warrant for an act like thisGessler. How dare you!Rudenz. The Emperor is my lord, and you are not I'm free-born , like yourself, and I will match Myself against you in all warlike virtue;Were you not here to represent the king (Whose name I reverence, even when 'tis abused, )I'd throw my glove down for you; you should give Account to me for words that you have spoken Ha! you may call your followers. I am notDefenceless like these people; I've a sword Let any man come near me!Stauffacher ( shouts ). The apple has fallen!-See!Rösselmann . The boy's alive!"Walther Tell ( leaping towards his father and bringing the apple ).See, father, here's the apple I -I was sure You would not shoot at WaltherXXII.) • WILHELM TELL.' 331[ TELL stands, for some moments, bent forwards, as if still following the bolt's flight; then steps on quickly to meet the boy , lifts andembraces him; then sinks helplessly on the ground. The bystanders look on him with sympathy .]OLeuthold . There was a shot! -Switzers will talk of thatTo the latest timesRudolph . Ay! while these mountains standOn their foundations men shall talk of that![ He gives the apple to GESSLER.Gessler. By Heaven! the apple's split! -A master's shot.Was that!. Ha, Tell!Tell ( steps towards GESSLER ]. Vogt, what command you now?Gessler . You had another bolt there - Yes; I saw itWhat was your meaning?Tell [ embarrassed ]. Sir, ' tis our custom .Gessler. No, Tell!—that replyWill not suffice — there was a meaning in it;Speak out! your life is safe; I pledge my wordWhat was that second bolt to do?Tell. My lord,My life is safe, you say — then hear the truth:If I had chanced to hit the boy, this bolt [ He draws forth the bolt and looks fiercely at the LANDVOGT. ]Should have pierced through your heart!-ay; for I'm sure I should not then have missed my mark!Gessler. Enough!Your life is safe; I gave my word for that ,And, now I know your temper, I'll be safe From such a marksman! you shall spend your lifeDown in a prison , where neither sun nor moon Shall ever shine upon you more!-Away!Come hither, men! and bind him fast![GESSLER's followers bind TELL .]How the cords that bound the Swiss hero were loosened that, by his power in rowing, he might save his own warders from astorm on the lake all the world knows.' The above scene wasnecessary to introduce another in which the death of GesslerThere is, even in the removal from the earth ofsuch a monster as the Landvogt, something with which we cannot sympathise; for Tell shoots from an ambush, while thetyrant is detained in a narrow pass. In the preceding scenes of the drama all that could be done by the poet has been well done to reconcile us — if possible -- to the conclusion of the third scene in the fourth act, of which we translate a part:takes place.332 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Сн.[ SCENE:-- The narrow pass of Küssnacht. On the rock TELL appears,armed with a cross - bow . ]Along this close defile the Vogt must ride:There is no other way to Küssnacht. Here I end my work , for which the place seems made.This alder- bush will screen me from his view ,And hence my bolt can be more surely pointed.The rocky cleft will hinder all pursuers.Now, Gessler, balance your accounts with Heaven Your latest hour has sounded . You must go!I once lived harmlessly, and only pointed My shafts against the creatures of the forest I thought not then of hurting human life:But you have driven from me all thoughts of peace;Ay, you have changed the current in my veins To poison. When you forced the father's hand To point the shaft so near his darling boy,You made me think of aiming at your breast.Now, to defend my children and my wife I'll spend this shaft. When last I drew the string,' Twas with a faltering hand, to strike the apple From my boy's head — then, while I prayed in vain That I, a father, might be spared that trial,I made a vow (within my secret breast Breathed deeply - God was witness of that vow )That the next target for my arrow , Gessler,Should be thy heart! And now the vow I made In that dark moment of infernal painShall be fulfilled: it was a sacred oath .[ A Marriage Procession , accompanied with music, winds through the defile.ARMGART, a poor woman , comes with her children , and occupies the entrance of the pass. ... )Friesshardt. Make clear the path! Away! The Landvogt comes![ Tell retires.Armgart. The Landvogt comes![GESSLER, attended by RuVOLPH, enters on horseback .]Gessler (to Rudolph ].Say what you will, I am the Emperor's servant,And all my care is to obey his wishes.He did not send me to this stubborn landTo soothe these people. No! the question now Is this — who shall be ruler; prince or peasant?Armgart. Now is the moment! Now I press my claim![ She approaches GESSLER .Gessler. I did not bid the people to bow down Before the Hat, that I might laugh at them,No; but to bend the sinew in their neck,Which would not bow before their rightful lord .XXII.) " WILHELM TELL .'8331.I placed the Hat there, in the road by Altdorf,To keep in their unwilling minds the truth That I am master, and must be obeyed .Rudolph. And yet the people have some ancient rights.Gessler. We have no time to talk about them now:There are more serious interests at stake.The Emperor's house must flourish: what the fatherBegan so well, the son must now complete.This people is a stone upon our path ,And once for all they must submit.[ ARYGART kneels in the way before GESSLER.Armgart. Mercy, lord governor! Hear my petition!Gessler. Woman, how dare you thus obstruct the pass?Armgart. My lord! my husband in a dungeon lies All his poor orphans scream for bread . Have mercy!Have pity, governor, on our distress!Rudolph. What is your name? -who is your husband, woman?Armgart. He was a peasant on the Rigi mountain,And mowed, for life, the scanty grass that growsOver the mouths of fearful chasms and sidesOf rocks, where even wild cattle dare not climb.Rudolph ( to Gessler ]. Good Heaven! a poor and miserable life!I pray you let this wretched man be free:Whatever his transgression may have been ,His life is a sufficient punishment.[ TO ARMGART You shall be heard; but this is not the place:Apply to us when we arrive at Kussnacht.Armgart. No, no! I will not move, sir, from this spot Until my prayer is granted . Free my husband!Six moons have o'er his dungeon passed away ,And still he lies there, asking for a trial.Gessler. Woman, no more of this . Make clear the path!Armgart. Justice for me, my lord! You are our judge!The servant of the Emperor and of God:Perform your duty. If you have a hope That Heaven may listen to your prayers, hear mine!Gessler. Away, I tell you! This audacious people!( ARMGART seizes the reins of his horse.Armgart. No, no, sir! I have nothing now to lose.You go not through this narrow pass until My prayer is heard! Ay, you may knit your brow ,And roll your eyes in anger-I care not.I tell you that we are so wretched now ,We care not for your fury!Gessler. Woman, move!Or over you I soon shall find a way.( ARMGART seizes her children, and throws herself with them on the path before GESSLER .)Armgart. Ride on , then! Here I lie with all my children.334 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [Ch.Now trample on us with your iron hoofs;It will not be the worst deed you bave done!Rudolph . Surely the woman's mad!Armgart. For years you've troddenUpon the Emperor's people in this land.I'm but a woman; if I were a man ,I would do something better - not lie hereDown in the dust before you . Now ride on![ The music of the wedding -party is heard.Gessler. Where are my servants? Call my followers To drag this wretcbed creature from the path;Or I may act ton rashly, and repent.Rudolph. Your followers are all detained , my lord;A marriage -company obstructs the way.Gessler. I see it-I have been too mild a ruler;The people grow audacious in their talk!They are not tamed and fettered as they shall be;It shall be otherwise , I swear! I'll breakTheir obstinate will and bend their spirit down;A new law shall be published in the land;I will[ A bolt strikes him. He places his hand on his heart and speaks faintly .]O God, be merciful to me!Rudolph. My lord! What is it? Whence came that? O God!Armgart. He falls! -He dies!—The governor is slain![ RUDOLPH has dismounted and hastens to support GESSLER. ]Rudolph. What sudden horror this! —my lord, ' tis death Call for God's mercy! pray! your time is short.Gessler. That was Tell's bolt![ He sinks from the saddle into the arms of RUDOLPH, who lays him down on the slope at the side of the road. Tell appears on the summit of the rock .]Tell. You know the marksman! Search not for another.Free are our huts, and innocence is safe;The tyrant's hand shall vex the land no more.A brief criticism may be appended to this scene. Howevergreat the atrocity of which Gessler had been guilty, Tell, withhis friends, should have met the despot face to face, as Arnold von Winkelried encountered the Austrians at Sempach. The scenes of which Tell is the hero have been quoted, because their interest is almost complete in itself; but they are not the best parts of the play; they are bardly worthy to be compared with the scene ( Act ii . scene 2 ) in which the gathering of the Swiss people at Rütli is represented. There Schiller makes the manly and sober orator, Stauffacher, assert the rights of the people on groupds that are truly religious. He preaches no new dreamsXXII. ) ' WILHELM TELL .' 335>about ' the rights of man; ' but asserts the ancient, lawful, andconstitutional freedom of the Swiss people, in harmony with the welfare of the whole empire of which they form a part. Themoral strength of the drama has its centre and heart in the oration delivered by Stauffacher at Rütli. We must, as an act of justiceto the poet, give & quotation from this speech . On reading it once more, we wonder again that Napoleon I. allowed · WilhelmTell ' to be performed. It was no act of liberality; but rather amistake respecting the influence of poetry . What did he care for Anything that a poor obscure poet at Weimar could say aboutliberty? The mechanical Emperor heard of the success of the play, and aneered at the Germans for their admiration of a piece founded on a revolt (so called ) by which their own empire in oldtimes had lost a province. He could not imagine that there was anything greater or stronger than a vast empire held together ( like the rudest and least durable works in mechanism ) by amerely external power. The poet, with all his idealism , was, in the long run , a more practical man than the Corsican who invaded Russia and then went to Leipzig and to Waterloo.In the scene from which we quote a few paragraphs, the leadersof the Swiss people are assembled, at night, on a plot of meadow land at Rütli, surrounded on all sides but one by rocks and trees.By steps cut among the crevices of the rocks and by ladders suspended from the cliffs, the confederate leaders of the people are hastening down to join the national gathering. A lake shines in the background and, in the distance, white Alpine mountains and glaciers are glistening in the moonlight. Stauffacher, one of theolder members of the Bund ( “ union ' ), stands in the centre of the confederate patriots, and delivers a speech, which may be fitly called a German declaration of the rights of man .' It is as sober As it is enthusiastic, and gives us the poet's last ideas of liberty,which are strongly contrasted with the crude notions found in 6 The Robbers ':Stauffacher. We make here no new Bund, to -night, my friends!It is the old, old Bund of our fathers' timeWe renovate. — Mark that, Confederates!Lakes may divide us; mountains rise between us;Still we are all one race -- all of one bloodWe're all the sons of one dear Fatherland!a>Auf der Mauer. All of one blood l -Ay; and we've all one heart!336[Cu.OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE.[ All the people shout;meanwhile grasping one another's hand.]We are one people! We will act as one.Rösselmann . Our union with the empire was our choice;That's written down by Kaiser Friedrich's hand.Stauffacher. Ay, we are free! -As free men we would serve;We would be loyal; there must be a judge,So that when strife begins, it may be ended,And, therefore, our forefathers, for this soil,Which was their own - won from awildernessPaid homage to the Emperor, the lord Of our own German and of foreign lands;But it was paid by men whose rights were safe Within the realm; they gave their lives to guardThe realm that over them had spread its shield .Melchthal.Service on other terms is fit for slaves.Stauffacher. The land is ours; it is our own creation!By our own labour, those old gloomy forests,That once were lairs for wolves and bears, were felled,To make space for our homesteads, and the broodOf the old dragons that among the swampsLurked, or, with venom swollen, issued forth· For prey, were all destroyed; the dense, gray fogs That hung o'er fenny pastures were dispersed;The rocks were rent asunder; over chasmsWere flung these bridges, to make safe the wayFor passengers; -ay, by a thousand claims,The land is ours for ever I - Shall we bear it,That this , the creature of a foreign lord,Shall here insult us on our own free soil?Is there no help for us? Must we bear this?[ A great commotion takes place among the people . )No! -There's a limit to the tyrant's power.When men ,oppressed, can find no aid on earth,To rid them of their burden, then they rise;The people rise; they stretch their hands to heaven ,Andthence fetch down their old, eternal rights;Their rights, all — like the everlasting lights There shining in the heavens —unchangeable,Imperishable as the stars themselves! -Then nature's own primeval rule returns;Man stands in battle, ready for the foe.' Tis our last means; but, when all others fail,We draw the sword!—The best of all life's boonsWe will defend! -In front of this our landAnd of our wives and children , here we stand!aThe instantaneous and splendid success of this patriotic dramais noticed in a letter from Zelter to Goethe:-Schiller's “ Teli ,'says Zelter, ' bas been received here, in Berlin , with the liveliestXXII .) WILHELM TELL .' 337acclamation, and has been played thrice in the course of the last eight days. The people like the apple well.'This was only the beginning of a success, not confined to theatres, but soon spreading, as with electric energy, throughout the people, who felt and understood all that the poet had intended to say to the men of his own nation. He had talked of making the theatre serve as a school for teaching virtue and patriotic devo tion . A more hopeless ideal could then hardly have been dreamed of. Frivolities served as opiates to relieve a sense of national degra dation, and enthusiasm was made to appear ridiculous. Kotzebue,it was judged, was a poet quite good enough for people who were governed by a despot possessing neither French nor German virtues.At a time when the continent was crouching under a theatrical revival of oriental despotism; when men and women were expected to submit to such discipline as would hardly be tolerated by boys in a respectable school; when the moral evil of tyranny was not more apparent than the contemptible nature of the means employed to uphold it; when it was expected that intelligent nations could be governed by an intellect which, though urged by a mighty willand skilful in strategy , belonged to the mechanical class; —at such a time, Schiller persevered in striving on towards his ideal, in working — not for the market, such as it was — but for Germany.And he succeeded .So great was his success thatafter all that has been said of his defects there are still thousands of readers who will not thinkthat we have assigned too many pages in this book to an account of the life and the works of FRIEDRICH SCHILLER.z338 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CA.CHAPTER XXIII.SEVENTH PERIOD. 1770-1830.SCAILLER'S COTEMPORARIES— JEAN PAUL - MINOR POETS - PROSEFICTION - LOW LITERATURE THE DRAMA.Next to Schiller's endeavours to improve the drama, the mostimportant movement in literature, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was the rise of the Romantic School, representedby the brothers Schlegel and other writers. Whatever may bethought of the value of their services in connection with religion,art, and political life, it is clear that they led to important results,and had an effect on the progress of general literature in theperiod extending from 1800 to 1820. Without attempting to speak very precisely , it may be said, that the Romantic Schoolbecame powerful at the time when Schelling taught his firstphilosophy ( at Jena) , and that it declined rapidly when Hegel'steaching prerailed. In order to give a connected account of theschool and its associated interests, it will be convenient to noticefirst a few authors who can hardly be classed in any other waythan by saying, that they were the cotemporaries of Schiller.To follow the beaten track of several literary historians, weought to mention in the first place a few versifiers who were ambitious enough to write epics; but we cannot so highly esti mate the value of form as to place epic writers like Alxinger And Blumauer, or even their superiors, the lyric poets Holderlin and Matthison, above a greater poet who wrote in prose, and who -though justly censured for many faults - had a wide grasp of sympathy and an imaginative power that distinguish him from many of his versifying cotemporaries.In 1796, when Goethe and Schiller had left far behind themthe days of Sturm und Drang, there came to Weimar - ' thesacred citadel, ' as he called it - an enthusiast and humorist whoXXIII. ] JEAN PAUL 3396676had recently gained fame by writing a book called " Hesperus.'He was a genial child of nature, and came from Hof, an old townin the Baireuth district, where he had been living in extremepoverty, of which he made no secret; indeed , he rather gloried in it of a world where pretension and disguise are the highest virtues, and where poverty is almost the only sin that can beneither gilded nor forgiven, the writer of · Hesperus ’ had no con ception . He had “ a genial time of his own; it began in bis childhood, continued through all his privations, and ended whenhe died . His literary life was commenced by the mistake of writing some satires intended to be shaip; but he ' closed ,' as he said, the vinegar manufactory ' in 1788. His first visit to Goetheat Weimar is described as the introduction of a wild forest-man 'to polito society. Nevertheless, he was received with enthusiasm byHerder and Wieland, and was lauded by some other people who wished, if possible, to vex Goethe; but the attempt failed , for the latter was incapable of so base a passion as envy. The literary hermit from Hof enjoyed bis introduction to the society of Weimar. All the women here are my friends ' (he wrote to one of his correspon dents ), and the whole Court reads my books. I felt shy on my first visit to Goethe; for Frau von Kalb had told me that he admired nobody; not even himself. . . However, he read to meone of his splendid unprinted poems; the tones of his voice, whilereading, were like low thunder with gentle whisperings of rain .His heart warmed while he was reading, and the fire glowed upthrough the ice- crust. He gave me a grasp of the hand; another,when he said good -bye, and asked me to come again .' It is plain that, though Goethe did not think Hesperus ' a classical work,he might have agreed well with the genial and humorous author;but some gossips at Weimar made a distance between the twomen. Schiller in his literary journal , Die Horen, had called Goethe a modern · Propertius,' and Jean Paul Richter, the man from Hof,suid ( truly enough) that the times wanted a Tyrtæus .' This was of course reported to Goethe, who retorted by publishing in Die Horen a satirical epigram entitled ' A Chinese Visitor in Rome. 'With a reference to Jean Paul's style, the celestial visitor confesses that he likes all sorts of gilt-gingerbread decorations betterthan the simplicity and quiet beauty of the antique. At a later time, Goethe spoke more kindly of Richter.JOHANN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER ( commonly called JEANà&22340 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.66Paul) was born in 1763 at Wunsiedel in the Baireuth district.His father, who was in his early life a schoolmaster and organist,was appointed pastor at Schwarzenbach in 1776. Jean Paul'swritings abound in pleasing recollections of his youthful days,though they were passed in poverty . After some schooling in the gymnasium at Hof and a course of studies at Leipzig, he made the crude attempts in satire already referred to, but without success.He was for some time employed as a private tutor in several families, and, after the publication of an incomplete romance entitled “ The Invisible Lodge ' (1793) , gained a reputation as::humorist. His later works include ' Hesperus ’ ( 1794), ' Flower,Fruit, and Thorn Pieces ' ( 1796), " The Life of Quintus Fixlein '(1796) , “ Titan ' ( 1800-3 ), “ Wild Oats,' and several other very discursive romances. In 1798 he was induced by his friendship forHerder to visit Weimar a second time, and there he stayed until1800, when he went to Berlin . A fow years afterwards he received a pension which enabled him to live in modest and comfortable circumstances at Baireuth , where he died in 1825. Hisbiography ( " Truth from Jean Paul's Life ' ), partly written by himself and completed by friends, explains many traits in hiswritings.It has been said that Jean Paul is fully appreciated only by his own countrymen , and it may be added, that among his German critics great differences may be found in their respective estimates of his merits. Readers who admire his youthful enthusiasm , his fertility of imagination, and his genial humour often blended with pathos, have given him a place among the true poets who have written in prose; others, who maintain that beauty of form is an essential part of poetry, have severely criticised even the best of his writings. Both parties agree that his romances contain abundant evidences of a breadth of sympathy as remarkable as the wide range of his imaginative powers. His rural descriptions and his stories of lonely, persevering battles with poverty are his most successful passages; but he luxuriates in the wildest liberty of imagination, and it is his humour to soar away from all such domestic quietudes as he wrote of in • The Invisible Lodge,' and to speculate or dream on remote, mysterious and incomprehensible subjects. His reading was diffuse, and its results were given ' in season and out of season .' Accordingly his writings contain fragments carried away from all classes of literature and thrown7XXIII.] JEAN PAUL . 341ܕаtogether. He fills his pages with the results of the most mul tifarious reading; so that, sometimes, to understand one of his stories, one must be something of a geologist, a chemist, an as tronomer, a natural historian, and an antiquarian . If a deluge should break in upon some old museums, and bear away on its billows promiscuously - scattered curiosities in all the sciences, itmight afford a symbol of his style. Or, if anyone would collectsome hundreds of miscellaneous quotations from works of science,old histories, and modern newspapers, put them together and shake them well in a bag, then write a story to employ them all as they came to hand, he would make some approach to Jean Paul's style. Indeed, he actually wrote on a plan similar to that just suggested! All this and more that has been said by criticson Jean Paul's æsthetic offences may be summed up in the epigram which Schiller addressed to him: ~ You would indeedbe worthy of admiration, if you made as good use of your riches asothers make of their poverty.'After all that may be said of his rococo manner, there is a certain consistency in his works; but it is to be found (as Goethe,says)only in their moral tone. In other respects they are ill- constructed and unfinished . The Flegeljahre (' Wild Oats ' ) , esteemed by the author as his best work, is so lengthy in descriptions and so microscopic in details that it must tire the most patient reader.• The true way of ending with enoui is to try to say everything;and the author who cannot limit himself does not know howto write .' It must be regretted that Richter never learned thevalue of these maxims. If he had studied them, there wouldhave been less difference of judgment respecting his merits.There may be found in hisworks more of hearty sympathy with life than we find in thousands of books by authors who havetreated literature as an amusement, and have written clear, cold thoughts in a correct style. With these remarks, which include the substance of many critiques, the praise and the blame bestowedon Jean Paul may be left to moderate each other. There is only one way of conveying a true notion of his genius, and that is to give a fair selection of passages from his writings; but this can be done here only in the form of abridged translations.JEAN PAUL wrote sixty - five volumes of tales, romances, didactic essays, dreams, visions, and homilies. Considering their voluminous extent, his works have, with all their rich variety of342 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. CR .66Lina!' .... .imaginative illustration, a remarkable similarity in their leading ideas. By his early attempts in satire- the Greenland Lawsuits 'and the Selection from the Devil's Papers ' - he gained someexperience of his own defects. Then he abandoned the attempt to write sharp and direet satire, and wrote, with genial humour,of the sorrows and the consolations of poverty as exemplified in the experience of the poor little schoolmaster Wuz. " There is anoble playfulness in the author's descriptions of the hardships with which he was too well scquainted . In another story of aschoolmaster ( very poor, as a matter of course ) JEAN PAUL tells how bis starving hero yielded to the strong temptation of pur ehasing a lottery -ticket, giving him a chance of becoming theowner of certair desirable estates, named respectively Walchera and Liselberg, and charmingly situated between Salzburg and" The circumstances of poor Seemaas (the forlorn sehoolmaster) had been - as the government seemed to think exactly suitable to his wretched and obscare profession .' Thus the author continues the story: When Moses was preparing tobecome the teacher and the lawgiver of the Jewish people, be fasted forty days apon a mountain; and from this sublime ex ample our legislature seems to have deduced the conclusion, that the man who would be the guide and teacher of the rising generation, must prove his capabilities by his endurance of fasting. Astarving schoolmaster is consequently one of the features of ourcivilisation, and Seemaus is a perfectly normal specimen of his class. Under the excitement of a lottery -ticket bis frafl nervesare quivering, and in a letter which he has sent to me, he ex presses an apprebension that if he finds himself on June 30owner of “ the princely estates of Walchern and Lizelberg:peopled by 1,000 families; also, the now and spacions mansion,with the brewery, and the 700 acres of forest, with shooting aud fishing " -he shall die for joy! His letter contains the following paragraph: ... “ In my excited condition, I bare been so injudicious as to read several chapters of a translation of “ Tissot onNerrous Disorders ,' in which I bare found sereral accounts of persons who have died under the influence of sudden joy . Forinstance, we'rend of a pope dying in his delight on hearing of avictory gained by his friends, and of & hoand which died in thejoy with which it hailed its master after a long absence. Webertells a story of a man whose nerves were so much atfected byXXIII.] JEAN PAUL.34366 6a sudden shower of good fortune, that he became paralytic, and was afflicted with stammering. The Nuremberg Correspondent 'bas lately given an account of two great bankers who both died suddenly in one day, one in joy on receiving a large profit, and the other in sorrow for a heavy loss. ' I have also read of a poor relation of Leibnitz, who heard with calmness the news of richlegacy bequeathed to her; but when the real property — the costly linen and valuable silver plate — were spread out before her eyes,shegazed upon them for a moment in silent ecstasy, and immediately expired! What, then, must I expect to feel when I look upon the princely estates of Walchern and Lizelberg, &c. &c. &c. , and realise the fact that they are mine! ” .To appease the natural fears of the hopeful but timid pedagogue,the poor author writes to confess that he has been guilty of the same folly; he has purchased the lottery -ticket numbered 19,983.

