Hours with German classics : from the Nibelungenlied to Heinrich Heine

-/T/ZO

GIFT or

Professor CD, Brenner

HOURS

WITH

GERMAN CLASSICS

FROM THE NIBELUNGENLIED TO
HEINRICH HEINE

BY

FREDERIC HENRY HEDGE

JFonner ilrofessor of (Bxcrman in ]^arijarti 2Eiubcrsttg

AUTHOR OF "martin LUTHER AND OTHER ESSAYS"
"THE PROSE WRITERS OF GERMANY." ETC.

NEW EDITION

BOSTON

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

1902

Copyright, 1886,
By Frederic Henry Hedge.

(Knfbersfti! pre«»:
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.

TO

WILLIAM HENRY FURNESS,

THE SUCCESSFUL TRANSLATOR OF

GERMAN VERSE,

THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED,

WITH THE AUTHOR'S LOVE.

919031

EXPLANATORY NOTE.

The following essays contain the substance of lec-
tures delivered by the author in his official capacity as
Professor of German Literature. Far from assuming
to be a complete history of that literature, they aim to
exhibit some of its characteristic phases as exemplified
by writers who fairly represent the national genius.

Want of space within the limits of the one volume to
which it was judged expedient to restrict this presenta-
tion, necessitated the exclusion of many writers of note
in prose and in verse, — among others the great philoso-
phers, Kant and his followers, who, though eminently
classic, form a class by themselves.

These the author has presented in former publica-
tions. See " The Prose Writers of Germany," and
"Atheism in Philosophy, and other Essays."

F. H. H.

Cambridge, May 17, 1886.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAOE

I. Introductory . 1

II. Eldest Monuments 11

III. The Nibelungenlied 25

IV. Comparison of the Nibelungenlied with the

Iliad 48

V. GuDRUN AND Other Medi^val Poems ... 56

VI. Martin Luther 65

VII. Hans Sachs and Ulrich von Hutten ... 83

VIII. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries . . 100

IX. Klopstock 121

X. Lessing 143

XI. Mendelssohn 171

XII. The Universal German Library. — Friedrich

Nicolai 190

XIII. WiELAND 207

XIV. Herder 228

XV. Goethe 254

XVI. Schiller 344

XVII. Jean Paul 396

XVIII. The Romantic School 429

XIX. Hoffmann 474

XX. Heinrich Heine 502

INDEX 529

HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

'^T^HE literature of modern Germany is a recent
J- growth compared with the literatures of England,
Italy, France, and Spain. I say modern Germany, not
forgetting that mediasval Germany led contemporary
nations in epic and lyric song.

The English were slow to recognize the merits of
German writers when at last it was understood that
Germany had writers in propria sermone and a literature
of her own.

The Germans were confounded with the people of Hol-
land. The name " Dutch " was applied indiscriminately
to the countrymen of Hermann, of the Minnesingers, of
Luther, of Guttenberg, and to dwellers on the Waal and
the Scheldt. The elder Disraeli, in his " Curiosities of
Literature," has an essay entitled " Literary Dutch,"
in which he speaks of Germans and Hollanders as one
and the same people, using the same language : he is
not aware of any distinction between them. Vondel,
a Dutchman of the sixteenth century, and Schubart, a
German of the eighteenth, are adduced as illustrations
of the same literature. He writes with a show of candor,
but concludes that on the whole the question of Father

1

2 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

BouliQiirs, " Whether a German can have wit/' had not
been answered. And this was subsequent to the death
of Lcfeaiiij^. It was after Wieland and Klopstock and
Herder had nearly finished their labors ; after Goethe
and Schiller had published things which in their own
way have not been excelled. What German critic has
ever betrayed such Cimmerian ignorance on any subject
of which he undertook to discourse ?

A writer in the '' Edinburgh Review " for October,
1825, in a critical notice of Carlyle's translation of
" Wilhelm Meister," after characterizing that work —
which he professes to know only by translation — as
" eminently absurd, puerile, incongruous, vulgar, af-
fected, . . . from beginning to end one flagrant offence
against every principle of taste and every just rule of
composition," passes by an easy induction from the
particular to the general, and pronounces the same con-
demnation on the entire literature of Germany. It is
all vulgar; and the reason assigned is that German
writers are poor, and therefore debarred the privilege of
good society, — that is, of the society of the rich. The
fact being that a larger proportion of German writers
than of English have been the friends of princes, and
that literary genius in Germany has been better sus-
tained on the whole than in England, where, if poverty
makes authors vulgar, Burns should have been the most
vulgar of poets ; where Samuel Johnson was in the
habit of subscribing himself impransus; where Spenser
could testify from his own experience, —

" What hell it is in suing long to bide."

Three years had not elapsed after this tirade when
Thomas Carlyle published in the same journal his tri-

INTRODUCTORY, 3

umphant vindication of German literature, which marks
an epoch in the history of English opinion on that sub-
ject. The years succeeding have wrought a mighty
change, not in the value of the literature whose best
productions antedate that essay, but in the knowledge
and appreciation of it by English and American schol-
ars. A certain strangeness, which at first is always
repulsive, had to be encountered and overcome before
English intelligence could open itself freely to the com-
munications of the German mind.

Every nation that can properly be said to have a lit-
erature of its own imparts to that literature something
of its own character, — certain qualities due to language,
race, historic development, distinguishing it from other
literatures, and making it, more than any industrial
activities, a true exponent of the national mind. In
German literature, accordingly, we shall expect to find,
and do find, along with much that is common to all
modern. Western, Christian nations, some qualities pe-
culiar to itself.

I name as the first of these qualities a predominant
idealism, a tendency to see all things in the light of
ideas, to seek in all things the interior reason of their
being. " When Candide," says Heine, " came to Eldo-
rado, he saw some boys in the street playing with great
nuggets of gold instead of stones. This extravagance
led him to believe that these boys were young princes ;
and he was not a little surprised when he learned that
in Eldorado nuggets of gold were as plentiful as pebbles
are with us, so that school-boys can play with them.
Something similar happened to a friend of mine, a for-
eigner, when he first began to read German books. He
was amazed at the wealth of thought he found in them ;

4 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

but he soon discovered that ideas in Germany are as
plentiful as nuggets of gold in Eldorado, and that the
authors whom he had supposed to be the intellectual
princes of the nation were mere ordinary school-boys."

The familiar witticism which represents the German
naturalist as undertaking to evolve the image of the
camel from his interior consciousness, points to this
peculiarity of the national mind, — that it works, so to
speak, from within outward. Imagination predomi-
nates. We are indebted to this peculiarity for that rich
treasury of fairy myths and tales of the supernatural
which have found such ready welcome in other lands.
Motte-Fouqu^'s " Undine," his " Bottle-Imp," Cha-
misso's " Peter Schlemihl," Tieck's " Elves," and above
all Goethe's " Marchen," are flowers of fiction indigenous
to German soil.

Another distinguishing feature of German literature is
philosophic criticism, — a province of intellectual activ-
ity in which the writers of that country have taken the
lead, and hold by universal consent the foremost place.
Indeed, the higher criticism, as distinguished not only
from verbal corrections and emendation of texts, but
even from such judgments of literary merit as those of
the English critics of the last century, — criticism that
discerns and interprets the innermost principle of a
work of art, that divines the spirit and reconstructs the
life of the past, — may be said to be an original growth of
the German mind. And what a change it has wrought
in the intellectual life of our time ! What a dawn it has
shed on theology, history, literature, art ! How differently
the great masterpieces of ancient and modern time shine
forth ! How different the lands and the ages show in its
light! German criticism has unfolded the merit and

INTRODUCTORY. 5

the meaning of Hellenic art; it has taught us to dis-
tinguish between the mythic and the actual in historic
records, Biblical and profane. It has enucleated the
kernel from the hull, has elicited from ancient fable
the secrets intrusted to its keeping, and given us in
Japhetic equivalents and scientific form the eternal
truths of religion divested of their Semitic envelopment.
In this way Lessing, Herder, the Schlegels, Niebuhr,
Bunsen, and a host of others have become the mediators
of universal culture, the priests of a common humanity,
which in various phases and costumes asserts its identity
in every land and age.

Cosmopolitan breadth of view, generous appreciation
of foreign merit, I must also name as a special grace of
the German mind. Conscientiously investigating and
thoroughly acquainting itself with the literatures of other
nations, it renders full justice to all. Nowhere have the
great minds of England, Italy, France, and Spain re-
ceived such thorough appreciation. And what other na-
tion boasting great wits of its own, among them some of
the greatest, has so exalted as have the Germans a for-
eign genius, and one of a contemporary people ? What
other nation has enthroned in its Yalhalla, supreme over
all, a stranger god ? In Shakspeare the Germans have
recognized — they first among the nations, earlier even
than his own countrymen — the chief of poets. " Every
literature of the world," says Carlyle, " has been culti-
vated by them ; and to every literature they have studied
to give due honor." While Homer and Shakspeare
" occupy the loftiest station in their poetical Olympus,
there is space in it for all true singers out of every age
and clime. . . . Ferdusi and the primeval mythologists of
Hindustan live in brotherly union with the Troubadours

6 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

and ancient story-tellers of the West. The wayward,
mystic gloom of Calderon, the lurid fire of Dante, the
auroral light of Tasso, the clear icy glitter of Racine, all
are acknowledged and reverenced. . . . The Germans
study foreign nations in a spirit which deserves to be
imitated. ... It is their honest endeavor to understand
each with its own peculiarities, and participate in what-
ever worth or beauty it has brought into being. Of all
literatures accordingly, the German has the best as well
as the most numerous translations."

This was written more than fifty years ago. Other
nations since then, and notably the English, have made
great strides in the same direction ; but the leadership
here must be accorded to the Germans.

The principal, or certainly a marked, defect in Ger-
man literature is its want of rhetorical force, — of free,
impressive communication in the way of direct ad-
dress, whether primarily through the lips or through
the pen.

I speak of prose composition. Germany has produced
no orators, no speeches of the pulpit or the forum, that
have taken strong hold of the popular mind, — no names
in this line that can be compared with those of English
and French renown.

It has been suggested that the absence of popular as-
semblies, of an open court, and until lately of a national
parliament, is the reason of this deficiency. But Ger-
many has had a pulpit : why not a Savonarola, a Bossuet,
a Masillon, a Taylor, a Hall ? Able preachers she has
had, but — with the exception of Luther, whose rugged
but clear, direct, and uninvolved sentences so strongly
contrast the utterances of his later countrymen — no
great pulpit orator. The ability of her preachers has con-

INTRODUCTORY. 7

sisted rather in profundity of thought or piety of senti-
ment than in forcible speech.

Not German institutions, but the character of the Ger-
man language, as it seems to me, is chargeable with the
want of oratorical power. If it be urged on the contrary
that great oratorical gifts would have moulded the lan-
guage to suit the demands of effective popular address,
I shall not dispute the point : I only maintain that tak-
ing the language as it is, I find it ill suited to oratorical
effect. For many purposes it is the best of modern dia-
lects. Copious and flexible beyond any of the Latin
family ; indefinitely capable of compounds by simple ag-
glutination ; expressive of nice shades of meaning and
philosophical distinctions which have no exponent in
English, — it forms an apt instrument of transcendental
speculation. By the facility with which it yields itself
to every variety of metrical form, it is equally adapted
to poetic use. The charm of the female rhyme, so limited
and often so dearly purchased in English, impossible in
French, is the natural method of German verse. But in
oratory, in direct address, where short sentences, simple
construction, and sharp terminal accent are required to
produce the desired effect, the German fails by reason of
its polysyllaljic character, its involved periods, its clumsy
syntax. Here the English, with its prevalence of mono-
syllables, has an immense advantage. The German sep-
arates the parts of the verb, — the auxiliary from the
participle ; and where a conjunction or relative pronoun
comes in, it separates the nominative from the verb
agreeing with it, throwing the latter to the end of the
sentence, with more or less of secondary matter between.
This often gives to the most emphatic word in the sen-
tence a position unfavorable to the best effect. Take the

8 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

following sentence from Goethe's " Campaign in France."
In English idiom it would read as follows : "- During this
time I often saw Marshal Broglie, and have since been
glad to find the man whose figure had made so good and
lasting an impression honorably mentioned in history."
Literally rendered according to the order of the words in
the original, it reads thus : " During this time have I the
Marshal Broglie often seen, and it has me also afterward
rejoiced the man whose figure a so good and lasting im-
pression made had in history honorably mentioned to
find." " Surely," says a writer in the Contemporary
Review, *' no people with a sense of the art of words
would have adopted a mode of writing where sentences,
a page in length, are ended by the verb."

In poetry also, of the sort in which the aim is fervid
utterance, English verse by its abundance of mono-
syllables has capabilities which the German wants. In
Byron's " Giaour " occur these lines : —

" The cold in clime are cold in blood,

Their love can scarce deserve the name ;
But mine was like the lava flood

That boils in Etna's breast of flame.
'T is true, I could not whine or sigh, —

I knew but to obtain or die.
I die : but first I have possessed ;

And come what may, I have been blest."

Here, in eight consecutive lines, there are but five
words which are not monosyllables, and three of the five
have the accent on the last syllable. It would be im-
possible to render these lines into German with the same
effect of sound which they have in English. On the
other hand, it would be impossible to render smoothly
into English verse, preserving the metre and rhyme of
the original, some of the finest German lyrics.

INTRODUCTORY. 9

The vocal properties and capabilities of the language
have been underrated, I think, not only by nations whose
speech is of Latin origin, but also by the English, whose
language is compounded in nearly equal parts of Latin
and German elements. Coleridge undertook to illustrate
the plionetic inferiority of the German to the English by
comparing the effect on the ear of two words, an English
and a German, having the same signification, — death; in
German, Tod. This word, he. argues, has a disagreeable
sound on account of the loathsome animal (toad) which
it suggests. A curious hibernicism ! Even if the word
in question, t-o-d^ were pronounced toad^ as Coleridge
supposes, it would not suggest a toad to those who use
it, since their word for toad is quite different. But in
fact the word is not pronounced toad^ but toadt.

Unquestionably the German is inferior to the English,
as the English is to the Italian, in sonorousness. Who-
ever has heard at a concert songs in the Italian and in
the German, sung by the same singer, must have felt
painfully the musical inferiority of the latter. The em-
peror Julian declared that the singing of their popular
songs by the Germans of the Rhine sounded like the
crowing and cawing of birds of prey. 'T is not a so-
norous language — the excess of consonants forbids ; but
fine vocal effects are possible in it through the ease with
which it forms compounds : e. g. Wlndesungestum. In
Korner's " Prayer before Battle " we have the lines, —

" Wie im herbstlichen Rauschen der Blatter
So irn Schlachtendonnerwetter."

If not orotund like languages of the Latin family, it
has softer combinations of sound than any language with
which I am acquainted. Take this from Goethe's poem,
" Der gefangene Graf," —

10 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

" Doch wird ein liebes Liebchen auch
Der Lilie Zierde loben."

Or this from Schiller's " Pilger," —

" Ach kein Steg will dahin fiihren,
Ach der Himmel iiber mir
Will die Erde nie beriihren,
Und das doit ist iiiemals hier."

Native historians of German literature have adopted
certain classifications which, so far as the purpose of
these essays is concerned, are unimportant, and will not
be noticed as characterizing the individual authors of
whom I am to speak. The great divisions of ancient,
mediaeval, or pre-Lutheran, modern and more modern ;
the period of full maturity, including Goethe and Schiller
and their successors, — these divisions are obvious, and
justify themselves to the apprehension of other nations
as well as to native Germans. But the subdivisions into
what are called " schools," — the Old Silesian, and the
New Silesian, the Swiss, the Saxon, the Prussian Poets'
Union, the Leipziger Poets' Union, the Gottingen Circle,
the Romantic School, and the Austrian School, — these,
with the exception, perhaps, of the Romantic School,
have little or no significance for the foreigner. They
express local and accidental association rather than in-
tellectual tendency or literary likeness. I shall pay no
regard to these, but present in chronological or nearly
chronological order, out of the mass of German writers
and writings, such as have seemed to me for one or an-
other reason worthy of special note.

First, let us glance at some of the works which have
come down to us in forms of speech now obsolete.

ELDEST MONUMENTS, \\

CHAPTER II.

ELDEST MONUMENTS.

THE word " Teutonic " — derived from " Teutones,"
the name of a barbarous people who make their
first appearance in history in connection with the Ro-
man General C. Marius, 102 B.C. — has, by a strange
mischance, become a synonym for " German." It is
not certain that the Teutones were a German tribe.
Some authorities suppose them to have been Celts. And
yet, proceeding on the former supposition, German writ-
ers themselves at one time adopted the fashion of spell-
ing their national designation with a t instead of c?, —
Teutsch instead of Deutsch. It was a mistaken ety-
mology. " Deutsch " is not derived from '' Teutones,"
but from the Gothic word '' Thiuda," — a people. Hence,
the adjective " Thiudisc ; " whence, in the old High-Ger-
man, " Diutisc (th changing into d)', thence " Deutisch"
contracted into " Deutsch."

If certain ethnologists are right in their identification
of the Goths, who figure in the third and fourth centuries
of our era, with the Getae, who inhabited the western
shore of the Euxine, we may reckon as the earliest
known writer in German the Latin poet Ovid,i who was
banished to Tomi on the Euxine in the year 8 a. d. In
his letter to Carius in the Fourth Book of the " Epistolae

^ See Taylor's " Survey of German Poetry.'*

12 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

ex Ponto," he boasts of having written a poem in the
Gothic language with Latin metre, —

" Getico scrips! sermone libellum
Structaque sint nobis barbara verba modis."

Ovid's Gothic verses have not come down to us, but
we have what is infinitely better, a work which German
philologists unanimously claim as the oldest monument
of German literature, — Ulfilas's Gothic version of the
New Testament. Says Jacob Grimm, the most diligent
investigator of the sources of German speech : —

"There where, according to Thracian tradition, Haemus
and Rhodope ^ were petrified into mountains, was heard the
earliest German discourse preserved to us in writing. Had not
Ulfilas felt in himself the impulse to express in Gothic the
sacred words of the new faith, the very foundation of the his-
tory of our language would have been wanting. But a small
portion of his imperishable work has come down to us ; it is
impossible to estimate the injury sustained by the loss of the
rest. But a happy discovery in our day has enabled us to fill
out a considerable gap, and from every line of the text thus
preserved we derive fresh gains. No other living European
language can boast a monument of equal antiquity and worth."

Ulfilas, or Wulfilas, belonged to that portion of the
Gothic race known in history as Visigoths or Westgoths.
The word " Goth " is associated in common speech with
all that is rude and barbarous. It is to the modern
mind what " Scythian " was to the ancient. Indeed, a
portion of the Goths have been supposed to be identical
with the Scythians inhabiting European or old Scythia,
the " Moesia Inferior " of ancient geography. We find

1 King and queen of Thrace, who, aspiring to divine honors, were
turned to mountains.

ELDEST MONUMENTS. 13

mention made by the ancients of a people inhabiting
that country who bear the name of Getae. They are
known to Herodotus, who speaks of them as a Thracian
tribe, but distinguishes them as a better variety of that
nation, — " GprjLKwv dvBpeiorarot koI hucaioTarou^^ He
speaks of " Terai adavarl^ovre^,^^ the Getae who deemed
themselves immortal, — words of weight, says Grimm,
" in the mouth of haughty Greeks who would look upon
Thracians as barbarians." In Greek and Latin comedy,
the names G-etas and Getae occur repeatedly as names
of slaves. They are supposed to be names of nationali-
ties applied to individuals, — in the same way that the
term " Swiss " has been used to denote servants of that
nation.

Geta has been affirmed to be synonymous with Goth.
Grimm thinks the evidence irresistible for their identity.
If his view is correct, it would follow that long antece-
dent to the Christian era the Goths were known to the
Greeks and Romans as a people inhabiting the countries
called Moesia and Dacia, corresponding in modern geog-
raphy with the province of Bulgaria. It would seem,
furthermore, from the typical use of the name Getas
(^Geta)^ in Greek and Latin comedy, that enslaved Goths
in those ages, perhaps on account of their fidelity and
trustworthiness, were favorite servants.

On the other hand, history presents at the opening of
the third century of our era an influx of Goths ^ into
Central and Southern Europe from an opposite quarter,
— from the Scandinavian peninsula. A portion of these
Invaders make incursions into Thrace, and finally estab-
lish themselves in Dacia, a province ceded to them by
the emperor Aurelian in the year 272. Whether these

1 Called by Latin liistorians Gothones.

14 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Gothones were the veritable Getae mentioned above, —
moving southward and eastward again after a tempo-
rary settlement in the north, and returning to the an-
cient home of their race, — or a wholly distinct people,
confounded with the Getae in consequence of the iden-
tity of their location, is a question on which authorities
diifer. Certain it is that the Visigoths are found estab-
lished in Dacia and Moesia toward the close of the third
century. The more powerful kingdom of the Ostrogoths
lay to the north and the east of them on the banks of the
Borysthenes, now the Dnieper. That the Goths were
Germans, a branch of the great Germanic stock, is univer-
sally conceded. Their language proves it ; it is evidently
one of the cognates of modern German speech.

Ulfilas was a Visigoth, a native of Moesia; hence called
Moeso-Goth. Philostorgius claims for him a Cappado-
cian ancestry. Himself a Cappadocian, the historian
perhaps desired for his people the reflected glory of a
writer so eminent in the annals of the Church. There
is, however, nothing improbable in the assertion. The
Goths, among other predatory excursions in Asia Minor,
are quite likely to have invaded Cappadocia, and to have
taken captive some of the natives. Philostorgius asserts
that among these captives were ecclesiastics who con-
verted some of their captors, and that one of these was
an ancestor of Ulfilas.

It is recorded that a Gothic bishop named Theophi-
lus attended the Council of Nicaea, where he signed the
Orthodox creed, nearly half a century before Ulfilas ap-
pears upon the stage. The latter may have been the
descendant of a Cappadocian captive, but was unques-
tionably of Gothic birth. The family name Wolf el, of
which Ulfilas is the latinization, is certainly German.

ELDEST MONUMENTS. 15.

It was not until near the middle of this century that
the learned world had any authentic knowledge of the
history of this remarkable man. The way in which that
knowledge was obtained is very curious, — one of the
instances so common in our time of the unexpected
recovery of long-buried literary treasures. A German
professor, by the name of Waitz, in 1840 found in the
library of Paris a manuscript of the fourth century, con-
taining the strictures of an Arian bishop, Maximinus, on
the Council of Aquileja (381). In this manuscript is
inserted a life of Ulfilas, by the bishop Auxentius of
Dorostorius, who, when a child, had been committed by
his parents to the care of Ulfilas for instruction in the
sacred Scriptures. Before this discovery, all that was
known of him was that he was a Gothic bishop who
translated the Bible into his native tongue. From the
manuscript of Maximinus we learn that he was born in
311, was consecrated bishop in 341, and died during
a visit to Constantinople in 388, greatly honored and
deeply lamented by his people. He translated into his
native Gothic, it is said, the whole Bible, with the excep-
tion of the books of Samuel and of Kings. These he
omitted on account of the frequent fighting recorded in
them. His Goths were already quite too fond of that
sort of thing ; the encouragement of Biblical precedent
might stimulate injuriously their native proclivities.
He is also, but erroneously, said to have invented an
alphabet for his work.

It is an interesting circumstance that this Gothic ver-
sion of the Scriptures was nearly contemporary with the
preparation of that Latin one which, under the name of
the " Yulgate,'-' was for a thousand years the only au-
thorized Bible of Western Christendom, and is still the

16 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Bible ^ar excellence of the Romish Church. Saint Jerome,
at work upon this Latin version in his cell at Bethlehem
in 403 A. D., was surprised by a letter from two Goths,
requesting light on certain discrepancies which they had
noticed between the Latin and the Alexandrian versions
of the Psalms. '' Who would believe," he said, " that the
barbarous tongue of the Goths would be inquiring about
the true sense of the Hebrew original ; and that while the
Greeks were sleeping, or contemptuous, Germany would
be investigating ,the words of the Holy Spirit ? " ^

The work of Ulfilas was held in high estimation for
several centuries by descendants of the Goths in Italy
and Spain. As late as the seventh century the language
in which it is written was still understood if not spoken.
Then it passed out of sight, and all that was known
about it, or its author, was the assertion of Greek eccle-
siastical historians, — that there was once a bishop
of the Goths who had translated the Bible into their
vernacular.

Six hundred years went by before, toward the close
of the sixteenth century, one Arnold Mercator, an offi-
cer in the service of the Hessian Landgrave, William
IV., reported the discovery in the Abbey of Werden
of a German translation of the Gospels written on
parchment. This precious manuscript afterward found
its way to Prague, and when the Swedes took Prague
in the Thirty Years' War, was seized and transferred
to Stockholm. Thence, for reasons and by means un-
known to me, it travelled to Holland. There it was pur-
chased by the Swedish chancellor. Count de la Gardie,

1 Quis crederet ut barbara Getarura lingua Hebraicam quaereret veri-
tatem, et dorraitantibus, immo contemnentibus Graecis, ipsa Germania
Spiritus Sancti eloquia scrutaretur ?

ELDEST MONUMENTS. 17.

and presented to the University of Upsala in 1669,
where it remains to this day. It is inscribed, partly in
silver and partly in gold letters, on a purple ground,
and is bound in solid silver ; hence called codex argen-
teus. It had originally three hundred and thirty leaves,
of which only one hundred and seventy-seven remain.
It gives the Gospels in a different order from that with
which we are familiar, — namely, Matthew, John, Luke,
and Mark. This manuscript, dating from the close of
the fifth century, when the Ostrogoths, had possession
of Italy, is the only original one known to be extant
which contains any portion of Ulfilas's version. There
are five or six others containing small fragments, but
these are copies of a later date. The entire version is
nowhere preserved ; of the Old Testament, only por-
tions of Ezra and Nehemiah.

In a scientific view the value of these fragments, mea-
gre as they are, is immense. The enthusiasm of the
philologer has not overrated their import. Without them
the knowledge of the oldest branch of German speech
would be wanting. The piety of the Visigoth (a name
which stands as a synonym for barbarism) has fur-
nished to the science of language — a science of wholly
modern growth — a more important contribution than all
the scholars of his time. Little did the good bishop,
toiling for his wild flock to tame their savageness and to
give them those milder manners with which Saint Chry-
sostom credits them in a sermon still extant, and which
he applauds as the fruit of Christian teaching, — little
did he dream that a fragment of his work, enshrined in
silver, at the distance of fourteen hundred years, would
gladden the heart of a plodding Gelehrte and stimulate a
new branch of human learning.

2

18 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

This is not the only instance in which religion has
rendered such aid to science. To the sacred books of
the Hindus we are indebted for the preservation of the
earliest form of that widespread family of languages from
which our own, and those of the greater portion of Eu-
rope, are derived. To Christian missionaries we are in-
debted for our best knowledge of China and the written
wisdom of that alien race. And, to cite an example
nearer home, an American apostle in the middle of the
seventeenth century performed a task in character and
purpose the same with that of Ulfilas, but incomparably
more difficult. The Goth translated the Bible from a
language the acquisition of which was facilitated by all
the means and appliances which a civilized dialect with
a literature of its own supplies to the learner, into his
own familiar tongue. John Eliot turned the same scrip-
tures into a foreign, unwritten, undeveloped language, of
which he had known not a word until nearly his fiftieth
year, — a language with words of such portentous length,
that Cotton Mather said they must have been growing
ever since the Tower of Babel ; a language having no
affinity with any dialect of civilized man. The world's
libraries contain no work more brave in its conception,
more wonderful in its execution, than Eliot's Indian
Bible. The seventeenth century witnessed no feat more
arduous than the making of that book.

Curiously enough, it was the first Bible ever printed on
this continent, the printing of English Bibles being then
a monopoly of the British crown. The race who used
the language in which it was written has long since
passed from the earth. The language is extinct ; this
Bible with its accompanying grammar is its only remain-
ing monument. Probably there lives not the man who

ELDEST MONUMENTS. 19

can read it without the aid of a translation. But there
it is, an imperishable witness of holy zeal and indomita-
ble patience. The end for which piety designed it, — the
edification of future generations of Mohicans, — has failed
through the failure, undreamed of by Eliot, of the race
for whom he toiled ; but like the work of the Yisigoth it
subserves another end, which its author did not intend,
and could hardly have foreseen. As an aid to compara-
tive philology, as a guide to the knowledge of the lan-
guages of the aborigines of North America, and through
them, it may be, of other dialects of other savage tribes,
it renders a service to the cause of science for which the
learned in all generations should bless that good man's
name.