• If,' says he, “ this number prove the winning card in the game,

what a destiny will be mine! According to the proclamation made under royal authority at Munich, I shall possess, in the first place, “ all those most desirable estutes named respectively Walchern and Lizelberg , in the district of Hausruckviertel,charningly and beautifully situated between Salzburg and Linz;estates which , even in the year 1750, were valued at 231,900 Rhenish forins; item , the saw - mill in excellent repair, and the complete brewery situated at Lizelberg. Such is the gold mine of which I shall be the possessor if my ticket (one of36,000 ) prove fortunate, of which I am strongly disposed to hope.So now I can put my finger on the spot in my almanac marking the day when, like an aloe suddenly bursting into bloom after forty years without flowers, I shall expand my golden blossoms, and flourish as the Croesus of our times. ....assure you, my dear friend, that I fully sympathise with your excited feelings, for I am now in circumstances exactly like your Many others around me are hoping and fearing to evaporate in joy on that day, and such is the benevoient feelingprevailing here that everyone is willing to become a martyr for the benefit of his fellow ticket-holders - willing, among 36,000men, to be the one man doomed to die! ... However, as youwish to cherish your hope of gaining Walchern, Lizelberg, the excellent saw -mill, and the complete brewery, &c . &c. , withoutgiving up all hope of life, I will give you some means of calming.I canown.34 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.Weyour fears. Allow me to recommend to you an umbrella to defendyour head against the sudden thunder - shower of gold; or aparasol to guard you from the sun - stroke of good fortune. Thedanger to be apprehended when we step suddenly into the possession of such enormous wealth is, that our minds will be unpre pared to cope with our external circumstances. A thousandschemes of expenditure will at once present themselves. While our nerves are tingling with delight, and our veins are throbbing ,the brain will be oppressed by ideas too vast, too new , and toonumerous to be comprehended, and even the fatal explosion which you apprehend may take place. To prevent such a calamity, we must now calmly prepare ourselves for the great crisis.must familiarise our minds with thoughts of the possession and the distribution of such wealth as will soon be ours. . . . Accord ingly, I have made charts of the travels I shall enjoy during my first year in possession. If you could visit me now, you would find anong my papers some elegant plans and elevationsof houses ( for after all that has been said in favour of the mansion ,I shall build another to suit my own taste); item , an extensive catalogue for a new library; item , a plan for the benefit of thetenants; besides sundries, such as memoranda, “ to buy a Silber mann's pianoforte," a good hunter,” &c. &c." You will not be surprised to learn that I intend to con tinue my authorship; but it will be in future conducted in aprincely style, as I shall maintain two clerks as quotation -makersand copyists, and another man to correct the press. But mygreat care has been to prepare a code of laws for my 1,000 families of subjects. . Allow me to remind you paring a magna charta for your subjects; for all rulers must be boundbefore they can be obeyed. . . . The old Egyptians wisely tied together the fore - claws of the crocodile, in order that they might worship him without danger.• Prepare yourself according to my plan, and then you need not fear that the great gold mine will fall in and crush you as you begin to work it. At least let us enjoy for a few days the hope for which we have paid twelve florins: let us not spoil it with anxieties. This hope is like butter on a dog's nose, which makes him eat dry bread with relish . With their noses anointed withthis butter, all our fellow ticket - holders are now eating their bread( black, brown, or white, earned by toil, or tears, or servility ) withyou that should be preXXIII.) JEAN PAUL. 345666an extra relish . This, for the present time, is a positive enjoyment,and if we are wise, we shall not disturb it. 'This is an example of Jean Paul's quiet style; but it showsonly one side of his character. It was his humour to range fromone extreme to another, and a great part of his writings consists of variations on the themes given in The Invisible Lodge ' and in . Titan; ' the first idyllic, the latter containing some rhapsodiesaccordivg well with its title . The stories of ' Quintus Fixlein ,'• Siebenkäs ' and ' Der Jubelsenior ,' are passages of transition be tween “ The Lodge ' and ' Titan .' Of the last -named romance it would be as hard to give a concise account as to give a notion of a forest by selecting a few twigs. But, on the whole, we mayventure to say , that Jean Paul's success is in inverse ratio withhis ambition, and that his longest works are not his best.In Siebenkäs,' as in other tales, the author harps too much onthe contrast between the real and the ideal. The Ideal is hererepresented in the person of a poor author; the Real is his wife,who plies her needle wbile Siebenkäs writes. A collision betweenthe Ideal and the Real is thus described:• The evil genius who delights in raising matrimonial disputesout of mere trifles bad thrown into the way of our hero a classical anecdote of the wife of Pliny the Younger, who (it is said ) heldthe lamp over her husband's table, while he was employed inwriting. Siebenkäs admired this example, and, as he had nolamp, he suggested that his wife might, by snuffing the candle for hiin , imitate, in a humble way, the conduct of that noble Romanlady. Lenette -- closely engaged with her needlework_allowedthe snuff to rise almost above the flame, and after receiving alecture on this offence, promised to do better another time.This promise was duly remembered the next evening; for now she would hardly keep her fingers from the snuffers for five minutes.As Siebenkäs expressed by frequent nods his thanks for her attentiveness, she imagined that she could not be too active, andwas thus led into an extreme. Her husband observed this, andsaid, “ Try to preserve a just medium .” But again Lenette wastoo hasty . “ Really," exclaimed Siebenkäs, “ was there any need of snuffing then? " Lenette now tried to find “ the just medium , ” but it was too late. “ Now, now!” said the author." Yes, yes! " she responded, immediately performing the requiredamputetion. At length Siebenkäs became deeply engaged in hisa."346 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Cm ,writing; and Lenette, being left without a prompter, thought somuch of her needlework , that the forgotten wick rose again in dismal blackness as a witness against her. Siebenkäs fixed adespairing look upon it; then threw down his pen, and exclaimed ,“ This is a miserable life for a poor author! I have not in all the world a friend who will even snuff a candle for me!” So saying, he hastily snuffed it out.' In the interval of darkness which followed, he walked to and fro, and expressed some unfavourable views of feminine characteristics. “ Women," said he, " have no just sense of moderation;but will always do either too much or too little! " ds thisabstract theory provoked no answer, he proceeded to apply his remarks, and complained that his wife had always been unwilling to perform for him eren the most trifling services. Even this ex torted no reply" " Indeed , ” he exclaimed, rising to a declamatory tone, “ when have I required any save the slightest services? And when have even these been paid to me? Now I demand an answer.Speak! "‘ Lenette said nothing; but lighted the candle, and placed it on the table, while Siebenkäs saw tears in her eyes for the first time since their marriage.'These excerpts may serve as examples of the writer's quiet humour and of two of his peculiarities; his love of bringing in manyreferences to bis reading, and his minuteness in descriptions. Theaccount given of snuffing the candle (which we have closely abridged) occupies four or five pages in ‘ Siebenkäs .? To show thatsuch passages representonly one side of Jean Paul's genius, we mayrefer to his terrible Vision of a Battle- Field ,' and to the gloomand despair of his “ Dream of Atheism . But as a shorter speci men of Richter's serious style we may translate two or three paragraphs from the dream of ' A New Year's Eve. '

• At midnight, when the old year was departing, there stood at his window an Old Man, looking forth, with the aspect of a long despair, on the calm never- fading heavens, and on the pure, white and quiet earth, where there seemed to exist then no creature so sleepless and so miserable as himself! Now near the grave, this Old Man had, as the results of all his long career, nothing but errors,

sins, and diseases—a shattered body, a desolated soul, a poisonedheart, and an age of remorse. The beautiful years of his youth6XXIII. JEAN PAUL. 347»were all changed into dismal goblins shrinking away now , to hide themselves from the dawn of another New Year. . . . . In hisdesperation and unutterable grief, he looked up towards the hearens and cried aloud: - " Oh, give me back my youth! -O Father! place me but once more upon the cross -way, that I may choose the path on the right hand, and not again that on the left."But his Father and his Youth were gone — for ever! He sawmisguiding lights (ignes fatui) gleaming furth out of the marsh,and fading away in the churchyard. “ There are my days offolly? ” he said . Then a shooting star fell from heaven,flickered,and vanished on the ground. “ That is myself! ” said he; whilethe poisoned fangs of remorse were biting into his bleedinghears." Then, suddenly, a peal of bells - distant church music hailing the New Year - sounded through the calm air, and his agony was appeased. He looked on the dim horizon, and on the wide world all around, and he thought of the friends of his youth; of the men who - happier and better than himself — were now teachers of the people, or fathers of joyous children growing up to a pros perous manhood, and he exclaimed:- “ Ah, my Parents! I toomight have been sleeping now with eyes not stained with tears,if I had followed your advice and had responded to your New Year's prayers forme! ” He covered his face with his hands, anda thousand burning tears streamed down bis cheeks, while in hisdespair he sighed:- Oh, give me back my youth! ”" And his youth suddenly returned - he awoke, and lo, all theterror of this New Year's Eve had been only a dream! He was still young; but the sins of his youth had not been dreams. Howthankful he felt now, that he was still young; that he had powerto forsake the false path and to enter the road lighted by a bright sun and lending on to rich fields of harvest!O young reader! if you have wandered from the right path,turn back now! Or this terrible dream may, some day, be for you a condemnation; and when you cry out: “ O beautiful Youth, return!” your prayermay not be heard; your Youth maycome back to you no more .'A sermon like that may make readers pardon many of. Richter'sfaults of style. He wrote, besides the romances already named and others left unnoticed , several discursive, didactic works;-the.،،348 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.6>6Kampanerthal (an Essay on Immortality); an Introduction to Æsthetics; ' Lepana, an Essay on Education; and Selina, an un finished Essay on Immortality. This last work was placed on his bier and carried to his grave.Jean Paul's virtues won the love of enthusiastic readers,especially of the young and of women . Their interest inhis sentiments made them overlook all his faults. Many who,when young, admired his works, afterwards grew tired of them,and readers of mature age, accustomed to read dry, sober authors,could hardly be induced to read many pages of Richter; but his admirers forgave all his sins of taste, because he had, what many correct writers have wanted—a sympathetic heart.The subjects which he treated most charmingly were spring - time,childhood, poverty, the patience of women amid the cares andsorrows of domestic life, and the sacrifices made by the poor to aid the poor. ' He loved to travel in imagination ' ( says one of.his friendly critics) through mist and storm , and over the frozenbrook to the snow - covered cottage of the village schoolmaster;there to share in the joys of the children on ChristmasEve. ' He was never less, successful than when he attempted to describe scenes in the so-called higher circles of society. There Jean Paul was quite out of his element. It must not be forgotten,in bis praise, that his general tendency is to encourage virtue and to cherish all the best hopes of youth. If many women were countedamong his readers there was a reason for it; they appreciated his respectful sympathy.RICHTER's humour and earnestness have been represented as fairly as our limits allow; but there remains to be noticed anamiable phase of his character - his delight in dreaming of the happiness of other men; especially of a domestic happiness such as the realities of this world can too seldom afford.-- ' Go away ,sweet tones! ' says Jean Paul ( in a description of music ), ' for yetell me of a beautiful world that I shall never see. ' The wordsmight have been applied to the author's own vision of The Morning and the Evening of Life,' which may serve as a conclusion to our quotations. It must be given — like all our excerpts from Jean Paul-in the form of an abridged translation • GOTTREICH HARTMANN lived with his father, the aged pastorof a church in the village of Heim. Happy were the old man's declining years; for, as his strength failed , bis son stepped into66a66XXIII.) JEAN PAUL . 349his place, and fulfilled his duties; and truly edifying were the humilies of the young preacher to the father's heart. . .. If it ispainful to differ in opinion from one whom we love, to tum away the head from one to whom the heart is always incliued, it is doubly sweet at once to love and believe in accordance with one inwhom we find our own better self sustained and perpetuated withyouthful energy. Thus life is like a fair starry right, when nostar sets until another has arisen . Gottreich had a paradiseabout him, in which he held the post of gardener for his father,and enjoyed all its fruits, while he laboured chiefly for thegratification of the old man. Every Sunday brought a new delight in a new homily prepared to gladden the father's heart. ...The moistened eye of the old clergyman, his hands folded now and then in silent thanksgiving during the sermon, made for the young preacher an Ascension festival out of every Sunday. Those who imagine that the preparation and delivery of a course of homilies throughout a year must be a dry task, should have heardthis father und his son conversing on the last, or consulting on the next discourse for the little congregation at Heim." A new memberwas added to this congregation. Justa, a youngmaiden of considerable wealth, and an orpban, left her residence in a neighbouring town to find rural happiness in the little village where Gottreich lived with his father. Two may be happy to gether, but three may be still happier; for two may talk on the merits of the third, and so the harmonic triad of friendship will allow of several pleasing variations. This required third person was found in Justa; for, after she had heard four or five of the young preacher's homilies, she consented to listen also, very patiently, to his addresses, and resolved to withhold her handonly until the disturbances of the country ( for it was then the time of our war with the French ) should subside into peace.In the fresh delight of this May morning of his life, Gottreich could not avoid thinking that his morning star must some day sbine as his evening star. He said to himself: - " My prospects are clear and joyous now; the happiness of life, the beauty of the universe, the glory of the Creator, the constellations of eternaltruths; -I see and feel them all clearly and warmly. But it may be otherwise with me in the latest hours of my life; for approaching death sometimes holds an inverted telescope before the eye,and then nothing is seen but a drear, void space, extending be350 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE [CH. .6tween us and all whom we love. But should this mere optical deception be taken as the truth? No; this is the truth which Isee and feel now, in the youth and vigour of my life. Let me remember it well, that the light of my morning inay appear againin my evening sky." With this intention be opened a diary, and wrote down his best sentiments under this title- “ Recollectionsof the Fairest Hours preserved to cheer the Latest Hours ofLife."

• From these happy occupations Gottreich was called away by

the demands of his country during the warfare of liberation. He left his father under the care of Justa, and took a place in aregiment of volunteers. He closed his campaign after some activeservice, but, somewhat to his disappointment, without a wound.And now, as peace again brooded over the rescued country, theyoung soldier travelled homeward through towns and villages full offestivity, but knowing that none were happier than himself.. As he approached his native place, the little church tower ofHeim seemed to grow up out of the earth , and as he went downinto the valley, the lowly parsonage again met his eye, while all its windows were shining in evening radiance. But when he enteredthe house, he was surprised to find the lower rooms empty. Aslight noise called his attention to his father's chamber. Heentered it, and found Justa beside the bed of the old clergyman ,who sat propped up by pillows, while his pale wasted face gleaned strangely in the rosy light of evening. Justa related, in a fewwords, how the father had overwrought himself in attention to his duties, and had remained now for some days halt sunk in lethargy, taking no interest in all that had once been dear to him .As she spoke the old man heard not, but sat gazing on the setting sun surrounded with crimsop and golden clouds.After a little time the sky was overcast, a dead calm lasted for a few minutes, and then a heavy shower fell, accompanied with lightning. This disturbance of elements seemed to waken thedying father from his stupor. " See! ” said he, pointing to thesky; see the glorious works of God! And now, my son , tell me, for my comfort, something of the goodness of the AlmightyOne, as you told us in your sermons in the spring."

• Gottreich wept, as he thought that the little manual which he

had written for his own consolation must first be read at hisfather's death-bed. He drew out bis little book of Recollections,"XIII.] JEAN PAUL. 351and read a passage with a faltering voice, while the old man folded his hands in silent prayer. “ Have you not known andfelt, " said Gottreich , " the presence of that Being whose infinitude is not only displayed in power and wisdom, but also in love?Remember now the sweet hours of childhood, when the clear bluesky of day, and the dark blue sky of night, opened upon you, likethe eyes ofyour preserving Angel. Think how a thousand reflections of the Eternal Goodness have played around you, from heartto heart, from eyo to eye of mankind, as one light shines fromsun to sun, and from world to world, throughout the universe .'3311be‘Gottreich read other passages from his manual, and adminis tered Christian consolation to his father. The old man drank inthe words of his son , and seemed to be refreshed with the recollections of his own life, as he whispered now and then , with failing breath, “ All- is good - all is good! ” At last the brightness of these views of life was lost; not in the darkness of death , butin the superior light of another life." “ He is gone, " said Gottreich. " The sun has set andrisen at once, and he knows now that the same light makes gloriousboth the morning and the evening."“ The accomplishment of verse ' which was wanting in Jean Paul was the chief talent possessed by several of his cotemporaries who, writing in rhyme, were very kindly called ' poets. ' Thelyrical verse -writers were better than the writers ofepicswho may briefly noticed here; for they belonged, ' with hardly any exception , to the imitative class. If an exception must be made, it would, perhaps, be in favour of the unhappy young writer FRANZ ANTON VON SONNENBERG (1779–1805), who, when only fifteen years old, began to write a poem ( Das Weltende) on " The End ofthe World . Another epic, Donatoa, on the same subject, was completed only a short time before the writer committed suicide by throwing himself from the window of a house in Jena.The choice of such a theme as " The End of the World ' is enough to show that the writer had no true conception of what an epic poem ought to be. When the destruction of the world is firstmeditated, an assembly of all the guardian -angels of men ' is convened, and the majority votes for annihilation. One angel,Michael, who votes for a reprieve, justifies his vote on the ground that two righteous persons — the old man Eliora and a youth6&6352 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Сн.6named Heroal - are still living on the earth. The reprieve is granted, on the condition that both tempting demons and guardian angels shall leave the world, and that men shall be left free to determine their own course of life. Eliora and Heroal, as preachersof repentance, travel from land to land; but everywhere their warnings are despised . They are then called away from the earth ,and Donatoa, the angel of death ,' receives permission to destroy the world. Klopstock suggested the more ambitious passages in this wild epic; but Wieland was mostly imitated by epic versifiers.LUDWIG HEINRICH (von) NICOLAY borrowed both his materialsand his style from Bojardo, Ariosto and Wieland, and the author ofOberon ' was the principal source of all such inspiration as visited JOHANN VON ALXINGER and FRIEDRICH August MÜLLER, whosenames are mentioned here only in deference to the judgment of some conservative literary historians.The irony that Wieland had made too fashionable was imitated by Aloys BLUMAUER, a Jesuit, who, after his order.had beensuppressed in Austria, settled as a bookseller in Vienna, and wrote,among other trifles, a travesty of Virgil's epic. KOSEGARTEN and NEUFFER, who imitated the homely idyllic style of Voss, maybe mentioned here as fair specimens of several other versifierswhom we cannot even name.Of several popular poets who wrote in German dialects, JOHANN MARTIN USTERI ( 1763–1827 ) was one of the best. His idylls,De Vikari and De Herr Heiri, are in Swiss -German . JOHANNGRÜBEL, a very homely but humorous versifier, employed theNürnberg dialect in his comic stories, and DANIEL ARNOLD wrote a comedy and some poems in the dialects of Strassburg and Alsace .The poems written in Alemannian German by JOHANN PETERHEBEL (1760-1826) were truly popular and were praised by Goethe; but the stories in prose contained in Hebel's Schatzkästlein ( “ The Casket ' ) are , we think, more interesting than hisverses .6Among didactic versifiers NEUBECK gained a reputation by apoem (80 called) on Medicinal Waters,' and TIEDGE wrote• Urania ,' an essay in verse on the Immortality of the Soul. His diction is correct and harnionious; but is more rhetorical thanpoetical. “ Uradia ' was, however, very popular in its day, and its topics were so often discussed in society that they were madeXXIII .] LYRICAL POETRY . 353"6tiresome. Goethe ( who firmly believed in the soul's immortality )was annoyed by incessant arguments about it, introduced by ladies, who, ' as he said, ' had nothing else to do. ' • When theyexamined me on the doctrine,' said he, ' I told them, I hoped to meet in another world none of those who believed in it here.For how should I be tormented! The pious would throng roundme and say, “ Were we not right?–Did we not predict it?Has it not happened just as we said? ”A less tedious didactic versifier, CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH Haug,was a humorist who wrote - besides lyrical poems and ballads one hundred epigrams, all sportively addressed to one of his friends who had a very long nose. The following may serve as asufficient specimen of Haug's hyperbolical style:When you were lying on the ground And looking at the sky, the people,In all the hamlets far around,Said , ' Look! - they've built another steeple. 'Of all the young poets who were followers of Schiller, the most promising was FRIEDRICH HÖLDERLIN , born in 1770. He studiedat Tübingen, visited Schiller at Jena, and was afterwards engaged as a private tutor. His enthusiastic admiration of the life, the poetry and art, and even the religion of the ancient Greeks wasnot an affectation , but a fixed idea. It was expressed in his fomance, ‘ Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece ' ( 1797), as well asin odes and hymns written in antique metres and showing both earnest feeling and imaginative power. After leaving a situationin Bordeaux, the poet wandered alone through France, fell into amood of deep melancholy, and, in 1802, was found almost entirely deprived of his intellectual faculties. In this deplorable condition -still sometimes writing verses and often expressing a delight inthe beauties of nature - he lived on for the long space of forty - oneyears.The lyrical poems written by FRIEDRICH VON MATTHISON( 1761-1831) were praised by Schiller, and must, therefore, have some merit; but it consists mostly in their diction and theirmelodious versification. The well-known song, ' Adelaide, ' set tomusic by Beethoven, was written by Matthison. His style was partly imitated by his friend JOHANN GAUDENZ VON SALIS - SEEWIS ( 1762-1834), who studied in a school at Colmar (kept by the blind fabulist, Pfeffel), and, afterwards, served in the French army.AA354 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CA.8His lyrical poems have a melancholy but not unpleasant tone, and there is true feeling in some of his descriptive passages.JOHANN GOTTFRIED SEUME ( 1763–1810 ), though included among lyrical poets, was more noticeable as a prose -writer and abitter satirist. He was for some years a soldier; then a correctorof the press, and to recruit his health travelled on foot through agreat part of Europe, and published an account of his tour underthe title ' A Journey to Syracuse.' It tells more of his own character and of his political opinions than of the scenery on his way.When be climbed Mount Ætna, he was accompanied, he tells us,by a travelling Briton, to whom ho ascribes the following plati tude given as an estimate of the view from the mountain: -" ' Tisworth a young man's while to mount and see this; for there's notsuch a sight in the parks of Old England .'JENS BAGOESEN ( 1765–1826 ), a Dane, who wrote some hu morous and other poems in German, deserves to be rememberedchiefly for his kindness to Schiller at the time when the poet'shealth failed . A strange epic, intended to be comical, on the subject of ' Adam and Eve, ' may be mentioned as a proof of the writer's bad taste. He represents Eve as conversing in French with the Serpent. Baggesen wasone of the most resolute oppo nents of the writers belonging to the Romantic School. Hehardly understood their best thoughts; but be justly ridiculedsome of their mannerisms. There is hardly anything in his lyrical poems better than his philosophical, bacchanalian song—a parody on some of the phrases or formulæ used in Fichte's system of philosophy. The first strophe may be rather freely translated asfollows:Since old father Noah, his cares to assuage,First sqneezed out the grape's parple blood,His example's been followed from age to age,Yet no man has understood ,Hitherto, the strict logic of drinking:Men have tippled, as if the act Like living - required not a word of instruction ,Or could always be properly done without thinking;Of toping, in fact,To this day, we have no scientific deduction!The subsequent stanzas of the song are better than this, butcould not be readily put into English. Nothing of its kind can be better than the assumed philosophical gravity and the strictnessXXIII. ] LYRICAL POETRY. 355women.>6of logical sequence with which the Fichtean formule are applied,and the conclusive result obtained by the process must have beenamusing enough to the students at Jena, who respected Fichte,but could enjoy a laugh at his expense.The names of the minor poets, or versifiers, already mentioned,fairly represent the lower poetical literature of the age. We may,however, very briefly notice some specimens of poetry written by Some of the idylls and other poems written by AMALIEVON HELWIG - a court- lady of Weimar - are graceful. FRIEDE RIKE BRUN imitated Matthison, whose own poems can hardly be called original. The name of another amiable poetess, KAROLINE RUDOLPHI, must be mentioned with much respect for her amiable character; but her poems are less interesting than her book en titled Pictures of Female Education ' ( 1808) . She superintended ,for several years, an excellent ladies' school at Heidelberg, and gave in her writings the results of her own observations onteaching. The formation of the characters of young women, 'says this writer, should be the matron's care; but men ought tobe our teachers in all studies that are purely scientific and intellectual. In vain would men vie with us in quick intuitive perception , or in delicacy of feeling, and as vainly might we attempt to rival men in the depth or the close order of scientificthinking. Women educated mostly among men lose their best distinctive qualities, and women confined to the society of theirown sex become narrow in their minds and their sympathies.'These remarks are noticeable as contrasted with more recent doctrines on the education of women . Karoline Rudolphi describesas unnatural all rivalry between men and women.In Schiller's literary journals — Die Horen and Der Musenalma nach — may be found several poems written by LUISE KAROLINEBRACHMANN, who was hardly more than fourteen years old whenthe poet accepted some of her contributions. Her biography is one of the most melancholy in the pages of literary history. Atone time she maintained herself by writing romances, for whichshe received as payment only four dollars a sheet, with the under standing that one half of her pay must be accepted in the shapeof books. Her life, made miserable through adverse circumstances and by her own want of self - control, was terminated by suicide . It would be too severe to criticise her novels, written in the circumstances referred to. Several of her ballads are good,A A 2356 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH .and her lyrical poems are far better than a reader of her biography might expect. They contain, indeed , some passages remarkable for a poetic expression of true feeling, such as inspired the followingstanzas on Consolation in Absence:Our eyes still drink from the same fount of light;The same wind round us softly breathes or blows;We both lie veiled in the same cloud of night;One Spring to both its opening glories shows.When morning dawns, I cry: ' Awaken, day!And strew thy roses wheresoe'er he roam;When in the sea the sun is sinking- Stay!And cast a gleam to light hiin to his home.'In visionary, moonlit, silent night,When ghostly forms on distant mountains shine,My heart beats high-I say with deep delight:• He lives — however distant, he is mine! 'And, when a star looks out, a gladdening raySeems darting from his eye to cheer my heart All thoughts of earthly distance melt away ,We meet in heaven - and never more to part!These notices of verse -writers who had no association with anynew movement in imaginative literature may suffice, at least, toshow how great was the distance existing between Schiller andthe majority of his cotemporaries.Our attention must next be directed to the more fertile depart ment of prose - fiction. Here we find, besides a few didactic storiesby PESPALOZZI ( which will be noticed in a following chapter ), the Idylls ' of Franz XAVER BRONNER and some humorous novels by ULRICH HEGNER, who described scenes from life in Switzerland. The ' Parables ' written by FRIEDRICH ADOLF KRUMMACHER may be commended for their style as well as for their didactic tendency.Other works in prose - fiction include-besides mediocrities toonumerous to be named-some respectable novels and romanceswritten by ladies, and a host of inferior fictions by such popular authors as Vulpius, Spiess, Cramer, and Lafontaine. The works of these four writers may, on the whole, be fairly classed together as representing the Low Literature of their times. Before noticingits characteristics we may name two or three ladies who wrote respectable fiction . BENEDICTINE EUGENIE NAUBERT( 1756–1819 )published anonymously several stories, including Thekla von66aXXIII.] ROMANCES. 357a164 >Thurn , an historical romance from which Schiller derived some suggestions for his Wallenstein . The modesty of the amiablenovelist was more remarkable than her knowledge of history.Until a shorttime before her death she kept concealed the author ship of all her writings.JOHANNA SCHOPENHAUER ( 1766–1838 ), the author of the romances ' Gabriele ' and ' The Aunt, ' and of an interesting book on • Johann von Eyck and his Followers, ' lived for some years atWeimar. Her style, like her character, was lively and superficial,and her novels were read and admired, while the original and powerful writings of her son , Arthur, were generally neglected.His character was as strongly contrasted with her own as aremidnight and noon, and she disliked so much his gloomy theory of human life , that she refused to dwell in the same house with him. “ Your lamentations,' said she, about this stupid world .and the miseries of mankind deprive me of rest at night and give me bad dreams. ' Arthur told her that his own books would beread when her novels were forgotten, and the prediction has beenfulfilled .The fault of prolixity is found in most of the novels written by KAROLINE PICHLER ( 1769-1843 ), but in their moral tendenciesthey were well contrasted with many fictions too popular in hertimes. Her best work, · Agathocles’ (1808 ),was written in oppo sition to Gibbon's misrepresentations of Christianity. In severalof her romances she endeavoured to give a popular interest to some passages in the history of her native land .Another lady who wrote respectable prose - fiction was KAROLINE von WOLZOGEN ( 1763-1847) , the friend and sister- in - law of Schiller, whose biography she wrote. This interesting work is more valuable than her romances, ' Agnes von Lilien ' ( 1798) and• Cordelia ' ( 1840); though the former had a remarkable and deserved succe88. This lady was the latest survivor of all thecircle of Schiller's literary friends at Weimar.These notices of female writers may be closed by naming THERESE HUBER (1764-1829 ), daughter of the philologer Heyne.Her novels were, at one time, erroneously ascribed to her second husband, Ludwig Ferdinand Huber. She wrote especially for women , and one of her leading motives was to show the happiness of - celibacy.If any apology were wanted for noticing the fictions we include6358 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.under the heading Low Literature, it might be found in . one of two humorous epistles written in verse by Goethe and addressed to the father of a family. The anxious parent complairs — notwithout good reasons — of the character of such popular literature as the circulating libraries, in his time, supplied. Goethe, in · reply, states his belief, that the demand produces the supply in the class of fictions to which the letter refers. In other words,he asserts, that the character of the people impresses itself on their favourite literature; which is not the cause, but the con sequence of a depraved taste. To illustrate this doctrine, heinvents a humorous story of an improvisatore at Venice, who gained popularity by telling a story of his adventures in Utopia.There, he asserted, he had been severely and justly punished for wishing to pay his debts and to work for his own maintenance.The people, says Goethe, listened with delight to a romance which expressed so clearly their own notion of a happy life. If weaccept this theory of literary success, the sensational romances andsentimental novels that gave delight to numerous readers during a long period must deserve attention , when we would describe literature as expressing the character of a people. A popular series of extravagant robber - romances and ghost-stories may firstbe noticed .Goethe and Schiller, by their earliest dramas, called into activity the imitative talents of the men who wrote absurd tales of knights and bandits, and, rather later, the ' Ghost - Seer ' ( 1786-89 ), an unfinished romance by Schiller, was accepted as a new model for imitators; though it was very unfavourably characterised by itsauthor. Then shrieks heard in uninhabited castles ' and noisesof chains dragged about at midnight through long and mysteriouscorridors' were freely employed as materials in unearthly fictiun .But, on the whole, the robbers had a greater success than their spectral rivals. Schiller was not allowed to forget the extrava gance of his own first play. When he came to Weimar in 1787,one of his first visitors was a literary man , described as an insignificant figure and oddly dressed . This young man was afterwardscelebrated as CHRISTIAN AUGUST VULPIUS, author of ' RinaldoRinaldini the Robber,' one of the most successful sensational romances ever written, and a fair type of a numerous class of similar productions. It appeared first in 1797, and its great popu6IXXIII.] ' RINALDO RINALDINI.' 3596larity is proved by the facts that it was translated into several languages, and that a new edition in German appeared in 1858.

• Rinaldo Rinaldini' might be called , with reference to popu

larity, the chieftain of a formidable gang of robber-romances com piled for the circulatiny libraries. But another hero - the renowned great bundit . Abällino ' -claims precedence in the order of time. To readers who know HEINRICI ZSCHOKKE (1771-1848)as the writer of Hours of Devotion ' and of numerous didacticstories and historical works, it may seem strange that his name should be mentioned here; but his celebrated robber-romance,Abällino the Great Bandit,' was written as early as 1793 ( six years before Schiller's Wallenstein was completed ), and was, soon after wards, put into the form of a play which had great success.SPIESS, another wiiter of sensational dramas and romances, may be mentioned , but merely with reference to his remarkable popularity.

Abällino ' and ' Rinaldo Rinaldini ' were both respectable when compared with some of the romances written by CRAMER and LAFONTAINE; especially some stories of domestic life by the latter, who wrote more than one hundred and thirty volumes of unwholesome fiction, made worse by the insertion of false moral reflections. He was followed , at a later time, by Heun, who used the pseudonyme Clauren, and ruled in the circulating libraries as Kotzebue ruled on the stage. The Low Literature represented by these names, and including a host of bad romances and plays, enjoyed an extensive popularity during Schiller's time, and sur vired for several years after the War of Liberation. If we could be deceived by the prominence given in literary history to such names as Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, and Fichte, or could suppose that they expressed the mind of a pation, the question might arise: How could a people represented by such pien fall into the political degradation in which Germany was found at the beginning of the present century? There existed, in fact, no such contrast as such a question would imply between the intellectual and the political condition of the people. The taste and, to some extent, the moral character of the majority of readers were repre sented by such writers as Vulpius, Spiess, Cramer, Lafontaine, Kotzebue, and Clauren, whose fictions enjoyed a popularity extended over more than a quarter of a century.

JAHN, (the patriotic founder of the Gymnastic Unions, that have been so fruitful in good results) gives, in a few plain words, acondensed inventory of many circulating libraries. ' Here we have, ' says he, ' romances with titles like mountebanks' placards;“ Wonderful Stories! ” ( amazing, indeed , that men could be found 80 senseless as to write them ); “ Ghost Stories! ” ( where such goblins make their appearance no mind exists ); “ Romances of Knighthood ” (I wish “ the iron hand of Götz ” might fall on their authors!); “ Robber Romances ” ( in old times robbers took away men's goods or, sometimes, their lives; now they would deprive . us of our brains); and then we have Poison - Books ' .... The more energetic part of Jahn's denunciation may be left untranslated , but not because it is too severe.