This, then, is our present interest in the work of Ulfilas,
this the claim which these hardly-preserved fragments
have on our regard ; they reveal to us, if not the fountain
head, for which we must look beyond the Himalaya, yet
one of the earliest tributaries of German speech.

And now, to show how much of modern German there
is in that old Gothic dialect, here is Ulfilas' rendering of
the best-known portion of the New Testament, the Lord's
Prayer : —

Atta unsar pu in himinam, Veinai namo pein. Quimai pu-
dinassus peins. Vairpai vilja peins, sve in himina jah ana
airpai. Hlaif unserana pana sinteinam gif uns himma daga.
Jah aflet uns patei skulans sijaima svasve jah veis afletam paim
skulam unseraim. Jah ni briggais uns in fraistubnjai, ak lausei
uns af pamma ubilin ; unte peina ist pudangardi jah mats, jah
vulpus, in awans. Amen.

Although the Gothic is the oldest form of German
speech of which any monuments survive, it would be in

20 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

correct to say that modern German is derived originally
from the Gothic ; both are descended from an earlier
tongue, of which no monuments remain. The Scandi-
navian dialects — the High German, the Low German
with its branches, Saxon, Anglo-Saxon, Dutch and Platt-
deutsch (German patois) and the Frisian — are oif spring
of the same stock. The more immediate antecedents of
the German of to-day are Old High-German, Middle
High-German, Low German, and Saxon, a branch of Low
German. Of the Old High-German we have a trans-
lation and exposition of the Lord's Prayer by an un-
known author, near the beginning of the ninth century.
The original is in the Royal Library at Munich. A
comparison of this with the version of Ulfilas will show
how truly the Gothic may claim to be German, and how
little progress was made in the development of the lan-
guage during the space of four hundred years. Here is
the first clause : —

Fater unser der ist in himilom, Kaeuaihit uuerde din namo.

In Low German (one of the sources of modern Ger-
man), or partly in that dialect, is an old heroic poem of
the eighth century, of which a fragment has come down
to us with the title " Hildebrand and Hadubrand." The
story which furnished the material of the poem is as
follows : —

Hildebrand, an Ostrogoth, had fled with Dietrich of
Bern (Theodoric) before the arms of Odoacer from Italy
to the Huns, leaving behind him a wife and an infant
son. After an interval of thirty years, during which
his enemies, with Odoacer at their head, had been slain
in battle, he returns to his native land. Meanwhile his
son Hadubrand had grown to be a powerful warrior.

ELDEST MONUMENTS. 21

And now, with an accompaniment of armed men, he
marches to the border to oppose the entrance of Hilde-
brand with his followers, whom he takes for enemies.
Not knowing him to be his father, he challenges him to
single combat. Hildebrand knows his son, and endea-
vors to dissuade him from the duel. He tells his story,
which Hadubrand discredits, insisting that his father is
dead, — for so it had been reported by seafaring men who
came over the Wendelsee (the Mediterranean). Hilde-
brand takes from his arm the golden bracelet, the most
esteemed ornament of a German warrior, and offers it
to propitiate his son. The younger hero disdains the
gift, which he boasts he will win with his sword. '' Thou
art a Hun ; " he says, " a cunning Hun ; thou wishest to
mislead in order to slay me." " Woe ! " cries Hilde-
brand, " now is the day of my calamity come ; thirty
winters and thirty summers I have roamed an exile, and
now will my beloved child hew me with the sword or
compel me to be his murderer ! Nevertheless, the most
cowardly were he of the men of the eastland [the Ostro-
goths] who would keep thee from the conflict since thy
heart desires it." Then father and son first hurled at
each other their lances of ash, and afterward closed with
each other in hand-to-hand conflict, and smote with grim
strokes each other's white shields, until the edges thereof
were hacked in pieces by the blows of their swords.

Here, provokingly, this ancient fragment — which,
bound in vellum, is still preserved in the library of Cas-
sel — ends. But fortunately, for the satisfaction of our
curiosity, the sequel has come down to us by another
way. After an interval of seven hundred years, during
which this remarkable lay may be supposed to have lived
an oral life in popular song, its substance, toward the

22 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

close of the fifteenth century, was embodied in a new
poem, entitled "- The Father with the Son," by one
Kaspar von der Roen. There we learn that the sexa-
genarian sire was victor in that unnatural combat.
Hadubrand being vanquished, acknowledges Hildebrand
for his father, and leads him home to his mother, who
is greatly surprised to see the old man, supposed to be
dead, led by the hand of her son, and placed at the head
of the table. Then Hadubrand discloses to her that the
stranger is her husband ; and Hildebrand drops, as a
token, his golden ring into the cup of his beloved wife.

It is interesting to know that for what remains of the
elder poem we are indebted to the literary taste of two
monks in the monastery of Fulda. These worthy friars,
who found, no doubt, their monastic life hang heavy on
their hands, for want of something better to do in the
intervals of prayer, engrossed this lay which may have
been familiar to them from their earlier secular experi-
ence : the one by turns dictating, the other writing on
the only material afforded them, — the blank spaces of
a prayer-book, of whose devout breathings the author, it
is likely, would not have approved as a fit accompani-
ment, — these secular and partly heathenish heroics.

The verses of this poem are without rhyme, and with-
out even the alliteration which meets us somewhat later
as a prominent characteristic of mediaeval poetry. They
lack, of course, the exact measure of the Greeks and
Latins, differing in that so widely from modern verse.
Still there is a rhythm, an appreciable rhythm, but no
metre. The rhythmical effect is produced by an arsis,
or lift, which marks the beginning of a verse, and is once
or twice repeated, thus distinguishing poetic diction from
chance-accented, irregular prose.

ELDEST MONUMENTS. 23

There survives in the Low-German dialect a confession
of faith and a form of renunciation of the Devil ordered
by a council of the Church called by Charles Martel in the
eighth century, in which we discern a somewhat nearer
approximation to the German, and also to the English
of our day. To the same period belongs, moreover, a
celebrated poem of which the original is lost, and only
a Latin version dating from the earlier years of the tenth
century survives. It relates the story of Walter of Aqui-
taine, his encounter with Giinther, king of the Burgun-
dians, and his twelve champions in a narrow pass of the
Vosges. They seek to wrest from him the rich treasures
which he brought from the Huns, and his betrothed
Hildegard whom he had rescued from the hands of
Attila. Walter fights these warriors, one after another,
in single combat, and, though he loses his right hand in
the conflict, overcomes them all, secures his treasures
and his bride, reaches his native land, where his nuptials
are celebrated with royal festivity, succeeds his father
on the throne, and reigns in Aquitania thirty years,
a just and beneficent sovereign. If we may trust the
enthusiasm of certain philo-German antiquaries, the
description of those successive duels, each with differ-
ent accompaniments and fresh characterization, exceeds
everything of later interest in that line, and is not sur-
passed by Homer himself. Enthusiasm is not always a
trustworthy critic ; still, one can see that the stuff is
good, and the situation well chosen.

Of other writings in the rude German of those distant
years, I will only mention the great Saxon epic of the
ninth century, — the " Heliand," or " History of Christ,"
which Vilmar pronounces the most perfect and sublime
work that the Christian muse in any age or nation has

24 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

produced ; the only real Christian epos, and, apart from
its Christian contents, one of the most glorious of poetic
creations. I confess a mistrust of the eulogy which
throws Dante and Milton into the shade. No one as
yet, so far as I know, has thought it worth the while to
translate this vaunted masterpiece into modern German,
or into any modern language ; and the specimen given
by the critic whom I have named does not seem to me
to justify his encomium.

Within less than half a century after the composition
of the " Heliand " by an unknown author or authors, —
a work which waited six centuries for a publisher, — one
Otfrid in Alsace, a Dominican friar, handled the same
subject less impressively but more artistically in a poem
which is chiefly remarkable as the earliest German poem
in rhyme, and as furnishing a model for that kind of
verse in later ages.

Of these and other contemporary writings I care not
to speak at length, but pass at once over an interval of
more than three centuries to the period of tlie full
efflorescence of ancient German classic poetry, — the
period of the Nibelungen and the Minnesingers.

THE NIBELUNGENLIED. 25

CHAPTER III.

THE NIBELUNGENLIED.

THE Nibelungenlied, like the Iliad, is an epic in the
strictest sense of the term, — a people's epos as
distinguished from the epopee^ a word implying artistic
creation.

In a loose way we call Virgil's Aeneid an epic ; also
Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and even Milton's Para-
dise Lost. But criticism notes a difference in kind be-
tween these masterpieces of poetic art and the Iliad.
Virgil proposes to himself a narrative poem, of which
Aeneas shall be the hero ; which shall consist of so many
books, and in which such and such characters and inci-
dents shall be embodied. The idea governs and moulds
the stuff ; it is a work of art. Tasso plans a Christian
poem, to glorify Christian manhood, and finds his ma-
terials in the first crusade. Milton finds his material
outside the actual world, and constructs a poem whose
characters are ideas. Obviously the Iliad was gener-
ated in no such way. Here was no forecasting, no cun-
ning invention, no fabrication, but simply an arranging
by some unknown hand of existing materials ; a telling
of stories that were current, in such sequence as to form
a connected whole. The poem throughout is pure narra-
tive ; a presentation of persons and events with no ac-
companying reflections or ulterior design ; the author's
personality nowhere appears, and Homer is only a name

26 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

for the unity of the compositions to which it is assigned,
— a name which throws no light on their origin ; it is the
name of an dolSo^, not a Troci^rrj^;, — of a singer, not a
maker. The Iliad is not a work of art ; was not made,
in the ordinary literary sense of the term, but grew.
Where, when, and how it grew — its true genesis — is a
question involved in impenetrable mystery.

The same obscurity envelops the origin of the Nibe-
lungen. Here we have not even the name of a compilei*
attached to the Sagas, which gathered and rounded by
some unknown hand have taken this name.

Critics are divided on the question, whether it is the
work of one individual or of several. Lachmann main-
tained the latter view. Bartsch and his followers incline
to the former. Hermann Fischer, in his " Forschungen
iiber das Nibelungenlied seit Lachmann," has pro-
pounded the name of Conrad von Kiirenberger as the
probable author. Scheffel, in his " Ekkehard," adopts
this opinion. Kiirenberger was one of the Minnesingers
of the twelfth century, whose extant verses are composed
in the same stanza as that of the Nibelungen. But
whoever may have been the author of the poem, as we
now have it, can he be regarded only as compiler of pre-
existing legends. Lachmann detected, as he thought,
twenty distinct poems in the thirty-nine cantos which
compose the present work ; the remaining nineteen he
supposes were added and intermixed by the compiler, to
give unity and wholeness to the poem. The approximate
date of the composition is from 70 to 80 of the twelfth
century.

Twenty manuscript copies of the original have come to
light, but before the invention of printing it had passed
into oblivion for three hundred years. The fifteenth

THE NIBELUNGENLIED, 27

century knew nothing of it, or next to nothing ; the six-
teenth nothing ; the seventeenth nothing. About the
middle of the eighteenth, a little more than a hundred
years ago, a Swiss-German writer, Bodmer, discovered
a manuscript in the library of the Count of Ems, in the
Orisons, from which he published the latter half with the
title, " Chriemhilde's Revenge." Another Swiss, Miiller
by name, a teacher in Berlin, published somewhat later
the whole poem, with the present title, Nibelungen. But
the time had not arrived for the right appreciation of this
precious relic of the Middle Age. French taste still
prevailed, at least in Berlin, and especially at court.
There is extant an autograph letter of Frederick the
Great, showing how utterly abhorrent from all his views
were such productions. " In my judgment," he says,
" they are not worth a charge of gunpowder. I would n't
have them in my library; I would pitch them out if I
found them there." This letter may be seen preserved in
a glass case in the public library at Zurich, — a curious
proof of the extent to which the Gallomania of that age
had infected the literary taste of Germany. With Fred-
erick it was something more than Gallomania ; it was
positive literary anti-Germanism.

The Nibelungen draws its characters and incidents
from several distinct Sagas, or cycles of Sagas, — the
so-called Frankish, or Siegfried-Saga ; the Burgundian,
in which Giinther and Hagen, Kriemhild and Brunhild,
and the city of Worms figure ; the Ostrogothic, in
which we encounter Dietrich of Bern, who has been
identified with Theodoric of Yerona ; and finally the Hun-
nish Saga, concerning Etzel, who is recognized as Attila,
the redoubtable king of the Huns. The first of these,
the Siegfried-Saga, possesses an interest independent

28 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

of its connection with the Nibelungenlied. Siegfried ^ is
the central figure of German mediaeval fable ; he bears
the same relation to German tradition that Rustam does
to Persian, or the Cid to Spanish. In the latter case, it
is true, the historical element is firmer and larger, but
the mythical element is by no means wanting. Neither
is the historical element, we have reason to believe, alto-
gether wanting in Siegfried, although it is impossible
to disentangle it from its mythical connections. Given
an exceptional character, a person eminent in good or
in evil, — a saint, a hero, or an outlaw, — in an age an-
tecedent to the art of printing, and myths will gather
around him as naturally as iron filings around a magnet.
The fight with the dragon — the critical adventure of
Siegfried's youth — suggests at once a kindred company
of dragon-killers, from Hercules and Rustam to Saint
George, and sets the hero in a canon of international
mythology. It is a curious and yet unexplained coinci-
dence, that in regions so remote from each other, and
with nations so diverse, — Persians, Greeks, Germans,
— the dragon fight should be the chief ordeal, and
dragon-slaying the sufficing test of heroism. It seems
that the dragon was regarded as the symbol of the
Powers of Darkness, and the dragon-slayer as approv-
ing himself by that act the ally and prot^g^ of the
Powers of Light.

Our German hero bears in legendary lore the sobri-
quet "Horned," — "Der Gehornte," or, in Old German,
" der htirnin Siegfried," — not as being furnished by
Nature with the weapons ofiPensive and defensive of a
bull or a bison, but as being invulnerable, having a skin

1 I have preferred to adopt the modem German spelUng of this name,
instead of the older Sigfrid.

THE NIBELUNGENLIED. 29

as of horn. The legends which recount his achieve-
ments and fortunes vary widely, not only in their inci-
dents and images, but in their fundamental conception
of the man. There is the Scandinavian and the German
Siegfried, — two distinct types. The Scandinavian was
formerly thought to be the original, and the German a
Christian reflection and modified form of the Northern
demigod. But later criticism has established the priority
of the German type. The mistake of the old theory
appears to have arisen from the circumstance that the
Nibelungen, or Niflungen (" children of the mist "), with
whom Siegfried allies himself, and who had settled in
Worms on the Rhine, originally came from the North,
and that the seat of the Nibelungenhort, or treasure
of the Nibelungen, which plays so important a part in
the poem, is supposed to be Norway. Transferred to
the North, the German type took on the characteristics
of Northern fable, and Siegfried becomes a mythological
monster, divested of the human attributes which en-
deared him to the milder feeling of the German singers.
Judged by modern standards, the character, even in
their gentler portraiture, is sufficiently savage.

Siegfried, according to the legends, is the son of King
Sigmund and Queen Sigelinde, who dwell at Santen on
the Lower Rhine. As a boy he quits his parents in
search of adventure, and falls in with a smith named
Mimer, with whom he engages himself as an apprentice.
But the wonderful strength which he displays in a blow
on the anvil, that sinks it into the ground, puts Mimer
in terror of his life. So, under pretence of procuring
coal for the stithy, he sends his apprentice to a forest
where dwells a dragon, through whose assistance he
trusts to be released from his troublesome indenture.

30 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

The dragon is Mimer's brother in disguise. But though
they meet, — the youth and the dragon, — the encounter
has not the looked-for result. Siegfried slays the beast,
piles trees upon him, and roasts him; anoints himself
with the fat of the melted scaly hide, and thereby be-
comes invulnerable, except in one spot between the
shoulders, where his hand could not reach, or where,
according to another account, the leaf of a linden tree
lodged during the operation. Another miraculous ad-
vantage he gained from the victory. In a culinary
experiment on the flesh of the monster, tasting of the
blood, he found himself suddenly endowed with a
knowledge of the language of birds. Said one bird to
another : " If Siegfried knew what we know, he would
kill Mimer, who will be sure to avenge the death of his
brother." Our hero took the hint ; he returned to the
stithy with the serpent's head in his hand, which he
proposed to Mimer, in a somewhat obligatory way, to
eat. The smith, to pacify him, offered him a suit of
armor bright as silver and hard as steel, a sword (Gram)
of irresistible force, and promised to procure for him
a steed of wonderful virtue, belonging to a lady of his
acquaintance named Brunhild. Siegfried appeared to
consent; accepted the armor, was shown the way to
Brunhild's castle, and then settled his account with
Mimer by cleaving his skull. Arrived at the castle, he
found no difficulty in bursting the iron gates with a
kick of his foot, and in killing the seven warders with
his sword Gram. These lively proceedings interested
Brunhild in the youthful stranger. To her inquiry,
what had procured her the honor of his visit, he re-
plied by referring to a horse in her stud named Grane,
which he would like to possess. Brunhild made no

THE NIBELUNGENLIED. 31

objection : lie might have the steed if the steed could
be caught. Twelve of her servants accompanied him to
the field where the horse ran wild, and eluded all their
efforts to lay hold of him. But when Siegfried ap-
proached he came of his own accord, and submitted to
the bridle as a horse that knows his master. Siegfried
then took leave of Brunhild, — some will have it as her
betrothed ; but inasmuch as he never claimed her for
his wife, German honor rejects the supposition of the
broken vow.

Another adventure, which it is impossible to bring
into chronological harmony with what has been already
narrated, but which has an important bearing on the
Nibelungenlied, and is incidentally referred to in that
poem, is the acquisition of the fabulous treasure, — the
so-called Nibelungenhort, — which happened on this
wise. Riding alone one day in the land of the Nibe-
lungen, Siegfried came to the foot of a hill where two
princes, Nibelung and Shilbung, were striving for an
equitable division of an immense treasure which had
just been brought out of a cave, — gold and jewels in
such abundance that one hundred wagons coming and
going three times a day, for I know not how many days,
were insufficient to bear it away. Unable to agree in a
satisfactory adjustment of their respective rights, they
refer the matter to Siegfried, and make him a present
of the good sword Balmung, — which formed a part of
the treasure, and which, it seems, was a weapon alto-
gether superior to Mimer's Gram, — if he will under-
take the division of the hoard. Siegfried does his best ;
but who can satisfy two greedy princes ? They quarrel
with his decision, and quarrel with him. They attempt his
life ; but fortunately he has the Balmung, and with that

32 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

he despatches them both, as also the twelve giants their
attendants, and a whole army of followers. Then he
overcomes Albrich the king of the dwarfs, who it seems
has a lien on the treasure, takes from him the Tarn-
kappe, or cloud-cloak, which possesses the property of
rendering the wearer invisible, and appoints him, on his
oath of fidelity, keeper of the treasure, which is taken
back to the cave, and to which, it should be stated, there
cleaves a curse pronounced by some former possessor,
from whom it had been wrested in old mythological
time.

Thus the hero has all that hero can reasonably desire.
With Grane for a horse, with an invulnerable body, a
cloak of invisibility, a sword that will sever a ball of
wool floating on the water, and will cleave a mailed
warrior through his mail so deftly that he shall not know
what has happened to him until he shakes himself and
tumbles in pieces, — with these, and a hundred wagon-
loads of jewels and gold, he may be regarded as fairly
well equipped to encounter the rough chances of an un-
certain world.

The Nibelungenlied, in its present form, consists of
thirty-nine lays, called Aventiuren (" Adventures "), and
contains 2459 stanzas of four verses each. The first
nineteen lays, in which the scene for the most part is
the ancient city of Worms on the Rhine, are occupied
with the wooing of Kriemhild by Siegfried, and of
Brunhild by Giinther, Kriemhild's brother, king of the
Burgundians ; with the marriages consequent on these
wooings, with the strife between the two sisters-in-law,
with the treacherous murder of Siegfried at the instiga-
tion of Brunhild, with his burial, and the bringing of the

THE NIBELUNGENLIED. 33

Nibelung hoard to Worms. The second part narrates
the marriage of the widowed Kriemhild to the widowed
Etzel king of the Huns, her purpose of revenge on the
murderer of Siegfried, the invitation of her relatives to
the court of Etzel, the journey of the Burgundians
thither, the subsequent terrible conflicts between them
and their hosts the Huns, and finally the deaths of the
principal actors in the story.

The poem opens with a brief statement of the subject-
matter, and introduces us at once to the court of the
Burgundian princes at Worms. I quote here and else-
where from Lettsom's translation : —

" In Burgundy there flourished

A maid so fair to see,
That in all the world together

A fairer could not be;
The maiden's name was Kriemhild;

Through her in dismal strife
Full many a prowest warrior

Thereafter lost his life."

After the proem, announcing the theme, the story
begins with a dream of Kriemhild, whose bodeful im-
port prefigures the doom which the future has in store
for her. She dreams of having nursed and trained a
young falcon, which was afterwards torn by two fierce
eagles. She relates the dream to her mother, Uta, who
thus interprets it : —

" The falcon that thou trained'st
Is sure a noble mate ;
God shield him in His mercy,

Or thou must lose him straight! '*

But Kriemhild thinks she is safe from any danger of
that sort, for she never means to marry, —

3

34 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

*' I'll live and die a maiden,
And end as I began ;
Nor (let what else befall me)
Will suffer woe for man," —

a resolution which holds good till the right suitor comes.
The next lay takes us to Netherland, — that is, the coun-
try of the Lower Rhine, — to the court of King Sigmund,
and describes in glowing verse the wondrous beauty and
prowess of young Siegfried, Sigmund's and Sigelinde's
son. Siegfried has heard the widespread report of the
charms of Kriemhild, and determines, if possible, to
make her his wife. Resisting the entreaties of his father
and mother, he proceeds with twelve chosen attendants
to Worms ; makes himself formidable to King Giinther
her brother, who finds it politic to conciliate the stranger,
till Siegfried finally becomes his fast friend, and estab-
lishes himself at court, where the nobles, and even the
fierce and terrible Hagen, are won to love him. Then
the Burgundians are threatened by the allied hosts of
the Saxons and Danes, who mean to dispossess them of
their kingdom. The king in despair is about to suc-
cumb, but Siegfried encourages him, advises resistance,
and engages, with an army of only one thousand men,
to repel the forty thousand of the invaders. The armies
meet, prodigies of valor are performed on both sides ;
but Siegfried of course is victor, and returns in triumph,
bringing five hundred captives, among them the Saxon
and the Danish kings Ludger and Ludgast. A splendid
festival is arranged to celebrate the victory ; and now,
for the first time, Siegfried beholds Kriemhild, who had
already secretly watched him, and, in spite of her vow,
had yielded her heart to the gracious champion. By
the advice of Ortwine, the ladies of the court are invited
to grace the feast.

THE NIBELUNGENLIED. 35

** On from bower advancing

They came, in fair array ;
Much press was there of heroes

Along the crowded way,
Through anxious glad expectance

To see that beauty rare.
The fairest and the noblest

Of the noble and the fair.

" As the moon arising

Out-glitters every star
That through the clouds so purely

Glimmers from afar.
E'en so love-breathing Kriemhild

Dimmed every beauty nigh.
Well might at such a vision

Many a heart beat high.

*' Then inly was Sir Siegfried

Both well and ill r^aid;
Within himself thus thought he,

* How could I so misdeem,
That I should dare to woo thee?

Sure 't was an idle dream.
Yet rather than forsake thee,

Far better were I dead ! '
Thus thinking, thus impassioned,

Waxed he ever white and red.

*' So stood the son of Sigelinde,

In matchless grace arrayed.
As though upon a parchment

In glowing hues portrayed
By some good master's cunning.

All owned, and could no less,
Eye had not seen a pattern

Of such fair manliness."

The comparison in this last stanza is notable as indi-
cating the age of the composition. Siegfried is likened
to a figure in some illuminated manuscript. The art of

36 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

illumination, in which modern painting had its rise, was
fully developed about the beginning of the thirteenth
century. The miniature pictures in those illuminations,
especially in the article of coloring, have often great ar-
tistic merit. At a later period, great painters like Ci-
mabue and Giotto did not disdain to employ themselves
with such work. There are illuminated manuscripts of
a very much earlier date, but they are rare. A writer
before the twelfth century would not be likely to refer
to them. Hence we conclude that whatever the age of
the legends on which the poem is founded, and of parts
of the poem itself, that particular passage is the work
of a writer who lived in the twelfth century, — the same,
perhaps, who gathered the floating fragments, and com-
piled the work.

** There stood he, the high-minded,

Beneath her star-bright eye,
His cheek as fire all glowing.

Then said she modestly :
* Sir Siegfried, you are welcome,

Noble knight and good.'
Yet loftier at that greeting

Rose his lofty mood ;
He bowed with soft emotion,

And thanked the blushing fair.
Love's strong constraint together

Impelled the enamoured pair. "

The fifth lay recounts King Giinther's wooing of
Queen Brunhild already mentioned in the Siegfried
legend. He has heard of the wondrous maiden, — as
renowned for her bodily strength as she is for her riches
and peerless beauty, — and thinks that no other woman
would suit him so well for a wife. Siegfried endeavors to
dissuade him from the rash adventure, in which, accord-

THE NIBELUNGENLIED. 37

ing to the terms imposed by Brunhild on her lovers, he
is to forfeit his life if he does not beat her in hurling
the spear, in throwing the stone, and leaping after it.
Giinther deems it impossible that he should not be a
match for any woman in feats of strength, and resolves
to make the trial. He entreats Siegfried to accompany
Iiim ; and the latter consents, on condition that he shall
have Kriemhild for his wife. He goes as Giinther's ser-
vant, and takes with him the Tarnkappe, or cloud-cloak,
won from the dwarfs, which not only makes the wearer
invisible, but gives him the strength of twelve men. By
this means the king appears to win the victory really due
to his invisible proxy, and Brunhild reluctantly enough
consents to be his wife.

To accept a husband is one thing ; to be a dutiful and
loving wife is another. Brunhild had agreed per force
to be Queen Giinther, but could not bring herself to em-
brace her lord and spouse, or suffer him to embrace her,
with conjugal affection. He must keep his distance.
So the bridal chamber is converted into a new battle-
field, and becomes the scene of a desperate conflict. The
Burgundian had somehow, greatly to her astonishment,
beat her in casting the spear and hurling the stone ; but
was he, after all, the stronger of the two ? That is
a question she will settle at once and forever. The
struggle results in her tying him hand and foot, and
suspending him by a nail in the wall. In this abnormal
position he passed the small hours. In the morning he
was taken down and suffered to leave the room.

Not " as a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber
and rejoicing as a strong man to run a race," but with a
woful look of discomfiture he hurried to Siegfried and
made his complaint.

38 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

** No sooner came I near her, what did she do but tie
My hands and feet together, and hang me up on high!
There like a ball I dangled all night till break of day
Before she would unbind me. How soft the while she lay! "

Siegfried comforted his friend, and engaged the fol-
lowing night to subdue the haughty maiden, so that ever
after she should be his submissive wife.

Accordingly, by means of the cloud-cloak he gained
admission to the royal chamber, extinguished the lights,
and then, in the darkness of the night, there began be-
tween him and the virago — who supposed all the while
that she was fighting with her husband — a conflict which
threatened at first to be fatal to Siegfried, but ended in
giving him a complete victory. She acknowledged her-
self vanquished, and he took from her finger a ring,
which he kept as a trophy of his prowess, and afterward
gave to his wife.

Ten years later a quarrel arose between the two queens
as to the merits of their respective husbands. Proceed-
ing from one thing to another, as such altercations will,
Kriemhild at last discloses the shameful secret of that
nocturnal conflict. Brunhild is informed that it was
Siegfried, and not Giinther, who overcame her virgin
resistance, and is shown the ring abstracted from her
finger on that occasion, in confirmation of the fact.

It is characteristic of the manners of the time, that when
Siegfried heard of his wife's indiscretion he punished
her blabbing with corporal chastisement, which she after-
ward naively confesses, and seems to consider as perfectly
in order : —

" ' My fault,' pursued she sadly,
' Good cause had I to rue ;
I for it have far'd badly, —
He beat me black and blue.

THE NIBELUNGENLIED. 39

Such mischief-making tattle

His patience could not brook,
And for it ample vengeance

On my poor limbs he took.' "

That Brunhild should thenceforth study to revenge
the double insult inflicted by the hands of Siegfried
and the tongue of Kriemhild, was Inevitable. It was a
question not of purpose, but of means. Giinther was
Siegfried's friend, and too deeply his debtor to be easily-
drawn into any plot which aimed at his destruction.
But Brunhild, although she no longer attempted to gov-
ern her husband by strength of arm, was able still, as
the stronger nature, to overrule his weak will ; and at last
she persuaded him, partly by representation of her own
wrongs, and partly by the lure of the vast treasure of
the Nibelungenhort, which in case of Siegfried's death
would come into his possession, to give his aid to a
scheme by which the unsuspecting hero was to be en-
trapped, and either slain in battle or privily made way
with. A spurious message was brought to the court
purporting to be a threat of invasion from his old ene-
mies, Ludger and Ludgast. Siegfried, as had been
foreseen, volunteered to meet and repel the invaders;
and an expedition was organized for that purpose.
Meanwhile the terrible Hagen, the willing instrument
of Brunhild's revenge, contrived to ingratiate himself
with Kriemhild, and under pretext of being his protec-
tor in battle, wormed from her the secret of Siegfried's
weak spot. He was invulnerable except in the one
small place between the shoulders. Kriemhild en-
gages, in order to guide Hagen in his office of protector,
to indicate the spot by a slight mark on Siegfried's gar-
ment. That fatal mark, a small cross, was all that the

40 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

traitor required to accomplish his own and his mistress's
revenge.

On their way to the battlefield, by Hagen's con-
trivance, they meet two men who had received their
instructions and professed to be messengers from Lud-
ger, stating that he had abandoned his hostile intentions,
and desired to be at peace with the Burgundians. So
the party returned to Worms. The pretence of a war
with Ludger had answered its purpose in frightening
Kriemhild, and thus inducing her to disclose the secret
which placed her husband in the power of his enemies.
Gtinther next, at the instigation of Brunhild, proposed
a grand hunting-party in the Odenwald. Kriemhild,
in whose breast a dreadful presentiment of treason had
arisen, vainly endeavored to dissuade Siegfried from ac-
companying it. He goes, and, as usual, plays the fore-
most part. The thirsty huntsmen stoop to drink of a little
stream. Hagen watches his chance, and when Siegfried
in his turn prostrates himself to partake of the refresh-
ment, transfixes him with a boar-spear in the vulnerable
spot of which he had learned the secret.

*' So the lord of Kriemhild

Among the flow 'rets fell,
From the wound fresh gushing

His heart's blood fast did well.
Then thus amid his tortures,

E'en with his failing breath,
The false friends he upbraided

Who had contriv'd his death.
Thus spake the deadly wounded:

' Ay, cowards, false as hell!
To you I still was faithful,

I serv'd you long and well.
But what boots all ? for guerdon

Treason and death I've won ;

THE NIBELUNGENLIED. 41

By your friend, vile traitors,

Foully you have done !
Whoever shall hereafter

From your loins be born,
Shall take from such vile fathers

A heritage of scorn.
On me ye have wreak'd malice

Where gratitude was due :
With shame shall ye be banish'd

By all good knights and true.' "

The king, who had sanctioned, not instigated, the
cruel deed, might repent the treachery perpetrated on
a trusting guest and benefactor; but the dark soul of
Hagen knew neither pity nor remorse. By his advice,
to consummate his vengeance, the hero's body was laid
at dead of night before the door of Kriemhild's dwell-
ing. It was the first thing which she beheld when she
sallied forth in the morning to early Mass.

The lament for Siegfried, the gorgeous exequies, the
one hundred Masses, the three days' and three nights'
watching of the dead, are the theme of the next canto.
In this connection we have an illustration of the antiq-
uity of the popular superstition that the body of a mur-
dered man will bleed at the approach of the murderer.

After a widowhood of thirteen years, during which the
injured queen never ceased to lament her murdered
husband, there came a message from Etzel, king of the
Huns, then mourning the loss of his wife Hecla, solicit-
ing the hand of Kriemhild in marriage. The second
book — or shall we say the second poem — begins with
the recommendation of this alliance to King Etzel by
his courtiers. He doubts if she will accept a heathen
for her husband. This circumstance did seem an objec-
tion when the proposal was made to Kriemhild, but was

42 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

overruled by Riidiger, Margrave of Bechlaren,King Etzel's
envoy on this occasion, on the ground that Etzel, though
not a Christian at that precise moment, had been one
formerly for a little while.

Perhaps if she had seen her suitor before accepting
his offer, another objection might have been felt, if not
confessed. By King Etzel is meant the famous Attila,
the savage warrior of the fifth century, whom the Gothic
historian Jornandes describes as a monster of ugliness ;
of low stature, big misshapen head, and the characteris-
tic features of the Tartar, — broad flat nose and small
deep-sunk eyes. But the offer was accepted in spite of
the strenuous efforts of Hagen to prevent it ; and Kriem-
hild travelled in state, under conduct of Riidiger, through
Bavaria and Austria, to the court of the terrible Hun,
whose sway extended from France to China, and whom
Christendom feared as the scourge of God.

She had lived thirteen years the wife of Attila, twenty-
three had elapsed since Siegfried's death, during all
which time she had nursed her grief and her wrath.
Now when, according to the dates incidentally given in
the poem, she must have been at least fifty years old,
she resolved to execute her long-cherished scheme of
revenge for the murder of her first love. To this end
she persuaded her husband to send messengers to Bur-
gundy with an invitation to her brothers and their court
to visit her and attend a festival in Hungary. Hagen,
mistrusting her motive and foreseeing evil, is strongly
opposed to the expedition, but resolves to accompany the
royal party when taunted by Gieseler with fears for his
personal safety. He, however, persuades Giinther to
take with them a following of a thousand good knights
and nine thousand yeomen by way of protection. When

THE NIBELUNGENLIED. 43

this army reaches the Danube, there are no means of
crossing at the point where they strike the river ; and
Hagen, who went off alone in search of a ferry or ford,
encounters a party of water-nymphs, who predict the
destruction of the entire host.

Undismayed by this prediction, he continues his quest,
finds a ferryman at last, hails him under a feigned name,
and asks to be put across the river. The ferryman, be-
lieving him to be the person named, — a friend of Elsy,
the lord of that district, — comes at his call, but when he
reaches the shore and discovers his mistake, refuses to
serve. A quarrel ensues, in which the boatman is killed ;
and Hagen, equal to every emergency, manages to bring
the unwieldy vessel to the place where Giinther and his
followers are encamped, and to row them across the
river.

No sooner was the river crossed than Hagen, to the
utter surprise and dismay of his companions, broke the
ferry-boat in pieces, and sent the fragments down the
stream. " How shall we cross on our return from Hun-
gary ? " they asked. " We shall not return," was the
stern reply ; " and this is to prevent any cowards among
us from attempting to escape their doom."

At the court of Attila and Kriemhild, the Burgun-
dians are received with the royal pomp befitting such
royal guests. Their quarters are assigned to them ; the
feast is prepared. And now the epic tragedy hastens on U
to the dira-ConsumniaBonforesha^wedTnrtEe opening^
stanzas, and initiated by the quarrel of two women whose
jealousj^^oves^ore fatal to their countrymen than the
wrath of Achilles to the Greeks. Thenceforth the story
is written in blood, — a story in which hatred and despair
transcend the ordinary limits of mortal passion; in which

44 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

insatiate ferocity uncovers all the hells of human nature,
and carnage in its utter ruthlessness becomes sublime. //

The inexorable Kriemhild, who for so many years has
nursed her impotent wrath against the slayer of Sieg-
fried, has her enemy now, as she fancies, in her power.
Her vengeance aims only at the death of Hagen; but
to accomplish that end, when other means fail, she is
willing to sacrifice her three brothers and all her kin-
dred and all her people. Her first attempt was made
when Hagen and his friend Fqlker the minstrel, as
strong and ferocious as himself, were discovered in close
conference with each other apart from their comrades.
She had moved the compassion of her attendants by the
tale of her wrongs, and sixty knights volunteered to take
the life of Hagen on the spot.

By the advice of Kriemhild the number was increased
to four hundred. Such a squadron, well armed and
weaponed, might be supposed to be a match for two,
however gigantic their strength or redoubtable their
prowess. Kriemhild thought so, and putting on her
crown, she went thus accompanied to confront her
enemy, sure of her revenge.

Folker, seeing her approach, suggested to Hagen that
they should rise, since after all she was a queen, and was
entitled to that respect. "No," said Hagen, "they would
think- we were afraid.'* He remained sitting, and across
his knees, the more to spite her, he held the sword he
had stolen from Siegfried, the wondrous Balmung. She
urges her party to fall upon the two ; but they stood,
eying the two strangers as huntsmen look upon some
wild monster of the forest. Four hundred against two,
and not one of the four hundred ventured to lead on the
attack !

THE NIBELUNGENLIED, 45

Foiled in that attempt, Kriemhild next sent a company
of her warriors to the hall where the Bargundians were
lodged, with orders to slay her enemy in his sleep. But
Hagen and Folker were keeping watch at the door of
the hall, and the intruders, on seeing them, immediately
dispersed.

A tournament is held, followed by a grand feast, whose
brief merriment goes out in savage wrath and slaughtei\_
Queen Kriemhild had bribed her husband's liegeman
Bloedel to make another attempt on Hagen' s life ; but
instead of seeking him in the royal assembly where he
was feasting with Giinther and his host, the misguided
emissary took his followers to the quarters where the
yeomen held their carouse, and there found Dankwart,
Hagen' s brother, who, having been secretly apprised of
the plot, was prepared, and when assaulted by Bloedel
killed him with a single stroke of the sword. Thereupon
thecal] was attacked by a body of infuriated Huns ; the
Burgundians, both knights and yeomen, massacred.
Dankwart alone escaping, forces his way through the
mob of the enemy. He reaches the palace, and enter-
ing the banqueting hall reports the catastrophe to his
countrymen. It was just as young Ortlieb, the child of
Attila and Kriemhild, was presented to the assembly as
the heir of the crown. When Hagen heard the tidings,
he exclaimed, with horrible irony, —

" Now, then, let 's drink to friendship;
King's wine shall quench our thirst,
And the young prince of Hungary
Himself shall pledge us first."

So saying, hejiilled the child and threw its head into
the mother's lap. With that ghastly act a fearful tumult
arose. Etzel and his queen, Biidiger and one or two

46 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

others, were permitted to leave the hall ; then, while the
doors were guarded by Folker and Dankwart, the rest of
the Huns were massacred by the Burgundians, and their
bodies thrown into the court below. But a new band,
composed of Danes and Thuringians, pressed forward to
avenge the death of Iring, who had challenged Hagen
and fallen by his hand. Folker advises his people to
give way and suffer them to enter the hall. Once in-
side, and matched with the Rhenish champions, they are
slaughtered to a man. And now the victors, utterly ex-
hausted, longed for rest. The hall was filled with the
dead ; beleaguered by the enemy without, there was no
escape ; they were prisoners amid the carnage them-
selves had made ; if they sat at all, they must sit on the
bodies of their victims.

A parley was held with the king and queen, and de-
liverance promised to all but Hagen, on condition that
he, the chief offender, should be given up. This the
princes declined to do, preferring any fate to what they
regarded as an act of foul treachery to their comrade.

Kriemhild, when her terms were rejected, gave orders
to set the building on fire, and a horrible scene ensued.
The warriors, familiar with the face of death, as envis-
aged in the heat of action, were now to encounter it in
the way of passive endurance, driven into a strait where
sword and helmet were of no avail. The hall, protected
by walls of stone and vaulted roof, was not consumed ;
the warriors did not perish, but suffered such torture
from the heat and the thirst engendered by it that they
were fain to cool their parched throats with the blood
of the slain.

Want of space compels me to omit the scenes which
ensue. Gtinther and Hagen, after a succession of in-

THE NIBELUNGENLIED. 47

credible atrocities and the slaughter of all their country-
men, are delivered bound into the hands of Kriemhild.
Her brother she causes to be beheaded in prison, pre-
sents the severed head to Hagen, and then despatches
him also with the sword Balmung which he had stolen
from Siegfried.

But the queen's triumph was the parting flash that
ended her own tempestuous life. Incensed and horror-
struck that so brave a warrior should have perished by
the hand of a woman, —

*' Hildebrand, the aged,

Fierce on Kriemhild sprung;
To the death he smote her

As his sword he swung.
Sudden and remorseless

He his wrath did wreak.
What could then avail her, —

The woman's thrilling shriek?

" There now the dreary corpses

Stretch 'd all around were seen.
There lay hewn in pieces

The fair and noble queen.
Sir Dietrich and King Etzel —

Their tears began to start ;
For kinsmen and for vassals

Each sorrow'd in his heart.

" The mighty and the noble

Lay there together dead ;
For this had all the people

Dole and drearihead.
The feast of royal Etzel

Was thus shut up in woe.
Pain in the steps of pleasure

Treads ever here below."

48 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

CHAPTER lY.

COMPARISON OF THE NIBELUNGENLIED WITH THE ILIAD.

A COMPARISON of the Nibelungenlied with the
■^-^ Iliad is one which naturally suggests itself to
readers familiar with both poems. The two have some
features in common, and there is much in which they
differ. They resemble each other in their genesis, in
the uncertainty of their authorship, in the evidence of
modifications which each must have undergone before
assuming its present shape. They resemble each other
in their mixture of the fabulous with the historical, or
with historic reminiscence. The hero in each poem is
invulnerable except iii one particular spot. The Tarn-
kappe or cloud-cloak of Siegfried is paralleled by the
cloud with which the deities of Olympus make their
proteges invisible when overmatched by the enemy.
The fabulous is most predominant in the Iliad. Not
anticipating the Horatian maxim, it abounds in deus-
ex-machina devices conveniently interposed where natu-
ral agencies are inadequate to accomplish the desired
end. Such devices are not resorted to in the Nibelungen.
There the agencies, if we except the mythical belongings
of Siegfried and the mermaids encountered by Hagen,
are all natural and human.

The Iliad exhibits a firmer geographical conscious-
ness, a knowledge of localities, which is still more con-
spicuous in the Odyssey. The Nibelungen knows with

THE NIBELUNGENLIED AND THE ILIAD. 49

geographical certainty only the two rivers, the Rhine
and the Danube, and the city of Worms. But the latter
poem exhibits that feeling for nature, for inland nature,
which is foreign to the seafaring Greek. The hunting-
scene in which Siegfried is treacherously slain, breathes
that intense sympathy with woodland aspects and forest
life which marks the Germanic genius, and which char-
acterizes the modern romantic spirit as contrasted with
the ancient classic. ^

In both poems woman is the prime motive ; but in the
Greek it is woman as passive occasion, in the German
it is woman as active force. The two poems resemble
each other in the impersonality of their respective au-
thors. Both are prevailingly objective, realistic ; but the
Greek surpasses the German in minuteness of detail and
elaborate comparison. Every reader of Homer knows
how fond and circumstantial are all his descriptions.
He is not content to say of a warrior struck down in
battle, that he fell like a forest-tree hewn by the wood-
man's axe. He knows no such generalities ; he does not
say tree, but gives the species. The son of Anthemion
falls like a poplar which has sprung up smooth in the
watery region of a great marsh, and whose branches
have grown to the very top, which some fabricator of
chariots cuts down with his glittering iron that he may
bend the curve of the wheel for an elegant chariot, and
which now lies seasoning by the river's side. There is
nothing of this circumstantiality in the Nibelungen ; the
movement of the poem is too impetuous for such details.
Siegfried coloring at the sight of Kriemhild is likened
to a glowing figure in an illuminated manuscript, por-
trayed by the cunning hand of a master. There the
description stops; but when Menelaos in the Iliad is

4

50 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

wounded by the arrow of Pandaros, we read that the
purple blood which flows from the wound is as when
some Mseonian or Carian woman has stained with scar-
let the ivory which is destined to ornament the head-
piece of a horse; and it lies in her bower, desired by
many riders, but reserved for the decoration of the king,
alike the ornament of the horse and the glory of the
rider. Such, "0 Menelaos, appeared thy well-formed
limb stained with blood, and the beautiful ankle beneath."

Sometimes these minutiae, if one may venture to criti-
cise Homer, seem out of place. The poet, speaking in
his own name, may extend his comparisons to any length ;
but the personages he presents, speaking in the heat of
emotion, become unnatural when they indulge in such
particularities. Hector has taxed Paris with pusillanim-
ity, and upbraided him for disgracing his nation. Paris
replies to Hector, " Your heart is as violent as an axe."
So far all right ; but then he continues, an axe " which
pierces the wood wielded by a man who with art hews
timber for a ship." Did people in the Homeric time talk
in that fashion ? Did they in the midst of a hot discus-
sion go off on a side-track of incidental suggestion ? If
so, they differed from people now-a-days. We have a
phrase, " savage as a meat-axe," but those who employ it
do not specify the joints which that implement is used to
cleave and the customers for whom they are destined.

Both poems delight in acts of valor ; the main topic of
both is conflict in arms, but the spirit of the Iliad is
more humane than that of the Nibelungen. If it sings
the fierce encounter and describes the wounds which are
given and taken, it does not, like its German counter-
part, dabble in blood and revel in carnage. There is
very little tenderness and very little of domestic affection

THE NIBELUNGENLIED AND THE ILIAD. 51

exhibited by the characters of the Nibelungen. The
parting scene between Siegfried and Kriemhild, her en-
treaties that he will not join the hunting-party of whose
issue she has such gloomy forebodings, are very touch-
ing ; but how much more so the parting between Hector
and Andromache at the Skaian gate, and the tenderness
of the warrior for their infant child ! In magnanimity,
on the other hand, the agreement of Hagen and Folker
not to fight against Riidiger, their former host, presents
a fit parallel to the similar agreement between Glaucus
and Diomed.

The Nibelungen, on the whole, has greater unity and
continuity ; and therefore, whatever may have been the
history of its composition, whatever fitting and piecing
there may have been, whatever compacting of separate
parts to make out the thirty-nine " Adventures," taken
as it stands it is the more strictly epic of the two. It
begins with Kriemhild and ends with Kriemhild ; begins
with representations of her early life and her family at
Worms, and ends with her and their destruction. Its
crowning felicity is her marriage with Siegfried ; its be-
ginning of woes, the assassination of her husband ; its
tragicj^nclusion, the consequences of that crime. On
the contrary, the rhapsodies of the Iliad, whose number
is made to correspond with that of the letters of the
Greek alphabet, while presenting a series of pictures all
connected, it is true, with the Trojan war, arrive at no
fit conclusion and form no rounded whole.

A further comparison between the Nibelungen and the
Iliad is suggested by the social conditions they respec-
tively represent. We observe in the Greek poem, as I
have said, a predominance of the supernatural. The war
between Achaians and Trojans is a war of the Olympian

52 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

deities as well ; they are constantly interfering in the
strife, ranging themselves in parties for and against the
mortal combatants. Gods and goddesses slip down to
the field as occasion prompts ; and so little does their
godhead avail them, that not only Aphrodite but Ares
himself, the god of war, comes to grief when, descending
to the aid of the Trojans, he ventures within reach of
Diomed's spear. But, on the other hand, Diomed's valor
is the preternatural effect of Athene's aid. In short, we
find in that Homeric world a religion childishly naive,
but thoroughly grounded in popular belief and inwrought
with all the habits of life.

A beautiful piety pervades the Iliad. If Menelaos
taxes Zeus with hardness in not granting his prayer, it
is only a proof of entire faith in the power of Zeus to
do what was asked if so disposed, — as the pious cru-
saders in their extremity at Antioch charged Christ with
ingratitude in letting them starve who were doing so
much for him. This childlike piety is wanting in the
Nibelungen. Religion there appears but incidentally,
as where mention is made of Masses at Worms and at
Etzel's court. There is nothing like the personal devout-
ness of Homer's heroes, as seen for example in Hector's
prayer for his child ; and the Christian faith is so evi-
dently at variance with the manners of the people, that
one sees it to be something foreign, a recent importation,
— or, what is more likely, a device which the Christian
author or redactor saw fit to graft on the ancient Saga.

As to moral qualities, I have already spoken of the
milder character of the Greeks as contrasted with the
ruthless ferocity of the Germans. We may also credit
them with the virtue, or at least with the practice, of
temperance. When Hector declines the cup proffered

THE NIBELUNGENLIED AND THE ILIAD. 53

him by his mother for fear of its demoralizing conse-
queiices,^ we may suppose him to represent the prevail-
ing sentiment of the Hellenic people. On the other
hand, they made little account of female chastity, and
seem not to have been very sensitive on the subject of
conjugal fidelity. The rape of Helen was a predatory
outrage which roused the ire of the princes against its
perpetrator and the house of Priam, but did not degrade
the victim in the estimation of her countrymen. Here
the Germans exhibit a marked superiority, as they do
in true respect for womankind. Siegfried takes no dis-
loyal advantage of his victory in that nocturnal encoun-
ter with Brunhild, — a continence undreamed of by the
Greeks of Homer's time. And so Brunhild's physical
prowess, overmatching all masculine adversaries, typifies
in a rude way the estimation and high position accorded
to her sex by the German races, — a position elsewhere
unknown.

In the quality of valor I think it will not be disputed
that the heroes of the Nibelungen far excel those of the
Iliad. Mr. Mahaffy, in his " Social Life in Greece," has
satisfactorily shown that the vaunted courage of the
Homeric chiefs " was of a second-rate order ; " they ran
away when hardly pressed, and cried like babies when
things went wrong.

It required, as we have seen, the miraculous aid of
Pallas to screw the courage of Diomed to the sticking-
point at which we find it in the fifth rhapsody. And the
Iliad exhibits no picture of valor like that of Hagen and
Folker calmly facing and defying a party of four hun-
dred warriors urged on by Kriemhild to seize and slay
them.

1 Iliad, book vi., v. 263.

54 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

A hateful character is Hagen, a monster of treachery
and cruelty unequalled by Homer's worst. Yet even in
.Hagen, the murderer of Siegfried, we see personified one
virtue characteristic of those old Germans, — the virtue
of loyalty. Utter, unswerving, uncalculating, unconquer-
able loyalty to sovereign and chief, — loyalty in good
and in evil, loyalty that hesitates at no danger, shuns no
sacrifice, and shrinks from no crime, — is the source
and, according to the judgment of his time, the justifi-
cation of all that is most repulsive in that devoted, faith-
ful, execrable man. >'

On the whole, a fair comparison of the two races, as
they appear respectively in their native poems, will ac-
cord to the German the palm in respect of moral worth.
And the virtues in which they excel are precisely those
which are most essential to national stability and social
well-being. So the event has proved. Greece has given
to the world the purest models in poetry and art. She
still lives, and will live forever, in the beautiful forms
which her plastic genius called into being. She lives in
the "tale of Troy divine," in the masterpieces of her
tragic Muse ; and she will live forever in the wisdom of
her schools.

•' Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone."

Each succeeding generation gives us a new translation
of the Iliad and Odyssey. The plays of Sophokles are
reproduced in the theatres of Oxford and Berlin and
Cambridge. Plato still taxes the learning of the scho-
liast, and challenges the acumen of the metaphysician.
But when it is asked what has become of the people who
led and lead the world in philosophy and art, we can
only point to an insignificant territory newly wrested

THE NIBELUNGENLIED AND THE ILIAD. ^^

from the grasp of the once despised Scythian, and des-
tined never, it is likely, to become a ruling power among
the nations.

But those German races ? Greece had already retro-
graded from her place in the van of human progress, she
had delivered up the torch of civilization into stranger
hands, when the ancestors of those Burgundians who
figure in the Nibelungen were fortifying their burghs
against the savages of the Vistula, and when the Saxons
and the Alemanni, the Franks and the rest were chasing
the aurochs and the elk in the Odenwald and the Black
Forest.

When they first appear on the stage of history it is as
pestilent invaders of Italian soil. The sagacity of Caesar
saw in them a cloud of danger to the Roman State, which
he labored to dispel. But what prophet in the time of
Caesar, or even of Constantine, would have ventured to
predict that these barbarians would one day overshadow
with their Kaisermacht the old Roman world ? Or, that
in the fulness of time, through their German, Anglo-
Saxon, Anglo-American descendants, with a foothold in
every continent, they would put a girdle round the earth,
and sway the destinies of human kind ?

56 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

CHAPTER Y.

GUDRUN AND OTHER MEDIEVAL POEMS.

THE second great epic of German mediaeval literature
is Gudrun, a poetic embodiment of certain maritime
legends, gathered chiefly from countries bordering on
the German ocean. As the Nibelungenlied suggested a
comparison with the Iliad, so Gudrun has been likened
to the Odyssey. The analogy is fainter in the case of the
latter poem, and seems to rest mainly in a certain simi-
larity between the fate of its heroine, separated from her
betrothed, and that of Penelope exposed to the importu-
nity of the fiv7j(TT-rjp6<; in the absence of her husband.

The poem consists of three parts. In the first we have
the story of Hagen, son of an Irish king, who has been
carried by a griffin to a distant island, where he meets
with Hilde, an Indian princess, who has been conveyed
to the same island in the same way. The two are re-
leased from their captivity by a vessel which touches at
the island and takes them to Ireland, where they are
married when Hagen, after the death of his father, suc-
ceeds to the throne. The offspring of this marriage is a
daughter named after lier mother, Hilde ; and the sec-
ond part of the poem relates her abduction by -Horaiit,
a celebrated singer sent to Ireland for the purpose by
Hetel, king of Friesland. Horant captivates her by the
magic of his song; she accompanies him to Friesland
and becomes the bride of Hetel. The third part, which

GUDRUN AND OTHER MEDIEVAL POEMS. 57

gives the name to the whole, is the story of the princess
Gudrun, the daughter of Hetel and Hilde. She is sought
in marriage by Hartmut, son of Ludwig a Norman
king, but rejects his suit in favor of Herwig, son of the
king of Zealand. They are betrothed, but before the
marriage can take place Hartmut, aided by his father,
carries her away by force. As they approach the coast
of Normandy, and come within sight of the towered city,
the old king Ludwig says to her : " See ! all this will be
yours if you will marry my son." She replies that death
shall be her spouse before she will break her troth with
Herwig. Whereupon the enraged king seizes her by the
hair and flings her overboard. Hartmut springs after
and with difficulty rescues her. When they reach the
palace, the queen Gerlinde receives her kindly at first,
but on her obstinate refusal to wed Hartmut treats
her with great cruelty. A born princess, she is com-
pelled to do menial service ; she is the drudge of the
house, and is sent to wash linen by the seaside.

One day, after years have passed, she is engaged in
this task when a vessel approaches the shore. It proves
to be one of a fleet commanded by Herwig and her
brother Ortwein, who have organized an expedition to
avenge her and their own wrongs on the Normans, — so
long time had been required to collect a force sufficieiit
to cope with so powerful an adversary ! Gudrun and
Hildburg, her companion in adversity, are hailed from
the ship ; inquiries are made, in the course of which a
recognition takes place between the two lovers. Herwig
might have carried away Gudrun at once ; but, no ! he
says he will not take her by stealth ; she shall be the
prize of his victory over the enemy ! That night his
followers surround the castle, and a fearful conflict

58 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

ensues. King Ludwig falls by the hand of Herwig;
Gerlinde is also slain, having first in her rage endeav-
ored to kill Gudrun, who is saved by Hartmut, and nobly
but vainly intercedes for the queen her oppressor. The
Normans are overcome, Gudrun marries Herwig ; her
brother Ortwein weds Ortrun, the sister of Hartmut;
and Hartmut, who has behaved nobly, at last receives
Hildburg.

I quote from Bayard Taylor's translation the descrip-
tion of Horant's song at the court of Hagen : —

" Now when the night was ending

And day almost begun,
Horant began his singing ;

And all the birds, outdone,
Were silent in the hedges

Because of his sweet song.
And the folk, who still were sleeping,

When they heard him slept not long.
Sweetly to them it sounded,
• . So loud and then so low.

Lord Hagen woke and heard it,

And Hagen's wife also.
Forth came they from the chamber

Unto the balcony ;
As the minstrel wished, it happened.

The Princess, pleased was she.
The daughter of wild Hagen,

And her maidens first and least ;
They silent sat and listened

While the song of the small birds ceased
That fluttered around the castle.

And the heroes also heard
How the Danish minstrel chanted.

Full sweetly the souls of all were stirred;
He was thanked by all the women.