The popular drama of Schiller's times may be lastly noticed, as it is historically connected with the movement in literature ofwhich some account must be given in the next chapter. In thegenial time when Goethe and Herder were friends at Strassburg,literary men were divided, as we have seen , into two parties, who might be called the old school and the new. Another divisiontook place a short time before Schiller's denth. Several young writers, led by the brothers Schlegel, and associated under the title of the Romantic School, ' made themselves prominent bytheir opposition to the tendencies of popular literature in their time. They had other and higher motives, which may be mentioned in our next chapter; but here it is enough to say that theywere reasonably dissatisfied with such dramas as were written by IMand and Kotzebue, and with the romances of Lafontaine and Clauren . On the whole, this literature might fairly be called low; there was in it no breath of aspiration towards any higher thoughts thon such as would have been sanctioned by Nicolai, thochampion of commonplace, whose name may be once more men tioned , ag serving to represent briefly, the characteristics of acrowd of writers of plays, novels, and romances .Among the dramatists here referred to the most respectablewas AUGUST WILHELM IFFLAND ( 1759–1814 ).excellent actor in comedy and in such domestic plays as hecould write. In 1796 he was appointed director of the National Theatre at Berlin, where he remained until the close of his life.His dramas, founded on domestic interests, though prosaic, have good moral motives, and contain passages of natural and powerfulHe was anXXIII.] KOTZEBUE. 3611pathos; but, in all their essential features, they have a close family likeness one to another. They consist mostly of scenes from every day life; such as might be found in the lowliest of Crabbe'sdomestic stories. Ifland's boundaries of thought and sympathywere narrow; but he was respected in his day, as he wrote better plays than robber -tragedies,' and brought upon the stage such men and women as may be seen in daily life. . One of his bestpieces Die Jäger - enjoyed remarkable popularity. As fair spe cimens of the whole family group, we may mention «The Old Bachelors,' ' The Advocates, ' and “ The Legacy .' In his moral tendency Iffland was too respectable to be classified with his more versatile cotemporary Kotzebue -- a play -writer as remarkable for tact and cleverness as for the absence of any higher qualities.AUGUST FRIEDRICH FERDINAND (von) KOTZEBUE was born atWeimar in 1761 , beld, in the course of his life, several political offices in Russia and Germany, and gained a wide reputation, byno means founded on respect for his character. He was intensely unpatriotic, and might be concisely described as the extreme op posite to Schiller. Kotzebue was a thoroughly practical man,and wrote for the market. Schiller had tried to make a school ofthe theatre; but Kotzebue viewed it as a shop in wbich he could carry on an extensive trade. The same motive guided him inpolitics. The cynical invectives published in the paper he edited were directed against men whose motives were more generousthan his own, and he found delight and profit in writing to dis courage the hopes entertained by liberal politicians. This conductand the suspicion that he was acting as a Russian spy soused to a state of fanaticism a young student ( Karl Ludwig Sand ), by whom Kotzebue was assassinated at Mannheim in 1819.It must be granted that he possessed one virtue - industry.He wrote, beside several romances and a deplorable history of Germany, a host of plays, comedies and farces, by which he gained a European reputation. His play The Indians in England ' had a success that now seems incredible, and his ' Old Coachman ofPeter III .' gained for its author the patronage of the Czar Paul I. of Russia . If Kotzebue's dramas had been written to makeSchiller's theory of an educational theatre ' appear ridiculous, itcould not have been done more effectively . Critics wrote severely of such plays as ' Brother Moriz;' but the unscrupulous author6362 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [Co.6had an applauding public on his side. He had good tact in making Arrangements for stage- effects -- especially in farces and comedies—and some of his tragedies are highly sensational. His farces are pardonable, or may be praised when compared with some of hissentimental or falsely -pathetic pieces; especially such as end with repentance and conversion . In these his aims and the meanswhich he used to attain them are alike conteniptible. One of his most successful plays — Misanthropy and Repentance '- is also oneof the worst in its moral tendency. This frivolous exhibition of asudden, so -called ' repentance as a means of making an effectiveclosing scene to a base career is one of the writer's greatestoffences. A fow crocodile tears are shed, and are made effectual tocancel, in a moment, all remembrance of transgression.It is not intended to be said that Kotzebue, who ruled so long in the theatre, gained and maintained his popularity merely bypandering to the depraved taste of the public. Pieces that kept .their reputation for twenty years and more must have some merits,such as lively action, a fertile invention of effective situations, andsome rather clever portraitures of the lower characteristics of menand women. These traits may be found in such pieces as " TheEpigram ,' the Affinities,' Reconciliation ,' and The Two Klinsbergs. ' But the writer's offences against good taste and morals are unpardonable. In several of his plays and farces he makes ago an object of ridicule. One of his amiable ' women openlydeclares her gladness when she finds herself a widow, and this is a venial offence when compared with the bad taste that may be found in Brother Moriz ' and other pieces that may be left un named . One high eulogium of Kotzebue's moral tendency appeared in his own times; but it was written by himself: - ' There is moremorality in my plays ,' he said, ' than can be found in the thickestvolume of sermons ever printed .'Kotzebue was profoundly irreverent, and had not the slightest suspicion that he was in any respect inferior to Goethe, whom heseems to have viewed as an intruder in Weimar. On one occasion, the playwright made arrangements for a showy coronation ofSchiller as poet-laureate, which was to take place in the town hall at Weimar; but the sole object of the scheme was to give annoyance to Goethe. It, however, gave greater annoyance to Schiller, who declared that the bare suggestion had injured his1 666XXIII.] KOTZEBUE. 363health. Kotzebue respected nobody. One of his farces ( " The Visit ') was intended to make the philosopher Kant appearridiculous; another (not worth naming ) was directed against Fichte; " The Incognito' was a satire on the brothers Schlegel,and another farce, called ' The Hyperborean Ass, ' was written to expose the errors of the Romantic School, who had veutured tosuggest that people ought not to be satisfied with such plays as were written by Kotzebue.364 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH .CHAPTER XXIV .SEVENTH PERIOD. 1770-1830.THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL,It is like stepping out of the sunshine of an open field into the twilight of a dense forest when we leave the society of Kant and Schiller and enter the Romantic School , where Schelling teaches pbilosophy, where the brothers Schlegel read lectures on criticism,and Tieck revives the poetry of the Middle Ages. How great the transition from Kant's clear moral doctrine to Schelling's theoryof The Soul of the World; ' or from · Wilhelm Tell ' to Tieck'sGenoveva '!A severely logical or rationalistic reader may be surprised by this transition from works in prose and verse that may be easilyunderstood, to writings in which an imaginative mysticism moreor less prevails. It should, however, be remembered, that the object of these outlines is to give a fair representation of German Literature, and not a selection of passages accordant with English taste. Any history of German Poetry that would leave un noticed, or barely mentioned, the extensive department occupied by mystical and fantastic fictions would be defective and false..It is with deference to the judgment of several German his torians of literature that we have included the sixty years 17701830 in one period. The beginning of the nineteenth century wasan epoch in literature and philosophy, and was marked by tendencies and innovations as important as any that we have noticed in the eighteenth century.In the years 1725–1770, there was a general tendency to make all speculation, philosophy, religion , and poetry serve immediately the interests of morality and practical life. If that tendency , as promoted by Kant's doctrine of ethics, and as shown in theXXIV .] THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 365writings of such men as Möser, Engel, and Garve, had been continued, the Romantic School of poetry would never have arisen .An English tone of sobriety and clearness is prevalent in theessays and other writings of the popular philosophers and their cotemporaries, and if their style of writing had been followed,we should have heard nothing of German obscurity.About the time of Schiller's death (or rather before ), both literature and philosophy seemed to be weary of their old topics and desirous of enlarging their boundaries, especially such as had been defined by Kant. Men would seek to know what, as he had said , could not be known.It must appear strange to an English reader to learn that theprevalence of a system of philosophy was closely connected witha certain class of tendencies in the treatment of historical, political,and religious questions, and also in the culture of imaginative literature; yet there can be no doubt of the fact. It is clear thatthe abstract-ideal character and the didactic tone of some ofSchiller’s poems on art and culture may be ascribed to a study ofKant's writings and to the poet's respect for the judgment of hisfriend, Wilhelm von Humboldt, who held a theory in favour ofthe union of poetry with philosophy. This union, he said, mustbe the centre of all culture and the source of inspiration for all thespecial sciences. The assertion seems a bold one in prose; but Wordsworth has said the same thing in verse.As long as Kant's philosophy was accepted as final, it mightlead to abstruseness, but hardly to what we may, without offence,call mysticism. This was avoided by refusing to attack the problems that lead to it. ' Of what nature may be in itself ,' saidKant, ' we can know nothing. We see only phenomena, and these are beheld through a certain medium - our own mind. The world around us supplies the objects we contemplate, but they are like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. Our own faculties are the slides by which the fragments are arranged in various designs.'Kant thus left a division between the intellect and the conscience, and drew lines of close limitation around metaphysics.He taught that, as all our knowledge is derived from experience,and our experience is finite, we can know, by theoretic reasoning,nothing of the infinite. But he also taught that the truths whichnever can be proved by the intellect may be found implied andasserted in ethics.66366 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.Fichte, like his predecessor, had mostly a moral aim in vier ,and wrote and lectured to promote a union of the highest science with political and practical life; but he protested against the toleration of duality in a system of philosophy, and demanded that all its parts should proceed from one centre, and be indis solubly united as one organism .This severe demand led to the speculations of Schelling and toHegel's laborious dialectic method.Philosophy, as understood by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, has for its substance the results of all the special sciences and endeavours to find their union, or to reduce them to a general theory.It, therefore, does not confine itself to abstract metaphysics, or toa few questions of psychology; but interferes in the several de partments of the physical sciences, history, ethics, politics, religion,and ästhetics.We say nothing of the wisdom, or of the hopelessness, of such acomprehensive endeavour to grasp in their own union all the results of knowledge; our object is only to show that a philosophysuch as we describe must, if accepted, produce effects on the ten dencies of general literature.In the first eight or ten years of the present century, the bold and imaginative theory of Schelling was closely — though indirectly — connected with the tendencies of several writers whowere included under the general heading of the Romantic School.This title had, at least, two meanings; a wide and a narrowIf the latter only were accepted, as including the brothers Schlegel and their friends who wrote fantastic romances, the importance of the new school would hardly be understood; but, in its wider meaning, it includes a number of writers on history,politics, religion, philology, and archeology. The tendencies in literature, politics, and religion of all the men who have been in cluded under the name of the Romantic School were by no meansderived from the brothers Schlegel. These two critics madethemselves very prominent in the defence of theories and sentiments that were called ' Mediæral ' or ' Romantic; ' but such menas Baader and Görres, Adam Müller and Ludwig von Haller,Steffens and Schubert, must not be described as followers of the Schlegels.The fact is, that the title Romantic School has been used by some writers so as to include at least five or six distinct meanone.XXIV .] NEW TENDENCIES. 367ings. In the first place, it includes (in its most restricted sense)the Schlegels and their poetical friends, Tieck, Novalis, and Wack enroder. Then followed several imaginative writers known, inliterary history , as the ' Later Romantic School, ' which includes the names of Fouqué, Brentano, Ardim , and Eichendorff. To thislatter group the name of Coffmann has been added. Again thewriters of patriotic songs, before andduring the War of Liberation ,are associated, by their romantic tendency, with the author's of some dismal dramas known as ' fate- tragedies , which were written during the time when a romantic literature prevailed.In its widest acceptation the title romantic ' is so vague as to be useless. It includes, for example, such a writer as Baader,whose mystic works are in favour of a moderated Catholicism , and Steffens, who endeavoured to unite philosophy with Lutheran doc trine. Then we find classed with the men of the Romantic Schoolseveral writers on German philology and archæology, studies which were greatly encouraged by the tendencies of the times,and were represented by the brothers Grimm and other able men,including Hagen and Lachmann. Their nationality is, indeed,almost the only bond that unites all the writers we have named,as belonging to one school. Several might be more distinctly clas sified, either as having tendencies in favour of Medieval Catholi cism, or as having become converts to the Roman Catholic Church .These might be called the retrogressive men of their times. Avague and imaginative tendency towards Catholicism was one ofthe more important traits in the literature now to be noticed . Inthe German literature of the eighteenth century, the controversybetween authority and freedom in religion was mostly set aside orregarded as concluded. The writingsof the popular philosophers 'show this clearly enough. In the nineteenth century the question bas been revived, and has led to a discussion calling forth, fromeach of the parties engaged in it, abundant resources of historicallearning and controversial powers.It is of the Romantic School, in the more limited acceptationof the name, that some account must next be given.In the first decennium of the present century, Jena, ' the Athenson the Saale ' (as it was sometimes called ), was the centre of a new movement in literature and philosophy, which took place during atime of national degradation.In the course of the thirty years already reviewed ( 1770-1800 )368 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CH.literature had received its new impulses, first, from Königsberg,where Kant, Hamann, Hippel, and Herder resided; then from Strassburg, in the days when Herder and Goethe met there, and,next, from Weimar ( 1775–1800); but about the close of the eighteenth century, Weimar, though still famous as the residence of Wieland, Herder,, Goethe, and Schiller, was surpassed in intel lectual activity and innovation by its neighbour, the seat of learningon the Saale. The University which, before the time of Schiller's appointment there, had been (as we have noticed ) notorious for the rudeness of the students, had been greatly improved by the liberalmeasures of Karl August and his minister Goethe, and, during Schiller’s lifetime, literature was represented at Jena by such menas the brothers Schlegel, Tieck, and Novalis, and philosophy by Reinhold, Fichte, Wilhelm Humboldt, Schelling, Steffens, and Hegel.Literary society lost dignity, but gained energy and freedom ,when Jena was made the centre. The meetings of poetical andphilosophical men which took place here (in the elder Schlegel's house) were genial, and included some amusing contrasts of character. There might be seen Fichte—a short, sturdy figure,with hair flowing on his shoulders - speaking imperiously, “ but often in urgent need of a louis d'or ' ( says Scherr) , and sometimes dressed not better than a rag - picker .' No sharper contrast couldbe seen than when this philosopher seated himself beside Woltmann , the historian, who was almost a dandy, and wore a claret coloured coat, with a blue satin vest and spotless snowy linen.In rather later years some romantic youths, in their endeavour to blend life with poetry,' resolved to abjure the use of tobacco;but this grand design was not realised at the time of which wewrite. Then, on the contrary, one of the cares of Wilhelm von Humboldt, while he stayed at Jena, was to preserve his best suit,from the taint of that obnoxious herb . For this purpose (weare told) he generally wore, when he went to spend an evening with philosophers, an old and rusty coat which a barber wouldscorn to put on his back . Among the poetical men and the philosophers who were assembled at Jena, there sometimes ap peared a young man with luminous eyes, a round head, and aprojecting brow . This was Schelling, who had recently pub lished several essays containing the outlines of a new philo sophy of nature. Whatever might be its intrinsic value, it had76XXIV . ] 369 JENA.remarkable power as a stimulant in several departments of study,changed the tone of controversy on some religious questions, and indirectly favoured the more important tendencies of a new school of poetry.It may be asserted — but without any attempt to write pre cisely — that each of the systems of German philosophy had an ascendancy of about ten years. Kant ruled in 1780-90, and Fichte during the next decennium; in 1800–10 Schelling's theories (or intuitions) were predominant, and were followed by Solger's teaching. Hegel's system had to wait long before it gained ( about 1820 ) the predominance which it retained until1830 and later .'It was about the time ( 1799) when Fichte left Jena, and when Schelling began to rule there, that the ROMANTIC SCHOOL became prominent in literature, and it had assumed some importancebefore Schiller's death occurred .The times were indeed gloomy when the enthusiastic men wehave mentioned were assembled at Jena, and endeavoured toforget political degradation while they dreamed of new theoriesin philosophy, or of a new school of poetry in which all the picturesque life of the Middle Ages should be restored .'These dreams at such a time might remind us of the men whowrote pastoral fantasias during the horrors of the Thirty Years?War, or of the amiable ‘ unknown philosopher,' Saint-Martin,who, during the French Revolution , occupied himself in the studyof Böhme's theosophy; but the apparently hopeless state ofpolitical affairs may explain a retirement and quietism that was not altogether voluntary. What could poets or philosophers doat such a time?Prussia was dismembered, and the spoliation of Germany was planned at Luneville; then followed the disaster at Austerlitz,and events were moving on rapidly towards the greater catastrophe at Jena in 1806.However oppressive the conqueror's rule might be, thoughtfulmen knew well that there was stern justice, not on the side of the enemy, but in the punishment inflicted on Germany for its long and obstinate policy of self -division . A house divided against itself cannot stand, ' and a merely military union, even though animated by no spirit higher than a national or a personal egoism , must prevail over disorganisation.66BB370 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [Сн.6 >Therewas no true national life in Germany. This was too wellunderstood by intelligent men . A disunion represented by numerous and envious particular interests had been an institution in Germany for at least two centuries, and how could its disastrous results be remedied in a lifetime?The French, who had been fighting, in 1792, to extend a formaland external freedom , were fighting soon afterwards to extend such a mechanical and Oriental despotism as had hardly beenheard of since the time of Xerxes; but they had a union, thoughone of the least durable character, and they were, of course, forsome time victorious over a mere aggregate of factions. The " house divided against itself ' fell. It was in accordance withthe law that governs the world; the greatest and the firmest union must win.Prussia lost half its territory; a third part of Germany wasreduced to a state of vassalage; the slavery of the Rheinbund wasmade more oppressive than ever, and the great minister, VomSTEIN, who had in his mind, and at his heart, grand projects forthe deliverance of the nation from thraldom , was dismissed fromoffice.Napoleon I., in 1807, ruled, formally or virtually, over allEurope, excepting England and Turkey. His despotism was asminute and petty as it was extensive. Amid all his plans for thefinal degradation of Germany, he could find time to wage warfare against Madame de Staël. Palm , a bookseller at Nürnberg, had in his shop a fow pamphlets complaining of the Corsican invasion(so it should be named, we think ), and, though he had not sold a copy, he was shot in obedience to orders received directly from the emperor.' I suppose,' said Napoleon, writing to his agent, ' you have arrested the booksellers at Augsburg and Nürnberg. It is mywill that they should be tried by a court -martial and shot, and within the space of twenty -four hours.'These were the times when ( if we might believe all that Falk tells us) Goethe wept with indignation, and talked of wandering,as a ballad - singer, about the land, to complain of the wrongs endured by his friend, the Grand - Duke of Saxe- Weimar.Such political circumstances might, at first sight, condemn the men who were writing poetry or dreaming and speculating in 1800-7; but, in another point of view , the despais of their times>XXIV .] THE TIMES. 371might serve as an apology even for the reveries of the RomanticSchool. They might well look back to past ages of a nationalexistence and to such freedoni as was enjoyed in medieval times;for the present condition of things was intolerable, and of thefuture there seemed to be no hope.Freedom was nowhere to be found, save in abstract thought,or in imaginative literature, and into these ideal regions menretreated .Goethe, after Schiller's death, wrote, to beguile care, first novels,and then his autobiography. Wilhelm von Humboldt studied æsthetics and philology, while he waited for an opportunity ofrendering service to the State. His brother was arranging the results of extensive explorations in tropical lands. Schelling endeavoured to animate with a new spirit the study of nature.The brothers Schlegel were engaged in the culture of the world's literature ,' and called attention to the beauties of Spanish , OldFrench, and Hindoo poetry. Their friends Novalis and Tieckwere dreaming of restoring to life and of uniting with modernculture the poetry and romance of the Hohenstaufen period.Hegel, who, at this time, had attracted the notice of Goethe andSchiller, was dissatisfied with the Sybilline and rhapsodical character of his friend Schelling's teaching, and was laboriously planning the outlines of the most comprehensive of all systems of philosophy. He had advanced as far as the conclusion of his· Phenomenology of the Mind ,' when the thunders of the Frenchartillery were heard at Jena. Deprived of such scanty means of subsistence as Jena had afforded , he was then compelled to migrateto Bamberg, where hefound employment as editor of The Mercury ,'Enough has been said of political circumstances to explain the fact that, the men associated under the name of the RomanticSchool expressed — though vaguely and under a disguise of fiction -the national spirit that, subsequently, more boldly asserted itself in the war of liberation . The poetical dreams and ästhetictheories of Tieck and the brothers Schlegel were followed by thepatriotic orations of Fichte and the war- songs of Moritz Arndt and Theodor Körner. This sequence alone would give some importance to a school of fiction having tendencies that were mediæval but also national.The term ' romantic ,' as used by German critics and literary63в в 2372 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.аhistorians, is generally equivalent to medieval, but refers moreparticularly to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when theimaginative literature of the German people was partly borrowedfrom Provençal poetry. This borrowed literature consisted mostly,as we have seen, of romances founded on fantastic or extravagantadventures; hence the secondary meaning of the word ' romantic ,as commonly used by English writers. But, as we have alreadynoticed ( ante, Chapter V.), the term is used, with a more extensivemeaning, so as to include the chief characteristics of art, poetry,and religion during the Middle Ages, and to place them in contrast with classic- antique art and literature .The contrast intended to be expressed by the words classic andromantic is found not only in æsthetics, but also in practical life and in religion. The poetry and the sculpture of ancient Greeceare the symbols of a life that, long ago, ceased to exist, except inhistory. The shrines of the Middle Ages are not yet utterly deserted, but remain as symbols of à religious life that has notyet passed away. On these facts August Wilhelm von Schlegel based an argument in favour of his own medieval tendencies. Itmay be read in the book commonly ascribed to Madame de Staël.We cannot, he says, revive antique art and poetry; it is foreign ,and can give rise only to cold imitations. Medieval poetry is national, and belongs to our own soil, to our own history and ourreligion.The eulogies of the Middle Ages that were written by the brothersSchlegel and their friends may be contrasted with the popular medieval literature of which some account has been given in these outlines. That literature must not be altogether acceptedas either fair or complete testimony; it was, no doubt, one-sided.There was something better than popular satires tell of in the times when the foundations of modern civilisation were laid;when such grand poems in stone as cathedrals, abbeys, and in numerable parish churches were constructed , and when theworking -men of the guilds at Nürnberg and other places were accustomed to assemble after their day's labour, and to find solacein competitive versification on moral and religious subjects.There existed then some bonds of society that were stronger than gola.But there are less pleasing parts in the story of those ages, and these the brothers Schlegel, Görres, and other writers of theXXIV . ] MEDIÆVAL HISTORY . 3736mediæval school left in the shade. They referred to the picturesque times of the Minnesingers. Why did they not go back alittle farther - say to the last year of the eleventh century? Theywould then have encountered among all the ' romantic ' events ofthe Crusades such a fact as the Storming of Jerusalem . ThusVon Raumer concludes his narration of that event: ~' No dwellinghouse was spared: grey -headed men, women, domestic serrants,and children, were not merely slain, but barbarously mocked andtortured. Some were compelled to leap from towers; others were thrown from windows; children were torn from the bosoms of theirmothers, and dashed against the walls. Some victims werebumed by slow fires; the bodies of others were cut open, becauseit was suspected that they had swallowed pieces of gold. Of40,000 Saracens (or, as Oriental historians write, 70,000 ), therewere not left enough to bury the dead. The meaner classes ofpilgrims, therefore, assisted in the work of burial; while manypiles of bodies were burned, partly to prevent the infection of theair, and partly because there was a hope of finding gold in theirashes.And now the work was done; and the host of pilgrims,fatigued with massacre and pillage, washed themselves, andmarched in a long procession, with bare heads and feet, and chanting hymns of triumph , to the Church of the Resurrection .Here they were received by the clergy with great solemnity, andthe highest homage was paid to Peter the Hermit, who, fifty years before, had promised aid to the Christian clergy in Jerusalem , andthus had kept his word .'If it would have been inconvenient to the Schlegels and theirfriends to have travelled back much farther than to the Hohenstaufen times, to find the ideal Middle Ages, it would as littlehave served the Romantic School to have referred to numeroussatires expressing the dualism of religious profession and practicallife, and the strife of classes that prevailed in the period 13501525; or to have noticed such facts as ' burnings of the Jews inall the towns on the Rhine.'There were good men and able teachers living in those ages;but culture was mostly confined to a few castes, religion was mostly an external institution , and, if the concurrent testimony of a host of witnesses is to be accepted, discontent was the spirit of the times. The expression will hardly seem too strong, if the374 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ Ch.reader has made himself acquainted with the outlines of suchpopular literature as was circulated from the decline of chivalry to the era of the Reformation. Many writers in these ages - atleast, many of those who wrote popular German literature - couldfind hardly anything to praise, or on which they could dwell with satisfaction . Everything they saw excited their serious displeasure or their satirical humour. Brandt, though far milder than many other satirists, thought that the world in his day was ready for a second deluge. Geiler, the popular preacher and one of the best men of the period, railed from the pulpit at the vicesof his age, and by no means spared either the aristocracy or the highest authorities in the Church. It is more than probable that the compilers of such books as “ Parson Amis ' and ' The Parson of Kalenberg ' circulated some libels, but they were accepted as truth by thousands. Lastly, Thomas Murner appeared as an embodiment of satire - a polemic to be described only by his own6pen.It is true, there were some contented and conciliatory men who lived in these times; but they generally found rest only by turning their thoughts away from this world . If we had noticedthe Latin literature of the period, we might have found, here and there, peace of mind in the cells of learned schoolmen; but it wasabstract and intellectual, and implied a forgetfulness of the world with all its cares; by no means a real victory in which the laity might have a share.This dualism , found nearly everywhere - between the Church and the State, the hierarchy and the laity, morality and sanctity,soul and body, heaven and earth - was reflected in poetry and There is, after all that has been said in praise of ' brave and gentle knights ,' hardly a single bero of medievalromance who is as manly, self -mastering, and contented as the hero of the ' Odyssey.' The latter, it is true, expresses discontent when he is detained a prisoner on the island ruled by Calypso;but he is neither tired of the world, nor longing for any unearthlystate of existence; be reasonably wishes to see his own realm ,Ithaca, once more, and he is contented when he is again settledthere.This spirit of contentment breathed through old classic poetry may be contrasted with the vague longing of ' Parzival' in his quest of the mysterious Gral,' or with many of the lyrical poemsromance .6>66XXIV .] MEDIÆVAL POETRY. 375of Walther and his cotemporaries. Among all the Minnesingerswho wrote on any serious subjects, we remember only one ( Sonnenburg ), who generally expresses himself as a man at rest in the world that is his dwelling - place.It was the unrest and discontent of meditative minds in theMiddle Ages that, by the force of contrast, gave an intense charm to the most perfect of all the subjects represented by Mediæval Christian art — the Madonna. There was seen perfect love inperfect repose - an absolute union of divine and human love. Nowonder that such a subject was so often repeated, and that it shed its beautiful light over so many churches, chapels, and walls ofconvents. But the harmony of this subject was unique; nothingto be compared with it is found in mediæval poetry.The want of artistic unity in the romances of chivalry; their endless episodes and didactic or reflective passages; such traits asare found in Wolfram's ' Parzival,' where the author inserts auto biographical scraps and passing comments on his own eccentric style; -all these were so many expressions of a discontent andunrest strongly contrasted with the general tone of ancient art andpoetry .The contrast has been, sometimes, exaggerated; for neither in history nor in nature are the lines of demarcation drawn sostrongly as in theory. There are classic passages to be found inmediæval art; but these exceptions may be allowed without denying that a profound difference exists between antique Grecian and Mediæval- Christian poetry. It is seen, at once, if we comparethe most natural and truthful of all antique poems—the ' Odyssey '-with the Divina Commedia ,' the poetic embodiment of the Middle Ages.Union is the prevailing characteristic of the ' Odyssey. ' Everyadventure in the story is connected with the hero's return to Ithaca, and the treatment of the subject is throughout epic. Inthe ' Divina Commedia,' dramatic, epic, and lyric elements aremingled, according to the poet's will and pleasure, and philosophyand theology are called in to aid the poet in the expression of histhoughts.The author of the ' Odyssey' was contented in his own world of poetry. There is no abstract theology and no philosophy to be found in Homer. He wrote no allegories, though' critics afterwards treated as allegorical some of his stories. Dante's great6376 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CA.6 6poem is certainly not to be called an allegory; but its meaning is,nevertheless, twofold . Beatrice is, at once, a saint and a symbol of theology, and several distinct departments of thought, and all the forms of poetry, are blended in this unique poem.The contentment of the old Greek poet with the means of expression at his command is another mark by which he is dis tinguished from both mediæral and modern writers. He nevercomplains that he cannot find words to tell us what he wishes tosay; but nature and the language of the senses supply all the symbols he wants. A poet can hardly recede farther from the goal of art than when he confesses that he is unable to tell us exactly what he means. Yet this confession is found, not only inthe poetry of the German Romantic School, but also in modern English poems.This defect of utterance was praised by the romantic writers.The strangest of all their errors was a contempt of artistic forins.It can be understood how imaginative men found , here and there,in Parzival, ' Titurel, ' and other romances of chivalry, somehalf -expressed ideas more sentimental and interesting than those found in antique poetry; but it was not only the meaning of the romance that was commended; its want of definite and intelligibleform was described as the expression of a freedom that was the soul of art! How this notion of westhetic freedom was derivedfrom Fichte's philosophy, the romantic writers must explain for themselves. Their doctrine of an arbitrary rejection of all thelaws of form was, apparently, supported by Schelling's essay on Dante's . Divina Commedia. ' The critic described Dante as ' thehigh-priest of modern art, ' and spoke of his great poem as aprophecy and a prefiguration of all modern poetry .'Accepting these assertions as true, the romantic writers imagined that they were authorised by the great mediæval poet toneglect all the natural distinctions of lyrical, epic, and dramatic poetry, and, moreover, to confound poetry and prose, and to mingle imaginative with reflective writing. Errors and defects that had been inevitable in old times were recommended byFriedrich Schlegel's criticism , and ' irony' was described by himas a substitute for art. The mind of the poet or the artist, we are told, can find in the external world nothing better than agross parody of divine ideas. A genius must therefore make hisown world of imagination, and must govern it by his own laws.66XXIV .] THE SCHLEGELS AND THEIR FRIENDS. 37766An ironical tone ( like that of Socrates when talking with hisinferiors) is the grand characteristic of a genius, with regard toany materials that he may condescend to borrow from actual life,or the real world . This is Schlegel's ' irony .' Other critics havecalled it self- conceit.The men of the Earlier Romantic School -including the brothers Schlegel, Wackenroder, Tieck, and Novalis — had three leading notions, which they expressed , on the whole, in a dreamy and fantastic style in their imaginative writings. They talked of uniting practical life with art and poetry, of restoring the catholi cism of the Middle Ages, and of the culture of a romantic'asopposed to a classic or antique school of poetry and art. On the whole, it may be briefly asserted that their more important tendencies were mediæval and retrogressive, in politics, as in religion and literature. But their writings are by no means fully described by such general statements as these, which must beaccepted as only prefatory to an analysis.It can hardly be necessary to say that a class of writers havingsuch tendencies as have been mentioned must have excitedcontroversy. The brothers Schlegel, who were the chief criticsand polemical writers of the school, began their literary careers by attacking not only the low literature of their times but also therationalism ( Aufklärung) to which we have already so often referred .One of the more important facts in the history of German literature is the frequent recurrence of a contest between rationalism , inone form or another, and all the tendencies that may (without anyimplied censure ) be included under the title of modern mysticism .On the fornier side, we have clearness and simplicity in the few tenets maintained as founded on common sense; ' but the clearness,' says the elder Schlegel, ' is gained mostly by an arbitrary clearing -away; or by putting out of sight ideas that have guided the progress of mankind . Aufklärung ([ clearing - up ']is,' says Schlegel, ' nothing more than Abklärung [a clearing away ' ] of everything in history, in nature, or in man's consciencethat cannot be very readily explained.' Rationalism , he asserts,does not seek for truth alone, but for a supposed utility; it makes a clear and definite understanding the final standard of truth, and dismisses as unworthy of notice all traditions and religious sentiments which, though described as destitute of any basis in reason, have exerted a powerful influence on the destinies of69"378 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.mankind. In accordance with Schlegel's tendency, to assert the claims of tradition , of sentiment, and of imagination against the negations of rationalism , Steffens (another writer associated withthe Romantic School) used an argument that may be mentionedhere: ' How,' said he, ' can all the intuitions implied in the highest poetry of all ages be described as destitute of any truebasis??Steffens, most probably, borrowed that thought from JOSEPH von SCHELLING, whose writings are noticed here only with regard to their influence on general literature. One fair example of his attacks ou rationalism is found in an essay written in 1806, inwhich he replies to the accusation of Schwärmerei, which had been preferred against him and his friends. The foreign word Schwärmerei would not be used here if a true eqnivalent could befound in English to express at once the two notions of fanaticism and proselytism . Schelling clearly explains the sense in which he uses the word: ~ The blindest of all fanatics,' says he, 'arethose whose zeal is purely negative. All that is truly positiveoccupies the mind and gives satisfaction; but men whose zeal is destructive find a vacancy in their own minds, and, therefore,must seek beyond themselves for objects on which they can employ their powers. Thus certain zealots for enlightenment may be described. What do they want? Generallyspeaking, nothing positive; they would only clear away (or destroy] all such things as religious superstition, with its monas teries and its images of saints. But what follows when theconvents, with all their absurdities, have been put out of the way and have disappeared? The “ enlightened" will then be left standing idle , and there will remain nothing better for them thanthat some detachment from their company should sacrifice itselffor the good of the whole. Let them turn themselves into monksor saints, or something of that kind, so that there may be left for their friends something still to be destroyed. 'Schelling then goes on, rather vaguely, to confound extreme rationalists with iconoclasts and leaders of the peasantry in thesixteenth century. He then more fairly describes the arguments of his opponents as based on an exaggeration of some commonly accepted principles. " Who would not,' he says, ' honour the modest self - limitation of an honest mind that finds in itself nocalling to attempt any systematic study of things, but rests•6XXIV .] SCHELLING . 379quietly in its own moral convictions — such convictions as that the man who acts righteously has the Divine approbation; that the essence of all religions is included in morality, and that aplain, practical man may leave further study uncared for?

• But a man now comes forward with the reputation of a philo

sopher; a man distinct from and superior to the common people to whom he preaches their own doctrine, adding, however, his new commentary. This is to the effect that, if we think of the Supreme Being as more than the general idea of a universal morallaw, we must be suspected as superstitious men or as idolaters.Can it be wondered at if the people, with all their good humour,call out to such a teacher, " Hold your tongue and come down;you are a miserable comforter, and know no more about it than we do, though you thus exalt yourself, and your discourse makesa noise like the waves of the sea ”? 'The above passayes may serve as examples of Schelling's declamatory power. But it was by his philosophy of nature and by the imaginative style of his lectures on that subject that he led young romantic writers into the recesses of poetical mysticism .Nature and the Mind, said Schelling, are in their essence one.In Nature ideas are divided and become external and visible; inthe Mind they return to union. The processes of Nature are somany ascending steps by which the Mind escapes from its subjection to external laws, recognises itself, and becomes conscious ofits own freedom . Every phenomenon in Nature is the incorporation of an idea.These doctrines, vaguely conceived by imaginative young men,led them to write as interpreters of a meaning concealed and rerealed by the symbols of the external world. They gave, intheir romantic stories, sentiments and thoughts to landscapes,heard tales of wonder told by running brooks and waterfalls, and described, or implied, reciprocal relations existing between manand the surrounding world.The thought thus expressed in fantastic forms seemed new and bold , when pronounced as philosophy and written in prose; but in poetry it was far older than the times of Schelling. It is implied in Milton's words—The Mind is its own place.880 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.When man first sinned ' the sky lowered ,' says the writer of * Paradise Lost. ' Wordsworth speaks of -6The human soul of universal earthDreaming of things to come.He might have derived the thought from Schelling, through Coleridge, who wrote the linesWe receive but what we giveAnd in our life alone doth nature lire;Ours is her wedding- garment; ours her shroud .The Scottish peasant Burns, when he has to say farewell tothe bonnie banks of Ayr,' makes the scenery reflect his owngriefThe gloomy night is gathering fast,Loud roars the wild, inconstant blast ..6But this is an accidental coincidence of which the poet makes use .Hiswords by no means represent Schelling's doctrine. That itmay be fairly stated, we quote a few passages from a dialogue ( written in 1816-17) on The Connection of Nature with theWorld of Spirits .' It was, afterwards, entitled • Clara ,' and was published separately in 1862. The following passage shows that Schelling could view as credible the virtues ascribed to holy places and pilgrimages:There is a peculiar and mysterious power' ( said the physician )• that dwells concealed in a locality. Certain tenets or views ofthe world are found indigenous in certain defined localities, andnot only on large continents ( as in the East) but in small districtsand such as lie in the midst of regions inhabited by people of analien creed . ... Were not the ancient oracles confined to certainplaces? And may we not thence infer generally, that locality, inits relations with the higher ( spiritual] life, is not such an indifferent thing as has been commonly supposed? 'The writer of the dialogue then proceeds to state his belief of adoctrine implied in a thousand superstitions, and often expressed,more or less distinctly, in poetry:—How often should we besurprised to find (if we had not the confirmed habit of seeing only outward things ) that the circumstances which we mistake for causes are merely means and conditions, and that — while we arelittle thinking of it - spirits are active around us, and ready to>XXIV .] SCHELLING . 3816lead us, either to good or to evil, according as we yield to theinfluence of one or the other. 'In another passage of the same dialogue, one of the speakers expresses, at least, a willingness to believe that certain regionsare under the care of patron saints:- May it not be assumed, ' says Clara, ' that the souls of the men who have long had reverence paid to them in certain districts may, through the magic influence of faith, actually become the Guardian Spirits of those localities?I speak of the men who first brought into these forests the light of the faith , who first planted vines on these hills and corn in these valleys, and who were thus the authors of a more humanised life in regions previously wild and almost inaccessible — is it notnatural, I say , that they should retain a permanent interest in the

• district which they brought to a state of culture and in the people whom they led to union in one faith??

Schelling accepted, as we have seen, the intuitions of poetry and even the general doctrine implied in some old Catholiclegends of saints. But he did far more than this. He asserted ,in its widest generalisation, the theory of a sympathy of the Mind with Nature — a union which he describes in the followingpassages:

• Springtime, the season of aspiration! with what delight in

life thou fillest the heart! On one side, the spiritual world is attracting us, and we feel assured that only in its closest bond ofuvion can our true happiness be found. On the other hand,Nature, with her thousandfold witcheries, calls back our heartand our senses to her own external life. It is hard that neitherthe internal nor the external can fully satisfy our desires, and that the souls in which the two are united are so few . A lifepurely spiritual cannot satisfy us; there is something in us that has a longing for reality. . . . As the thoughts of the artist can find no rest until he has embodied them in an external representation; as the man of genius, when inspired by an ideal,strives either to find it, or to reveal it in a bodily form; 80 tbeobject of all our aspiration is to find in the perfect material the counterpart and the reflection of the perfect spiritual.' .It is the Springtime that has awakened in me this blossoming of thoughts and hopes. I see it clearly, and feel it deeply . - Wo are the children of Nature; we belong to her by our birth, and we can never be wholly separated from her, and if Nature does382 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [Ch.not belong to God we also cannot belong to Him. . . . Not we alone aspire; but all Nature longs to return to the Source of herexistence. True, she is now made subject to the law of exter nality. .. But this firm structure of the world will, at last, beresolved into a spiritual life . ... The divine fire that now lies imprisoned there will finally prevail, and will consume all that now exists only by means of a repression of Nature's true innerlife.'In an essay from which we have already quoted some passages,Schelling asserts that he was accused of coinciding with some of the doctrines of mystics whose works he had not read. If he had not, when he wrote this dialogue («Clara ' ) , studied the principal doctrines of Jacob Böhme, their agreement with the last of the above - quoted passages would be very remarkable.From one ofSchelling's poems it might be inferred that, as early as 1800, he had read some works by the theosophist of Görlitz. To him must be ascribed the boldest enunciation of a thought that gave to Schelling's earlier lectures their mysterious charm andattraction .A notion has so long prevailed ( among some classes of English readers) of the negative character of all German philosophy, and of its tendency to destroy even the foundations of religion, that it is a duty to represent fairly speculations that might serve rather to encourage superstition than to spread unbelief.The passages that have been quoted are not selections made to represent only the earlier doctrines of one speculative writer.Numerous passages might be referred to in the writings of Meyer,Schubert, and Baader, to show how prevalent was the doctrine expounded by Schelling, and how deeply rooted was the mysticism expressed in some fictions of the Romantic School.

• There is in Nature an ascending metempsychosis,' says Schu bert, 6 and an aspiration that man alone can fulfil. It is with a

reference to this view of his own doctrine that Schelling says,• Teach a man what he is (as the minister and interpreter of Nature ), and he will be what he ought to be. 'The most extraordinary of all expressions of such mysticism as we have described may be found, not in German, but in a Frenchbook ( Le Ministère de l'Homme- esprit ') , by Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, le philosophe inconnu,' as he was styled . HeXXIV .] MATERIALISM . 383thus describes the sun ' as " setting, every day, with grief,' onaccount of the ignorance and the sins of mankind:Oui, Soleil sacré, c'est nous qui sommes la première cause deton inquiétude et de ton agitation. Ton vil impatient ne cessede parcourir successivement toutes les régions de la nature. Tute lèves chaque jour pour chaque homme; tu te lèves joyeuxdans l'espérance qu'ils vont te rendre cette épouse chérie, oul'éternelle Sophie, dont tu es privé. Tu remplis ton cours jouimalier en la demandant à toute la terre avec des paroles ardentes oùse peignent tes désirs dévorans. Mais le soir tu te couches dansl'affliction et dans les larmes, parce que tu as en vain cherché ton épouse; tu l'as en vain demandée à l'homme. 'For the ideas so enthusiastically expressed Saint-Martin was indebted to his study of Böhme’s writings, from wbich FranzBaader also derived his doctrines. To conclude these statementsrespecting mysticism , it may be added, that Hegel, who has been described as an enemy to religion, spoke with the greatest respectof Böhme and of his disciple Baader. For proof of an assertion that may appear improbable, we refer to the preface to Hegel's second edition of his ' Encyclopædia.'The speculations we have mentioned are now almost forgotten ,or belong mostly to history. The modern, or, we might say ,recent school of materialism in Germany — a school representedby such writers as Moleschott, Vogt, and Büchner - is utterlyhostile to mysticism and religion, but also to everthing that was accepted as philosophical teaching before 1832. Vogt's teachingrepresents a contempt for everything called speculation or philosophy, and would confine us within the limits of the special physical sciences. The origin of the school to which he belongs should be sought in France, or in England, rather than in Germany, where, however, materialism is now boldly enough Asserted . Such are the revolutions of opinions. A day may comewhen ideas and even sentiments may be again esteemed as moreimportant than the things now exclusively called “ realities. 'For examples of the influence of speculation on imaginativeliterature we refer to the writings of one of Schelling's friendsand disciples — HEINRICH STEFFENS, a Norwegian, who was born in 1773 and died in 1845. He was a man of versatile talents,and wrote, beside several scientific works to which we can only384 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .66refer, a series of imaginative stories, including Walseth and Leith ,' The Four Norwegians,' and ' Malcolm . They are defec tive as works of art, but may be commended for their originality and deep religious sentiment. The mysticism that led other men into the Roman Catholic Church led Steffens back to the Lutheranfaith, from which he had wandered. He describes the process of his conversion in an interesting bonk, entitled, ' How I became aLutheran once more, ' which contains a remarkable argument in favour of the Christian religion .Despite all the progress of science, says Steffens, a belief in thesupernatural manifests itself everywhere as an irrepressible ele ment in human nature. Though driven back, again and again , it always returns to the contest against exclusive physical science and rationalism . A thousand cases of supposed supernaturalinterference in the order of Nature have been found to be erroneous; still the belief in such events remains, and can be neither demonstrated nor refuted. There must be some ground for it,says Steffens. He then refers to the popular belief, or notion,that commotions or revolutions in human society have been frequently or generally attended with extraordinary phenomena in nature .' ' Everyone,' he says, ' must acknowledge the fact that man, as an individual, is intimately connected with the system of nature; that his existence, indeed, depends, as a part,on the whole to which it belongs. But we assert more than this.We maintain that history, as a whole, or as a total organisation of all human events and relations, and nature, or the external world, have always existed in mysterious and intimate union.And as man was ordained to be the regulative principle in nature,80 when his influence has not been duly exercised, the restless and violent elements of nature have displayed their ascendancy.This assertion is founded on the general convictions of mankind,which remain even in the present age. ... That a general sentiment in accordance with our assertion has pervaded all nations, and that in every age of the world , during times of commotion in human society, the people have expected with dread some extraordinary or destructive movements in nature, is too well known to be denied. 'This belief in the supernatural, says Steffens, when left without control and guidance, must give rise to such terrors and supersti tions as history tells of. It is, therefore, necessary that the vagueXXIV .]

STEFFENS. 385faith inherent in mankind should find its true object and shouldbe confined within a system of religious doctrines, such as is foundin Christianity.As an example of this writer's powers in blending picturesquedescriptions with mystical and highly imaginative reveries, wemay notice an essay on the sources from which old Scandinavianand other popular legends were derived. Steffens is not a concise writer. We may, therefore, give rather a summary than atranslation of some passages. Thus he speaks of some ' remnantsof superstitious legends found in the more lonely and romanticdistricts of Denmark and Norway:

• Tame scenery and tame animals, cultivated fields and educated

minds, orderly, rectangular streets, and logical notions, are natu rally found together, while, if we would discover any relics of thewild and beautiful fantasies of early times, we must turn asidefrom the abodes of civilisation , and wander among unculturedmountains and secluded valleys. These old legends arose in thedays when rude Nature in her primeval mystery lay all aroundthe haunts of men, while her phenomena sonetimes excitedterrors, and at other times inspired delight.• Well might our ancestors, who had to contend for existence with the vast powers of nature, conceive of such adventures as combats with giants and genii; for such tales, indeed, were symbols of the condition of human society. The unmeasured forests wore a threatening aspect, and the wild animals which came oùt from their gloomy recesses sometimes seemed to be united in a league against mankind; rocks impended over the traveller in the narrow valley; loud waterfalls, with voices of thunder, proclaimed the power of nature, and few and feeble were the contrivapces of art to relieve the gloom and mystery of long and stormy nights in winter.Such were the external circumstances favourable to thegrowth of a romantic imagination; and we may also observe that the feelings of men, not yet softened and relaxed by ease and indulgence, were more intense in hope, or fear, or joy, than wo can expect to find them in highly -civilised society. But with stern and strong feelings, our Scandinavian ancestors united somegentle virtues. Resignation to want and suffering was often found connected with courage and energy in the hour of peril.6>.OCC386 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE , [ CH .Amidmyresearches in natural history, I had always a great curiosity in exploring what I may call the physiognomy ofthe legendsof various districts, or, in other words, the resemblance which theselegends bear to the natural scenery amid which they had theirbirth. Various districts are marked by the prevalence of variouskinds of plants and grasses; granite, limestone, and other rocks give peculiar formations to chasms, hills, and valleys, and thesedistinctions affect the varieties of trees. The effects of light andshade in the morning and the evening, the aspects of waters, andtones of waterfalls, are various in various districts. And, as Ihave often imagined, the natural characteristics of a district maybe recognised in its legends." I know no better instances to support my supposition thansuch as may be found on the northern side of the Hartz Mountains,where a marked difference may be noted between the legends ofthe granite district and those of a neighbouring district of slaterocks. The old stories that may be collected between the Ilseand the Ocker differ in their colouring from the tales preservedamong the peasantry in Budethal or Selkethal; while the legend of Hans Heiling in Bohemia is a genuine production of a granitedistrict.· Seeland, the island - home of my childhood, is, on the whole, alevel country, and only here and there billy; but in some parts itcan show prospects of surpassing beauty. The hills are roundedwith an indescribable gracefulness; there is a charm in the fresh greepness of the pastures; the beech - woods have an imposingand venerable · aspect; the sea winds its arms about amid theverdure of these woodland solitudes, and lakes of silver brightness lie encircled by graceful trees. The leaves rustling, brooksmurmuring, the sounds of many insects, the plaintive notes ofbirds, and the gentle plashing of waves upon the lonely shore,are the only sounds which break the silence. While I write ofsuch a scene, I feel a longing to return to the quiet home of mychildhood. In such a solitude I have sometimes felt as if I hadapproached the sacred resting - place of one of the old northerndeities, and bave almost feared lest I should disturb his longsleep. Here is the hiding-place of the old legends, and in such asolitude we still may feel their power. When twilight gathersover woods, lakes, and pastures, we may see once more the>XXIV.]STEFFENS. 387phantom -ships, guided by departed spirits of the olden times,sailing among the green islands; we may hear the melancholydirges for fallen heroes, or the plaintive song of the forsakenmaid; and when the storm is bending all the boughs of the beech wood, we may hear, blended in the gale, the loud cries of thewild huntsman and his followers.'002388 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE [ CH. .CHAPTER XXV.SEVENTH PERIOD . 1770-1830.THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL ( continued ).>THE EARLIER ROMANTIC SCHOOL included the brothers Schlegel ( as critics ), Wackenroder, an enthusiastic writer on art, Tieck,the poet of the school, and Novalis, who was called its prophet.'The LATER ROMANTIC SCHOOL is represented by Fouqué, Arnim ,Clemens Brentano, and Eichendorff; all writers of prose romances.>6The writings of the brothers Schlegel served greatly to extend the culture of universal literature which Herder had introduced.The elder brother, August WILHELM VON SCHLEGEL ( 1767–1846 ),first acquired fame by some specimens of a “ Translation of Dante,'and, soon afterwards, commenced a “ Translation of Shakspeare .?At Jena he was united with his brother in the production of acritical journal, ' The Atheneum ' ( 1798), and in writing a series of Characteristics and Critiques ' (1801) . He issued a transla tion of Calderon's Dramas ' in 1803, and Garlands of Italian,Spanish, and Portuguese Poetry,' in 1804. His Lectures onDramatic Art and Literature were given in Vienna in 1808.Subsequently he devoted his studies with enthusiasm to Oriental,and especially Sanscrit literature.In all these writings August von Schlegel displayed a mind en dowed rather with comprehensive intelligence than with original creative genins. Hewas a genial interpreter or translator,and, whenprejudice did not obscure his views, an excellent critic, as may beseen in his reviews of several of Goethe's poems. As we have already said, the merits of Madame de Staël's work on German Literature must be partly ascribed to her friend, A. von Schlegel.XXV. ) THE BROTHERS SCHLEGEL . 389the stage.His poems are, by no means deficient in elegant diction, but maybe thus briefly referred to; as they are not remarkable for originality." Ion ,' a drama written by the elder Schlegel, was a failure, like the tragedy of Alarcos,' written by his brother. Goethe, as director of the Weimar theatre, had long ruled there with success,but his authority was defied when he introduced ' Alarcos ' onThe play was received with derision , and Goethe's loud and commanding call — No laughing there!!— was quite ineffectual. The chief innovation in the elder Schlegel's criticism is indicated by the facts, that he lavished enthusiastic praises on Calderon and depreciated Molière. A partial translation of Shak speare must be named as one of the best services rendered toliterature by A. W. von Schlegel, who translated seventeen plays.The work was completed under Tieck's editorship.August von Schlegel received, during the earlier years of hiscareer, considerable literary assistance from his wife, Caroline ( 1763–1809), whose correspondence (first published in 1871) is an interesting contribution to the literary history of her times. Shewas the daughter of the theologian Michaelis. After her marriage with Schlegel she often presided over social and literary reunions at Jena and wrote both criticism and controversy. In the latter she ventured to attack Schiller, who described her character as ' too pathetic .' Her union with A. von Schlegel was terminated by an amicable divorce, and she afterwards married the philo sopher Schelling, who was twelve years younger than herself.KARL WILHELM FRIEDRICH VON SCHLEGEL, the younger brother,( 1772-1829) gained a reputation by a History of the Poetry ofthe Greeks and the Romans,' 1798 , and in the following yearwrote the notorious romance ' Lucinde, ' the tendency of which is directly opposed to the institution of marriage. This publication ,which brought great discredit on the Romantic School, should notbe mentioned as representative of the general tendency of otherwriters associated with that school. In 1808 Friedrich vonSchlegel went over to the Roman Catholic Church, and, subsequently, his lectures and writings were intended to advocate, more or less directly , the faith which he had embraced.His views in favour of Roman Catholicism may be found in his treatise " On the Wisdom of the Hindoos, as well as in the History of Ancient and Modern Literature. His lectures on thePhilosophy of History ' were written with religious and political66390 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. LCH.6>purposes, to which he sometimes sacrificed a fair statement of facts.The best argument contained in these lectures is that which exposes the danger of negative ’ reformation; or, in other words, theinexpediency of destroying old institutions before new ideas areprepared to develope themselves in consistency with the order ofsociety. In the History of Ancient and Modern Literature '( 1811-12) the author describes its development in connection withthe social and religious institutions of various nations and periods.The history of the world of books is thus represented as nopedantic study, but as one intimately connected with the bestinterests of humanity. The design was noble, though its execution was disfigured by prejudices, as the following summarymay prove:The first and second lectures are devoted to Grecian poetry,history, and philosophy; but the historian, instead of giving aclear view of these rich departments of ancient literature, wanders into digressions on religious and other topics. In the third and fourth lectures, the imitative character of Roman poetry is exposed,and the oratory and the historical writings of the Romans are described as the most favourable exhibitions of their intellectualcharacter. The fifth lecture gives an account of the ancient lite rature of the Hindoos. The seventh and eighth describe thepoetry of the Germans during the Middle Ages, and the ninth the progress of Italian literature during the same time. In the tenth lecture Schlegel expresses his censures on the character of Luther,and then proceeds to place in contrast with each other the poetry of Catholic countries and the imaginative works produced after the Reformation. He praises very highly Calderon and Camoens,and ascribes the wealth of poetical genius found in Spenser and Shakspeare to the influence of the Roman Catholic faith still remaining in England during the Elizabethan age. Where facts are apparently favourable to the author's theory, he exaggerates their importance, as when he ascribes the French Revolution tothe theories of rationalists, and neglects to describe fairly their historical antecedents. On the whole, it may be said that these lectures, while containing abundant proofs of the writer's great capacity and extensive learning, must be viewed as the arguments of an advocate. The brothers Schlegel provoked opposition bywriting in a controversial tone; and, on the other side , it may be noticed that some of the sererest censures of the younger Schlegel'sXXV. ). NOVALIS . 3916writings were rather polemical than fairly critical. The errors ofhis earlier life were not exclusive characteristics of the school towhich he belonged. His poems can hardly be described as original or powerful. The epic ' Roland ' and the tragedy Alarcos ' are,however, far inferior to his lyrical poems, which include some genial expressions of national enthusiasm . It should not beforgotten that the Schlegels and their associates, with all theireccentricities, gave new interest and a national tendency to literary history.It must not be imagined that all the literary associates of theSchlegels borrowed ideas from them. On the contrary, with regard to the depth and sincerity of his convictions, the author ofthe mediæval romance Heinrich vom (ofter dingen might be placedat the head of the school to which he belonged. The tendencies nientioned in the preceding chapter were all united in this young author, who called himself Novalis, though his proper name was FRIEDRICE, VON HARDENBERG. He was born in 1772. Afterresiding for some time at Jena, he went through a course of study in the mining -school at Freiberg, and prepared himself for the duties of practical life. He was hardly thirty years old when hedied. His mind, like his physical constitution, was sensitive and delicate, and it may be said that his life in this world was mostly spent in meditation on another world . He dreamed of a churchthat would unite all men as one family, and of a faith that wouldhave for its symbols both art and practical life. He was not content with the internal vision, but, seeking for its realisation on earth, he imagined that he had found it in the Roman Catholicchurch of the Middle Ages. He described that church as the onlycentre from which a religious life could diffuse its influence throughsociety. To find peace for nations as well as for individuals, we must return , said Novalis, to mediæval institutions. In his un finished romance, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, he endeavoured totreat the common events of this life as symbols of a higher life,and in his · Hymns to Night ' he wrote of the vague longings or aspirations of the soul as higher and truer than all science andphilosophy.:The poetry written by Novalis belongs only in part to the schoolof which he was styled ' the prophet. ' Several of bis hymos should be noticed as true and melodious expressions of piousfeeling, and they are perfectly free from sectarian narrowness.6392 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.The gentleness, sincerity, and piety of this young enthusiast tended to make critics blind to the defects of his writings.One idea — the consecration of art to the service of religionmay be said to be the substance of all the tales and essays written by another enthusiast, WILAELM HEINRICH WACKENRODER, who,like Novalis, died at a premature age.The romantic and enthusiastic students associated with theSchlegels at Jena (in 1799–1800 ) believed that they had found agreat poet in LUDWIG TECK. He was born at Berlin in 1773,and studied at Göttingen and Erlangen . His early writings gaveproof of an exuberant imaginative power and of some depth of feeling, but expressed also a dislike of restraint that made himtoo ready to accept Friedrich Schlegel's doctrine of art and poetry.A neglect of classical forms might, it was said, be regarded as aproof of original genius. .Accepting this teaching, Tieck developed in his ( so -called ) dramas, Genoveva and Kaiser Octavianus,the principles advocated by the Romantic School.If his physical health had befriended his genius, Tieck might,perhaps, have been known as one of the greatest actors of his times . His powers of poetic improvisation were extraordinaryand, even in his later years, his reading of dramatic poetry could hold the attention of his audience as if they were bound by a spell." When he read, ' says Eckermann - referring to Tieck's reading of Goethe's Clavigo ~ ' it seemed as if I heard it from the stage, only better; every character and situation was more perfectly felt; it produced the impression of a theatrical representation in which each part is well performed .'Steffens tells how Tieck could, for the amusement of his selectfriends, extemporise and perform , as a solo , a farce introducing half a dozen characters and including as their chief an ourangoutang. The last - named character was represented as a sentimental admirer of Kotzebue'sdramas.The extreme versatility which his friends admired was unfavourable to the artistic culture of Tieck's talents. Studies ofold German literature and of the English Elizabethan drama, the assistance given in a translation of Shakspeare, and numerouscontributions to poetical and dramatic criticism, must all be added to a long list of works of fiction, in order to represent the literary industry of Tieck during a career which was frequently inter rupted by'a painful physical malady. He died in 1853.1XXV.] TIECK . 393Variety without harmony is the general impression left after reading many of Tieck's poems and prose - fictions. In his early life he derived from his study of Wackenroder's tales an impression that art and literature should be more than playthings for adultchildren. Thus he wrote (in 1799) of " The Seductive Character of Art ': - ' Surely it is a noble endeavour in man to create a work of art, transcending all the low and common utilities of life — awork independent, complete in itself, subservient to no utilitarianpurpose — a beautiful object shining in its own splendour. Theinstinct to produce such a work seems to point more directly to ahigher world than any other impulse of our nature . . . Andyet this beautiful art is a seductive and forbidden fruit; and he who has once been intoxicated with its sweetness, may be regardedas a lost man in practical life. He becomes more and more absorbed in his own internal pleasures, and at length finds that hehas no heart to feel, no band to labour for his fellow -men.I am shocked when I reflect on my whole life devoted to the luxury of music! Here I have sat, a self - indulging hermit,drawing sensations of sweetness from harmonious tones. . . , Icannot avoid knowing that thousands are suffering under as many varieties of affliction: I know that every vibration of the pendu lum is like the stroke of a sword for some fellow -creature, andthat the world is crying loudly for all possible help — and still here I sit, amusing myself with luxurious music, as carelessly as achild playing with bubbles; as if I knew nothing of the earnest ness either of the life around me or the death that awaitsme...Here is evidently a seductive poison in the apparently innocent love of art. . . . In striving to be an artist, I may become like atheatrical hero, who fancies his stage to be the real world, looks on the world round his theatre as a very dull place, and onlyregards the actions and sorrows of mankind as crude materials outof which dramas may be manufactured .'It can hardly be said that Tieck wrote, afterwards, in accordance with these sentiments. His notions of a union of art and poetrywith social life were mostly dreamy and romantic. His Genovevaand Kniser Octavianus were both intended as representations ofthe chivalry, the piety, and the domestic virtues that flourished, we are told, in Germany and elsewhere during the Middle Ages; or rather in such selected times and places as Tieck and his friends might wish to refer to .394 [Ch. OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE.The beautiful old legend of Genoveva — one of the best of all theold popular legends — is used by Tieck as a cord upon which tosuspend a series of pictures of life, religion and poetry as heimagines them to have existed in medieval times. One fact thatmakes the poet's enthusiasm more remarkable, is that he was wellacquainted with some sections of mediæval literature . He hadread and studied the Minnelieder and Ulrich von Lichtenstein'sdidactic book ( Itwitz), which describes the refinements of chivalrous manners as having become obsolete as early as the thirteenthcentury.The two romantic dramas Kaiser Octavianus and Fortunatuscontain some beautiful passages, but they want unity. Their neglect of laws of art is the most inexcusable of all the errors of the Romantic School. Granted that the chivalry, the mystic orimaginative religion, and the social and monastic life of theMiddle Ages supply the best materials for modern poetry - it stillremains true, that the character of a drama is distinct from that of an epic, and that every poem should have a beginning, a middle,and a conclusion .The best of Tieck's shorter poetical tales are found in his Phantasus (1812–17) , a delightful book for readers not too old or too logical to enjoy the dreamy poetry of solitary forests and woodlands haunted by fairies. Several old and popular mythsand legends-- such as " True Eckart' and ' Tannhäuser '—are bereconnected by a series of dialogues in which the author's notions of wsthetic criticism are given . These conversations serve also as examples of a style of writing in which Tieck excels.The story of The Love- charm ’ is quite unworthy of a place in the book. On the other hand, ' True Eckart ' may be noticed as an example of the author's happy treatment of old popular legends.The ethical character of the story is so noble that the charm of the original may not all be lost even in a summary, which is allthat our space will allow . It may be observed that Tieck departswidely from the oldest story of Eckart (as given in the Vilkinisaga ); but in doing this he has made more complete the characterof the hero, who might be called the personification of loyalty.ECKART, we are told, was the greatest hero employed in the service of the Duke of Burgundy, whose life he had saved. Theresult of this and other important services was that the herobecame the most powerful man in the state, and stood next to the6XXV.)TIECK .395throne. His enemies then plotted and represented that he wishedto make himself master of the whole realm , and that he had already gained the favour of a majority of the people. The duke's jealousy was excited by slanders; but - fearing to attack Eckarthimself - he listened too willingly to a false accusation of treason preferred against two of the hero's sons, who were seized andconfined in one of the ducal castles. Their elder brother hadalready fallen on the battle - field , where the duke's life had beensaved by Eckart. His third surviving son, Conrad, having boldlydemanded that his brothers should be liberated, was also accused of treason , and, shortly afterwards, the three sons of Eckart were put to death .When he heard that his sons were slain, he was so torn with grief and rage, that he lost his senses. He left his fortress, andwandered into a vast wood, where he roamed about like a wildbeast, and satisfied his hunger with roots and herbs. When sometimes light broke in upon his mind, and be remembered the death of his children, he tore his gray hair from his head, and cried aloud,“ My sons! my sons! ” Meanwhile the duke was uneasywben he heard that Eckart had escaped, and that no man knew his hiding - place. One morning all the duke's followers and huntemen were summoned to go in many parties, to explore theforest and all the neighbouring hills, and Burgundy, attended by his squire, rode at the head of one party. The day was spent in endeavours to find Eckart; but the duke would not leave theforest even when the sun was going down, for he said that he could not sleep securely in his castle until the traitor Eckart was found and imprisoned.• After sunset the sky was overclouded, and a black thunder storm lowered over the wood; the wind howled among the trees,the rain fell fast, and lightnings glittered among the branches of the oaks. The duke rode as fast as he could through the twilight,and lost himself in the heart of the forest, while the squire lost alltrace of his master. And now the exhausted steed which carriedBurgundy stumbled over a fallen oak and was lamed, while allthe huntsmen and followers were far beyond the sound of their master's cries. He called loudly for help, until his voice failed ,and he was faint and despairing, when a tall old man , with long gray hair, made his way through a thicket, and — ooming near the duke - stood and gazed earnestly upon him . Burgundy prayed396 [ CH .OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE.the stranger to show pity, and to guide him out of the wood; but the old man drew his sword, and raised it over the head of thetrembling duke. In another moment the sword was put back into its sheath , the stranger grasped the hand of Burgundy, and ledhim along until he fell to the ground exbausted with fatigue and terror; then the old man lifted his companion and carried him.They had proceeded some distance in this way , when the squirefound them , and gave his assistance. He climbed to the top of alofty fir -tree, and was glad to discover the light of a cottage twinkling not very far off. Having descended, he pointed outthe way to the skirts of the forest, while the old man, still carrying Burgundy, followed but spoke not a word .: . When they hadentered the cottage, the stranger relieved himself of his burden,and gently placed the duke in a recumbent position. Then the oldman stepped to the shaded side of the room where his featureswere hidden. “ I feel assured ,” said Burgundy, “ that I shall not long survive this night of terror; and now, old man , step forward,and let me see your face, that I may reward you for your service .You have saved my life, though, at first, you drew your swordagainst me. I know not why you did that; but I know that oneman (if still living) might have justly slain me - for I slew histhree sons! "The old man stepped out from the corner and stood in thelight, so that his face was clearly seen; but he spoke not a word.The duke gazed upon that sorrowful face and recognised the features; then, trembling and kneeling, he exclaimed: - " Can it bepossible, that I owe my life to the man whom I made childless? ”" " Say no more! ” said the old man; “ it is enough. You know now that Eckart is true.";Several stories of the class to which “ True Eckart ' belongs and such as Fair Eckbert," ' The Runenberg,' and Die Elfen -- make • Phantasus ' a book that may still be read with pleasure by those who care nothing for the romantic theory of poetry.In 1819, or soon after a visit to London, (where he collected materials for the study of English dramatic literature) Tieckdeserted the Romantic School, and began to write novels founded on real life. The change was accepted by some as an improve ment, but there were other readers who thought that fairies,dreaming or half -intelligent trees and wild flowers, enchanted6XXV.]TIECK . 3976birds, and even the witches, young and old, to which we were introduced by · Phantasus,' were better than Tieck's additions tothe pile of historical (?) novels and romances .In his Dichterleben (" Lives of Poets ') Tieck is presumptuousenough to introduce us to Shakspeare! Some of the dia logues in this audacious novel are clever and the style is good of its kindl; but these subordinate merits can hardly make amends for the writer's error in the choice of a subject. There is, however,one trait for which Tieck deserves credit — he represents the greatest of all dramatic writers as a modest young man . Shak speare, who is a lawyer's clerk ( as Tieck supposes), goes, in companywith his theatrical friends, Kit Marlowe and Robert Greene, to consult a fortune- telling astrologer, who, by means of a pack of cards, can predict future events . The seer's prediction that the unassuming lawyer's clerk will, some day, be moro celebrated than his friends, excites Marlowe's loud, derisive laughter, which how over betrays some vexation." “ By Saint George! ” exclaimed Marlowe - striking his fistupon the table so as to make all the cards dance about_ “ but theprophet has made a rare, absurd guess at last! —What say you to it, Mr. Clerk? ” - This is addressed to Shakspeare. Why,you are an idiot; a miserable old imbecile! ” Marlowe continued,turning to the astrologer, “ and we are still greater fools, to come here and pay money for such low , commonplace imposition as this!However, I will take care to let the stupid public know how grossly you cheat them . You have fairly exposed yourself now ,you old necromancer! ”66 Blind and arrogant man! ” said the magician indignantly putting on his cap and assuming a commanding attitude— “ say just what you please! -You have drawn the bolt from my lips,and have allowed words to escape that I intended to retain as prisoners in my own breast, lest they should blanch your cheeks and quench that brightness in your eyes. What care I for your fame and your perishable works P — your own life will be of still shorter duration . . . . Not a month, not a week will pass before you are snatched away by a violent death! ” ... " Both Greene and Marlowe were pale and meditative when they walked down the stairs and crossed the court leading into thestreet, now dim in the twilight.".

398 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH. -

>و««Put away all that nonsense out of your head, my friend,” saidMarlowe to Greene.“ You are yourself more disturbed, ” said Greene, " than I haveever seen you before .”This novel was recommended by lively dialogues and by suchportraitures of English life as many readers accepted for truth .Success induced the author to write his ' Poet's Death ,' a tragicnovel founded on the more romantic incidents in the life ofCamoens.Several other novels produced by Tieck after he had left the Romantic School were more or less intended to express specialtendencies. In " The Young Master- Joiner ' he wrote vaguely ofthe elevation of the working classes, and in Vittoria Accorombona (one of the worst of all his novels) he suggested the emancipationof women. 'The unfinished novel Der Aufruhr in den Cevennen (" The Insur rection in the Cevennes ' ) meddled with subjects better left aloneby writers of fiction , who, in their religious novels,' succeed too often in making religion seem fictitious. Tieck fails to make aclear distinction between the religion long cherished by the Cevennes people and the stern fanaticism to which they were excited by Louis XIV. and his dragonnades.'One of the more remarkable parts of the story describes the conversion of a spy who, disguised as a peasant, has entered one of the secret Camisard conventicles. There is some graphic powerin Tieck's descriptions of scenery in this part of the story; but the good taste of introducing such a subject as personal religion in awork of fiction may be questioned, and the account given of the 80 - called conversion of the spy is theatrical and shallow , though it was probably intended to be reverent. Thus the spy describeshis visit to the conventicle:As we advanced further among the hills, there passed us going stealthily along the narrow footpath - several dimly -seen figures. Following them, we arrived , after a two miles' walk, ata solitary barn - like shed. They knocked at the door, and it wasopened. I cannot describe the sensation with which I entered,to play my part as one of this assembly of fanatical peasants. Ifelt a shudder of horror pass, at once, through soul and body.Some were kneeling; others were standing. I took my place among the latter, and endeavoured to imitate their demeanour, 806XXV. ) TIECK. 399as to avoid detection . All, for a time, went on quietly. Everyeye was fixed upon the ground, and only a few aged women interrupted the silence by their muttering of psalnıs; but, sud denly, a boy of about eight years old fell to the ground and struggled as in conyulsions. My feeling of aversion was at its height; for I was now an eye-witness of that gross fanaticism of which the mere description had so long offended my reason .'The conversion that so soon follows aversion has no sufficientpsychological motives, but seems to have been physical, or, at the best, imaginative, and by no means deep and true. It is followed by an excitement thus described:" The Assembly broke up, and the worshippers went forth to find their ways to their several places of abode.• I followed them, and— like one introduced to a new worldreturned down the valley and plunged into the densest part of theforest. “ What is Nature? " I had often asked, when, in a fit ofimaginative inspiration, I had roamed far among wooded hills and green valleys, decked in all the lights and shades of morning, or t'anned by the light wind, and breathing a charm to lull the heart in soothing dreams. Now I could understand the deep voice of lamentation in the forest, on the mountain, and in the murmuringstream . I could hear and understand it now as the voice ofthe Eternal Himself uttering His sympathy with all His creatures.His voice seemed sounding from every wave of the river, andwhispering from every leaf and twig of the forest. All things around me seemed to rebuke me for my past, cold, unbelieving,and indolent existence . I thought, at once, of the past and of thefuture. Every thought was a prayer, and my heart was melted down to one feeling of devotion. I plunged into the deeper recesses of the wood, and gave free vent to my tears.' .This excitement subsides, and the new convert is described aWandering on until he reaches a desolate landscape, where no tree, not even a shrub, casts a shade all around. There is scarcely a patch of grass on the dry, white soil of limestone; as far as theeye can travel, solitary blocks or massive groups of limestone are seen, some splintered by frost, so as to resemble rudely forms of men, cattle, and houses. It is a confusing and wearisome prospectof bare shingle on the mountain - side, and far down below lies agloomy and lonesome little town. ' Here, ' says the visitor to the Camisards, ' I lay down in weariness and gazed around me on the400 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE, [ Ch .scene of desolation and upwards on the dark - blue sky. A strangechange of thoughts and feelings came upon me here . I cannot, in any words I know , express how entirely, how suddenly, everysentiment of belief, every noble, inspiring thought, vanisheddied away — and left me utterly disconsolate. I cannot tell you how Nature, the whole creation, and man, its greatest problem ,with all bis marvellous powers and all his weakness and pitiabledependence on these external elements were changed for me; how hopeless and dreary, nay, how absurd and contemptible all thingsnow appeared to me-to me who had so lately seen all things ina new, celestial light! -I could not repress my scom - I could notcontrol myself; but gave vent to a cynical, despairing laugh atthe whole world, as I now saw it . There was no immortal soul;nothing but absurdity, objectless existence, and miserable delusionin all that creeps, swims, or flies, and, most of all, in this head ofmine (the crown of the visible creation , forsooth! ) that thinks andmourns, and, at intervals, must condescend to the lowly necessityof eating, to support this wretchedness called life. Oh let me burysuch morbid thoughts in silence! Annihilation -dead, coldnegation - seemed to me better than all the sum of being. Faithand hope and my whole inner life were, for the time, extinguished, and long and difficult was my return to the cheerful,breathing world.These passages have been referred to as dramatic and powerful;but they are mostly theatrical, and convey a shallow notion ofreligious sentiments. Feelings and convictions that are worthy to be called spiritual are not liable to be changed by a physical accident like this of wandering out of a wood into a mountain limestone district, however barren and lonesoine it may appear.This story of the Camisards, though admired by many readers,was judiciously left unfinished .Tieck's imaginative powers were far greater than any possessedby his friends the Schlegels, and his influence on the poeticliterature of his times was important. His romantic friendsdescribed him as ' the rival ofGoethe.'The fictions of Tieck and his friends were all sober and practicalwhen compared with the diablerie written by Hoffmann, who, inthe order of time, precedes the writers of the Later Romantic School. It is only fair to them to say that they are not represented by the author of the Night Pieces,' and other tales of theXXV. ] .HOFFMANN. 40166 6same character. But on account of his fantastic style and themerits of such a story as · Master Martin,' he may be named here in association with the later romantic authors. The error ofdescribing him as follower of Jean Paul hardly needs a word torefute it. As we have seen, Jean Paul has often a good meaningwhich he is pleased to express in a rococo manner, while Hoff mann has delight in the excesses of a morbid imagination. His works had in their day a considerable popularity in Germany,and some influence on cotemporary French literature.ERNST THEODOR WILHELM HOFFMANN (who styled himself Amadeus Hoffmann ) was born at Königsberg in 1776. He studied law, and held several inferior offices under government until 1806,when war deprived him of his means of subsistence. He was afterwards engaged as music - director at Bamberg, and in connec tion with the theatres at Dresden and Leipzig, but found time to write many grotesque and horrible fictions and some stories of abetter description. He died in 1822.His Fantastic Pieces in Callot's Manner ' belong to the grotesque department, but include one good fiction— ' The Story of the Golden Pot.' Other clever pieces — such as the shorter novels Master Martin ,' " Fräulein von Scudery,' and the ' Doge und Dogaressa ' - may be found in a series of tales entitled The Brothers of Serapion .' Jean Paul said — with reference to such ' dreams as are found in the Night-Pieces '—that " belladonna '( deadly night- shade) ' was Hoffmann's muse, ' and the criticism may be applied to several other wild fictions that may be left unnamed .Hoffmann had versatile talents. He composed music, drew some clever caricatures of Napoleon, and wrote musical criticismsin a rhapsodical style that was too often imitated . His audacity in narrating as facts the most marvellous adventures is bis chieftrait, and he does not condescend to give explanations accordingto the method of Mrs. Radcliffe. One of his more sober storiesmay be noticed to show something of bis manner.In the tale here abridged Hoffmann describes, in a lively style,an adventure in Berlin . The writer of the story, strolling in theThiergarten, was listening to some indifferent music, when his attention was attracted to a stranger -- a tall old gentleman, whospoke disrespectfully of the Berlin opera, and particularly of the performance of Gluck's music. After some conversation with theD D6402 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. (CH.stranger (who has a highly intellectual expression when he talks of music ), the author receives an invitation , and pays a visit to an obscure part of Berlin, where the old man has his lodgings. It soon becomes evident that the critic who condemns the Berlin opera knows something of music.' I shall now give you, ' said the old gentleman , ' some notion of the style in which Gluck's music ought to be played .'So saying, he opened a pianoforte and a music- book , whichwas labelled on the back as if it.contained the opera · Armida.'There was, in fact, nothing in the volume except blank paper.

• You will please turn over the pages for me, ' said the stranger,

and the author obeyed.