He w^as thanked by all the men.
And from those guests of Denmark,

Out spoke Fruote then:

GUDRUN AND OTHER MEDIEVAL POEMS. 59

' Let my nephew leave his singing,'

The bold Fruote said,
* To whom may he be bringing

This uncouth morning serenade?'
Then answered Hagen's heroes,

* Sir, let us know your mind;
There 's none so sick and suffering

But healing he must find
In the minstrel's voice that soundeth

From his mouth so sweet and true.'
Said the king, ' I would to heaven

That I myself could sing thus too. '
When he had sung three measures,

Sung to the end each song,
It seemed to all who heard him

The time was not too long;
Nor had the listeners deemed it

A hand-breadth long the while.
Though he had kept on singing

While one rode may be a thousand mile."

I shall not undertake to discourse in detail of the
poets and Minnesingers, and the anonymous poems of
this period of German literature, extending from the
eleventh to the fourteenth century. I can only indicate
the most important of them. Heinrich von Veldeke,
author of the " Eneit " (^AeneiJ)^ a work which borrows
its material from Virgil, and in which Aeneas is repre-
sented as a mediaeval knight ; Hartmann von Aue, author
of " Erec und Enite," of " Iwein,'' of " Gregory of the
Rock," and " Der arme Heinrich ; " Wolfram von Eschen-
bach, author of " Parzival " and " Titurel ; " Gottfried
von Strassburg, author of " Tristan und Isolde ; " Rudolf
von Ems, author of " Baarlam und Josaphat ; " Konrad
von Wlirzburg, remarkable for the beauty of his verse
and the affluence of his imagery ; Ktirenberg, to whom
Fischer ascribes the authorship of the Nibelungen ; and

60 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Walther of the Yogelweide, the most eminent of the
Minnesingers, a prot^g^ of the Emperor Frederick II.
To these we may add the " Reinhart Fuchs " (Renard
the Fox) of Heinrich dem Glichesare, the typical ex-
ample of what is called the Thier-epos, or fable of beasts.
It was afterward enlarged by Heinrich von Alkmar in
the fifteenth century, and translated into Low German,
with the title " Reinke de Fos." In this recast it appears
as a satire on the clergy and the secular authorities of
the time, and is reproduced in Goethe's " Reineke Fuchs."
It expresses with great humor a kind of mediaeval pessi-
mism, showing how wicked cunning in this world carries
the day against honor and truth.

One of the works which I have named, the " Parzival,"
by Wolfram von Eschenbach, claims special notice as,
next to the Nibelungen and the Gudrun, the most im-
portant of the German mediasval poems.

The. subject-matter is derived from two principal
sources, — the Celtic traditions of King Arthur and the
Knights of the Round Table (the source from which
Tennyson has drawn his " Idyls of the King "), and the
Spanish Saga of the " Holy Grail."

The order of the Knights of the Round Table, of whom
Lancelot of the Lake is the most celebrated, was said to
be founded by King Arthur at the suggestion of the en-
chanter Merlin. The tradition, which has no ascer-
tained historical basis, has furnished the subjects of
countless romances. From England it passed over to
France, and thence to Germany.

The Holy Grail, or San Graal, was, according to the
saga, the vessel which Jesus used at the Last Supper,
and which received the drops of blood shed on the cross.
It was believed to be endowed with miraculous virtue.

GUDRUN AND OTHER MEDIEVAL POEMS. 61

Angels were said to have had charge of it until it was
delivered to Titurel, a king's son, who built a tower for
its preservation at Salvaterra, in Spain. Titurel estab-
lished an order of priestly knights, who lived secluded
from the world, and whose business it was to guard the
sacred trust. They were supposed to be elect of God.
The tower which contained the Grail was situated in
the midst of an immense forest, and no one without
divine aid could find it. If by divine leading a knight
arrived at the place, he was bound to inquire after the
Grail in order to be elected one of its guardians. If he
was too indifferent or too obtuse to make such inquiries,
he forfeited that high distinction. Such forfeiture, ac-
cordingly, symbolized want of interest in spiritual things.
The Knights of the Holy Grail constituted a spiritual
order, in contrast with the Knights of the Round Table
who represented the glories of secular chivalry.

Tennyson, in his poem of Sir Galahad, figures a knight-
errant in pursuit of the sacred treasure : —

*' Sometimes on lonely mountain meres
I find a magic bark ;
I leap on board, no helmsman steers, —
I float till all is dark.

" A gentle sound, an awful light!

Three angels bear the holy Grail;
With folded feet, in stoles of white,
On sleeping wings they sail.

*' Ah! blessed vision, blood of God!
My spirit beats her mortal bars,
As down dark tides the glory slides,
And, starlike, mingles with the stars.

*' The clouds are broken in the sky,
And thro' the mountain walls
A rolling organ-harmony

Swells up and shakes and falls.

62 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

*' Then move the trees, the copses nod,
Wings flutter, voices hover clear;
' Oh, just and faithful knight of God!
Ride on ! the prize is near. '

" So pass I hostel, hall, and grange,

By bridge and ford, by park and pale,
All armed I ride, whate'er betide,
Until I find the Holy Grail."

Parzival (in English, Percival) is the son of Gamuret,
who was treacherously slain in one of the crusades. He
was brought up by his mother Herzeleide (" heart-sorrow")
in the seclusion of a dense forest, that he might hear
nothing of war and feats of arms. But roaming through
the forest one day, when arrived at mature years, he en-
counters a company of knights splendidly equipped. He
attracts their notice, is questioned by them, and advised
to repair to the court of Arthur. The hereditary pas-
sion for military adventure is aroused in him, and he ex-
presses an intense longing to become a knight. The
mother is alarmed, she endeavors to dissuade him ; but
no entreaties, and no representation of the dangers and
hardships of such a life are of any avail. At last, when
she finds him inexorably determined, she resorts to an
artifice which she hopes will result in discouraging his
zeal and defeating his intent. Under pretence of equip-
ping him for his journey she prepares a costume which,
unknown to him, is the habit worn by the professional
court-fools of the time, and gives him all sorts of false
directions. He sets forth, and after a series of striking
adventures arrives at the court of King Arthur, then
held at Nantes in France. He there distinguishes him-
self by chivalrous exploits, and is received into the order
of Knights of the Round Table. In that character he
sets forth in quest of adventures, succeeds in freeing

GUDRUN AND OTHER MEDIEVAL POEMS. 63

from her captors a lady named Conduiramar, whom he
marries, and finally reaches the castle of the Holy Grail,
where his uncle Amfortas, who has been wounded by a
poisoned lance, lies confined, awaiting his deliverance,
which was to take place whenever a strange knight, un-
prompted, should of his own accord inquire after the
wonders of the castle. But, unfortunately, Parzival had
received from an aged knight, Gurnemanz, who was a
master of etiquette and learned in the customs of courts,
the counsel not to ask questions. Mindful of this ad-
vice, he neglects at the decisive moment to make the
necessary inquiry, which would have put him in posses-
sion of the castle and its treasure, and thus by his stupid-
ity misses the good fortune. Then follows a period of
sore trial and probation. The curse which follows the
slighting of the Holy Grail pursues him. He is expelled
from the circle of the Knights of the Round Table ; for
four years he wanders in despair, rebelling against God,
until at last, on a Good Friday, he falls in with a pious
hermit, who reconciles him with God, explains to him
the wonders of the Holy Grail, and reveals to him that
he is destined to become the king of the castle. Peni-
tent and encouraged, he enters on a new life. In suc-
cessive combats he overcomes the secular knighthood
represented by Gawaine, is received once more into
the brotherhood of the Round Table, returns to the cas-
tle of the Grail, delivers his uncle, and then, having been
purified by suffering, is declared worthy to become king
of the Holy Grail by the prophetess who had formerly
cursed him.

The incidents of this poem are borrowed mainly from
the ProveuQal, but the German poet has imported into
them a mystical and spiritual significance. Parzival's

64 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

life-course symbolizes the history of the soul, which in
its endeavors after happiness strays and errs, for a time
is alienated from God and surrendered to evil, but finally,
through repentance and conquest of self and the world,
attains to the supreme good.

MARTIN LUTHER. 65

CHAPTER YL

MARTIN LUTHER.

THE sixteenth century consummated the schism in
European polity which the fifteenth had initiated ;
it separated the German and the Latin races into two
distinct households of faith. When, at the Council of
Constance in 1414, it was moved and carried that the
delegates should vote not as individuals but by nations,
each nation having but one vote, a new element was in-
troduced into the ecclesiastical polity of Europe, — the
Protestant element of nationality. Until then the Church
in the unity of her consciousness, and in her conscious
unity, had taken no heed of national distinctions. Eu-
rope was ecclesiastically one. There had been in the
view of the Church neither German, French, nor Eng-
lish, but one Catholic body, with Rome for its head.
Now it appeared that the nation had become a reality
and a power in the Christian world.

In the sixteenth century this Protestant element dis-
engaged itself still further from the ecclesiastical whole ;
it asserted its independence of Roman dictation. Eu-
rope was cloven in twain ; Catholic in the Latin races,
and mostly Protestant in those of German kin.

At the head of this movement we encounter two fig-
ures, dissimilar in all their qualities and accidents,
agreeing only in their anti-papal determination : in
England a monarch, the mighty Tudor, standing on his

6

ee HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

indomitable will ; in Germany a college professor, stand-
ing on his immovable faith.

Martin Luther was born on the 10th of November,
1483. It was the eve of a great revolution in human
affairs. Our western hemisphere was yet hidden from
European ken behind the waves of the Atlantic ; but in
this very year Columbus made his first application to
royal power for material aid toward the realizing of his
pregnant dream, which nine years later was destined to
be realized, that so the new dispensation of Christianity
impending with Luther's birth might not want a new
world for its unfolding.

There is a law which adapts the man to his time.
The work to be done is not laid on a chance individual,
but from the foundation of the world the man was found
to stand just there, and to do just that. The opportunity
does not make the man, but finds him. He is the Provi-
dential man. All the past is in him, all the future is to
come from him.

The saying that personality is the lever of history
was never more fully exemplified in any man than in
Luther. A sturdy Saxon nature, Saxon to the core ;
reverent, patient, believing, unsuspicious ; easily led
when conscience seconded the leading, impossible to
drive when conscience opposed. It is noticeable that
great reformers, for the most part, have stepped into the
blazing focus of their time out of comparative obscurity.
No one would have divined in Luther before the age of
thirty — least of all would he have divined in himself —
the leader of a new age, the founder of a new Church.
His boyhood was illustrated by no especial promise, and
his school-days were burdened with the usual amount of
suffering endured by the boys of the period when educa-

MARTIN LUTHER. 67

tion was conceived as a kind of rhabdomancy, — a divin-
ing and eliciting by means of the rod the hidden virtue
in the boyish frame. He cannot forget in after life that
fifteen times in one day the rod in his case was so ap-
plied. Graduated at Erfurt at the age of twenty-one, he
undertakes the study of the law in obedience to the
vrishes of his father, but is irresistibly driven from it into
theology ; becomes a monk of the order of Augustine,
falls into deep despondency through fears for the welfare
of his soul, suffers spiritual agonies in the contemplation
of eternal doom, but finds peace at last in the doctrine of
forgiveness by free grace, — a doctrine not taught by his
church, but learned from the New Testament, then al-
most an unknown book, of which he had found a copy in
the library of the University. We next find him pro-
moted to a chair of Philosophy in the new University of
Wittenberg, sent to Rome on business of his Order,
amazed to find the capital of the Church a sink of ini-
quity, but not presuming to lift up his voice in the way
of reproof ; willing to fulfil all righteousness by mount-
ing on his knees the steps of the Santa Scala, — in the
midst of which performance there flashes on his mind,
as a rebuke of such works, the saying, " The just shall
live by faith." Returning to Wittenberg, he labors in
the quiet discharge of the duties of his office until Tetzel
appears with his Indulgences, selling on commission im-
punity for sin. Then at last his over-strained patience
gives way. He nails on the door of the principal church
of the city his famous ninety-five theses, exposing the
iniquity of that business. And so, on the 31st of Octo-
ber, 1517, Protestantism is born.

Luther had then no thought of seceding from the
Catholic Church and founding one of his own. Had

68 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

there been the right man in the papal chair there would
have been no secession. He meant simply to protest
against the fetichism of his time, and to bring the Church
back to the truth in Christ. But a controversy had been
opened with the Church authorities, not only on this
matter of Indulgences but on other questions of Cath-
olic doctrine and discipline as well, which could not
be healed ; and when at the peremptory demand of the
papal legate Cajetan, and again after negotiations with
Miltitz and offers of tempting emoluments from Rome,
he refused to retract, in 1520 a bull of excommunication
was launched against him. That bull he burned in the
public square amid applause that, like the embattled
farmers' shot at Concord in 1775, was " heard round the
world."

The rupture with Rome was consummated at the Diet
of Worms, to which in 1521 Luther was summoned to
answer for his heresies, and whither, against the urgent
advice of his friends he repaired, feeling that the hour
had come when he must show himself ready, if need
were, to seal his testimony with his blood. His self-
communings and prayers which have come down to us
show how deeply he felt the import of the crisis, how his
heart within him burned as he mused on its issues : —

" Ah, God, Thou my God, stand by me against the reason
and wisdom of all the world ! Thou must do it ; it is not my
cause but Thine. For my own person I have nothing to do here
with these great lords of the world. Gladly would I have
quiet days and be unperplexed. But Thine is the cause, Lord !
it is just and eternal. Stand Thou by me, Thou true, eternal
God ! I confide in no man, — it is to no purpose and in vain.
Hast Thou chosen me for this end, I ask Thee ? But I know
for a surety that Thou hast chosen me."

MARTIN LUTHER. 69

As a theologian Luther was limited, even bigoted ;
more so than most of his associates in the work of re-
form. He contributed little to theological emancipation
and the progress of rational thought. His merit consists
in having grasped, as no one before had done, the great
truth that sins are not expiated and heaven secured by
meritorious works. — still less by money, as the Church
in that day would have men believe, reversing the saying
of Jesus, and making it easy for the rich to enter the
kingdom of heaven. Not works, but faith, — not what a
man performs to order, but what he is, — the ground of
salvation, was Luther's doctrine.

A man of limited vision, but of boundless faith and,
what is equally characteristic, of indomitable courage !
'T is a fearful thing for a man to pit himself against all
the powers that be, backed moreover, in Luther's case,
by occasional misgivings and scruples of his own vacil-
lating thought. For however sure he might feel that the
Indulgences issued by Leo and farmed by Tetzel could
not save souls from the penalties of sin, his right to say
so — he, a poor monk, to set up his word against the in-
fallible head of Christendom and all his angels — was not
so clear. But Luther's better moments set aside these
misgivings as suggestions of the Devil. " How," whis-
pered Satan, " if your doctrine be erroneous ; if all this
confusion has been stirred up without just cause ? How
dare you preach what no one has ventured for so many
centuries ? Are you wiser than popes, bishops, kings,
emperors ? Are not all these together wiser than a
single poor monk ? " It is a proof of the man's courage
that he would not listen to these suggestions, but as-
cribed them to the Devil, and repudiated them accord-
ingly. In spite of these intrusive voices saying, " You

70 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

must not!" a voice behind, more imperative than all,
called to him, "You must!" and a courage beyond all
martial daring responded " I will ! " Here precisely is
where a higher power comes in to reinforce the human.
When valor in a good cause swells to that pitch, it
becomes what the Greeks called Aaifxcav^ — inspiration,
God.

Of the existence of a personal Devil he had no more
doubt than he had of his own. His vivid imagination,
suborning the senses, might sometimes present the fiend
in bodily shape. The splash of ink which used to be
shown to visitors at the Wartburg may or may not have
been Luther's mark ; but nothing is more likely than
that Luther, with his overwrought brain, had a vision
resembling the popular idea of Satan, and hurled his
inkstand at the apparition.

The vulgar expression which characterizes certain
persons as having a great deal of human nature in them
is especially applicable to Luther. There was in him a
largeness of nature, a great-heartedness, which mani-
fested itself in generosity and freedom of action, and
which has endeared him to young Germany in all
succeeding generations. He might have accumulated
wealth, — he had abundant opportunities of so doing, —
but he chose to remain poor. Before the rupture with
Rome, the cardinal legate sent to Augsburg to treat
with him had rich livings and high honors to bestow, if
the reformer would hold his tongue. And after the rup-
ture, German nobles who sympathized with him sent him
presents of costly plate, all which he sold for the bene-
fit of the poor wretches rendered homeless by the break-
ing up of the monastic establishments. " The world,"
he said, " cannot pay me for translating the Bible. . . .

MARTIN LUTHER. 71

I have asked no pay for my books. Not the value of
a penny have I asked from my master the Duke of Sax-
ony. The world is not rich enough to satisfy me. The
world is but the Decalogue reversed, the Ten Command-
ments read backward."

The following letter to his lord and patron illustrates the
independent spirit and indomitable pluck of the man :

From a letter to Duke Frederick, Elector of Saxony.
"Concerning my affairs, most gracious Master, I answer
thus : Your Grace knows — or if not, let this certify you — that
I have received the Gospel not from man but from Heaven,
through our Lord Jesus Christ ; so that I might have boasted
and styled myself, as I will henceforth do, an evangelist. That
I have submitted to be examined by a tribunal is not because I
had any doubts on my own account, but out of excessive hu-
mility. . . . But now that I see how my humility tends to de-
grade the Gospel, and that the Devil is going to usurp the whole
space where I have yielded only a hand-breadth, I am con-
strained by my conscience to do otherwise. I have done enough
for your Grace in yielding thus far in your Grace's service.
Well does the Devil know that I have not done it from fear.
He saw my heart when I entered Worms, how if I had known
that there were as many devils opposed to me as there are tiles
on the roofs of the houses, I would nevertheless have leaped into
the midst of them with joy. Now, Duke George is far from
being equal to a single devil ; and seeing that the Father of un-
fathomable mercy has made us through the Gospel superior to
all devils and death, and given us the riches of trust so that we
dare say to him, ' Father, most beloved of our hearts ! ' your
Grace may judge whether it were not doing the greatest dis-
honor to such a Father, if we trusted not through Him to be
superior to the wrath of Duke George. For myself, I know
well that if matters stood at Leipsic as at Wittenberg I would
nevertheless ride thither, although, — your Grace shall pardon
my foolish speech, — although it should rain nothing but Duke

72 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Georges for nine days running, and each one of them were
nine times more violent than this one. He thinks my Lord
Jesus to be a man of straw. That, my Lord and I can well
endure for a season. ... I would soon choke Duke George
with a word, if that were all.

" I have written this that your Grace may know that I am
going to Wittenberg under much higher protection than that of
any Elector. Nor have I any thought of seeking protection of
your Grace. Yea, I deem that I could sooner protect your
Grace than you me. Moreover, if I knew that your Grace
would protect me, I would not go at all. . . . And since your
Grace desires to know what you are to do in this business, and
since you think that you have done far too little, I answer, with
submission, that you have already done too much, and that you
ought to do nothing at all. For God cannot and will not suffer
either your Grace's or my care and management. He chooses
that this shall be left- to Him, and to no one else. And your
Grace has got to behave yourself accordingly. . . .

" Since, then, I will not follow your Grace's counsel, you
will be excused before God if I should be taken prisoner and
put to death."

Of Luther's freedom of speech we have examples in
the Tischreden ("Table Talk") recorded by his disciples
and friends, who were always about him with their tab-
lets to gather up the fragments that fell from his lips.
Yery annoying it must have been to the master to be thus
dogged and shadowed, to have all his ways observed,
all his sayings set in a note-book. But who, even before
our latter-day dispensation of the newspaper, could ever
escape the reporter ? It is related that on one occasion,
seeing one of these parasites taking notes, he went to
him with a spoonful of the gruel which constituted his
frugal supper, and playfully throwing it in his face said,
" Put that down too."

MARTIN LUTHER. 73

The " Table Talk " presents Luther in undress, con-
versing with his friends in the privacy of his own home
on all sorts of subjects, human and divine. It reveals
the freedom of speech which his unquestioning faith and
long familiarity with sacred things emboldened him to
use : " We tell our God plainly, that if He will have a
church He must look after it, and maintain and defend
it. We can neither uphold nor protect it ; if we could, we
would come to be the proudest asses under heaven."

A beautiful feature of Luther's character is his love of
music. " His songs and hymns," says Mr. Froude, "were
the expression of the inmost heart of the German peo-
ple. Music he called the grandest and sweetest gift of
God to man."

Equally German was his love of Nature. He seems to
have anticipated that love of Nature so characteristic of
our time, and which may be said to be a reminiscence
of the old German life of the forest. Generally in
Luther's day Nature was looked upon as godless and
accursed ; but " we are in the dawn of a new era," he
said ; " we are beginning to think something of the nat-
ural world which was ruined in Adam's Fall. We are
beginning to see in all around us the greatness and glory
of the Creator. We can see the Almighty hand, the
Infinite goodness, in the humblest flower."

Luther's national importance as a writer it is impos-
sible to over-estimate. By his multitudinous productions,
theological, polemic, didactic, political, — by his hymns,
above all by his translation of the Bible, — he conferred
on his country the greatest benefit which a people can re-
ceive,— the gift of a common language. He established
the new High-German as the language of literature for
all succeeding time. All the authorities are agreed in

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this. All, from the most cautious and conservative to
the most radical, even the Catholic, recognize his tran-
scendent merit in this particular.

Jacob Grimm, in the preface to his German grammar,
says : —

" Luther's language, by reason of its noble, almost wonderful
purity, must be regarded as the core and the foundation of the
new High- German language from which to this day there have
been but very slight deviations, and those for the most part only
an injury to its force and expressiveness. The new High-German
in fact may be designated the Protestant dialect, whose liberty-
breathing nature has, unknown to themselves, overpowered the
poets and writers of the Catholic faith. In the irrepressible
course of things our language has suffered in its vocal relations
and its forms ; but for that which has nourished and rejuvenated
its spirit and its body, and has put forth blossoms of a new
poesy, we are indebted to no one more than to Luther."

Rothe says, " The force of his speech, his power over
the minds of the masses, have never been equalled."
Baumgarten says : —

" Not only did Luther speak and write German, but his lan-
guage was a new creation, which sprang from a deep and mighty
love of the German people and German ways."

Ferdinand Christian Baur says : —

" Every one who has German blood in his veins must recog-
nize in Luther a German man in whom, as in no other, the
German nature presents itself in its purest and noblest charac-
teristics. . . . Together with the emancipation of the religious
consciousness of the Germans he also ' loosed their tongue.' "

Gervinus says : —

*' It was in accordance with our modern development that in
Germany we conceded to no metropolis, to no learned society,

MARTIN LUTHER. 75

the honor of fixing our language, but to the man who more than
any other . . . was the favorite of the people, who better than
any other hit the hearty, forceful, healthy tone of the people.
No dictionary of an academy was to be the canon of our tongue,
but that book by which modern humanity is schooled and
formed, and which in Germany, through Luther, has become as
nowhere else a people's book."

David Friedrich Strauss says : —

" We may dispute concerning the idea of a classic writer. I
call him a classic in whose writings the deepest idiosyncrasy of
his people finds its full expression. . . . Here, Luther takes
precedence of all others."

Wackernagel says, " The first name in the history of
new High-German literature is Martin Luther."
Friedrich Schlegel, a Catholic, says : —

" Luther forms an epoch not only in the history of the Ger-
man language through his mastery of the same, but also in the
history of European science and intellectual culture."

That Luther was not what is called a fine writer may
be taken for granted. The charm of his writing is its
naturalness ; it is not Art composing, but Nature speak-
ing. A special interest attaches to writings in which we
encounter a marked personality. This is the secret of
Luther's power. Here is no studied expression, no rhe-
torical cunning, but the honest, straightforward speech of
an earnest soul, — a hearty, robust, naive simplicity which
makes straight its way from the soul to the pen, and es-
tablishes a direct communication between the writer and
the reader.

Of a brave and generous spirit, few marks are more
characteristic than humor ; and of humor the subtlest
and most pervasive mode is irony. There have been, it

76 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

is true, great intellects and great reformers without it.
There was not much humor, as I remember, in Plato,
except as a reflection of Socrates, — nor in Dante, nor in
Leibnitz, nor in Calvin, nor in John Stuart Mill, nor in
Channing. But, on the whole, the men who have wrought
most beneficently in this human world, with tongue or
pen, have had in their mental, or perhaps I should say in
their moral, composition, — for the quality is more moral
than intellectual, — a spice of humor. A conspicuous
example in this kind is Luther. Strange combination,
one would say, of the serious, consecrated soul whose
consuming fire burned far into the heart of the world,
and the gayety which here and there enlivens his page ;
yet not so strange as at first it might seem. The very
friction of care and sorrow in a powerful nature will
elicit coruscations of mirth, — as when Hamlet jests
with Ophelia, and jests over Ophelia's grave. When the
summer cloud hangs heaviest and darkest we look to see
flashes along its edge. Abraham Lincoln, with the weight
of a nation on his mind, would often indulge in quips
and drolleries not over nice ; and one seems to feel that
without an all-buoyant humor the sad-eyed man could
not have ridden the surge of that tempestuous time, but
must have gone under in the horrible perplexity which
often could see no course to steer and no light to guide.
Luther, with the care of a new-born Christendom on his
soul, troubled, perplexed, harassed by papists on one side
and lawless iconoclasts on the other, must sometimes
find vent in laughter, or die.

Contemporary with him was one of the world's great
humorists, Erasmus of Rotterdam, the most learned and
the most facetious man of his age. Near to each other in
time, and nearly related in spiritual emancipation, how

MARTIN LUTHER, 77

vast the chasm which morally divided the two ! With
Erasmus, jocoseness was the kernel and core of his being
and doing; with Luther, it was only a delicate nimbus that
occasionally played around the edges of his grave intent.
With him it was the sportiveness of faith ; with Erasmus
it was the mirth of scepticism, almost of despair. Luther
could sometimes laugh ; Erasmus did little else. Moriat
Enkomion (" The Praise of Folly"), thus he entitles one
of his characteristic works, in which satire makes merry
with the absurdities of the time. Think of writing such
a book, with whatever purpose, in that day of folly, whose
morrow was the great and terrible day of the Lord, when
the elements were about to melt with fervent heat ! The
book was dedicated to Sir Thomas More, also a man of
invincible humor, — humor that sparkled under the exe-
cutioner's axe. But the brave chancellor — of England's
chancellors, almost of England's sons, the bravest and best
— was morally incapable of writing such a book. And
so was Luther. For him the follies of the world were no
joke, but a loathsome, dangerous disease to be purged
away by quite other cautery than that of the sharpest wit.
Though with humor richly endowed, he was not a humor-
ist in the technical sense ; not a humorist by vocation.
It was in him a quality that showed itself mostly in the
pleasantries of epistolary intercourse, in the playful
irony which enlivens his letters to intimate friends, espe-
cially those to his wife, — the loving, simple body, whom
he pleases himself by addressing with grand titles, as
a person of high distinction : " To her Grace, Lady
Catherine Luther, my sweetheart ; " " To the deeply
learned Lady Katharin Lutherin, my gracious house-
wife." From Eisleben he writes to the "" Doctoress and
Self-martyress" : —

78 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

'' Dear Kate, — Thou wilt still be anxious before thy God,
as if He were not almighty, and could not create ten new Dr.
Martins if the old one were to drown in the Saale or the Ofen
Loch. Leave me in peace with your anxiety. I have a better
guardian than you and all the angels. He lies in the crib and
hangs on the Virgin's breast, but sits nevertheless at the right
hand of God. Amen ! I think all the world must be emptied
of its devils, who all on my account have come together here in
Eisleben. Pray, pray, pray ! and help us that we may do well !
The country wine here is good, and the Naumburg beer is very
good, except that I think it makes my chest full of phlegm
with its pitch. The Devil has spoiled us all the beer in the
world with his pitch, and the wine with sulphur. . . . The let-
ters you wrote have arrived, and to-day came the letter you
wrote next Friday, together with that of Master Philip. So
don't be impatient. [Dated Sunday after Dorothy's Day,
1546.]

" Thy dear Lord, M. Luther."

In a previous letter written from Halle he speaks of a
great inundation caused by the rise of the Saale, which
prevented his proceeding immediately to Eisleben. It
suggests to him the sect of the Anabaptists, or, as we call
them, the Baptists, who had given him much trouble :

" Dear Kate, — We arrived to-day at eight o'clock at Halle,
but could not proceed to Eisleben, for there met us a great
Anabaptist with billows of water and cakes of ice, deluging the
country and threatening us with baptism. For the same cause
we could not go back on account of [the overflowing of] the
Moldau, but were forced to lie still at Halle between the waters.
Not that we thirsted to drink of them ; we took instead good
Torgan beer and good Rhine wine, and comforted and refreshed
ourselves while we waited till the Saale should have spent her
wrath. . . . We would not venture into the water and tempt
God. For the Devil is our enemy, and he lives in the water ;
and prevention is better than complaint, and there is no reason

MARTIN LUTHER. 79

why we should give the Pope and his emissaries occasion to re-
joice. ... I think if you had been with us you would have
counselled us to do as we have done. Then for once we should
have followed your advice."

The following is from his exposition of Psalm ci. :

" In the world it appears that no one is so rude and incapable
but thinks that if he were governor he would do great things,
and is dissatisfied with all that is done by those who have the
rule, — like that slave in Terence's comedy who said, ' Ah, I
ought to have been a king ! ' and as Absalom spoke to the peo-
ple of Israel, ' Oh that I were made judge in the land, that
every man which hath any suit or cause might come unto me
and I would do him justice ! ' These are the master wiseacres
who can only criticise others, but when they undertake a thing
themselves they are sure to make a botch of it, — as the saying
is, * They that look on and see the game, they can do it better.'
They think if they could only get the bowl in their hands they
would knock down twelve skittles at once, whereas there are
but nine ; and when they come to try, they find that there is a
way for the ball to run beside the alley. Such people render no
praise or thanks ; they do not consider that success is the gift
of God, and that they ought to pray to Him for it. But they are
presumptuous, and fancy that their own reason and wisdom are
so competent that they cannot fail ; they want to have all the
honor and fame for doing better than others, — just as if our Lord
God sat up there idle, and were not needed when anything good
is to be done ! And sometimes He does sit idle, and lets them
have their way, — lets the children of men in their presump-
tion undertake to build their tower of Babel ; and by and by He
comes in and scatters them and brings their devices to nought,
so that no one can understand what the other says. And serves
them right, because they left God out of their plan, and wanted
themselves to be wise as God, and to have the honor which be-
longs to God alone. . . . Saint Paul says, * He that plants is no-
thing, and he that watereth is nothing ; but God that giveth the
increase.' The children of men do not believe this till they

80 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

learn it by experience. If they only consult together, they
think the desired result must follow. * How can it fail,' they
say; ' it is as certain as that 7 and 3 make 10.' That is true
mathematically ; they are right in their calculations. But prac-
tically, when it comes to action, it is sometimes found that God
can melt down the 7 into 1, or make 1 into 7.

" There sits King or Prince by himself, wise and prudent, and
he has hold of the matter by all its five points ; then comes a
jurist with his book, and finds the law written down so clear and
sure that it cannot fail ; and after that some big bully, whose
head is too small to hold its wisdom, and he finds it in natural
equity so firmly grounded, so deeply rooted, that all the world
may not overthrow it. Then they ring the bell, — the great bell
booms, and comes me a bishop, prelate, theologus, whether self-
made or whoever made him ; he brings God's word and the
Holy Scripture to bear ; and then the Devil himself must give
in, and allow the cause to be right and just and divine. There
they sit, the four pillars of the State, and think they could bear
up heaven itself if God should require it of their wisdom ! Not
one of them looks up and seeks counsel and aid of God ; they
are either so godless that conscience does not prompt them to
pray, or they are so sure of their wisdom and their cause that
they forget in their contempt to do so. They think they need
nothing, being used to counsel, and are hardened in their unbe-
lief. And so our Lord God must sit idle ; it is not for Him to
interfere with the counsels of such wise people ! And He chats
the while perhaps with his angel Gabriel, and says : * What are
those wise folks doing in their council-chamber down there that
they do not take us into their counsels ? Perhaps they are go-
ing to build another tower of Babel. Dear Gabriel, run down,
and take Isaiah with you, and privily read them a lecture
through their window, and say : " Seeing ye shall not see,
hearing ye shall not hear, neither shall ye understand. Con-
clude your deliberation, and nothing shall come of it ; consult
together, and it shall not stand. For counsel is mine, and
sound wisdom ; I have strength, saith the Lord." '

MARTIN LUTHER. g^

THEORISTS AND MEN OF PRACTICAL GENIUS.

" God has two sorts of people in the world ; they are found in
all ranks. There are some who have a special star before God.
He himself teaches and drills them, as He chooses them to be.
The wind for them always sits in the right quarter ; they are the
lucky ones, they win the victory. Whatever they undertake suc-
ceeds, though all the world be against it. For God who puts it
into their hearts and gives them sense and courage. He puts it
into their hands also, and it must be accomplished. Such people
I do not call educated but created princes and masters. They
need no teaching and prescribing what and how they shall do ;
before one can teach them, they have done it. Such was the
doughty warrior Hannibal. No one taught him how to beat the
Romans so cruelly ; he had the master and teacher in himself.
He did it all before any one could tell him how, and did it
sometimes against the counsel and teaching of others. And
here I must give you an example from Cicero. Cicero writes
that when Hannibal applied to Antiochus the Great for aid
against the Romans, and was well received at court, there was
a philosopher there by the name of Phormio, whom Antiochus
desired that Hannibal should hear. So Phormio was sum-
moned, and paraded his wisdom. He discoursed for hours
about wars and captains, — how they should be conducted and
constituted, and what goes to make a good warrior. And all
the people applauded and marvelled at his discourse. And An-
tiochus asked Hannibal how he liked it ; and Hannibal said : ' I
have seen many old fools in my day, but never one equal to
this Phormio.' And Cicero commends the answer. Hannibal
had conquered the Romans and all the world, and Phormio,
who had never in all his life seen an army, was going to teach
him how to make war. The world is full of Phormios, who
know better than any one else how a thing should be done and
can never do it. So when David was to fight Goliath, they
wanted to teach him how ; they put armor on him, and rigged
him out with helmet and sword. Yes, dear ! David could n't

6

82 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

bear the armor ; he had another teacher in himself, and he slew
Goliath before they knew how he was going to do it. For he
was not an apprentice in this art, but a God-created master
of it."

Here we take leave of the greatest man of modern
history ; the man from whom modern history emanated,
in whose word and work are found its most influential
factors, — the spirit of inquiry, independent thought, the
onward impulse, defiance of consecrated wrong. At the
distance of three centuries our age still obeys the law of
that movement whose van he led ; and the latest age
will bear its impress. For here amid the phantasms
which crowd the stage of human existence was a great
reality, a genuine nature, a piece of the solid world, one
whom it is impossible to imagine not to have been.

A recent writer, Professor Schon of Vienna, has made
the discovery that Luther was crazy ; for he said and did
things which surely no sane man, as such minds esteem
sanity, — that is, no observer of conventional propriety, —
would have said or done. Yes ! he was mad, as are all of
his mould and kin. He was mad to burn the Pope's Bull
in the public square, to defy the Devil in high places, to
give to Germany a Bible and a Church, and to open the
way to spiritual freedom. He was mad with that over-
powering, upheaving madness which sweeps away cor-
ruptions, breaks down the old refuge of lies, and purges
and renews the world. Pity such madness is not in-
fectious, is not communicable, is not to be had at will,
and appears at intervals so rare in this sane world's
history !

HANS SACHS AND ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 83

CHAPTER YII.

HANS SACHS AND ULRICH VON HUTTEN.

IT is seldom that one and the same season is equally
fruitful the world over, or even in neighbor-lands.
This is true of intellectual as well as of material fecun-
dity ; as true of literary harvests as it is of cereal crops.
The sixteenth century, elsewhere, and especially in Eng-
land, so wondrously prolific of masterpieces of poetic art.
— the richest epoch in her literary annals, — was Ger-
many's leanest, fallowest time. I speak of poetic crea-
tions merely. It need not be said that the century which
bore and cradled the Protestant Reformation was not an
era of mental stagnation. Then, if ever, the national mind
was wide awake, and the exquisite satire of the famed
" Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum " shows what wit and
sap there were in the scholars of that time. But the
works of that period were mostly theological, controver-
sial ; moreover they were written in Latin, and cannot be
reckoned as constituents of German literature.

The genuine German Muse, so assiduously cultivated
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was almost de-
serted in the sixteenth. Almost, but not quite. I have
spoken of Luther's place and part in the literature of
Germany, of the eminent importance especially of his
version of the Bible in fixing and equalizing the lan-
guage of the people. I have now a word to say of one of
Luther's contemporaries, the one most like him in some

84 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

respects, and notably in the quality which the Germans
call Derbheit, — in hearty, downright plainness of speech.
I speak of Hans Sachs, — like Luther one of the people,
the son of a tailor, born in the city of Niirnberg in 1494.

The city of Nurnberg was then one of the principal com-
mercial cities, not of Germany only, but of Europe. It
was the great entrepot of the trade with the East, which
before the discovery of the passage around the Cape of
Good Hope was carried on by Venetian merchants, and
from Venice found its way through the passes of the
Tyrol to the great centres of distribution for the North,
of which Augsburg and Niirnberg were the chief. Nurn-
berg was also the capital of German art, the home of
A. Dtirer, of Peter Vischer, of Adam Kraft and others,
whose works still glorify her churches and museums and
public squares. At present, the solemn mediaeval city by
a curious destiny has become the world's toy-shop. No
longer an imperial free city, no longer a commercial
power and a centre of aesthetic influence, she is active
still in another kind. Instead of creating altar-pieces,
entombments, Adams and Eves, St. Sebald's monuments
and architectural fountains, she supplies the nurseries of
Europe and America with Noah's arks and Swiss villa-
ges, and wooden armies and miniature fifes and drums.
Scarcely a child of any well-to-do family but receives
once a year a token from Nurnberg through the media-
tion of Saint Nicholas.

In his seventh year Hans Sachs attended the Latin
school in his native town, where " I studied," he tells
us, " Puerilia Grammatica and Musica according to the
custom of the time, all which I have since forgotten."
Himself the son of a tailor, he chose for his own profes-
sion and life-work that of shoemaker, to which he was

HANS SACHS AND ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 85

apprenticed in his fifteenth year, and which, having in his
twentieth year become master of his craft, he practised so
long as he was able to work. He is one of that illus-
trious triad, including Boehme and George Fox, whose
life and works have defied the proverb Ne sutor ultra
crepidam, — " the cobbler must stick to his last." It is
worthy of note that precisely the craft which the proverb
thus restricts has given the most shining examples of the
perfect compatibility of mechanical pursuits with intel-
lectual attainments and literary eminence, — eminence
not merely in works of the understanding (which that
craft might seem especially adapted to promote), but in
the way of deep philosophic insight.

Hans Sachs was not only master-cordwainer, but
master-singer as well. That term is explained by a fact
which should be stated as one of the curiosities of litera-
ture. Poetry, no longer the delight and occupation, as
in the centuries preceding, of knights and nobles, had
devolved upon the middle or burgher class, and was con-
stituted a regular profession, organized like other call-
ings, and, like all the civil pursuits of that day, having
its regular guilds, apprenticeships and masterships, and
rules of the craft. To the Minnesingers of the thirteenth
century had succeeded the Master-singers of the fifteenth
and sixteenth. In Niirnberg alone there is said to have
been two hundred and fifty Master-singers by profession.
That not much poetry, none of the genuine sort, was born
of such an institution; that Pegasus in civil harness,
yoked to a dray, could but amble at best in doggerel
fashion, — may be assumed as a matter of course.
Goethe, referring to the abundance of poets in his day,
says : "In the time of roses they are found on every
wayside briar. But the time of roses is a dispensation

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of Nature, — a grace of Heaven which no civil institution
and no human device can bring about."

The fundamental principle of the institution of the
Master-singers was that the art of poetry, like any other
art, might be acquired by any one who chose to apply
himself thereto. In direct contradiction of the saying,
" Poeta nascitur, non fit," it was held that diligent observ-
ance of certain rules was all that was needed for this
high function ; and accordingly associations were formed,
schools were established , and a grammar of rules called a
Tahulatur prepared for the making and furnishing of
poets. The first of these associations is said to have been
founded at Mainz in tlie fourteenth century by Heinrich
Meissen, one of the later Minnesingers, — called, from his
use of the word Frau ^ in his praise of women, " Frauen-
lob." In grateful acknowledgment of this tribute the
women of Mainz, when he died, bore his body to the
churchyard with loud lament, and poured wine upon his
grave. From Mainz, under a charter granted by Charles
IV., the association extended its branches to other cities,
Strasburg, Frankfort, and in the fifteenth century to
Niirnberg and Augsburg. These afiiliated guilds con-
sisted chiefly of mechanics. The leading members were
masters in the several guilds of their callings, — shoe-
makers, tailors, locksmiths, brass founders, and the like.
After a specified term of apprenticeship in the Sing-
schule, the poetic aspirant was publicly examined in a
solemn assembly of the whole guild. He was required
to give proof of his knowledge of versification and rhyme
and all the rules of the Tahulatur, If he acquitted
himself satisfactorily he was graduated as journeyman,
and after further proficiency promoted to the rank of

1 Instead of Weib, — lady instead of woman.

HANS SACHS AND ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 87

master-singer. Occasionally there were exhibitions of
master-singers competing for prizes in one or another
city of the association. One of these exhibitions, presided
over by the Emperor Maximilian, and given in one of the
churches of Niirnberg, is described by August Hagen :
Near the pulpit was a second pulpit called the Singer-
stuhl^ occupied successively by the different competitors,
and in the choir was a platform where sat the " mark-
ers," whose duty it was to mark the mistakes in measure
or matter of which a singer might be guilty, counting on
their fingers the syllables in each verse to prove the
correctness of the metre. The victor was rewarded with
a silver chain bearing a medal on which was an image
of King David, who was accounted the master-singer of
the world.

Had Hans Sachs produced nothing else in the way
of poetry than the verses which he made professionally
as member of the honorable guild of Master-singers,
his name it is likely would not have survived. Four
thousand and odd poems he is said to have manufac-
tured in that capacity, made according to rule and
measure, no doubt entirely correct, and very worthless.
Not one of them has come down to us, for the very suffi-
cient reason that he had the good sense to suppress
them all. " If, nevertheless," says Koberstein, " he is to
be regarded as the best German poet of his time, that
distinction is due to those poems only which he com-
posed, so to speak, out of school, in the simple artless
form of short-rhymed couplets, and in the tone of the
Volkspoesie. Only these productions, whose number he
himself estimates at two hundred, he arranged for print
and published in five folio volumes. Even of these a por-
tion are as unpoetical as possible, because he sometimes

88 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

ventured on subjects which absolutely resist poetical
treatment. But many of them, especially of the stories,
farces, fables, carnival masques, and parables, leave
scarce anything to be desired, unless it be a finer lan-
guage and greater regularity of form."

In what may be called the technics of poetry, — in
the art of versification, in metrical flow, in melody and
rhythm, — Hans Sachs, it must be confessed, does not
shine. His material is cast into a rough sort of mea-
sure which reads like that of Hudibras, with less of
monotony perhaps, but with even greater disregard of
metrical cadence, — a measure in which accent tri-
umphs over quantity, and whose movement resembles
that of a spring-wagon over a corduroy road. But the
spirit of poetry was in the man, so far as the spirit of
poetry consists in the seeing eye, the feeling heart, and
the rightly divining and interpreting sense applied to
the aspects of every-day life. In these respects he jus-
tifies what Goethe says of him in a well-known poem
written in imitation of the old master-singer, and en-
titled " Hans Sachsen's Poetische Sendung, —

** Er hatt ein Auge treu und klug,
Und Hebe voiles Herz genug,
Zu schauen Manches klar und rein,
Und wieder alles zu machen fein.'*

Among the extant writings of Hans Sachs are dra-
matic poems founded on Biblical history, and suggested
perhaps by the Miracle Plays of an elder age. One of
these is entitled " The Unlike [that is, the good and bad]
Children of Eve, and what God said to them." Its
charm consists in its guileless simplicity and unconscious
disregard of chronological and other proprieties. The

HANS SACHS AND ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 89

subject is handled with a childlike faith, which excuses
and redeems what would otherwise be travesty and blas-
phemy. The good children — the term being used in
the widest sense — are Abel, Seth, Jared, Enoch, Methu-
selah, and Lamech ; the bad children are Cain, Dathan,
Achar, Nabal, Esau, and Nimrod. The poet has no
scruple in representing all these worthies and un worthies
as being boys of the same age. The Lord has signified
to Eve that he will come down on a certain Sunday and
catechise the boys. The good mother sets about her pre-
paration for this event by making her boys neat and trim,
as befits the occasion. But Cain, prefiguring his future
wickedness, refuses to be washed, to have his hair
combed, or to put on his Sunday clothes ; and when the
Lord enters, contrary to previous instruction, Cain gives
him the left hand instead of the right. The catechising
begins ; the good boys are asked if they can say their
prayers, whereupon each embodies in a really beautiful
and touching paraphrase one of the petitions of the
Lord's Prayer. Then the Lord proceeds to question :

" Abel, what do you understand by the word Amen f "
" Seth, how do we know that prayer is heard ? "
" Jared, if God does not give at once what we pray for, what
must believers do ? "

And so on with Enoch, Methuselah, and Lamech, all an-
swering promptly and correctly as set down in the cate-
chism in use in Hans Sachs's time. Then come the
Commandments : —

" Abel, what is the first commandment ? "
" Thou shalt have no other gods before me."
" What is forbidden and what is required in this command-
ment ? "

90 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

So each answers in turn the questions put to him, and
all receive encouraging words from the Lord. The
Creed is next in order ; and here belief in Christ and the
several points of Christian doctrine is confessed by these
patriarchs with a promptitude which would be creditable
to any Sunday-school of to-day. Then comes the turn of
the bad boys, whose answers of course are incorrect and
often ludicrously awry ; whereat the Lord is much dis-
pleased, declares them to be a bad lot, whose earthly
portion will be a hard one, — for whereas the boys who
have said their catechism well are to come to honor, and
be kings and princes, scholars, preachers, and bishops,
Cain and his associates are destined to be plowmen,
cottagers, shepherds, hangmen, day-laborers, beadles,
policemen, carriers, teamsters, shoemakers, and militia-
men, or military volunteers, — LandsTcnechte.

The last term requires explanation. The Emperor
Maximilian in the fifteenth century had raised some
regiments for his army by voluntary enlistment. In
times of peace these fighting men were thrown upon the
country without employment, and took to begging from
door to door. The money obtained in this way they
often spent in gambling and carousing. In many ways
they were a public nuisance, and much disliked by staid
and sober citizens. They were called Landshiechte,
(land-servants) ; whence the French lansquenet. They
seem to have been especially hateful to Hans Sachs, who
satirizes them in the following poem, which I find in
Biisching's collection. It represents nine landsknechte
who went begging about the country, and one day strolled
up to the gate of heaven, where they knocked and begged
admittance. Saint Peter as usual was keeping watch at
the gate. When he saw the landsknechte he ran to the

HANS SACHS AND ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 91

Lord and said, " Lord, there's a parcel of poor fellows at
the gate who want to come in." The Lord said, " Let
them wait awhile." When the landsknechte were not
admitted tliey began to curse and swear, and made use
of certain strange oaths, among which was the word
Sacrament, Saint Peter, who did not know much about
swearing, thought they were talking of spiritual things,
and pleaded with the Lord for their admittance. " I
have never seen," he said, " a more pious set." The
Lord replied, " Oh, Peter, you don't know them. I see
they are landsknechte; if they were here they would
make heaven too narrow for us with their mischievous
pranks." But Peter persisted, and at last the Lord
said, " Well, let them in ; you will have them on your
hands, and then you may see how you can get rid of
them." So Peter ran and opened the gates and let in
his pious landsknechte. No sooner were they in heaven
than immediately they set about begging of everybody;
and when they had collected a little money they squatted
down on the first grass-plot and began to gamble. It
was not long before they quarrelled over their dice, and
rushed at each other in furious combat. Saint Peter,
hearing the noise, came with great indignation, and took
them to task. " What ! will you squabble and fight in
heaven ? " This interference was fiercely resented. The
landsknechte left off beating each other and fell upon
Peter, whom they left half dead with their blows. When
he had recovered his breath he came to the Lord with
a piteous complaint. The Lord said, "It serves you
right. Did I not advise you to keep them out ? They
are a shameful crew." Peter replied, " Oh, Lord, it was
a great mistake ; it shall be a warning to me never to
admit another landsknecht. But now help me to get

92 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

them out." The Lord said, " Go tell one of the angels
to take a drum and beat an alarm outside of the gates."
No sooner was this done than the landsknechte, think-
ing it was the reveille, rushed out ; whereupon Saint
Peter immediately closed the gates and barred them.
And since then no landsknecht has ever been admitted
to heaven, because Saint Peter has a grudge against
them.

The other satire presents the landsknechte in connec-
tion with the opposite, Satanic interest. Lucifer in
council with his devils informs them that he has heard
of a class of people who have lately arisen in Germany,
called landsknechte. The report of them had excited his
interest. They were said to be averse to fasting, not par-
ticular about prayer, but given to carousing and much
swearing. He would like to make their acquaintance.
" Beelzebub, suppose you run up to Germany, capture a
dozen of these fellows and bring them down to us." This
Beelzebub undertakes to do. He enters a tavern which
this gentry frequent, and hides himself behind the stove
in that snug corner which in German houses is popularly
called the hell. There he listens to the talk and watches
the doings of the landsknechte. It makes his hair
stand on end ; and the worst of it is that he cannot get
hold of them, because every time that one drank he re-
peated the customary Gesegnet sei^s, — " May it be blessed
to you ! " So they were all unfortunately blest, and the
Devil had no power over them. Now, it happened that
one of them had stolen a fowl, which unknown to Beel-
zebub was hanging in the very corner he had chosen for
his hiding-place. Presently one of them calls to the
waiter, " Go fetch that fellow behind the stove ! we '11
pluck him and roast him," meaning the fowl. Beelzebub,

HANS SACHS AND ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 93

thinking that the order concerned himself, rushed from
the little hell straight down to the great one, and made
such a report of his adventure that Lucifer at once re-
solves to have nothing to do with the landsknechte ;
they would turn hell upside down, and make it such a
place that no decent devil would be content to live there.

The best known of Hans Sachs's poems is the one en-
titled " Saint Peter and the Goose," — a parable de-
signed to rebuke grumblers who fancy that the world
might be better governed than it is, and would be so if
they had the ruling of it.

When Jesus Christ was on earth he was walking with
Peter in the country one day, when Peter said to him :
" Oh, Lord God and Master mine, I wonder greatly at
your forbearance, since you are God Almighty, that you
let things go on as they do in the world. As the prophet
Habakkuk says, ' crime and violence are instead of
right ; the ungodly triumph over the good and just.'
False doctrines circulate and cross each other like the
fish in the sea ; there is wickedness everywhere among
high and low ; and you look on and do nothing, as if
these things nowise concerned you, and you did not care
how the world goes on. You might put an end to all
this evil, if you would only take hold in good earnest and
exercise your sovereign power. Oh, if I were only Lord
God for a year and had your omnipotence, I would gov-
ern after a very different fashion ; I would soon stop war
and fighting, and cheating and plunder, and establish a
quiet life on the earth." The Lord said to Peter : " So
you think you could exercise a wiser and juster rule than
I ; that you would know better how to protect the good
and punish the wicked ? Well, you shall make the trial.
This day you shall be Lord God in my place. Do and

94 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

ordain what you will ; be hard and severe, or gentle and
mild ; send curses or blessings, order fine weather or
wind and rain ; you may punish or reward, afflict or com-
fort. In short, I resign my whole government for to-day
into your hands." And therewith the Lord gave Peter
liis staff. Whereat the disciple was greatly rejoiced,
thought to do wonders in the way of reform, and was
meditating where to begin, when there came along a poor
woman, emaciated, pale, in tattered garments, driving
her one goat to pasture. When she came to the cross-
ing of two roads she said to the goat, " Go now, in God's
name ! May He protect thee that thou comest to no
harm, for I cannot stay to watch thee. I must go to my
day's work, or my children will have no bread." So the
woman went back to the village, and left the goat to
shift for itself. Then the Lord said to Peter, " Here
now is your opportunity. You heard the poor woman's
prayer, how she besought the Lord to watch over her
goat ; you are supreme Lord for to-day, it behooves you
to answer that prayer." So Peter followed the goat,
resolved that no harm should befall it, and that tlie
woman should receive her own again safe and sound
at nightfall. The goat was lively ; it ran hither and
thither, up hill and down, into bogs and thickets, and
Peter after it, puffing and panting, faithful to his
charge. The day was hot and Peter was old, unused to
such efforts. He suffered severely. He brought the
goat back safely at night, but so hard a day he had
never known. A day's fishing was sport in comparison.
When the Lord saw him he laughed, and said, " Peter,
would you like to retain the command a little longer ? "
And Peter answered, " Dear Lord, take back Thy staff
and Thy power, I have no desire to administer Thy

HANS SACHS AND ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 95

government longer. Pardon my folly ! I see that all my
wisdom scarcely suffices to keep a goat in order."

In all Hans Sachs's productions there is a serious pur-
pose and a moral for popular use, which lies sufficiently
near the surface ; but the form of narrative in which he
is most successful is the comic, and the favorites among
his poems — his own favorites, evidently, as well as
his readers' — are the class of pieces which he entitles
" Scliwanke ; " jests or drolleries, like this of the " Little
Tailor " : —

A tailor was in the habit of throwing large scraps of
cloth to the mouse, or throwing them into the hell, —
the Germans use both phrases for what we call " cabba-
ging." One night he dreams that the Devil shows him a
monstrous flag, composed of all the scraps he has cab-
baged in the course of his professional life. His con-
science takes the alarm, and he solemnly vows in the
presence of his journeymen to throw no more scraps to
the mouse. For a time he desists from the practice, and
honestly restores all the remnants to his customers.
But at length, when the impression of his dream had
grown faint, he receives a piece of splendid gold brocade
from which a coat is to be cut, and he cannot resist the
temptation to cabbage a considerable fragment. His
journeymen remind him of his vow ; but he pleads in ex-
cuse that in the flag which the Devil showed him in his
dream there was no brocade. Finally the little tailor
dies ; and although he is strictly considered no fit subject
for heaven, he pleads so piteously that Saint Peter in the
kindness of his heart smuggles him in and assigns him
a corner where he would be out of the way behind the
stove. Sitting there and looking down on the earth one
day, he espies a poor woman stealing a piece of cloth. So

96 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

he creeps from behind the stove, catches up the Lord
God's footstool, flings it at the woman, fractures her
spine, and makes her a cripple for life. It soon transpires
what has become of the footstool, and the Lord says to
the little tailor : " You miserable scamp ! if I had flung
my footstool at you every time you threw a piece of cloth
to the mouse, when you were tailoring down there, there
would n't have been a tile left in the roof of your house,
and you would have hobbled on crutches with a broken
back all the days of your life."

That Hans Sachs embraced the cause of the Reformers
in the great schism of the sixteenth century will be readily
inferred from the genuine Deutseheit, the "Germanity,"
of the man. He welcomed the new gospel at once in a
poem entitled " The Wittenberg Nightingale ; " and one
of the finest of his serious pieces is a threnody on Martin
Luther,' in which theology personified is represented as
uttering her wail over the dead body of the great Doctor.

As a proof of his diligence and fecundity, it is related
that in the three hot months of his sixty-ninth year, in
July, August, and September of 1563, he wrote thirty-
four comic pieces, besides several spiritual poems and
Meistergesange. How many pairs of shoes he made
during the same period is not recorded. He stopped
writing, overtaken with mental decrepitude, at the age
of eighty, two years before his death, having composed
in the fifty-five years of his intellectual activity two
hundred and eight tragedies and comedies, seventeen
hundred stories and fables, and forty-two hundred Meis-
tergesange, — in all, six thousand and forty-eight pieces ;
all regularly numbered, and signed Hans Sachs.

Other writers of distinction who flourished in this
period, including a part of the fifteenth together with the

J^^iV^^^ SACHS AND ULRICH VON HUTTEN. 97

sixteenth century, are Sebastian Brandt, famous for his
satirical poem of the " Narrenschiff ; " Thomas Murner,
an opponent of the Reformation, which he satirized in a
poem called " The Great Lutheran Fool exorcised by Dr.
Murner ; " and Johann Fischart, author of the " Lucky
Ship from Zurich."