• Now comes the overture! ' said the old man , and immediately

began to play in a masterly style the introduction . Almost everynote was exactly correct according to the best edition of the opera.In the following Allegro the leading subjecte were given, withseveral genial variations and bold modulations that excitedwonder. The face of the player glowed with enthusiasm; his features assumed now a stern expression , then an air of sadness,and while he played, as if from the full score , his voice wouldimitate, now and then, the low muttering of the drums. At theclose of the overture, he leaned back in the chair, closed his eyes,and rested a few moments.Now ,' said he, ' we will have Armida's grand scena.' Then he sang, now in low, then in high and thrilling tones. Lore,hate, despair, and madness, all were expressed with intense feeling.His voice seemed to have recovered all its youthful qualities. ' Itrembled ,' says the writer, ' while he was singing, and, when he ended, I exclaimed , “ What can this mean?-Who are you? "• He arose and looked at me with an earnest expression; thentook up the candle and walked out of the room. I had been leftin the dark about a quarter of an hour, when the door wasopened. There stood a tall figure richly dressed as for attendanceat Court, and with a small sword at his side. He held tholighted candle in his band. I stood dumb with amazement. Hestepped towards me, grasped my hand gently, and said, with apeculiar smile, “ I am the Ritter-GLUCK. " 'This adventure, Hoffmann assures us, took place at Berlin in 1809.may add that the composer Gluck died at Vienna in 1787. Thedifficulty suggested by these dates is, however, a trifle whenWeXXV.) FOUQUÉ. 4036a1compared with the wonders that in other stories are found mixedwith a dry statement of facts in every -day life and with the coldestand most sceptical reflections. But enough of a class of fictionsthat were once more popular than any of the romances of better tendency which we have still to notice.Tieck, Brentano, Arnim , Fouqué, and Hoffmann might all be classed together as writers of romances in which will be found afantastic mixture of scenes from real life with grotesque orvisionary adventures. But Hoffmann stands almost alone as afantastic dreamer, and it would be erroneous to confuse with his morbid stories such romances as were written by FRIEDRICHBARON DE LA MOTTE FOUQUÉ (1777-1843) , a romancist whose early popularity was revived in recent years by the influence of the English author of The Heir of Redclyffe .' A good meaningis often expressed by means of a fantastic narrative in Fouqué's best fictions, and bis wildest dreams have sometimes a clear inter pretation. He leads his readers through enchanted forests and among mysterious wandering knights, gnomes, fairies, - kobolds,'and talking waterfalls; but we come out of the wood, at last,and find a moral interest in the wonders through which we havebeen led.The well -known story of ' Undine ' ( 1819), which was translated into almost all European languages, is the author's bestwork . He might have borrowed the idea of the fiction, eitherfrom the Entretiens du Comte de Gabalis, by the French Abbé de Montfaucon de Villars (A writer of the seventeenth century ), or,more probably, from the strange romance, Der Ritter von Staufenherg, which was written in the fifteenth century, or earlier. Itsstory has, however, no close resemblance to that of " Undine,'which is too well known to be further described here.Of other tales by Fouqué — such as " The Magic Ring,'" Thio dolph the Icelander ,' and ' Sintram ' -it may at least be said that,As their incidents are too visionary to be mistaken for realities,they are more harmless than novels that misrepresent facts in social life, or serve as vehicles of sectarian or political satire.Instead of merely naming or noticing very briefly severalromances by Fouqué and other writers of the school to which he belonged, it may be better to give a summary of one of his shorter stories as a specimen of fictions that may be styled ethical andDD 2404 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ Cr.symbolical. It should be premised that, in old German ' demonology , the kobold ' or ' bausgeist ' is a ghost of domesticated habits who is attached to some locality or homestead, where he is oftenfound harmless, or even useful (likeMilton's ' lubber- fiend ' ), though he demands respectful treatment, and can, at times, be spiteful and mischievous. In the following story it will be easily guessedwhat human passion is symbolised by the ' hausgeist, Redmantle. 'The whole story may be described as a moral truth decorated with picturesque scenery .BERTHOLD, we are told , was an enterprising commercial man,who was very eager in the acquisition of wealth . On one of his long and solitary journeys, when travelling on horseback and carrying with him much gold , he lost his way in a hilly and thickly wooded district, and began to feel anxious, if not fearful,when the twilight gathered over the oak - trees around him, and no path was visible.He now felt assured that he had wandered into a very lonely partof the country; for even the wild animals, which came out from the thickets, looked upon him without fear; they seemed, indeed,altogether unacquainted with the dangerous powers of man;while the gray owls, with melancholy hootings, fluttered about his shoulders so nearly, that he often bowed his head to prevent their flying in his face. Berthold felt so lonely that the face of any honest man would have been the most pleasant sight in the world, and great was his pleasure when he saw a man dressed in the garb of a charcoal- burner. In reply to Berthold's questions,the stranger pointed the way to his lonely hut in the forest, and offered to the traveller a night's secure rest and guidance on his way in the morning. Though Berthold could not distinctly see the face of his friend, he followed him until he came to his lonely hut.' . i .Soon after Berthold bad entered the hut and had been made welcome by all the charcoal- burner's family, the door was gentlyopened, and ' a gray -headed , quiet- looking old man of low statureentered , and accosted all the family in a friendly way , but gazed with an expression of wonder on the stranger. Berthold returnedthe look in a similar style, while the new - comer went to the round table and took a seat on the lowest stool, which seemed to have been left vacant for him. There was an expression of sorrow onhis face, which excited the sympathy of Berthold, who wished toXXV.] FOUQUÉ. 405ask if this was the grandfather of the children . But the old man folded his hands, and asked the host if he was ready for eveningprayer. At this question the husband immediately began to sing the old hymn“ Now all the woods are sleeping,Peace over all is spread "awhile his wife and all the children joined softly in the melody.But the voice of the old man was predominant, and he'expressed,by several angry glances, his displeasure against Berthold, whe did not sing. When the hymn and the evening - prayer wereconcluded, the dwarf suddenly rose and left the house; but, afterclosing the door, he opened it again for a moment, and, lookingin, threw upon Berthold such a fierce and angry glance, that ourtraveller was amazed at the sudden change of a countenance lately composed in an expression of quietness and devotion.6 “ This is not the old man's usual way,” said the charcoal-burner,as an apology to Berthold .6 “ He is crazy, I suppose? ” said Berthold." He may be, " said the host; “ but he is quite harmless: atleast he has not done any harm here for a long time. You need have no fear, though he has free entrance into our house at all hours of the night. The door of the chamber where you must sleep does not shut, and the old man often wanders into thatchamber; but I assure you he will not hurt you, nor will he even disturb you,ifyou are as sleepy as myself; for, as you must haveobserved , he has a very light tread, and glides about like a ghost."At this story Berthold tried to sinile, but he did not feel easy in such mysterious circumstances.'Some sleepless hours passed away slowly, and , about midnight,the avaricious traveller opened his portmanteau, to see that his gold was all safe. He hardly knew whether he was waking or dreaming, when he imagined that he saw , close beside his bed,the face of the gray old man , who was also looking eagerly at themoney! " " I love," said he, " to see such shining gold as you have here! Yet I know where there is far more of it - goldheaps of gold - plenty. . . . I will show you if you will comewith me. It is under the earth - in the forest - under the moorland . " The speaker's face showed strange excitement.6 “ Well; if I venture to go with you? ” said Berthold .66406 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CH.66 “ I will be back in a minute, " said the old man , going out ofthe chamber. “ I must put on my mantle. "" He had not been out of the chamber more than a minute,when another figure entered. This seemed taller than the former one, and was covered from head to foot in a blood - red mantle.“ Now , ” said Redmantle, “ come along! Let us hasten to theforest! ”• Berthold seized his weapons. «With you! " he exclaimed:“ I will not leave the house with you! Where is the little old"6man?:66" “ Ha! you do not know me in this dress!” said Redmantle,throwing back the red cloak from his face . Berthold recognised the features of the dwarf; but their quiet uspect was changed into a fierce and eager expression.' ... Soon afterwards, the intruder, offended by Berthold's refusal toassist in digging for gold, suddenly left the hut and hastenedaway into the forest. The traveller, excited by the hope offinding great treasure, at length resolved ' to follow the tempter.Courage! ' said he, as be rode into the forest, the adventure ofthis night may make me a wealthy man! '• He had hardly uttered those words, when, turning his head,he saw Redmantle close beside him. The apparition seemed tohave heard the soliloquy, and nodded his head in approbation ofthe resolution of Berthold, who now endeavoured to maintain allthe courage he had summoned, but could not speak a word to his strange companion. Redmantle soon broke the silence by saying,I say, my friend, I have had a very dull life for some years with the poor charcoal-burner and his family there. The perpetualpsalm -singing and praying quite wore me down, until I became alittle, feeble, low -spirited old man, such as you saw . coming at first excited me strangely, and then eucouraged me to return to my old ways again. I saw in you something that reminded me of my former self; for I know you love hunting forgold as I used to love it, and as I love it now again. How the company of a fellow -spirit animates me! You see how much Ihave grown in one night; and I shall now continue to grow higherand higher still! But no more words! Let us dig for the gold!You see that hillock? There it lies! Ho, hol the charcoalburner is too stupid for this work. I could never excite him to it. Come along! "But yourXXV.] FOUQUÉ. 4071

• Berthold dismounted, and after tying the bridle to the branch of a tree, followed the apparition to the billock, which was covered

with the cones of the fir -tree. “ Dig - dig ," said Redmantle; andBerthold began to turn up the earth with his dagger, wbile hiscompanion laboured violently with his bare hands, tearing up the ground, until they discovered two earthen vessels, which brokein pieces, and disclosed their contents — mere ashes!

• At this disappointment the restless demon began to wring his hands, moaned dismally, and pointed to another hillock. Berthold

followed, and both began to dig; but their efforts ended again in the same disappointment — they found nothing but ashes! From one hillock they passed to another, and laboured vainly, again and again, until our traveller was exhausted, but still durst not dis obey the commands of Redmantle, who, becoming more and more exasperated and violent, struck his tists against the ground untilsparks flew from it, and angrily accused Berthold of having foundand secretly buried the gold again, instead of sharing it fairly.The red mantle streamed in the air, the figure of the spectre rosehigher and higher, and assumed violent and threatening attitudes,until Berthold caught a glimpse of morning light, and heard the cock crow and the morning -bell tolling in a neighbouring village.Redmantle was seen no more by our traveller, who soon found his steed, and rode away, hardly able to determine whether he bad been awake or dreaming during the night. . .." Years passed away and, once more, Berthold, in one of his long journeys, found that his road led him near the great forest. He felt a longing to see once more the charcoal-burner's hut, and to hear the sequel of Redmantle's history. Late one evening, hearrived at the lowly dwelling, and was recognised by all the family. All things here seemed unchanged, except that the children had grown taller. Again the family were assembled around the table at the hour of prayer, and Berthold saw, withsome dread, the same low stool left vacant for the unearthlyvisitor. The host seemed to guess the thoughts of his visitor and said: —“ Sir, I know not what passed between you and our othervisitor, when you lodged with us some years ago; but I assure you that, after that time, we had great trouble with him. Hehad been so much excited by your presence that, night after night, when you had gone away, he was roaming through the forest and disturbing our household. But all that is over, and he܀408 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.is again subdued . ... When our own minds are subject to evil passions, we are liable to be disturbed by such a visitor as Red mantle. It is our time for prayer, and I trust you will joinin our devotion . "Then the father began the old hymn, and the children and Berthold joined in singing:“ Now all the woods are sleeping,Peace over all is spread .";It is hardly necessary to say that the above is not a commonghost- story, but a dream with a truth in it. The poor charcoal burner, who had once been vexed and haunted by avarice, had so far subdued the passion that it might be aptly represented as afeeble old man; but the presence of the covetous trader, acting byå powerful sympathy, called again into life the demoniac energy that was almost extinct. Redmantle, in fact, was created, not byBerthold's imagination, but by his will, and was afterwards subdued once more by the piety and contentment of the charcoalburner. Stories of this class must not be classed with the wildfictions written by Hoffmann.The best characteristics, and some of the worst faults of the school to which he belonged, are found in the romances written by LUDWIG ACHIM VON ARNIM ( 1781-1832 ), the brother - in - law of Clemens Brentano, whom he assisted in editing the Wunder horn, a book of old popular songs. Arnim's unfinished romance ' The Crown Guardians, ' and his numerous novels and some dramas, maybe left unnoticed here; for all his merits and his extreme defectsmay be found in one romance — The Poverty, Wealth, Guilt, and Penunce of the Countess Dolores ' — which was highly commendedby Jean Paul. The character of the heroine, her sinfulness, her long penance of poverty and disgrace, and the circumstances of her death , are described with imaginative power and true feeling;but the romance may be said to be ruined by the intrusion of too many episodes and reflections, and when it is ended it begins again .Several of the episodes are in themselves attractive, and one deserves notice, as it casts some light on a class of literary men too well known in Arnim's time. His sketch of an egotistic and sentimental littérateur seems now very fantastic, but was foundedon facts. It was of such a poetical phenomenon as " Waller,' that6XXV.] VON ARNIM . 409>Fichte was thinking when he warned young men of the dangerof making light literature serve as a substitute for moral culture.Waller is a poetaster who supposes himself to be a genius, cultivates no faculties except fancy and self -conceit, and neglects thecommon duties of life. We meet him first when, travelling withhis wife, he pays a visit to a nobleman to whom he is thus introduced:“ The poet's wife addressed the count, and after thanking him for his kindness, assured him that in this instance his hospitalitywas well bestowed; for he had the honour of entertaining in his mansion the " celebrated poet Waller," whom to call her husbandwas her highest pride and delight. Hereupon various compliments were exchanged, but not without some awkwardness; for thecount and his lady differed in their opinions of the poet's merits.The count could not say that he regarded all Waller's verses ascounterfeit coin, and the countess durst not say how much she admired them. Waller soon became so confidential, that,with little invitation, he gave, in un animated style, various details of his personal history.' [We must condense bis narra tive, as it was inflated with many passages of questionable senti ment, and numerous quotations from his own poems. ] ' He first explained how , like other men of genius, he had been poor, but had found a wife who possessed some property. .suaded his wife to sell her house in town, in order to purchase &rural cottage and a garden which had charmed his fancy once ashe rode through a lonely part of the country. The lady at once consented; for " in all things she obeys my pleasure ” ( saidWaller ), and he travelled down to the romantic cottage to prepare it for her reception.' One day was passed after another in vain attempts to be romantic and happy. He determined that his wife should be, like himself,an enthusiastic admirer of nature; so he led her over the damp pastures, and through plantations of firs, in the early morning, to see the sun rising; but this practical poetry was accompanied with such unromantic realities as wet stockings, colds, and coughs.Waller was surprised to find that real Nature was not so pleasant as she had appeared in the verses which he wrote when in town,and that the rustics who lived near his cottage were not of theArcadian kind. He read his verses to some of them, but theycould not understand such poetry, and preferred their own rudeHe per410 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.66"6stories and jest -books. This was in the summer, but in thewinter rural happiness was sad' indeed for Waller. He wrote toall his friends, begging them to come and see a poor poet in awilderness; ” but the roads were deep in snow, and no friendwould undertake the journey. The poet was therefore left in domestic quietude, until he became quite weary of the company ofhis wife, and expressed his unamiable sentiments in such verses asthe following:“ In this, my lonely nest,I see no welcoine guest;In vain my letters goThe ways are deep in snow .My heart is restless as an aspen -treeAh, why did fortune link my wife and mo?In the spring Waller was glad to escape from his solitude, and bastened away to Leipzig to sell, if he could , a manuscript poem .' In my pleasure ' (he continued) at finding myself once more in the society of civilised men, I quite forgot my wife, the ruralcottage, and all the beauties of nature, until one day, as I was sitting at ry dessert in Mainoni's hotel (I was eating almonds andraisins ), the bookeeller's boy brought to me a letter from my wife; and what did it contain? My absence had excited her,. for the first time in her life, to write verses. Well,what could I do after receiving this touching letter intreating me to return? I hastened away from Leipzig, and left my transac tion with the bookseller unfinished. For a time I continued mystudies in our lonely cottage, and my wife ( who is a clever artist)made some drawings to illustrate my poem. But now a new trouble arose. I had bought a little estate, and knew nothing ofits management. I was losing money; so I persuaded my wife to let me sell the cottage, and we returned to live iu town once Here our circumstances were straitened; she was veryanxious, and worked hard, so that all her drawings were finished before balf of my poem was written. To incite my industry, sbe wakened me early every morning, and prepared for me a cup of coffee in my study. Of course she meant well in all these little attentions and indulgences bestowed on me; but she did not know that all such things tend to depress poetic genius. In a gloomy mood I now wrote an elegy, in which I represented myself as aweaver, and my wife as a spinster. I will read it to you. ' Here8more.XXV. ) CLEMENS BRENTANO . 4116Waller tried the count's last degree of patience by reciting someabsurd , sentimental verses.BETTINA VON ARNIM , the sister of Clemens Brentano and thewife of Von Arnim , may be mentioned as the authoress of an enthusiastic book, ' Goethe's Correspondence with a Child,'which was once read with great interest and may be referred to as astrange psychological romance . In Bettina von Arnim’s stories itis impossible to determine where facts end and imaginations begin.Her melancholy memoirs of a friend, Caroline von Günderode (who committed suicide), read like chapters from a wild romance, but they are founded on facts.There is, however, hardly anything in Bettina's writings asrhapsodical and obscure as some of the tales and poems writtenby her brother, CLEMENS BRENTANO ( 1778-1842 ). A want of harmony, or, we might say, a love of discords, was the chief traitin his life, as in bis fantastic novels and dramas. His cantata .TheNerry Musicians,' if it could be translated, might serve to repre sent his own characteristics. The miseries of a strolling companyare here placed in extreme contrast with their merry and bois terous music. The following is one of the less tragic stanzas:Like nightingales, unseen , that sing So sweeily all night long in spring,We come to sing and play, at ere;For we could not make the listener grieve.Then all the family of strolling singers and players soverally relate their misfortunes. The blind mother, a deformed boy, andhis two miserable brotbers, tell their sorrows, one after another,and their lamentations are, here and there, followed by a wildchorus:While we're strumming and thrumming the tambourine,The shrill little bells in it jingle and tingle,And while we are singivg the cymbals are ringing A cling and a clang to our sing and ouró sang ,'And the little fife, sbrill, with a squeak and a trill,Pierces the heart, with a joy and a smart.6This strange cantata was set to music by Amadeus Hoffinadn.Brentano's prose fictions and poems include the romance " Godwi, ' the dramatic and lyric poenis • Ponce de Leon ' and ' Victoria,' the story of “ The Brave Kasperl and the Fair Annerl ' (described as the writer's best work ), and the humorous and pleasant412 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .66fable of Gokel, Hinkel, und Gakelia .' . We have cultivatednothing but our imagination ,' said Brentano, and that has been the cause of our failure .' This was a just criticismon his own writings and on several fictions written by hisfriends.One of the best of the writers who, after the War of Liberation,ende ired to maintain the poetic tra ons the RomanticSchool was JOSEPH VON EICHENDORFF, who was called the lastknight of the School. ' He was born in 1788, served as a volunteerin the Prussian army ( 1813–15 ) and subsequently held several offices under the Prussian Government. He died in 1857.There is nothing strong or remarkably original, but much that is gentle and beautiful, in Eichendorff's writings, which consist of lyrical poems, romances, and dramas, besides some works onliterary history. His genius is lyrical, as may be seen even in his dramas. The world described in his poetry is not extensive, and the characters we meet in his romances are few and hardly to becalled individuals. In his lyrical poems he loves to meditate in secluded dells and to enjoy the quietude of sunset, or of Sunday as described in one of his songs beginning with thisstanza:How deep the calm o'er all extending!How lonely all the field, the sky,The woods!-their boughs so gently bending,As if the Lord were passing by.In tones still more subdued he speaks of a common domesticsorrow the loss of a child:mornaThen there came, at break of day,Notes of music far away ,Breathing over dale and hollow;And the singing seemed to say ,• If you love me, father - follow! 'The author's dramas, though they contain some fine passages,are rather lyrical than dramatic, and his longer fictions in prosewant sustained interest. Among his short novels Das Marmorbild(" The Marble Statue ' ) may be mentioned as one of the dreamyand romantic class; but the best is entitled Aus dem Leben einesTaugenichts ( " Passages from the Life of a Good - for-nothing ').The story is full of the youthful buoyancy and careless good humour of the hero, who is a wandering fiddler - a vagabond inXXV.) VON EICHENDORFF. 413the milder and more imaginative sense of the term. He cannowhere find a place of rest in this prosaic world, but, wherever he goes, some good fortune generally attends him. For example,he has scarcely arrived, in a state of destitution, on the confines of Austria, when he finds there three genial though poor companionswho are ready to aid him , as he tells us, in the following cheerful passages from the story of his youth:-• I see the pleasant country — hail,Austrian woods and birds and streams!The Danube glitters from the vale,St. Stephen's steeple yonder gleams Over the bills so far away ,As if it welcomed me to day!Vivat, Austria!' I was singing the last verse of the song , as I stood on the bill which commands the first prospect of Austria, when suddenly &trio of wind - instruments sounded out sweetly from the woodbehind me, and accompanied my voice, I turned round, and saw three young men in long blue mantles. One blew an oboe, another a clarionet, and the third played the French horn . To mend theconcert, I pulled out my fiddle and played away with them,singing heartily too. At this they seemed amazed, and looked one at another, like men who have made a great mistake. The FrenchHorn ( the player I mean) allowed his puffed -out cheeks to collapse,and looked very earnestly at me, while I civilly returned the stare of surprise. He stepped nearer to me, and said: " The fact is, we guessed, by your frock, that you were an Englishman, and thoughtwe might win a trile from you; but it seems you too are amusician .” I confessed that this was the better guess of the two,and that I had just returned from Rome, and had found it neces sary to scrape my way over the country with a fiddle." “ Ha!” said he," a single fiddle cannot do much now-a- days:here be stepped to a little fire on the ground beside the wood, andbegan to fan it with his cap—“ the wind instruments ' do the workfar better, you see, When we pop on a respectable family atdinner - time, we just step quietly into the portico, and blow ashard as we can, until one of the servants comes out, glad to givemoney, or victuals, anything to stop our noise. Won't you takebreakfast with us? ” I readily accepted the invitation. We satnear the fire on a green bank, and the two musicians began to414 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [CH.&&have lost yourcountie little bundles, and took out some slices of bread. A pot ofcoffee and milk was soon prepared , of which the Oboe and theClarionet drank alternately; but the French Horn said, as he handed to me half a buttered roll, " I don't like that black mix ture: this is better,” he added, drawing out a flask of wine, which he presented to me. I drank boldly; but as I took the flask frommy mouth, I could not suppress a slight distortion of my face.“ Hal it is only home-made stuff,” said he: “ you German taste in Italy, I suppose? ”• He drew from his pocket an old tattered map of Austria , which be spread out upon the grass, and his companions joined theirheads over it, pointing their fingers over various routes. “ Vacationends soon ,” said one. “ We must turn away from Linz here on the left hand, so as to get back to Prague in good time. " Ridi.culous! ” said the French Horn; “ that road will only lead youamong woods and ignorant peasants. You will not find a man of refined taste on that road ." “ Fine taste! Nonsense said theOboe; " the peasants are good -natured, and will not complain ofour false notes. " ." Their scraps of Latin, and other remarks, made me understandthat my new friends were Prague students. I felt melancholywhen I thought that three young men, who could talk in Latin 80 fluently, should remain so poor. The French Horn seemed to guess my thoughts, for he said, “ You see we have no rich friends:80, when the other students return home, we put these instruments under our cloaks, stroll away from Prague, and find the wide world at our service . Ours is the best mode of travelling. Iwould not be a tame tourist, with my bed warmed and my night cap laid in a certain hotel every evening. ' Tis the beauty of our way of life that we go out every morning, like the birds over ourheads, not knowing under what chimney we shall eat our supper."a1Our plan was soon completed. We resolved to go by the next packet down the Danube, and accordingly hastened to the place of embarkation. Here stood the stout landlord, filling up the doorway of the hotel, while maidens were looking out of the windows at the passengers and sailors. Among these stood an old gentleman wearing a gray frock and a black crarat. I and my friends emptied our pockets, and the steward smiled satirically when he saw that all our fares were paid in copper. But I caredXXV. ] VON EICHENDORFF . 415nothing for his scorn . The morning was brilliant, and I wasepraptured to find myself once more on the Danube. As westeamed rapidly along between pastures and hills, the birds weresinging, village clocks were chiming, and a caged canary, belongingto a pretty maiden among the passengers, began to whistle charmingly. I guessed the old gentleman in the gray frock to be aclergyman, as he was reading in a breviarg with a splendidlygilded and decorated title - page; and I found that my guess was true, for he soon began to talk in Latin with the students.Meanwbile, I walked to the bow of the packet, and stood theregazing into the blue distance, while towers and spires arose one after another over the green banks of the Danube. I took out my fiddle, and began to play somn old tunes. Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder, and turning round, saw the old gentleman. “ Ha! ”said he, “ do you prefer fiddling? Come and join us at lunch."I expressed my thanks, putting up the fiddle, and followed my host under a little canopy which the sailors had constructed onthe deck . Here found a plentiful supply of sandwiches andsome flasks of wine spread out before my companions. The old gentleman filled a silver goblet with wine, and passed it round.Our reserve soon melted away . My companions related their adventures, and the old gentleman laughed, and suid he also hadbeen a student, and had often wandered far during vacations. At his request, we took out ourinstruments and played. So the hours passed away, till the evening sun was gilding the woods and the valleys, while the banks were resounding with our strains. As we came near the end of our voyage, we passed the silver goblet round once more, and then all joined in singing a vacation -song with a Latin chorus.'For the purpose of placing together several specimens of prosefiction, we have deviated from the order of time to which we re turn to notice some productions in dramatic literature written before the years of the War of Liberation .The tendencies ofthe fate - tragedies' already named were indi cated in the first drama written by HEINRICH VON KLEIST, who was born at Frankfurt in 1776 . He gained in early life the patronage of Goethe, who, at one time, had hopes that the drama might be cultivated with success by Kleist. The gloomy and morbid temperament of the poet led to the disappointment of such hopes. His life was a series of almost aimless wanderings in416 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [CH.7France and Switzerland and in his natire land. At one time he was a prisoner in France, at another he conceived a plan of retiring from society and living in solitude. The unhappy circumstances of the timemightserve to increase his natural melancholy;but it does not appear that they were the cause of it. He died byhis own band in 1811 .His first drama, ' The Family Schroffenstein ,' 1803, was a dismal foreboding ofthe fate -tragedies' which were afterwards written by Werner and Müllner, and served to deprave theatrical taste.There are proofs of dramatic talent and poetic power in Kleist's comedy The Broken Pitcher ,' As in his most popular play,Käthchen von Heilbronn, and in " The Prince of Homburg;' but,excepting the first- named piece, they are all made painful hy some morbid traits. Somnambulism forms a prominent part of the plot in hchen, and the same expedient is employed in another play.Kleist wrote several tales in prose, of which the most remark able - entitled “ Michael Kohlhaas '-is founded on facts that occurred in Luther's time. The true and original story of inexorable revenge was gloomy enough, without the aid of fiction. Kohlhaas,a trader, had been unjustly treated by a country squire, againstwhom he brought an action at law . But no amount of damages awarded by law would satisfy the vengeance of the injured man ,and he was pacified only for a time when Martin Luther reminded him of the duty to forgive. The anger cherished at first against an individual, directed itself afterwards against society. Kohlhaas was found guilty of robbery and other crimes, and died on the scaffold in 1540. As Goethe said, Kleist showed a morbid temperament in choosing to treat minutely the details of such agloomy story as this of Michael Kohlhaas.'Kleist's dramas, with all their serious errors, are respectablecompared with the ' fate -tragedies, of which one, at least, is unfortunately associated with the literature of the RomanticSchool. The triumph of these dramas on the German stage tookplace in the years of depression that followed the War of Liberation;but the prototype of the whole class was written by Werner in1811, and must, therefore, be noticed here. The fact must not bedisguised that German literature has its ' night- side.' To thisregion we are introduced by Werner. It has been said thatKotzebue might have written his worst, but not least successfulplays, with the intention of refuting Schiller's ideal theory of theXXV.] WERNER . 4176amoral power of the stage .' The remark may, however, be still more fairly applied to such tragedies as were written by Werner and Müllner.FRIEDRICI LUDWIG ZACHARIAS WERNER was born at Königsberg in 1768. It is enough to sny of his life that it accorded wellwith bis own theory, that religion and morality belong to twoseparate worlds. His dramas The Sons of Thales' (1803-4) and