More memorable far than these, historically one of
the foremost figures of the time, and one of Germany's
noblest sons, was Ulrich von Hutten, brave champion
of truth and freedom, fellow-laborer with Luther, al-
though in a different field in the work of the Refor-
mation. Hutten was born on the 21st of April, 1488,
of a noble Franconian family, in their ancestral castle,
Steckelberg on the Main. At the age of twelve he
was sent to the monastery of Fulda, and being the
fourth of several sons was destined by his father for
the service of the Church, as a member of the brother-
hood of that ancient Stift. But Ulrich's genius indi-
cated a different calling ; and a nobleman of influence,
Eitelwolf von Stein, who had noted the extraordinary
talent of the youth, encouraged his refusal to take the
monastic vows, and aided his escape to Cologne and
thence to the newly established university at Frankfort,
where he enjoyed the powerful patronage of Albrecht of
Brandenburg, afterward Cardinal and Archbishop of
Mainz. I shall not undertake to follow his subsequent
fortunes as writer and soldier through hardships and
dangers in Italy and Germany during the first decade of
the sixteenth century. In 1515 he started, in connection
with his friend Crotus Rubianus, the celebrated "Epistolse
Obscurorum Yirorum," aimed at the Finsterlinge^ or ob-
scurantists, of Cologne. Johann Reuchlin, in whose
interest and defence the satire was first undertaken, was

7

98 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

said to have been one of the contributors, but recent in-
vestigation has shown that neither he nor Erasmus had
any part in the work. But Hutten was the principal
writer of those pungent attacks which aided so power-
fully the cause of the Reformation by exposing the ig-
norance, the stupidity, and vices of the clergy. The
excellence of his latinity in this and other publications
won for him the admiration of the scholars of the day,
and notably of Erasmus and Melancthon. Successful in
verse as in prose, he was crowned with a laurel wreath at
Augsburg in 1517 by the Emperor Maximilian, as poeta
imperialis. In the same year, in his paternal castle of
Steckelberg, he edited the treatise of Laurentius Valla,
exposing the forgery of the pretended donation of Con-
stantino to the bishops of Rome. This he had the auda-
city to dedicate to Pope Leo X., with an introduction in
which he lashed the vices of the popes generally, and
promised, if the work should prove acceptable to his Ho-
liness, to follow it up with other similar presents. He
continued to write satires on Rome and the Church,
which induced the Pope at last to demand of Albrecht
of Mainz the arrest of Hutten, who was to be sent pris-
oner to Rome for trial and punishment. But Hutten,
who meanwhile had openly espoused the cause of Luther,
threw himself on the protection of the imperial Knight,
Franz von Sickingen, with whose aid he instituted a
league of the Knights of the Empire against their spirit-
ual oppressors. He declined an invitation from Francis
I. of France to serve under the French Crown, preferring
to abide the issue of the evangelical cause in Germany.
In 1522 Franz von Sickingen, having made war on the
Archbishop of Treves, was obliged to succumb to the
united forces of the Spiritual Prince and those of the

HANS SACHS AND ULRICH VON HUTTEN, 99

Elector of the Palatinate and of Philip of Hessia. Hut-
ten thus lost his protector and fled to Basel, where he
was cordially welcomed by the most distinguished of the
laity, except his former friend Erasmus, whom he him-
self had advised to take refuge in that city, and who
now shunned him as a dangerous acquaintance. This,
and the hostile attitude of the bishop of the diocese, in-
duced him to quit Basel for Zurich. He was then en-
feebled by disease, and needed rest ; but Erasmus was
base enough to write to the Senate of Zurich to expel
him from their city. By the aid of Zwingli he finally
found shelter with a clergyman skilled in medical science
on the island Ufnau, in the lake of Constance, where
he died the victim of grief and disease on the 1st of
September, 1523, in the thirty-sixth year of his age.
" Thither repair, young tourist," says Herder in his
beautiful memoir ; " seek out his resting-place and say,
' Here lies the defender of the German people, of liberty
and truth, one who would fain have been something
more than their champion in words. A border-island
has furnished him an unknown grave.' " His monu-
ment bearing the inscription —

" Hie eques auratus jacet oratorque disertus,
Huttenus vates, carmine et ense potens,"

is no longer extant.

100 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

CHAPTER YIII.

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.

'^T^HE seventeenth century, amid all the wars and
J- revolutions which thicken the annals of its outer
life, is marked, if we look within, by the opposite ele-
ment of quietism ; by an introversive turn of mind which
gave to that stormy age the deepest mystics of modern
time, — in England, George Fox and his followers, espe-
cially Barclay ; in France, Madame Guyon and Fenelon,
and Fere Malebranche ; in Spain, Molinos ; in Holland,
Spinoza ; and in Germany, prominent among others, the
great theosopher Jacob Boehme, to whom Schelling,
deepest thinker of the Kantian line, is indebted for many
a pregnant hint, and Johann Scheffler, better known as
Angelus Silesius. It is not my purpose to enlarge on
these names. I mention them, — and others might be
mentioned, — only to show what wealth of interior spir-
itual life was born of an age of which otherwise the
history of German literature makes little account. Cer-
tainly it was not a barren age which produced such men
as Kepler, Boehme, and Leibnitz. But of literature in
the narrower sense, of artistic literature, Germany in all
that century exhibits nothing of supreme mark, — not a
writer in verse or prose of world-wide fame, very few of
whom even a German of average culture would be likely
to know more than the name, or so much as that. And
yet that period abounds in second and third-class poets

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 101

in whose compositions, scattered ijero- a ad .there, ar.e
many brave hits, bright thoughts, delicate turns, original
conceits, which modern poets might crib with ^ffec,t,i{?:a(!i
their readers be none the wiser as to the rights of author-
ship. It is one of the mishaps of literature that the good
things of the minor poets drop out of sight and mind, —
poets famous in their day, on the strength perhaps of
these few felicities, but whose fame, having no deepness
of earth, matured too soon and perished as quickly.
The many poor things they wrote, and which deserved
to be forgotten, dragged their few good things down
with them into oblivion. Germany was not the only
country in which the seventeenth century produced its
crop of small and now forgotten poets. The difference
between it and other countries consists not so much in
the multitude of small poets as in the absence of any
great one. England had during that period her Milton,
her Cowley, and her Waller. Dryden, Marvel, and
Suckling are all familiar names. Perhaps we have
read Denham, but few know anything of Rochester,
Roscommon, Pomfret, Dorset, Philips, Halifax.

The best German poets of the seventeenth century
seem to have been the writers of sacred lyrics. Their
numl)er is amazing. Franz Horn mentions a collection
in three hundred volumes, containing 33,712 hymns.
Many of these hymns have won for themselves a per-
manent place in German hymn-books, and some of them
have found their way into English collections. Sir Henry
Wotton, if I remember rightly, is indebted to a German
original for his

" How happy is he born or taught."
The well known hymns —

102 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

*' O sacred head now wounded,"
" Give to the winds thy fears,"

are both translations from Paul Gerhard. So is

*' Evening and morning, sunset and dawning,
Wealth, peace, and gladness, comfort in sadness."

From Herzog we have —

" In mercy. Lord, remember me;
Be with me through this night."

From Rosenroth:

" Dayspring of eternity.
Dawn on us this morning tide ! "

From Rodigast:

" Whate'er my God ordains is right."

From Scheffler :

*' Thee would I love, my strength, my tower."

This last named hymnist demands, among German
poets of the seventeenth century, particular notice.
Johann Scheffler, commonly called Angelus Silesius, was
born in 1624 at Breslau in Silesia, where he died in 1677.
A physician by profession, and bearing the high title of
" imperial court physician," he was yet best known to
his contemporaries, as he is to posterity, as theologian
and poet. He studied a year at Strasburg, then went to
Leyden in Holland, where he spent several years. While
there he was admitted to the fellowship of " Students of
Secret Wisdom," as they were called, and became ac-
quainted with the writings of Jacob Boehme, which had
been carried thither for publication by Scheffler's towns-
man and subsequent patron, Abraham Frank, the pub-
lication of them in Germany having been forbidden by
clerical authority. They confirmed in Sclieffler a tend-

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 103

ency to mysticism, for which he seems to have had, from
early youth, a strong predisposition. On his return to
his native city, his peculiar opinions, together with his
neglect of the formal observances of the Church, brought
him into conflict with the Lutheran clergy, who perse-
cuted him as a heretic and an unbeliever. A Lutheran
by birth, he was driven by the harsh treatment of his
fellow confessors to join the Catholic Church, in whose
less dogmatic sanctuary he found ample toleration, and
of which he thenceforth became a zealous champion and
even priest.

This is all that need be told of his external history.
His literary life was equally divided between contro-
versial theology and the composition of poems, partly
devotional and partly mystical. From the latter I se-
lect the following verses as exhibiting the extravagant
boldness of his thought rather than the excellence of
his poetic gift. They are from Hunt's " Essay on
Pantheism " : —

*' God in my nature is involved, as I in the Divine;
1 help to make His being up as much as He does mine.
As much as I to God, owes God to me, —
His blissfulness and self-sufficiency.
I am as rich as God, — no grain of dust
That is not mine too; share with me He must.
I am as great as God and He as small as I;
He cannot me surpass, or I beneath Him lie.
God cannot without me a moment's space endure;
Were I to be destroyed, then God would be no more."

*' While aught thou art, or know'st or lov'st or hast,
So long, believe me, will thy burden last.
Rise above time and space, and thou canst be
At any moment in eternity.
Eternity and time, time and eternity.
Are in themselves alike, — the difference is in thee.

104 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

'Tis thou thyself mak'st time, the clock-work is thy sense;
If thou but drop'st the spring, then time will vanish hence.
Think not the world will fade: the world will not decay,
The darkness of the world alone will pass away.'*

" I see in God both God and man;
He, man and God in me.
I quench His thirst, and He, in tuin.
Helps my necessity.''

Three other poets of this period, distinguished among
the crowd of hymn-writers, I would like to present, but
can only name, — Paul Flemming, born in 1609, died in
1640 ; Andreas Gryphius, born in 1631, died in 1664 ;
and Joachim Neander, born in 1620, died in 1680.

I pass by these to speak of Opitz, who preceded them
in time, and who, with less of poetic feeling, marks an
epoch in German literature as the first to establish
metrical rules.

Martin Opitz von Boberfeld (this title of nobility he
received from the Emperor Ferdinand II.) was called by
his contemporaries and by writers of the next genera-
tion the German Orpheus, the Father and Restorer of
German poetry, the Pindar, the Homer, the Virgil, of
his time. The German Muse was called after him the
" Opizinne." If we seek to legitimate these praises by
a nearer acquaintance with the man, we find a scholar
of wide culture, a courtier of commanding graces, but
by no means a poet in any high sense of the term ; a
man whose life was spent in going about from place to
place, winning patrons and honors by adroit adulation,
forming personal connections with the great of his day
at home and abroad ; the friend of scholars, among
others of Hugo Grotius, whose " Evidences of the True
Religion," written in Dutch, he translated into German;

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 105

the favored of nobles and kings, to whom he addressed
poetic gratulations of unctuous smoothness ; laurel-
crowned, though a Protestant, by the Catholic emperor,
his chief patron ; and writing, besides the gratula-
tions just mentioned, various poems which his con-
temporaries esteemed the last efforts of poetic art, but
which recent critics pronounce exceedingly flat. Gervi-
nus, the best historian of German poetry, ascribes his
high repute to a fawning servility, which stooped to the
smallest among the living, while it scrupled not to
asperse the greatest among the dead. Vilmar portrays
him as one of those men of mediocre talent, who are
skilled in appropriating and bringing to market the
intellectual element of their day ; who possess them-
selves of the current catchword and use it effectively ;
who are not so far above the great mass that the aver-
age mind cannot find itself in them, and who, by
fawning on the great and sailing with every wind,
know how to secure the good-will of all, — one of that
weak, good-natured, conceited kind, whom a strong age
despises and a weak one exalts.

Thus the poetic idol of the seventeenth century is
made the butt of the nineteenth. I am not quite sure
that modern criticism is not as excessive in its deprecia-
tion as that of the elders was in its panegyric. After
all, there must have been real merit in one who in any
age could win such fame. The merit of Opitz was two-
fold. In the first place, he did good service by vindi-
cating against all its contemners the claims of the
German language, and commending its use to scholars
and writers who, until then, had thought Latin the only
fit medium of literary communication, and had used only
that. His other and chief merit, which even Yilmar

106 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

concedes to him. is a radical reform of German metrical
art. His predecessors had written verses measured by
the number of syllables, with no regard to rise and fall,

— what the Latins call arsis and thesis, and the Ger-
mans Hehung and Senhung, — which often, as in Hans
Sachs, had a very unrhythmical effect. Opitz, in 1624,
published a work entitled " Die deutscbe Poeterei,"
which, as Vilmar says, dates the beginning of a new
era of poetry. " It marks, as few books in the world
have done, the initiation of a new linguistic sense,

— Sprachbewusstseins. It was the word which all
were seeking, which all were endeavoring to utter, but
which none had succeeded in doing. Opitz hit it, and
the world repeated it after him, and repeats it to this
day. ... It divided forever the poetry of the old time
from that of the new." Surely, this is sufficient — this
improvement in the form, in spite of all defects in the
matter — to immortalize any name. The doctrine laid
down by Opitz, and straightway accepted, was that Ger-
man verses, like those of the ancients, must have due
respect to quantity in their metrical movement; there
must be a regular alternation of rise and fall, long syl-
lables and short, corresponding with the natural accent
of the words, — regular iambuses and trochees. On the
other hand, he rejected dactyls, to which the German
language so readily adapts itself, — witness Schiller's
" Windet zum Kranze die goldenen Aehren," — and
with them, of course, the anapest and the amphibrach.
Moreover, he sinned, they say, in transplanting from
the French the cumbrous Alexandrine ; and worse still,
he sinned, as Yilmar thinks, in repudiating the old Ger-
man combinations, where the adjective follows the noun,

— das Milndlein roth, and die Hdndlein weiss (" the

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 107

little mouth red;" "the little hands white"). That
would not do ; it must be " the little red mouth," and
" the little white hands." And " the little red mouth "
and "the little white hands" it has been in German
poetry, with few exceptions, ever since, — to the satisfac-
tion of the purists, and much to the disgust of all lovers
of the mediaeval Muse.

There is little else that need detain us in that seven-
teenth century when, amid the thunder and smoke
of many a battle-field, out of darkness and chaos, a
new intellectual Germany was struggling into life.
Passing on to the eighteenth century, we are met on
its threshold by the ever-honored name of one who,
though chiefly known as naturalist, physiologist, and
therapeutist, holds also a distinguished place in German
literature as one of the foremost poets of his day.

Albrecht von Haller, born 1708, a native of Bern,
Swiss by birth, but German by speech and pen, was
one of those intellectual prodigies which suggest an
exceptional brain, a power of cerebration which only
by an occasional freak of nature falls to the lot of man.
At the age of ten he is said to have compiled a
Chaldee grammar, a Greek and Hebrew dictionary, and
two thousand biographical compends, drawn from such
sources as were then at his command. Latin he had
already mastered, having begun it at the age of six. In
maturer years, besides his great scientific works on
which his fame chiefly rests, — his " Elements of Physi-
ology," his six volumes of "Prelections," and his ten
quarto volumes, or what he called libraries (bibliothe-
cae) of botany, anatomy, chirurgy, and practical medi-
cine,— besides these, he contributed twelve thousand

108 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

articles to the " Gottinger Gelehrte Anzeigen," a peri-
odical of which for many years he was editor. These
tasks he performed while holding various offices, — aca-
demic, civil, and political, — first at Gottingen, then at
Bern, involving more or less labor, responsibility, and
care, and while carrying on a correspondence in five
different languages with all the savans and learned
societies of Europe, of nearly all of which he was a
member. His literary works, as distinguished from his
scientific, — his " Letters to his Daughter on the Truths
of Christianity," which were translated into English ;
his " Letters on Free-thinking," against the French phi-
losophers ; his novels, of which he wrote three ; and
last of all, his poems, — the best German poems, as I
have said, of his age, — these were the asides, the recre-
ations of his leisure hours. Where the leisure came in,
seeing he was also a practising physician, it is difficult
to say.

Of immense importance was Haller to the newly-
established University of Gottingen, to which he was
called by George 11. , from whom the university took
its name of Georgia Augusta. It owed to him its bo-
tanical garden, its anatomical theatre, its obstetrical
school, and, above all, its early fame. During seventeen
years, — the best of his active life, — he devoted himself
to the service of that university, declining an invitation
which he received in 1747 to a chair in the University
of Oxford. In 1753, at the age of forty-five, he resigned
his post, and retired to his native city of Bern, where
the Republic secured his residence by a pension, which
relieved him of all pecuniary trouble, and where the
remainder of his days was spent in ceaseless literary
and scientific labors.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 109

Of von Haller's poems, the most successful are his
lyrical pieces, which in point of diction and mechanical
finish, if not of poetic feeling, are greatly superior to
most of the poetry of his day. The most striking of
these is the threnody on the death of his first wife, of
which there is a spirited Italian version. The passionate
grief of the widower would seem to have exhausted itself
in this effusion. At any rate, he soon married a second
wife, whose death he bewailed in more moderate strains.
The third is supposed to have survived him. He died
at the age of sixty-nine, in 1777.

Here was a man who knew how to live, — whose com-
plete record illustrates the vast capabilities and infinite
value of life. A sickly child, at no time enjoying full
health, he filled — he crammed to the uttermost — with
learning and doing his span of years. And what is
still rarer, he knew when to die, — which he did not a
day too soon, nor a day too late. Not a day too soon,
for his work was finished and complete ; not a day too
late, for he died at his best. And the manner of his
death befitted such, a life. Philosophically curious to
the last, conversing with his physician, with his finger
on his own wrist, watching, as though it were anoth-
er's, the ebbing pulse, he suddenly exclaimed, " It has
stopped ! " — and he died.

Contemporary with Haller was Hagedorn, whose
graceful lyrics are still admired by the curious, but
who wrote too little to leave a decided impress on his
time.

Contemporary with Haller was also his fellow-towns-
man John Jacob Bodmer, founder of what is called the
Swiss School. Like Haller, Bodmer was a man of un-
tiring industry. His principal work, "The Noachid,''

110 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

is a poem in twelve books, in which are gathered around
the central figure of Noah divers narratives and pic-
tures of patriarchal time. Besides this and many other
original works in poetry and prose, he translated Homer,
translated the "Argonautae of Apollonius," Milton's
" Paradise Lost," Butler's " Hudibras," Pope's " Dun-
ciad," and edited from old manuscripts portions of the
Nibelungenlied, " Baarlam und Josaphat," and a collec-
tion of the Minnesingers, representing one hundred and
forty poets, with accompanying glossaries. It is true
he had plenty of time in which to do all this, for he
lived to the age of eighty-five, dying in 1783.

His great work, " The Noachid," has had little suc-
cess. The critics complained that what with " The
Noachid " and Gessner's " Pictures of the Deluge," Ger-
man literature was water-logged during that period, —
since known as the " period of the deluge," or the " water
epoch." A fatality attends the success and non-success
of books, whereby this of Bodmer has not received, as
it seems to me, the credit it deserves. But time is
judge, if not of merit, yet of fortune. The verdict of a
century is not to be set aside. The oblivion which soon
overtook " The Noachid " has deepened with the lapse
of years. The poetic Noah, unlike his prototype, went
down with his flood.

The best known writer of the Swiss School is Salomon
Gessner, born in 1730. His Idyls had a large circula-
tion in their day ; they were translated into several Eu-
ropean languages, and especially admired in France,
for the same reason, perhaps, which made the fortune
of Saint-Pierre's " Paul and Virginia," — their contrast
with the highly-spiced sensational fiction which then
prevailed. It was milk diet to a stomach whose diges-

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. HI

tion had been impaired by ragouts and piquant salads.
Milk tempered with water best expresses the character
of those innocent idyls. Gessner was a painter, and his
descriptions of natural scenery reflect the author's skill
with the brush ; but the personages are bloodless, and
their talk insipid. Lord Byron relates that his German
master gave him Gessner's " Death of Abel " to begin
the study of the language with ; and he wickedly adds,
that the impression made on him was that Cain de-
served the thanks of mankind for ridding the world
of such a sheepish and utterly feeble character.

Leaving Switzerland and the Swiss School, we en-
counter the life-long opponent of that school, John
Christopher Gottsched, born in 1700, in Juditenkirch,
near Konigsberg. Having studied in the University of
Konigsberg, he betook himself, in his twenty-fifth year,
to Leipsic, where he was eventually made professor, and
where he founded, in opposition to the Swiss School
at Zurich, represented by Bodmer and Breitinger, the
Leipsic School of Letters, styled *' Die Leipziger deutsche
Gesellschaft." Devoid of all poetic talent, with no cre-
ative power, — limited, bigoted, vapid, — he yet, by dint
of self-confident assumption, with the aid of his wife
(Ludovica Adelgunde Victoria, the better head of the
two), reigned for twenty years the literary dictator of
Germany. He prescribed to his countrymen, as mod-
els for imitation, the French writers of the age of
Louis XIV., and laid down the law of literary compo-
sition in several successive journals, in which he waged
war against the Swiss School, and also against the new
direction taken by Klopstock and his followers. He
outlived his wife, and, with her, his authority. De-
throned by younger and more commanding talent, left

112 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

higli-and-dry by the progress of literary taste, he died
neglected and forgotten at the age of sixty-six.

The measure of Gottsched's critical ability may be
inferred from his attempt to write down Milton, whose
" Paradise Lost " had just appeared in a German trans-
lation by Bodmer. Gottsched sagely prophesied that
the fame of the British poet would be short-lived, and
gave his reasons for so thinking, which amount to this,
— that Gottsched did not like Milton. And the reason
that Gottsched did not like Milton was, that the trans-
lation of " Paradise Lost " was the product of the Swiss
School. He also sneered at Shakspeare, who had the bad
taste to bring witches on the stage.

Carlyle tells us that in " Pinkerton's Geography," un-
der the head of Germany, Gottsched is named as the
sole representative of German literature, — " he," it is
said, " having first introduced a purer style." The date
of " Pinkerton's Geography " was 1811, six years after
the death of Schiller.

One merit must be conceded to Gottsched, and is
recognized by native writers; namely, this, — that he
purged the language of foreign idioms, and in this sense
introduced a purer style. It is also recorded in his
praise that he improved the stage by ruling out the tra~
ditional Hanswurst, and that he made a collection of
all the old plays preparatory to a history of German
dramatic art.

From contemporary notices one is tempted to believe
that Gottsched owed something of his authority to his
bodily stature, which was very imposing. This is said
to have been his reason for quitting Konigsberg. As a
Prussian subject, having reached his full growth and
finished his academic studies, he found himself imper-

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 113

illed by Frederic William's passion for tall men. So he
fled to Leipsic to avoid being kidnapped and enrolled in
the royal body-guard. Goethe records a visit which he
paid him, when a student at Leipsic, in company with
Schlosser : —

"We seat in our names. The servant led us into a spa-
cious room, saying that his master would immediately appear.
Whether we misunderstood a motion which he made I cannot
say ; enough, we supposed that he motioned us into an adjoin-
ing room. We entered upon a strange scene ; at the same mo-
ment Gottsched, the great, broad, gigantic man, clad in a green
damask dressing-gown, with red sarcenet lining, came in at the
opposite door, but his enormous head was bald, and without
any covering. That defect, however, was to be remedied ; the
servant rushed in by a side-door with a great full-bottomed wig
on his hand, the curls reaching down to his elbow, and with a
frightened look handed the head-dress to his master. Gottsched,
without expressing the least vexation, with his left hand lifted
the wig from the arm of his servant and tossed it dexterously
on his head, while with his right paw he gave the poor fellow a
box on the ear, which sent him tumbling and spinning, as one
sees it in a comedy, out of the door ; whereupon the venerable
patriarch urged us to sit down, and with good grace carried on
a long conversation."

The literary sovereignty assumed by Gottsched, and
maintained for years by dint of vigorous self-assertion,
fell naturally, by right of superior gifts, to Gellert, his
successor, to whom it was freely conceded by his fellow-
citizens.

Christian Fiirchtegott Gellert, from the middle until
near the close of the eighteenth century, was decidedly
Germany's most popular writer, and long after Goethe
and Schiller had appeared on the stage, still commanded
the votes of a large portion of his countrymen. I well

8

114 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

remember, as a youth in Germany, hearing him pre-
ferred to either of those poets. This preference was
partly due to the popularity of that species of composi-
tion in which he excelled, — rhymed fables, which enter-
tain without taxing the common mind, — and partly to
the wholesome moral tone which breathes through all
his writings. The veneration felt for the good man's
character reinforced his literary fame. He is styled by
his biographer, Cramer, the Epicharmos of Germany.
The comparison is a bold one, considering the high posi-
tion accorded to Epicharmos of Megara, the Pythagorean
and comedian, by Greek authorities. Cramer grounds
it on the words which occur in the epitaph on Epichar-
mos,— " His teachings were profitable for the young."

Gellert was born in Haynichen, in Saxony, in 1715,
the son of Christian Gellert, a clergyman of the town,
remarkable for his piety and his numerous offspring.
A poor provincial parson, with a small salary, and thir-
teen children to provide for, could do little beyond his
own teaching for the education of any one of them.
Nevertheless, with the aid of State funds and other
beneficiary provisions, Fiirchtegott, the most promising,
was prepared for college at Meissen, and studied the-
ology and philosophy at Leipsic, where, having failed
as a preacher through unconquerable shyness and de-
fective elocution, he obtained, in 1745, the venia docendi^
and in 1751 the position of professor extraordinarius of
moral philosophy, with a salary of one hundred dollars.
This, on his subsequent promotion to the post of pro-
fessor ordinarius, was increased to a sum sufficient for
the moderate wants of a man without a family.

The ancient University of Leipsic has had in all her
annals no professor more honored and beloved, and

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 115

none more deserving, — none who exercised a more
searching and salutary influence on his pupils. His
piety free from cant, his benevolence unwearied in well-
doing, his unaffected humility, his kind and gracious
manner compelled the reverence and won the enthusiastic
homage of the youth of the University. The largest
auditorium in the city was scarcely sufficient to accom-
modate the students who thronged to his lectures.
Goethe, who was one of his hearers in 1765, speaks with
tenderness and respect of the saintly man, and passes
lightly over certain weaknesses which a scrutinizing
criticism might detect in his character and manner.

But Gellert's influence extended far beyond the limits
of the University. He was, as I have said, the most
popular writer of his time ; and in spite of great phy-
sical infirmity and unremitting disease, he wrote in-
cessantly and in various kinds, — lyrics, plays, novels,
articles in the magazines of the day, lectures, poetic
epistles, but, above all, fables. He had chosen for his
thesis, on taking honors in the University, " The Fable
in Poetry, and the Principal Fabulists," thus indicating
the early bent of his mind in that direction. His Fables
passed through one edition after another in rapid suc-
cession, and pervaded the European world. They were
translated into many languages, — Russian, Danish,
Dutch, Italian, and by six different hands into French.
Their popularity at home, among even — nay, especially
among — the unlettered classes, appears from an anec-
dote related by Cramer. A Saxon peasant, in the be-
ginning of a hard winter, grateful for the pleasure he
had derived from Gellert's Fables, came to Leipsic one
day with a load of wood, halted at the Professor's door,
and asked, " Is this the Herr who makes such beautiful

116 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

fables ? " And then, with many apologies for the lib-
erty he was taking, requested the acceptance of a load
of wood as a token of his gratitude. More significant
still is the fact that General Hiilsen, in the Seven Years'
War, spared Gellert's native town Haynichen with the
billeting of soldiers, out of respect for the poet.

His popularity at home is easily accounted for. It is
due in part to the long poetic drought which he some-
what relieved with his watering-pot. But why those
Fables should have found such acceptance abroad it is
not easy to explain. They have none of the sprightli-
ness of Lafontaine, or the pith of Gay ; the style is je-
june, the invention mostly weak. It must have been
the moral they enforced that won for them such wide
acceptance. Here is a specimen, which he seems to
have considered one of his best : —

" A wise painter in Athens, who painted less for money than
for fame, once exhibited to a connoisseur a picture of Mars, and
asked his judgment upon it. The connoisseur told him frankly
that he was not altogether pleased with the picture ; it was too
labored, — there should be less appearance of art in it. The
painter demurred ; the connoisseur argued the matter on criti-
cal grounds, but could not convince him. Just then a young
coxcomb entered, looked at the picture, and exclaimed, at first
sight, ' Ye gods ! what a masterpiece ! Oh, what a foot ! how
skilfully the nails are rendered ! It is the living Mars himself !
How the helmet shines ! and the shield, and the armor ! ' The
painter was ashamed; he cast a piteous glance at the con-
noisseur. *Now,' said he, *I am convinced; you have not
overstated.' As soon as the coxcomb was gone, he rubbed out
the god of war.

^' Moral: If your writing does not satisfy a connoisseur,
that in itself is a bad sign ; but when fools praise it, then it
is time to suppress it."

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, ' 117

The reigning king of Prussia, Frederick the Great,
whose tastes had been formed on French models, enter-
tained a sovereign contempt for the German language
and literature ; but so much was said to him about Gel-
lert, that he wished to see the man whom everybody
praised, and accordingly sent for him, and asked him to
repeat one of his fables, addressing him throughout the
interview in the third person singular, — a mode of
speech which was formerly used in addressing servants,
and the use of which implies a sense of superiority in
the speaker and contempt for the hearer, not represent-
able in English. Gellert recited the fable I have just
given. When the recitation was finished, the monarch
expressed himself pleased. " I had not supposed that
a German could do anything so good. Where did
you learn to write so ? " " In the school of Nature."
" Have you imitated Lafontaine ? " " No, your Majesty,
I am an original ; but I cannot say whether I am a good
one." " Nay ! I must praise you. You shall come to
me again ; put your Fables in your pocket, and read me
some of them." So the interview ended. Soon after,
the King, referring to it, said : " C'est le plus raisonable
de tons les savants allemands."

Here is a fable of the comical, satirical sort, entitled
" The Ghost " : —

" A housekeeper, I have been told, was long tormented by a
ghost. He took lessons in exorcism, and tried his spell on the
spirit without effect. A poet came to the house as a lodger,
and the host, who dreaded being left alone at night, solicited
his company, and begged him to read some of his verses. The
poet read a frosty tragedy, which, if it did not interest the host,
delighted the author. The ghost, unseen by the poet but visi-
ble to the host, appeared and listened. He soon began to

118 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

shudder ; he could stand but one act, and then vanished. The
next night the poet was invited to read again. The spirit ap-
peared, but seeing the situation made no stay. ' Good ! thought
the host, I will soon be rid of you ; it seems you don't like
poetry.' The third night our host was alone. As soon as the
clock struck twelve the ghost put in his appearance. The host
immediately called to his servant, — ' John, run to the poet ;
ask him to lend me one of his tragedies for awhile.' The ghost
was frightened; he signified with a motion of his hand that
the servant should not go. Then he vanished, and was never
seen again.

" Moral : There is no poetry so poor but may be made to
answer some good purpose. And if the spirits are afraid of
bad poetry, it is a comfort to know that we have enough of it
in our time to keep them at bay, though their name were
legion."

Gellert's published correspondence, which constitutes
a portion of the uniform edition of his works, contains
some of his best things, or at least exhibits him (as a
man's letters to his friends are apt to do) in the most
characteristic light. Here is a letter to a Count some-
body, which is interesting both as showing an unlooked-
for capability of intense excitement in the sober moralist,
and still more, as illustrating the immense enthusiasm
which Richardson's novels awakened in the reading
world abroad as well as at home. Hear what Gellert
says of them and their author : —

Dear Count, — I am beside myself, and I must write and
tell you so, though I wrote you only yesterday. Yesterday I
had not yet finished the Fifth Part of " Grandison." I read, it
is true, until twelve o'clock at night, — a fault which I have not
been guilty of before since reading " Clarissa." You may imag-
ine that I slept but little during the night ; and this morning I
had scarce read my chapter in the Bible when, after six o'clock.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 119

I seized upon " Grandison." ... I read on until I came to the
parting scene between Grandison and Clementine. Ah ! Count,
dear Count, now I have tasted again the greatest pleasure in
life, — the same that I tasted when I read the closing part of
" Clarissa." For so many years I have not been able to weep ;
neither nature nor art could draw tears from me, — my heart
has been so hard, so tight. And to-day, this 3d of April, be-
tween seven and ten of the clock, I wept. . . . God ! what is
there in this book ? Now I understand how the tragedies of
the ancients could produce such mighty, such unfortunate, in-
credible effects. Yes, Count, not to have been allowed to read
on in those moments, not to continue to feel, — there on the
grassy bank, here in Clementine's chamber, — rather would
I have lost all my property. Is Richardson then a wizard ?
Everything that can move, that can take by storm, that can
ravish, that can charm to intoxication, he has at his command.
And can his countrymen for a moment doubt about him ? But
he must die : he will die, and then they will do him justice.
If they buried Gay, on account of some fables, among the
graves of their kings, they will do so with Richardson. Im-
mortal name ! honor to the human race ! prince of novel-
ists ! happy tyrant over all our passions ! — should they not
lay thee among the graves of their kings, by the ashes of their
Milton, or in some worthier place if there be one ? Write, —
but that transcends the powers of human nature, — write an-
other " Grandison," and then die, more blest than thy Clemen-
tine, than thy Grandison. Yes, Count — may God forgive me !
— Ebert was not wrong when he said that if he had written
*' Grandison" he would feel sure of his salvation. If heaven
could be merited by intelligence and art, by wit and heart, and
divine morality, then Richardson has more than merited it.
Preserve this letter with all its enthusiasm, with all its sincere
folly, and if I die soon let it be printed in large letters, with
my whole name, to the honor of Richardson (for when I am
dead I shall be great enough to honor him) ; and add these
words : " Let posterity know that two of my happiest days
were those on which I read the Seventh Part of * Clarissa

120 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Harlowe ' and the Fifth of * Sir Charles Grandison.' "... I
have not been in the habit of praying for Richardson by name,
but when I read the Fifth Part I prayed for his continued
welfare. I will write no more ; I cannot ; I am still beside
myself ; and if I am sick, " Grandison " will be the cause, and
my sickness will be Richardson's eulogy.

Gellert died, after long illness and great bodily suffer-
ing, in 1769. All Germany mourned the gifted, kindly,
blameless man.

KLOPSTOCK, 121

CHAPTER IX.

KLOPSTOCK.

THE old High-German literature was rich, as we
have seen, in epic verse. Modern Germany, less
fruitful in that kind, yet boasts one work which in
spite of many and great defects maintains, and will
always maintain, its place among the world's classics.
Inferior to " Paradise Lost " in sensuous imagery and
majesty of diction, inferior to the " Gerusalemme Libe-
rata " in sweetness and grace, in warmth and human
interest, Klopstock's " Messiah " equals either in poetic
valor, in lofty purpose and sustained inspiration, and
surpasses both in richness of invention and organic
fulness.

Friedrich tiottlieb Klopstock was one of the rare
cases, rarer then than now, in which fame and fortune
— fame for the living subject, wide popularity and
ready patronage — combined to smooth and gild a life
devoted to letters. Unlike his worthier contemporary
Lessing, he was borne by kind hands across the rough
places which so many of the scholars and poets of that
day were doomed to tread. A sufficient income, condi-
tioned by no drudgery or humiliation, relieved him of
those pestering anxieties which the Germans aptly de-
nominate Brodsorgen (" Bread-cares "), and allowed
ample leisure — the leisure so desirable and so infre-
quent— for self -chosen tasks.

122 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Born in Quedlinburg, July 2, 1724, Klopstock enjoyed
an easy childhood not overburdened with tasks, and re-
ceived in his native city enough of preparatory drill to
enter, at the age of sixteen, — not, however, without
close scraping, — the gymnasium of Schulpforte, then a
Saxon, now a Prussian seminary, and now, as then,
esteemed the foremost institution of its kind in Ger-
many,— a pet of the Prussian government, a State
institution, where for native Prussians the tuition is
free. From it have emanated some of Germany's most
distinguished scholars. They still show at Schulpforte
the grotto where, according to tradition, Klopstock
meditated the plan of his " Messiah." From personal
acquaintance with the uninviting spot, I greatly doubt
the tradition. Jean Paul has aimed one of his sar-
casms at Klopstock' s bequest to the school of a splendid
edition of the " Messiah," coupled with the condition
that annually the worthiest pupil should strew flowers
over the grave of his former master Stubel, and while
doing so pronounce softly the name of Klopstock ; also,
that some scholar, competent to the task, should recite
select passages from the poem, for which he was to re-
ceive a gold medal which some friend would contribute.
Jean Paul stigmatizes this as the poet's worship of him-
self,— as it were, his "own reliquary full of holy bones."
The strewing of flowers, so far as I remember, has be-
come obsolete. To the annual recitation of parts of the
" Messiah " I can testify ; but no gold medal did I see.

On leaving the school, Klopstock chose for the theme
of his valedictory Latin oration, " The highest Aim of
Poetry." In 1745 he entered the University of Jena,
but soon quitted it in disgust ; and in the following year
was matriculated at Leipsic ostensibly as a student of

KLOPSTOCK. 123

law. Here he became intimate with several literary
friends, whose souls were fired with enthusiasm for
poetry and transcendental flights of thought, and formed
with them a society for mutual encouragement and in-
tellectual stimulus. In such company it was easy for
Klopstock to persuade himself of his poetic vocation and
superiority to all the poets of his time. Cradled in this
belief, the first cantos of the " Mes8iah " wefe given to
the public ; and partly by virtue of their real intrinsic
merit, and partly in consequence of the state of German
literature at the time, they were received with all the
enthusiasm anticipated for them by loving friends. The
metre chosen by the poet, after various experiments in
other forms, was the hexameter, — then almost as new
in German song as it was in English when Longfellow
wrote his " Evangeline." Klopstock's hexameters were
certainly better than those of his predecessors, but far
inferior to those of more recent time, when that measure
has become naturalized.

This first instalment of the new epic was hailed with
universal delight. Since Luther's translation of the
Bible, says one writer, no work in German had been
received with such acclaim. Bodmer, in Switzerland,
was so charmed that he invited the author to Zurich.
There he passed nine happy months on the borders of
the lake whose beauties he has celebrated ; and there,
by good luck, he became acquainted with the Danish
minister, von Bernstorff, and through his instrumental-
ity received an invitation from Frederic V., king of Den-
mark, to take up his abode in Copenhagen, wdth a salary
ample for his wants, and nothing required of him but
to write out the rest of the " Messiah " and such other
poems as the Muse might inspire. Here he spent twenty

124 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

years, during which the greater part of his works were
composed. In 1754 he married Margaretha Moller,
daughter of a wealthy merchant of Hamburg, having
previously, on the plea of indifference, broken with
Fanny Schmidt, his earlier love. His union with Miss
Moller, known to literature by the name of " Meta," the
poetic name conferred upon her by her husband, appears
to have been as perfect in all that constitutes the hap-
piness of the nuptial bond as ever falls to the lot
of mortals. The four years of their wedded life, as
Wordsworth says of his, —

" Were as a day,
Whose current answers to the heart's desire."

Mrs. Jameson has celebrated their transcendent happi-
ness in her " Loves of the Poets." The wife wrote to
Richardson, the English novelist, in 1758, "I am the
happiest wife in the world. In a few months it will be
four years that I have enjoyed this happiness." Those
few months were her last. Four years of full content-
ment were all that earthly limitations could allow. The
poet survived her for nearly half a century, and married
again in his sixty-eighth year. In 1771 he left Copen-
hagen and removed to Hamburg, or rather to Altona
in the immediate vicinity of Hamburg, where he spent
the remainder of his days, still retaining, as councillor
of legation, his Danish pension. He died in his eigh-
tieth year, and was buried with great pomp, the cities of
Altona and Hamburg uniting in public demonstrations
of respect at his obsequies. Representatives of France,
Russia, and other nations joined in the funeral proces-
sion ; passages from his works were read or chanted,
and a copy of the " Messiah " was placed by one of the

KLOPSTOCK. 125

officiating clergymen in his coffin. Seldom had a poet
in those days been so fortunate in life, and so honored
in death.

Of Klopstock's person, his manner and conversation,
we have the reports of two witnesses, — one who saw
him at the height of his powers, and one who visited
him in his decline ; both men of supreme mark, the
one a German, the other an Englishman, — Goethe, his
junior by twenty-five years, and Coleridge, his junior
by forty-eight. Goethe, who received him at his fath-
er's house in Frankfort, speaks of him thus, in his
Autobiography : —

" He was a man of diminutive stature, but well built ; his
bearing grave and measured ; liis conversation to the point, and
agreeable. On the whole, his presence had something of the
diplomat. Such personages subject themselves to the difficult
problem of maintaining at the same time their own dignity and
that of a higher to whom they are accountable ; of promoting
their own together with the far more important interests of
some prince, or it may be of whole States, and of making
themselves in this critical position, before all things, agreeable
to all men. And so Klopstock appeared to conduct himself as
a man of worth, and at the same time as the representative of
higher beings, of religion, morality, and freedom. Another
peculiarity of men of the world he had also adopted ; namely,
that of being slow to speak on precisely those topics on which
they are expected and desired to converse. One rarely heard
him talk of poetry, or literary topics. But having learned that
I and my friends were passionately fond of skating, he con-
versed with us at length on this noble art, concerning which
he had meditated deeply, and well considered what therein is
to be attempted and what avoided. But before we could par-
take of his willing instruction on this subject, he must first set
us right respecting the word itself, which it seems we had
mistaken. We were accustomed, in good German, to say,

126 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

SchlittscJiuh [instead of SchrittschuK], which he would by no
means allow. ' For the word/ he said, * was not derived from
Schlitten (" sled "), as if one moved on little runners, but from
schreiten (" stride "), because, like the Homeric gods, one strode
on these winged soles over the sea as over a floor.' Then he
came to speak of the instrument itself ; he repudiated the tall,
grooved skates, and recommended instead the low, broad, un-
grooved Frisian irons as best adapted to rapid motion. ... I
procured for myself, according to his direction, a pair of those
flat skates with long beaks, and used them many years, al-
though with some inconvenience. He could also give account
— and was pleased to do so — of the art of riding, and even of
the training of horses. And thus, as it seemed intentionally,
he usually diverted the conversation from his proper calling,
in order to speak more freely of other arts which he pursued
as an amateur.

" Of these and other peculiarities of this extraordinary man
I could say more, if those who have lived longer with him had
not already sufficiently informed us on the subject. But I can-
not refrain from one observation ; namely, this : that men whom
Nature has endowed with uncommon gifts, but who have been
placed in a narrow or at least not proportionate sphere of
action, are apt to fall into oddities, and because they can
make no direct use of their gifts, to make them available in
strange and extraordinary ways."

Coleridge, in company with Wordsworth, visited Klop-
stock at his residence in Altona, in the autumn of 1798.
In a letter to a lady, he writes : —

" Believe me, I walked with an impression of awe on my
spirits as Wordsworth and myself accompanied the brother of
Klopstock to the house of the poet, which stands about a quar-
ter of a mile from the city gate. It is one of a row of little
commonplace summer-houses (for so they looked), with four or
five rows of young, meagre elm-trees before the windows, be-
yond which is a green, and then a dead flat, intersected with

KLOPSTOCK. 127

several roads. Whatever beauty (thought I) may be before
the poet's eye at present, it must certainly be purely of his
own creation. We waited a few moments in a neat little par-
lor, ornamented with the figures of two of the Muses, and
prints, the subjects of which were from Klopstock's Odes. The
poet entered. I was much disappointed in his countenance,
and recognized in it no likeness to the bust. There was no
comprehension in the forehead, no weight over the eye-brows,
no expression of peculiarity, moral or intellectual, in the eyes,
no massiveness in the general countenance. He is, if any-
thing, rather below the middle size. He wore very large half
boots, which his legs filled, so enormously were they swollen.
However, though neither Wordsworth nor myself could dis-
cover any indications of sublimity or enthusiasm in his physi-
ognomy, we were both equally impressed with his liveliness
and his kind and ready courtesy. He talked in French to my
friend, and with difficulty spoke a few sentences to me in Eng-
lish. His enunciation was not in the least affected by the entire
want of his upper teeth. The conversation began on his part
with the expression of his rapture at the surrender of the
French troops under General Humbert. . . . He declared his
sanguine belief in Nelson's victory, and anticipated its confirma-
tion with keen and triumphant pleasure. His words, tones,
looks, implied the most vehement anti-gallicanism.

" The subject changed to literature, and I inquired in Latin
concerning the history of German poetry and the elder German
poets. To my very great aistonishment, he confessed that he
knew very little on the subject. ... He then talked of Milton
and Glover, and thought Glover's blank verse superior to Mil-
ton's. Wordsworth and myself expressed our surprise, and my
friend gave his definition and notion of harmonious verse : that
it consisted — English Iambic blank verse especially — in the
apt arrangement of pauses and cadences, and the sweep of
whole paragraphs, not in the even flow, — much less in the
prominence or antithetic vigor of single lines, which indeed
were injurious to the total effect, except where they were in-
troduced for some special purpose. Klopstock assented, and

128 HOURS WITH. GERMAN CLASSICS.

said that he meant to confine Glover's superiority to single
lines. He told us that he had read Milton in a prose transla-
tion when he was fourteen. [But] he appeared to know very
little of Milton, or of our poets in general. He spoke with
great indignation of the English prose translation of his ' Mes-
siah.* All the translations had been bad, but the English
translation was no translation at all ; there were pages on
pages which were not in the original, and half of the original
was not in the translation. Wordsworth told him that I meant
to translate some of his Odes as specimens of German lyrics ;
he then said to me, in English, ' I wish you would render into
English some select passages of the " Messiah," and revenge
me of your countrymen.' It was the liveliest thing which he
produced in the whole conversation. He told us that his first
Ode was fifty years older than his last. I looked at him with
much emotion. I considered him as the venerable father of
German poetry, as a good man, as a Christian, seventy-four
years old, with legs enormously swollen, yet active, lively,
cheerful, and kind and communicative. My eyes felt as if a
tear were swelling into them."

But Coleridge proceeds to say, speaking of Klop-
stock's powdered periwig, " The author of the ' Mes-
siah ' should have worn his own gray hair. His powder
and periwig were to the eye what Mr. Yirgil would be
to the ear."

Klopstock's fame rests mainly on his Odes and his
" Messiah." His dramas, three of which, forming a
trilogy, celebrate the first hero of German history, —
Hermann the Arminius, who defeated the Romans,
commanded by Varus, in the year 9 of the Christian
era, — and the rest of which handle Biblical themes.
''The Death of Adam," "David and Solomon," — these
dramas are nearly forgotten, although " The Death of
Adam " was at one time a stock-piece in the repertory
of the German stage, and was thought to compare favor-

KLOPSTOCK. 129

ably with the " Athalie " of Racine, and with " Samson
Agonistes."

His Odes are thought by many critics, both native
and foreign, — among others, by Taylor, in his " Survey
of German Poetry," — to constitute the poet's strongest
title to immortality. He has been styled the '^ German
Pindar." Gervinus says that none of his predecessors
had attained to the inspiration of those earlier Odes,
which remind one by turns of Horace, of David, and of
Ossian. Their most prominent characteristics are the
metrical boldness of the form, and the pure and fervid,
though sometimes exaggerated, sentiment which fur-
nishes the stuff. In these compositions the author dis-
dains the use of rhyme, and imitates instead the
ancient classic metres, to which the German language
— though better adapted, because more plastic than the
English — lends itself reluctantly, and now and then
with a very bad grace, excepting always the hexameter
and pentameter. Goethe wrote occasional unrhymed
lyrics. But in his there is no imitation of ancient
forms, and no precise metre. The metrical law is un-
defined, and the movement is always graceful, because
the measure is not forecast, but adapts itself to the
thought or feeling expressed in each clause. In Klop-
stock's, on the contrary, the measure is first assumed ;
thought and feeling are cast into a prepared mould, and
where the mould does not fit, the language suffers vio-
lence, and the verse is awkward. Among them are
many noble compositions, in which there is a genuine
lift, inspired and inspiring. But sometimes the at-
tempted flight is a miscarriage, resembling (to borrow
a figure from Lessing) the attempt of the ostrich, that
spreads portentous wings, and never really leaves the

9

130 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

ground. Sometimes, too, when the Muse actually soars
her wings suddenly give out ; she discovers " an alacrity
in sinking," and the pathos of the thought is enhanced
by high-flown diction.

I have found these Odes absolutely untranslatable
into English, with corresponding metres, without such
violation of English idiom as would make the verses
absurdly un-English. Their peculiar beauties — beauties
that lie in the wording and the phraseology — evaporate
in any version. Like all lyric poems, and more than
most, to be rightly appreciated they must be read in
the original.

An English translator, Mr. Nind, has attempted to
solve the metrical problem by rendering these poems in
English rhyme. By this method he has produced, no
doubt, a volume of more readable verse than he could
have made by attempting to reproduce the original
metres ; but unhappily the English, instead of a trans-
lation, is often but a weak paraphrase of the German.
For example, the first stanza of the poem on the " Lake
of Zurich," literally rendered, reads thus : —

" Beautiful, O Mother Nature ! is the splendor of thy inven-
tion diffused over the landscape; more beautiful a glad face
that thinks the great thought of thy creation over again."

Nind has it : —

'* O Mother Nature ! beautiful and bright

Is all thy work o'er mountain, vale, and sea;
Brighter the eye that drinks delight
From lofty communings with thee."

Now, " lofty communings with thee " sounds well
enough ; it is just what any mediocre writer in verse or
prose would be likely to say ; but " to think the great

KLOPSTOCK. 131

til ought of creation over again " is a very different
thing ; it suggests a whole system of philosophy. In
fact, it is a saying of wide celebrity, often quoted,
though not commonly known to have originated with
Klopstock.

The merit of Klopstock's poetry consists in his bold
idealism, the inspiration of his thought, and the fervor
of his sentiment. His defect is want of sensuousness,
of the realism which is quite as necessary to the poet
as idealism. Full of poetic feeling, he lacks the poet's
eye. His imagination deals with abstractions ; he does
not represent to himself in sensuous images the objects
of his thought. Hence, some absurd conceits. In an
Ode entitled " The Two Muses," he represents the Brit-
ish and the German Muse competing for literary honors.
The idea is not a bad one ; but mark how the poet treats
it. Competition — in German, eoncurrenz — suggests to
him running for a wager. Accordingly, he figures his
two Muses as undertaking a foot-race. There are two
goals : the nearest goal is a grove of oaks ; the final one
a clump of palms. The poet witnesses the start, but
prudently confesses himself ignorant of the result.

" The herald sounds! they flew with eagle flight;
Behind them into clouds the dust was tossed.
I looked, but when the oaks were passed, my sight
In dimness of the dust was lost."

Fancy two modest, respectable maidens running at
the top of their speed, and kicking up a cloud of dust !
As if fleetness of foot decided the question of intellect-
ual supremacy ! As if the talent of the Muse, like that
of Atalanta, were seated in her heels ! Why could not
the poet have taken a hint from the old poetic tourna-

132 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

ments of the German minnesingers ? Why could he not
have put a lyre into the hands of each Muse, and let
them, agreeably to their vocation, compete with songs
instead of their feet ?

Whatever may be thought of the Odes, the "Mes-
siah " after all is the work by which Klopstock is best
known to the world at large, — and I may say the only
one. Those who know nothing else of him, know him
to be the author of a great epic poem which bears that
name. The " Messiah," as the name imports, is the'
life of Christ poetically set forth. Around this central
thread, which follows in the main the Gospel narrative,
are gathered episodes descriptive of imaginary scenes,
events in heaven and earth, characters celestial and
demonic, which constitute the substance of the poem.
The author, according to his own statement, began it at
the age of seventeen, but spent three years on the plan
before writing a line. Thirty years elapsed before the
work was completed. Portions of it were written at
intervals, amid other labors, and given to the public
in successive instalments. The first three cantos were
written in a kind of poetic prose ; but the poet could
not be satisfied with this form, and was long undecided
in what metre to embody his conceptions. Finally, it
occurred to him that something might be made of the
hexameter. There had been some attempts in that
measure in German, but none which seemed to him at
all successful. He shut himself up one day, went with-
out his dinner, and from morning till night employed
himself in turning a portion of what he had written into
hexameter. He was so well satisfied with the success
of this experiment, that he at once resolved to cast his
epic in that mould.

KLOPSTOCK. 133

It would occupy too much space to unfold the plan of
the " Messiah." The excellence of the poem consists,
not in the plan, which is very faulty, but in the beauty
of single parts. It extends through twenty cantos ; the
eighth brings us to the death of Christ, the remaining
twelve being partly occupied with what follows the
crucifixion in the Gospel story, but chiefly with imagi-
nary scenes, the creations of the poet's brain, and
owing what interest they possess to the splendor of his
imagination and the tender pathos of his sentiment.
The poem opens with an invocation, not of the Muse,
according to traditional custom, which even Milton fol-
lows, but, more fitly, of the soul : —

** Sing, immortal Soul! of sinful man the redemption,
Which the Messiah on earth, in his human nature, accomplished;
Whereby suffering, slain, and from death to glory exalted,
Adam's race he atoned and restored to the love of the Godhead.
Thus the Eternal willed." i

He then proceeds, like Milton, to implore the aid of
the Holy Spirit in unfolding his theme. Then we are
introduced to a scene on the Mount of Olives, where the
Redeemer, near the close of his ministry, meets God
face to face, and the Father and the Son renew their
covenant, — the latter to suffer and die for the sins oE
mankind, the former to forgive the sins thus atoned.

" Further he spake and said, ' I lift my head toward heaven,
Lift my hand to the clouds, and thus by myself, thus swear I, —
I who am God like thee, of man I will be the redeemer.'
Thus spake Jesus, and raised himself up; sublime was his visage;
Calm and earnest he stood before God, and full of compassion.
But, unheard by the angels, alone by himself and the Son heard,

1 Here we have, in the fourth verse, the Aihs S' ireXtUro fioii\r], from
the fourth verse of the first Book of the Iliad.

134 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Spake the eternal Father, while on the Redeemer all-searching
Rested his vision, and said, ' I spread my head through the

heavens.
Stretch my arm through infinity forth, and forever and ever
I, the Eternal, swear to forgive mankind their transgressions.* "

At this exchange of vows the earth quaked with awe ;
souls just starting into being, that had not yet begun to
think, were the first to tremble and feel. The seraph
Gabriel, the special attendant on Christ, shuddered, and
the world around him lay in hushed expectation, like
the earth before the approach of a storm; gentle rap-
ture entered the souls of future Christians, and a sweet
intoxicating sense of eternal life. But the spirits of
hell, susceptible only of despair, —

*' Sank from their thrones to new depths, and, as downward they
tumbled,
Fell upon each a rock, and under each the abyss broke
In with a crash, whence deep hell bellowed reverberant thunder."

I cite this as a specimen of that " majesty of action ''
in which it is claimed that this poem excels every other
epopee, actual or possible.

The fourth canto — which on the whole is the most
spirited, and contains many noble passages — exhibits
also one of Klopstock's chief defects, — an extravagance
which outruns the sympathy of the reader. The subject
is the assembly of the Jewish elders, called by Caiaphas
the high-priest to debate the question, what course shall be
taken with Jesus, whose growing popularity has alarmed
the rulers of the people. Caiaphas addresses the meeting
with an eloquent speech, and relates his vision, in which
Aaron had appeared to him as he was ministering in
the temple, and threatened dreadful penalties on ac-
count of the Galilean disturber, who had blasphemed

KLOPSTOCK. 135

Moses, and was still permitted to live. He is followed
by Gamaliel and Nicodemus, who both plead for the
toleration of Jesus. Then Philo, the Pharisee, trembled
with rage. His look grew dark ; night lay thick around
him, and darkness hid from him the assembly. He
sprang to his feet, and as in a tempest a single thun-
der-cloud, more black and charged with lightnings than
the rest, separates itself from the mass, and while the
others but seize the tops of the cedars, this kindles from
one end of the heavens to the other the woody moun-
tains, and with thousand thunders inflames the high-
towering, immeasurable cities of kings, and buries them
in ruins, — so Philo severed himself from the ranks of
his associates. Satan saw him, and said to himself, —

" Devoted to me be tliy speakiog. As we below consecrate,
so consecrate I thee, O Philo! Like the dreaded waters of
hell let thy speech stream wildly on, strong as the flaming
ocean, winged as with the breath of the thunders which my
mouth utters when it commands. . . .