• The Cross on the Baltic ' (1806) were both intended to have a

religious tendency, which was more clearly pronounced in Martin Luther.' It was by his notorious fate - tragedy The Twentyfourth of February ' (written in 1811) that he exerted a disastrous influence on the German stage. In 1811 Werner enteredthe Roman Catholic Church. In his later life he gained muchpopularity as a preacher in Vienna, where he died in 1823.Werner had a fervid imagination, and wrote with uncontrolledenergy . His earlier dramas have pompous situations and some good scenic effects, but are less remarkable than the " fatetragedy ' already named. Its success led to the appearance of aseries of other pieces of the same class, which had a long popularityin German theatres. Their character may be indicated by thefollowing analysis of the plot in Werner's děplorably successfuldrama:In a miserable cottage on the Grimsel we find the peasantKuruth and his wife reduced to such destitution that to livehonestly seems no longer possible. The wife, urged by want,advises the man to commit a robbery, and he consents to do it,as soon as an opportunity presents itself.While they are talking of this, a stranger arrives and brings with him a good supply of food and wine, but begs for a night's shelter in the miserable cottage. In the course of conversation Kuruth and his visitor soon become confidential, and both relatesome incidents in their own lives. The former confesses that byhis marriage he greatly offended his father, who would never forgive him .One day ,' says Kuruth, the old man vexed me so much by his objurgations, addressed to me when I was working in the harvest- field, that I hastily hurled at him a knife which I had been using in sharpening a scythe. The knife missed its aim; butthe old man, in a frenzy of anger, uttered the bitterest impre cations on myself, my wife, and all our children . He spent hisaEE418 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .last breath in that malediction, was soon afterwards seized byapoplexy, and died," This wretched tragedy took place,' says Kuruth, on “ The Twenty -fourth of February," and, on one of the anniversaries ofthat fatal day my infant daughter was slain by her own brother,whom I drove away from my house. 'The visitor is so far excited by sympathy and wine that he confesses that in his youth he was guilty of manslaughter, and the act, he remembers, was committed on ' The Twenty - fourth ofFebruary; ' but this coincidence leads to no recognition.The guest then goes on to tell how he emigrated and made afortune. ' I intend now ,' says he, ' to gladden the hearts of myold father and mother by making them sharers in my riches.Before retiring to rest, the stranger hides gold under the bedof straw . The destitute peasant wrestles hard with the temptation presented to his mind. His wife consents to the robberymeditated, but implores Kuruth not to commit a greater crime.He would yield, it appears, to her entreaties; but when heenters the guest's chamber a knife falls out of its sheath, that hangs upon the wall. It is the weapon that was once flung at his own father by the wretched man, Kuruth, who now makes it the instrument of a greater crime. All this is represented asthe result of fate .'When the murdered traveller's pass is examined, it is soon found out that his name is · Kurt Kuruth. ' The wretched motheridentifies the body of her only son, and hurls bitter reproaches at the criminal. But he heeds them not; he only reminds her thatthis is another anniversaryofthe fatal day - The Twenty - fourthof February .'Such are the outlines of a drama in which absurdity and evil tendency are combined . It would be wasting words to argue that the fate ' described in such a plot as Werner's is utterly unlike the Nemesis of antique Greek tragedy. Werner's notion of ' fate'is opposed, not only to morality, but to every rational notion of human existence. Man is here made the slave of a• fate ' which is itself nothing more than & trivial accident. Adream, an arbitrary prediction, or some angry words spoken by agipsy, may be enough to control a man's destiny, according to Wernor's notion . If there is any meaning in his play, it is that nothing whatsoever ought to be done on the Twenty - fourth dayof February66GXXV.] COLLIN . 4196Werner's absurd tragedy was imitated by MÜLLNER in his " Twenty-ninth of February,' which incredible as it may seem ) is considerably worse than the Twenty -fourth . Such productions would not be worth naming if they had not enjoyed a long lifeon the stage.FRANZ GRILLPARZER, who afterwards wrote superior dramaticworks, first gained his reputation by his fate -tragedy Die Ahnfrau(“ TheGrandmother '); and HOUWALD repeated in Das Bild ( 1821)the old story of ' fate, of which the public were hardly wearywhen Platen produced in 1826 ) his clever parody -play entitled" The Fatal Fork .' Its plot is complex and tiresome, but it is far better, in art as in moral tendency, than the dramas fitly de scribed as belonging to the night- side ' of poetical literature.Two dramatic writers may be named here as contemporaries ofthe Romantic School, with which , however, the author firstnamed had no association .HEINRICH JOSEPH VON COLLIN (1772–1811) wrote, in opposition to romantic tendencies, several dramas on such antique subjects as ' Regulus ' and ' Coriolan .' Collin , who might be called, with regard to his clear style and construction of plot, one of the Vienna disciples of Lessing, was once loudly praised and then soon forgotten. Hiş merits were hardly more than formal.A more productive and imaginative author, Adam GOTTLOB OEHLENSCHLÄGER ( 1779–1850 ), a Dane, wrote many dramatic poems, including ' Aladdin,' Axel und Walburg, and · Correggio,'besides lyrical poems, romances, and legende. His command ofthe two languages enabled him to translate with facility into German his own Danish poems. The graceful and sentimental style of several of his dramatic works is singularly contrasted with the stern character of some of his subjects, which were selected from old Scandinavian legends. His writings have more im portance in Danish than in German literature .Enough has been said to show that the theory and the practice of the Romantic School led to a serious degradation of dramatic literature. It could hardly excite either surprise or regret when,after the dismal reign of Wemer, Müllner, and their followers,Kotzebue's plays once more gained possession of the stage.Two or three epic poems and idylls written by prelates of the Catholic Church deserve notice for their Christian character, butare not otherwise remarkable. LADISLAS PYRKER, a native of6EE 2420 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH.Hungary, and well known as the Archbishop of Erlau ( 1772 1847 ), wrote two long epics — Tunisias' and ' Rudolf of Habsburg ' - in which he supplied the want of a mythology by intro ducing as agents the spirits of departed heroes. IGNAZ VON WESSENBERG ( 1774–1860 ), already named as a writer On the Moral Power of the Stage ' (see Chapter XXI.), wrote a poem entitled ' Fénelon .' The choice of the subject truly indicatesthe pious and amiable character of the writer. He was con demned for heresy, and was expelled from his bishopric by the Ultramontanes.XXVI.] THE WAR OF LIBERATION .421CHAPTER XXVI.SEVENTH PERIOD. 1770-1830.THE WAR OF LIBERATION ( 1812-15) . -PATRIOTIC STATESMENPHILOSOPHERS . PUBLICISTS — POETS THE SUABIAY SCHOOL OFPOETRY.0The heroism of the man who sacrifices his life for the welfare of his country may raise some doubts and scruples, even in the midst of our ad miration, as long as we do not see clearly that it was his absolute daty so to act. But when we see in an action a sacrifice of apparent honour, or happiness, or life, to the fulfilment of an undoubted duty, the neglect of which would be a violation of divine and human law - when there is nochoice save between duty performed at the cost of life, and life preserved by an immoral action, and when the former course is resolutely taken , here there is no scruple, no reserve in our approbation; we say at once, It isgood,” and are proud to see that human nature can thus lift itself above all the inclinations and passions of the sensuous world .'- IMM . KANT ( 1787).66It was at Königsberg that Kant taught the doctrine above quoted, and in the same town, in 1808, soon after the peace con cluded at Tilsit,the Tugendbund, or ' Bond of Valour,' was insti tuted. It was befriended, though not founded, by the patriotic minister STEIN . The brave and true GNEISENAU was a memberof the union , and SCHARNHORST, the military reformer, was its firmfriend . The objects of the union were to elevate the depressed spirit of the people, to relieve the miseries caused by war, and toprepare the way for liberation .The predictions of Schiller were demanding fulfilment; a new life was awakening among professors and students in universities,and at Berlin FICHTE, in the same year in which the Tugendbund was founded, delivered the addresses to the German nation which served to kindle a fervour ofpatriotism . Some passages from his concluding appeal may best express the spirit of the times:422 1OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . [ CH.a9•Germans! the voices of your ancestors are sounding from theoldest times -- the men who destroyed Rome's despotism , the heroes who gave their lives to preserve inviolate these mountains, plains,and rivers which you allow a foreign despot to claim -- these men,your forefathers, call to you , ' If you reverence your origin, preserve sacred your rights by maintaining our patriotic devotion ."... And with this admonition from antiquity there are mingledthe voices of patriots of a later age. The men who contended for religious freedom exhort you to carry out their conflict to its ultimate results. And posterity, still unborn, has claims uponyou. Your descendants must be involved in disgrace if you failin your duty. Will you make yourselves bad links in the national chain which ought to unite your remotest posterity to that noble ancestry of which you profess to be proud? Shall your descendants be tempted to use falsehood to hide their disgrace? Must they say, “ No! we are not descended from the Germans who were conquered in 1808? ” .... And many men in other lands conjure you now to maintain your freedom . For among all peoples there are souls who will not believe that the glorious promise of the dominion of justice, reason, and truth among men is all & vain dream . No! they still trust in that promise, andpray you to fulfil your great part in its realisation. Yea, allthe wise and good in all the past generations of mankind join in my exhortation. They seem to lift up imploring hands in your presence, and beseech you to fulfil th ardent desires and aspirations. May I not say even that the Divine plan of Providence is waiting for your co -operation? Shall all who have believed inthe progress of society and the possibility of just government among men be scouted as silly dreamers? Shall all the dullsouls who only awake from a sleepy life, like that of plants and animals, to direct their scorn against every noble purpose, be triumphant in their mockery? You must answer these questions by your practical career ." The old Roman world, with all its grandeur and glory, fellunder the burthen of its own unworthiness and the offorefathers. And if my reasoning has been correct, you, the de scendants of those heroes who triumphed over corrupted Rome,are now the people to whose care the great interests of humanity are confided. The hopes of humanity for deliverance out of the depths of evil depend upon you! If you fall, humanity falls withpower>OUTXXVI. ] FICHTE . 423you! Do not flatter yourselves with a vain consolation , imaginingthat future events, if not better, will be not worse than the events of past ages . If the modern civilised world sinks, like old Rome,into corruption, you may suppose that some half- barbarian butenergetic race, like the ancient Germans, may arise and establish a new order of society on the ruins of the old. But where will you find such a people now? The surface of the earth has been explored. Every nation is known. Is there any half- barbarous race now existing and prepared to do the work of restoration as our ancestors did it? Everyone must answer " No." Then myconclusion is established . If you, who constitute the centre of modern civilised society , fall into slavery and moral corruption ,then humanity must fall with you — and without any hope of arestoration .'It is impossible to mention here all the literary men whose services to their country at this time deserve to be remembered.All classes were united for one common object, and, for once in the history of modern times, philosophy and political science,poetry and reality, literature and life, were joined in a firm alliance. Philosophy, as we have seen, was represented by Fichte;to represent theology, SCHLEIERMACHER came to the front, and Steffens, the imaginative man of science, not only spoke forfreedom , but served bravely in the army and gained the distinctionof the Iron Cross.Among the historians and publicists who aided the nationalmovement JOSEPH GÖRRES ( 1776–1848 ) must be mentioned as one of the leading representatives of the Romantic School. He was enthusiastic and imaginative in his writings on the faith and the institutions of the Middle Ages, and ultimately declared him self a believer in Ultramontane doctrine. His zealous servicesto the national interest made his name very prominent in 1814and afterwards, when he edited · The Rhenish Mercury.'KARL VON ROTTECK ( 1775–1840), the author of a Universal History ' (1813), and of many writings on political and military affairs, should be named here, if only on account of his just de.nunciation of Napoleon's despotism. The facts stated by Rotteckserve to explain and to justify many expressions of indignation that might seem intemperate. A few sentences may convey the purport of the denunciation here referred to:• The victory of Austerlitz ,' says the historian, ' was as ruinous6424 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE. [ CH .to the liberty of the French people as to the independence of Germany.' After that, the armies of Napoleon fought for the en thronement of a despot, who had no respect for the principlesasserted in the revolution which had conferred on him his enormous power. His flatterers declared that he derived his authority from · the approbation of the people; but at the time when this was boldly asserted, the most stringent measures were used to prevent every free expression of public opinion. '

• All the governments of Europe were to be reduced to a state of Vassalage under one military power, and this vast scheme seemed

likely to be realised; for in 1807 only England and Turkey re mained free. The despot's own relatives, Joseph at Naples, Louis in Holland, and Jerome in Westphalia, were, like the members ofthe Rheinbund, mere creatures moved by one will .'In a material point of view the system founded only on the strength of that will seemed firm; but a mighty moral powerarose and overthrew the mechanical empire. Poets and dreamers were found to be practical men, and Schiller, Fichte, Arndt,Körner, and many other men of a class despised by the tyrant.called up a power more formidable than that of legions, and greatly aided the national movement that led to victory at Leipzig andat Waterloo.Patriotism and Religion , represented by both Catholics and Protestants were both united, as they ought to be, with Poetryand Philosophy. But the great effort demanded was physical as well as moral, and to preach the duty of training the body as wellas the mind for the service of the State, FRIEDRICH LUDWIG JAIN ( 1778–1852), the great gymnastic trainer, came forward ,and not in vain . His services were urgently required, and be gave them with all the zeal that was the characteristic of hisnature. His book on 'Gymnastic Training,' published in 1816,gave the results of his practical efforts made before that time, and led to the establishment of the Turnverein (“Gymnastic Union ')as an important attendant on mental culture . Jabn gatheredtogether, at Breslau, a body of volunteers whom he led to battlein 1814. It may be added, as a pleasing instance of national wisdom as well as gratitude, that a monument raised in honour of Jahn, the physical reformer, was unveiled near Berlin in 1872.Such honour paid to the good and brave men of the past is a good sign for the Empire's future .6XXVI.] ARNDT, 425But, passing over other names of statesmen, soldiers, preachers,and publicists, we must hasten to note a few of the poets who now asserted their power. Schiller, though dead, was still speaking.As we have said , he boldly predicted the rising of the nations against oppression, and his writings helped to hasten the fulfilmentof his own prophecy.Next must be named the steadfast veteran ERNST MORITZARNDT, who died, at the age of ninety, in 1860. In 1806–12 hewas travelling from one place to another, to escape from Napoleon's inquisitors. Their zeal in the pursuit of Arndt was not to bewondered at, for he was more formidable than a regiment of sol diers. His words were as truculent as any ever uttered by Hagen ,the fierce man of the Nibelungenlied, and, at the present time, we can hardly read them all with approval. But no cold and unrealcriticism must be applied to burning words kindled by an in tolerable sense of oppression. Arndt might have taken for his motto the words of Juvenal, in the well - known passage beginningwith ' Esto bonus miles .' ' (' Be a good soldier! ' ) Thus Arndt begins one song on the right use of iron in times of bondage: --The God who made the iron oreWill have no man a slave;To arm the man's right hand for war The sword and the spear He gave,And He gives to us a daring heart,And for burning words the breathTo tell the foeman that we fearDishonour more than death.One of Arndt's most fervid ballads tells of the fate of the braveFerdinand von Schill, who, in 1809, made a premature and unsuccessful attempt to carry out the design of the Tugendbund .Schill hoped, by making a bold attack on the enemy in Westphalia, to give the signal for a general rising of the people; but the time was inopportune. He was compelled to retreat on Stralsund, where his scanty forces made a brave resistance against superior numbers. Schill was shot and afterwards beheaded;then, as Arndt tellsThey gave to his corpse a mean funeral, dumb,With no music of fifes and no roll of the drum ,And no rattle of musketry over the graveWhere they buried in silence our hero brave.Another of Arndt's patriotic songs426 OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE . (CH.Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?is so well known, and has been sung so often, that it may be calledthe national hymn of Germany; but it has been justly observed that it tells too much of the old times of division ( Zerstückelung)that led to the degradation of 1806. The latter are far better than the earlier stanzas, of which we translate only one: -Where is the German's Fatherland?Is ' t Prussia , or the Suabian land?Where by the Rhine the grapes are growing?Or where the Baltic waves are flowing?Oh no! Oh no!Far wider is our Fatherland! 'Where is the German's Fatherland?Declare to us where is that land.• As far as ' neath the spreading skies Our German hymns to God arise All that wide land,Brave brothers, call our Fatherland!• All Germany we call our own!May God behold it from His throne;And give to all who in it dwellTrue hearts to love and cherish wellAll this wide landAll Germany, our Fatherland! 'THEODOR KÖRNER's life and writings are enough to prove howthe spirit of Schiller's poetry stirred the hearts of thousandsduring the War of Liberation . It was remarkable that the youth whose brave example had such an effect in kindling patriotic enthusiasm was the son of Schiller's most faithful friend. Theodor,born at Dresden in 1791, was an earnest student of Schiller's poetry, and wrote several dramas, of which Zriny was the most successful. But the sounds of war called the young poet awayfrom his studies and recreations at Vienna, where he had gained the appointment of poet to the theatre, and, tearing himself awayfrom flattering circumstances and kind friends, he, with his father's consent, joined a troop of volunteers, in which he was soon made a lieutenant. He fought bravely, was severely wounded,but returned to fight again, and animated his companions by martial songs— The Prayer before Battle;' «The people rise, the storm breaks loose! ' Thou sword at my left side ,' and otherswhich were collected under the title “ The Lyre and the Sword.'6XXVI.] KÖRNER 427Thus Körner addressed the youth who could stay at home in 1813:Let our last hour come in the midst of the fight!O welcome the death of a soldier brave!While you, ' neath your coverlet silken and bright,Cower like a dog, in your fear of the grave;You will die like a base and a pitiful wight.Here, come along! whoever is strong,A sabre to swing in defence of the right!There was no idle boasting in Theodor's battle -songs. He was ready to make the sacrifice which he demanded of others for thewelfare of the nation . After serving bravely as adjutant inLützow's corps of volunteers, Körner fell, mortally wounded, in askirmish which took place near Gadebusch, August 26, 1813, andhe was buried under an oak at Wöbbelin, where there is amonument to his memory. He anticipated such a close of his career when he sang thus of Lützow's Wilde Jagd:See there in the valley they rush in the fight,Where sabres and helmets are clashing;From their blades, as on helmets of steel they smite,Through the smoke of the battle tbere glistens a light,The sparks of our freedom are flashing.What mean the black horsemen who ride such a race?That is Lützow's fearless and desperate chase!Who lies mid his foes on the battle- place?Though from life and from friends he must sever,Though no more he must join in the desperate chase,There is not a shadow of fear on