'* * Thus speak, Philo, thus lead this captive people in triumph!
Think, and let thy heart overflow with such thoughts and

sensations
As Adra-Melech himself, if a mortal, would not be ashamed of !
Death to the Nazarean doom, and I will reward thee ;
Joys known only to hell shall be thine as soon as his blood flows.
And to us when thou comest, myself thou shalt have for a leader ;
I will bring thee to souls that were heroes, and revelled in

carnage.*
Thus spake Satan aside, but the seraph Ithuriel heard him.
Then stood Philo forth and spake as he looked toward heaven."

The speech which follows is one of great power. It
begins with a solemn address to the altar of blood, and
to all the altars and holy places of Israel ; the speaker
washes his hands of all complicity in the doings by

136 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

which these have been or may hereafter be polluted;
he pronounces maledictions on Nicodemus, on Gamaliel,
and all who have favored Jesus, devoting them to a
painful death. But his fiercest imprecations are hurled
at Jesus himself; he calls upon God to annihilate the
transgressor.

" But thy grimmest wrath, the thunders wherewith thou thuii-
derest,
Causing the mountains to quake, and hell beneath thee to

tremble,
Take, and therewith smite, O God, that blackest of sinners."

He threatens, and says : —

" I have been young, and now I am old ; I have served and
sacrificed after the manner of my fathers ; but if I am doomed
to the misery of seeing the Nazarean rebel prevail, then I de-
clare thy eternal covenant to be null, and the blessing promised
to Abraham and his seed forever ; and in the sight of all Judah
I herewith renounce thy justice and thy law. Without thee
I will live ; without thee my sinking head shall go down to
the pit.

*' Yea, if thou dost not sweep from the face of the earth that

transgressor.
Then thou didst not appear to Moses ; 't was empty illusion
All that he thought he saw in the bush in the mountain of Horeb.
Then thou didst not descend in flames on the summit of Sinai ;
Then no trumpet was heard, no thunder; the mountain, it quaked

not;
Then our fathers and we, through immemorial ages,
All unblest have been, of all nations most worthy of pity."

The fifth book describes the visit of Jehovah to Christ
in the garden of Gethsemane ; and here we have the
monstrous conceit of a regular journey pf the Almighty
from his own abode to the place of action, — a journey

KLOPSTOCK. 137

whose length is measured by the spaces which separate
sun from sun. A thousand sun-miles have to be trav-
ersed, in order that the Father may meet the Son. On
the way he encounters a seraph, who is journeying
toward heaven with some souls that have just put off
their mortal bodies and put on the spiritual. These are
the souls of the wise men of the East, who brought their
offerings to the infant Jesus. Their names are given,
and each one's story is narrated at some length. They
are told by the seraph that he who is passing is God,
and they immediately break forth in songs of adoration.
Then occurs an incident embodying an original and
beautiful conception. In the track of the journey lies
a planet, the counterpart to our earth, and resembling
it in all respects, with the exception that the human
beings there have never seen death, but rejoice in im-
mortal youth, — their first parents having withstood the
temptation to which Adam and Eve succumbed, and left
untasted the forbidden fruit. Their progenitor, — a young
man in appearance, though his life comprised so many
centuries, — seeing Jehovah pass, apparently bound for
earth, points him out to his progeny, and repeats to
them the story of our planet, the Fall of Man ; and
thus opportunity is given for pathetic descriptions of
death, and the partings which death involves.

The eighth book, which narrates the Crucifixion, con-
tains, in a famous passage, the description of an eclipse,
produced by the star Adamida, the dwelling-place of the
souls of the unborn, which Uriel by divine command
interposes between the earth and the sun.

The eleventh canto portrays the rising of the bodies
of the saints after the Crucifixion, as reported in the
Gospel of St. Matthew. Among others Rachel sees.

138 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

as in a trance, her own body arise like a cloud from the
grave.

" As of a vernal shower that scatters the snow of its blossoms,
Rachel's glory illumed the swimming vapor with lustre,
Golden and bright as on morning clouds are the fringes of sun-
shine.
Curious follow her glances ; the heaving mist, she beholds it
Hovering and shapeless as yet; it ascends, sinks, glitters, ap-
proaches.

Suddenly sounds the omnipotent word; she awakes, and is con-
scious
Now that her soul has received its immortal and glorified body." ^

I pass by the striking things of other cantos. The
twentieth and last describes, in intoxicating strains, the
ascent of the risen Christ to the Father. It consists
largely of songs of praise from angels, prophets, and
saints, in varying and difficult metres, and ends with
the words, —

v Thus the Father was seen, thus the Son, by the Heaven of
Heavens ;
Thus in view of the Heaven of Heavens the throne he ascended,
Jesus Christ, and sat down, the Son at the right of the Father."

These samples may suffice to convey some impression
of the scope and strain of a poem to which has been
assigned a very high rank among the enduring monu-
ments of genius, but which holds its place rather by
prescription and the judgment of contemporary critics
than by the interest felt in it, or any near acquaintance
with it, among even native readers of our time.

Klopstock has been called the " German Milton ; "
Coleridge says, with a covert sneer, " A very German

1 From W. Taylor's version, in his " Survey of German Poetry."

KLOPSTOCK.

Milton, indeed." But I doubt if Coleridge could estab-
lish, with the general consent of the critical world, a
canon of poetic art by which the " Messiah " should be
judged an inferior work, as compared with " Paradise
Lost " and " Paradise Regained." (These two are prop-
erly one poem.) The comparison is one which naturally
suggests itself, for the reason that both the German and
the English poem deal with sacred subjects ; both are
Christian compositions, — they draw their topics, char-
acters, and scenes from the Christian Scriptures, — and
both are native epics. But here the resemblance ends.
Further than this they are incommensurable. Both are
great in their way, but the ways are different. " Para-
dise Lost " is great in its massive realism, its level ease,
its sensuous imagery, its genial, apt diction, and the
sense it gives of reserved force. The *' Messiah " is
great in its overpowering wealth of imagination, its end-
less felicity of invention, its lyric daring, its lofty ideal-
ism, its sustained inspiration, in which perhaps no poem
of equal length can be compared with it. Klopstock is
always enthusiastic, Milton always self-possessed. Cor-
responding with this difference the style of the former
is florid to excess, extravagant, and often wearies with
its strained hyperbole ; the style of " Paradise Lost " is
grandly simple, but sometimes falls below the theme and
becomes prosy. Milton was certainly the greater, deeper
nature, — I am hardly prepared to say, the superior poet ;
or if superior, the superiority appears in the " Comus "
and the " Lycidas " and the minor poems, rather than in
the *' Paradise Lost." Perhaps we may say that Milton
had more of the poet's eye as it manifests itself in the
treatment of material nature ; Klopstock, more of the
poet's soul as manifest in dealing with the moral world.

140 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Milton's poetry was the incidental blossom of an opulent
nature ; Klopstock's was the substance of a very limited
one. The Englishman had that and a great deal more
beside ; the German had that, and nothing else.

One thing I find wearisome in Klopstock, — one thing
in which the German poets of that day were too prone
to indulge ; that is, an excessive sentimentality. Both
in his odes and his epic he is unreasonably lachrymose.
Scarcely a page but swims with tears. Even God is rep-
resented as weeping. One feels in reading him that the
so-called diluvian era in German literature had not yet
gone by. The waters were not yet '' abated from the
face of the earth."

Neither " Paradise Lost " nor the " Messiah " is much
read by the present generation, — the latter perhaps less
than the former, and perhaps for the same reason. The
grand defect in both is the want of solid ground in hu-
man experience, the want of a genuine human interest.
They move about in worlds not realized ; they deal with
imaginary, I mean superhuman or infra-human, beings,
— beings that may be objects of faith, but are too far
removed from the sphere of human sympathy to interest
us with their doings. Angels and archangels, seraphs
and Deity, are scarcely fit subjects for epic handling.

Milton's Satan, indeed, as a being swayed by human
passions, is nearer and more real than the heavenly
powers, or even than Adam and Eve, and constitutes
the central figure and focal interest of " Paradise Lost."
But Klopstock's " Messiah " is too shadowy, too super-
nal, to serve as the hero of an epopee. Christian dogma
affirms a human as well as a divine nature in Christ.
It was therefore open to the poet, without offence to
Christian faith, to treat his subject from the human side.

KLOPSTOCK. 141

Had he done so, he would have given us instead of a
spectre a man, and made, if not a greater, a more inter-
esting poem, and one that would be not only admired but
read, — which, even in his own day, Lessing, a friendly
critic, complains that the '* Messiah " was not. Tt is
true, the great epics of Greek and Roman literature
introduce divinities into their plot, and we read the
Iliad and the ^neid with no abatement of interest
on that account. The reason is that the gods and
goddesses of Greece and Rome are simply men and
women, inhabiting a different plane and possessing pe-
culiar privileges, but essentially human, in passion and
action, — as much so as Ajax or Diomed, or Helen
or Hector ; and about as real as these. Moreover, the
religion which those beings represent is so foreign and
indifferent to modern readers, so utterly null, that we
can enjoy them without disturbance of any theological
sensibilities. But in these Christian epics the enlight-
ened consciousness can hardly fail to be shocked with
the sensuous and historic treatment of sanctities tran-
scending space and time, and the matter-of-fact use of
dogmatic subtleties which have their place in metaphys-
ical speculation, but are not fit subjects of song. The
bold anthropomorphism of Klopstock — whose Deity
answers precisely to Matthew Arnold's " non-natural
man " — would be intolerable, did we not look at it from
a mythical point of view. We have to forget, not only
our own philosophic views, but the representations of
the Christian and even of the Jewish Scriptures, to read
with complacency of a God who travels from place to
place. If we stop to criticise, we turn with disgust from
Klopstock' s itinerant Deity to the Hebrew poet's sublimer
conception, — " Whither shall I go from thy spirit, or

142 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

whither shall I flee from thy presence ? " But what is
repellent, conceived as fact, may, if we throw ourselves
into it, be enjoyable as myth. Much of what we read,
not only in Klopstock and Milton but in other venerable
writings, must be taken in that sense if enjoyed at all.

LESSING. 143

CHAPTER X.

LESSING.

WHEN literature becomes reflective, and in pro-
portion as it becomes reflective, it changes its
constituency from the ignorant many to the cultured
few. It is one thing to please the public, another to
educate it. A crude and undisciplined taste delights in
tawdry sentiment and flashy rhetoric ; the instructed
mind prefers a severer style, with intimations of re-
served power. Thus literature learns to correct itself ;
a science is formed which discriminates between the
true and the false, the tinsel and the gold, — and not
only discriminates, but establishes the principles and
enunciates the rules by which it judges, and by which
we are to judge : aesthetic criticism.

, In this science the Germans excel all nations ; and
in this, the greatest of the Germans is Lessing.

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born in 1729, twenty
years before Goethe, who outlived him by half a cen-
tury. Criticism with him assumes a dignity unknown
before, rising to the level almost of creative genius.
His " Laocoon ; or. The Limits of Poetry and Painting,"
written more than a century ago, is still the foremost
work of its kind. It initiated a new era in critical sci-
ence, exploding maxims till then accepted as funda-
mental truths, especially the ut pictura poesis of the

144 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

ancients, — that painting is silent poetry, and poetry
vocal painting. It set the direction and defined the
principles which sound criticism has followed ever since,
and must always follow.

But Lessing was something more than a critic ; he
was an emancipator. He is rightly named the " sec-
ond Luther," — his country's deliverer intellectually, as
Luther was spiritually. He emancipated German lit-
erature once and forever from the thraldom of French
taste, against which Gellert and Klopstock had striven
in vain. In fact, German literature as we know it — the
modern native literature of Germany — dates with him.
He delivered science from the bondage of tradition,
theology from the bondage of the letter, and the life
of men of letters from the bondage of Philistinism.
One quality above all others distinguished him, and
distinguished him above all others, — unadulterated love
of truth, incorruptible integrity of mind, absolute sin-
cerity. Personified Justice is pictured in our courts as
holding with bandaged eyes an even balance : Lessing's
eyes no prejudice could bandage, and no partiality blind ;
and his balance was always even. The thing he most
hated in men of letters was one-sidedness ; the thing he
could least tolerate was intolerance. "It is not error
that injures," he said, " but sectarian error." Whoever
has heard about him at all has probably heard of that
famous saying of his, — that if God were to offer him
all truth in the right hand, and the never-tiring search
of truth in the left, with the privilege of choice between
the two, he would choose the left. The saying is very
characteristic. His own life was such a search. Mod-
ern literature knows no more devoted champion of
spiritual truth, — a literary Bayard, without fear and

LESSING, 145

without reproach. He passed for a rationalist ; his
theological writings, including the "Education of the
Human Race," contain the germs of all that rational
criticism has since achieved in the way of religious en-
lightenment and theological emancipation. But he was
no iconoclast ; the bigotry of Rationalism was as hateful
to him as the bigotry of Orthodoxy. He could discern,
and has finely stated, the ground of reason that underlies
the doctrine of the Trinity. He could even defend Leib-
nitz's recognition of the dogma of eternal punishment
as embodying an element of truth. No iconoclast ; his
acuteness in detecting, his boldness in exposing, error
were balanced by an equal reverence for all the sanctities
of history and life. More than all, he was a scholar,
broadly and profoundly learned, — the Casaubon, the
Scaliger of his day, who grubbed in libraries and made
discoveries ; yet no pedant, but a grub of the sort that
can turn to a butterfly, — pre-eminently the scholar-
poet.

The lives of most literary men in times past present
a tragical aspect, if we compare their talents with their
fortunes, the worth of their work with their worldly
success. In our day literary labor, excepting that of
the highest order, is well paid, — perhaps overpaid, in
comparison with other more needful work. And the
tragedy is nowadays, not that genius starves, but that
so much money is lavished on writing where no genius
is, — on trashy stories, sensational lectures, trivial
verses, and wordy gossip, and magazine-rubbish, —
which apparently sells, since it persists to litter the
land. Even in our day a genius like that of Lessing
would fail of its dues in the way of material compen-
sation ; but it would, at the least, command a sufficient

10

146 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

material support. In his day it was different ; and the
life of Lessing exhibits, in a more than ordinary degree,
the tragic character of which I speak. A ceaseless
struggle it was with parental prejudice, with adverse
opinion, theological persecution, and bitter penury. His
father, a Lutheran clergyman of the ancient orthodox
stamp, had set his heart on Gotthold's following in his
steps ; but Gotthold, at Leipsic, where most of the pro-
fessors knew less than himself, became acquainted with
the theatre, frequented it, even wrote for it, kept com-
pany with actors, — and that at a time when actors were
thought to be without the pale of salvation, and were
denied Christian burial. At home, in Kamentz, the re-
port of these things — exaggerated, of course, by officious
tale-bearers, and representing the young student as in-
tending himself to go upon the stage — created an alarm
which prompted an immediate recall. But would the
youth consent to forego such attractions ? Would lie
not, under one or another pretext, remain, and contract
still deeper contamination ? There was one thing that
would fetch him, and the exigency seemed to warrant a
pious fraud. The father wrote : " Immediately on the
receipt of this, take the first post and come home ; your
mother is dangerously ill, and would see you once more
before she dies." Lessing did not hesitate ; he started
at once in the depth of winter, without an overcoat.
No sooner was the letter despatched than the weather
turned unusually severe, and the tender mother's heart
was filled with new fears ; the play-house was bad, but
•that her Gotthold should freeze was a good deal worse.
She hoped against hope that he would not obey the sum-
mons ; and when he entered the house, benumbed with
cold, she exclaimed, " Why did you come in this fearful

LESSING. 147

weather ? " " Dear mother, you wished it. I am glad
you are not sick ; I hardly believed you were."

During this visit, prolonged to the close of the winter,
Lessing's parents endeavored in vain to dissuade him
from what he considered to be his true vocation, — the
profession of Letters. In conformity with their desire he
suffered himself, on his return to Leipsic, to be enrolled
as a student of medicine ; but the life which he thence-
forth embraced in the face of all discouragements, and
which in spite of all vexations, disappointments, persecu-
tions, poverty, and loss he pursued to the end, was that
of littSrateur. As a writer for the stage, as translator by
the job, as feuilletoniste, antiquary, original investigator,
learned essayist, in Leipsic and Berlin ; as government
secretary in Breslau, as theatrical critic in Hamburg,
as librarian of the ducal library in Wolfenbiittel, — he
labored, fought, and suffered through thirty-three years
with only once or twice a transient gleam of satisfac-
tion, which but served to throw into deeper relief the
thick and ever-thickening shadows of his ill-starred,
unblessed way, — always, in his own and his friends'
expectation, on the eve of some lucrative post congenial
with his gifts, and always disappointed ; or, if holding
such post for a brief term, losing it again, as at Ham-
burg, before he was fairly settled in it, by no fault of
his own. Openings of promise, which his great reputa-
tion seemed to have made for him, closed, upon nearer
approach, to his tantalized grasp. Would-be patrons
cheated him of the salary by the offer of which they
had lured him to their side. Frederick the Great, who
ought to have found a place for the greatest intellect in
his kingdom, was restrained from so doing by the stupid
presumption that Germany could produce nothing in the

148 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

literary line that deserved to be patronized. It must
have been with special reference to Lessing that Schiller
said of the German Muse, —

*' Von dem grdssten deutschen Sohne,
Von des grossen Friedrich's Throne,
Ging sie schutzlos, ungeehrt."

By the death of the keeper of the royal library, in
1765, an office became vacant, which Lessing's friends
endeavored to obtain for him, and which, if obtained,
would have yielded, not an ample indeed, but an ade-
quate support. Connected with this office was that of
custodian of the royal cabinet of coins and antiquities.
There were two men in Europe at that time, above all
others, especially fitted for the double office. One of
them was Lessing, the other was Winckelmann. It was
offered to Winckelmann, with the promise at first of a
salary of fifteen hundred or two thousand thalers. But
when Winckelmann signified his acceptance, the mis-
taken economy of the king proposed to reduce the salary
by one half. Then Winckelmann indignantly withdrew,
and the claims of Lessing were strenuously urged, —
among others, by Guichard, an intimate friend of the
king, who, though a Frenchman, understood that no
countryman of his own, or of any other country, could
compete with Lessing in the erudition demanded for the
office in question. He told the king, who expressed his
distrust of the Germans and his preference for the
French, that if he would not take a German he must
go without a sufficient man for the office, inasmuch as
thorough scholars like Lessing were no longer to be
found among the French or other nations. His indis-
creet zeal ruined his cause. The king persisted in depre-

LESSING. 149

elating the Grermans, and extolled the superior learning
of the Benedictines of St. Maur. Lessing he would not
have, but imported a librarian from Paris, one Pernety,
who proved — as Wilken, historian of the library of Ber-
lin, relates — entirely incompetent for the work required ;
moreover, he was addicted to all sorts of superstitions,
alchemy, and ghost-seeing, and finally resigned his post
because some preacher had prophesied the coming end
of the world, a catastrophe which was to begin in the
province of Brandenburg. He returned to France in
1783, and there, in the words of Stahr, he did indeed
behold the destruction of a world, although of a very
different one from that intended by the prophet.

This was one of the frequent, swift-succeeding disap-
pointments which made the life of Lessing a prolonged
tragedy. In spite of philosophy, there is such a thing as
luck, and the want of it. The inequalities of fortune are
never more glaring, and never more perplexing, than
when great gifts and extraordinary merit can find no
place and no remunerative work, while mediocrity occu-
pies important posts with unprofitable service. In such
cases the law of compensation hides itself, and our only
defence against doubt of divine rule is the faith that
somewhere and somehow the balance is made even,
or at least that scanty having is repaired by superior
being.

The best of Lessing's contemporaries — men like Wie-
land,Gleim, Mendelssohn, Kleist — were with him and for
him ; but they were few and without means. They could
do nothing for him but recommend him for offices which
he never obtained. On the other hand, the mediocre
men, whose prejudices he did not share, whose traditions
he could not follow, were against him. For them it was

150 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

enough that he was a genius. Genius is the one thing
that mediocrity can never forgive.

Among the other tragedies of Lessing's life was the
loss of a beloved wife in the second or third year of their
marriage, after a betrothal of six forlorn years, in which
poverty and other troubles had delayed their union. She
died after giving birth to a child, — a birth which required
the use of surgical instruments. The child breathed but
twenty-four hours ; the mother followed in two or three
days. The union, while it lasted, had been one of singu-
lar fitness and mutual delight. It had given Lessing the
one gleam of sunshine, the one green spot, in a life of
storm and woe. Soon after the death of his child, while
his wife lay senseless, he wrote to his friend Eschenburg,
with that ghastly wit which extreme grief will sometimes
wring from the soul, —

" My joy was brief, and I was sorry to lose him, this son of
mine ; he had so much sense ! Oh, so much sense ! Do not
think that the few hours of my paternity have made me such
an ape of a father. I know what I am talking about. Was it
not a proof of his sense that they were obliged to drag him into
the world with a forceps ; that he so soon became disgusted with
his new abode ? Was it not a proof of sense that he seized the
first opportunity to be off again ? I had wished just for once
to have some comfort like other people, but it has turned out
badly for me."

Hegel, commenting on this calamity, says : —

" Should we not think that if one could foresee such a des-
tiny, he would choose an earlier death than Nature intended ?
Undoubtedly Lessing would have greatly preferred an earlier
death ; he was weary enough of the burden of life, but he
would not anticipate the end. ' I set my teeth,' he said, ' and
let the boat drift at the mercy of the winds and waves. Enough
that I will not of myself capsize it.' '*

LESSING. 151

It was in the midst of this affliction that the bigot
Gotze, a Hamburg divine, assailed Lessing with coarse
invective, and even invoked against him the wrath of
the secular power for having published some fragments
found in the Wolfenbiittel library which were thought
to war against the Christian religion. Duty to himself,
and to what he considered the cause of spiritual freedom,
constrained him to gird up his soul for this new contro-
versy ; and in dealing with Gotze, whom his satire has
damned to everlasting fame, and in the composition of
" Nathan the Wise," the crown of his literary labors, he
found an anodyne, if not the cure, for his woes. He had
not long to wait for that cure, complete and final. Three
years after the death of his wife, in 1781, in his fifty-
third year, he laid down the life which had brought so
much labor and sorrow to himself, and borne such im-
perishable fruit to the world.

Lessing's death was a shock to all his literary friends,
who were hoping from the pen that had given so much still
better things to come. But the loss of his wife and child,
though it could not arrest his literary labors, had dried
the springs of his animal life and wrought in the man
of fifty a premature decline. He died so poor that the
Duke of Brunswick, in whose service he had labored, was
compelled to defray the expenses of his burial. So ended
the slow tragedy of that baffled, broken, blasted life. To
the everlasting shame of the princes of his day and coun-
try, it stands recorded — a record which no subsequent
honors awarded to his memory can efface — that the
foremost scholar of the eighteenth century died a pau-
per. When in after years it was proposed to erect a
monument to his name, so completely had all knowledge
of the resting-place of his remains passed away, that

152 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Dr. Schiller with difficulty succeeded in finding, " hidden
among weeds and briers, a little headstone which, cleared
of earth and moss, revealed the name of Lessing." The-
ological hatred pursued him beyond the bier. In Ham-
burg the censors of the press forbade the newspapers to
print any tribute to his memory. But the best intellects
in Germany bewailed his loss with grief unfeigned. It
was felt that life and strength had gone out with his
death ; and the oldest poet then living wrote : —

" Him have we lost who was our greatest pride,
Him who abroad had won our nation fame.
God said, Let there be light, and Leibnitz came ;
God said, Let darkness be, and Lessing died."

Mendelssohn, his life-long friend, wrote to his brother,
Karl Lessing : —

" All things considered, your brother, my friend, departed at
just the right time. At the right time not only in relation to
the plan of the universe, — for in that relation nothing is un-
timely, — but also at the right time in relation to this our
sphere, which has scarcely a span's breadth. Fontenelle says
of Copernicus, ' He made known his new system, and died.'
The biographer of your brother will be able to say, ' He wrote
" Nathan the Wise," and died.' I can form no conception of a
work which should be as much superior to * Nathan the Wise *
as that is superior in my view to everything else that Lessing
wrote. He could mount no higher without entering a region
where he would be lost to our sight. This he has done. And
we, like the disciples of the Prophet, stand and gaze at the spot
where he ascended and disappeared. A few weeks before his
death I had occasion to write to him, and I said that he must
not be surprised if the great mass of his readers should fail to
recognize the merits of that work, and that a better generation
fifty years after his death would find enough to do to chew and

LESSING. 153

digest it. Indeed, he had outstripped his age by more than one
generation."

The writings of Lessing may be classed under four
heads, — Critical, Poetical, Theological, and Biblio-
graphical.

Of the critical, the most important are the " Laocoon "
and the " Hamburgische Dramaturgic " (criticisms of
dramatic writers). Under the poetical I include, to-
gether with the smaller poems, the plays and the fables.
The larger part, and the best part, of the fables are
prose compositions, as indeed are the plays, with the
exception of " Nathan the Wise." But being works of
art, — artistic fictions, — I do not hesitate to rank them
as poetry. The author excuses the want of metrical
form in the introductory fable.

The theological writings are partly controversial,
called forth by the publication of the so-called " Wolf-
enblittel Fragments," works of a deistical character, by
an anonymous author ; partly dissertations suggested
by those Fragments, and partly they consist of mis-
cellaneous essays, such as the " Christianity of Reason "
and the " Education of the Human Race," — which, brief
as they are, contain the germs, as I have said, and were
the pioneers of the more advanced theology of recent
time.

The class which I have designated bibliographical
embraces all that is not included in the other three, —
results of life-long studies, researches, and discoveries
among the treasures of the Wolfenbtittel Library, of
which the author was custodian. One curious volume
bears the title, " Rettungen," — literally " Rescues," —
vindications of writers from imputations and reproaches
which have long attached to their name.

154 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

Never, perhaps, in the history of literature has a
writer, by mere expression of opinion, by simple judg-
ment of other's doings, independently of his own crea-
tions, exerted such influence as Lessing. Whatever the
merits of his dramatic and other original compositions,
it was mainly by his critical writings that he became the
power he was and is in the world of letters. Lord Macau-
lay pronounced him beyond dispute the best critic that
Europe has produced. And what was true in relation to
the writers of the eighteenth century, whom Macaulay
had in mind, is equally true in relation to the writers of
the nineteenth. In the hundred years that have elapsed
since Lessing's death, there has arisen no one to dispute
his supremacy in that line. In accordance with that
character, the most pronounced faculty in his mental
composition was the power of discrimination, the judg-
ing power, — Urtheilskraft.

It is noticeable in this connection that Lessing was
the first of continental critics to claim for Shakspeare
that supreme rank among poets which the universal
voice now accords to him. Scarcely, indeed, had any
English writer then ventured to speak of him with
eulogy so unqualified. By a curious coincidence. Dr.
Johnson and Lessing, each in his own country the
foremost litterateur of his day, were writing about
Shakspeare at the same time, in 1768, — Lessing, in
his dramatic criticisms at Hamburg, in which he re-
peatedly refers to the great master, and Johnson, in his
well-known Preface to his edition of Shakspeare's works,
in which he strangely affirms, intending it for praise,
that while '' in the writings of other poets a character is
often an individual, in those of Shakspeare it is com-
monly a species." Pope, with far deeper discernment.

LESSING. 155

wrote, that Shakspeare's characters were nearly all in-
dividuals. Johnson has many deductions to make from
the merit of his subject ; but he does say, grandly, that
"the stream of Time, which is continually washing
the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without in-
jury by the adamant of Shakspeare." Lessing, who
had previously declared that of all poets since Homer,
Shakspeare was the one who had looked human nature
through and through, takes occasion to say, in his cri-
tique of Weisse's " Richard III.," whose author dis-
claimed having plagiarized Shakspeare, that such dis-
claimer presupposes that Shakspeare can be plagiarized.
" But what was said of Homer — that you might sooner
deprive Hercules of his club than take a single line from
the Iliad or the Odyssey — is especially applicable to
Shakspeare : on the meanest of his beauties a mark is
set, which proclaims to the world, ' I am Shakspeare's ; '
and woe to any other beauty that would dare to appear
beside it ! "

Lessing had a talent for satire, which he seldom in-
dulges, and which, when indulged, is not of the bitter
but the playful sort, as in his controversy with Gotze,
whose ignorance and blunders he exposes with a half
compassionate raillery. This satirical propensity is
more conspicuous in his earlier efforts ; it inspired
many of his fugitive poems, and appears occasionally
in his fables. To appreciate the following morceau^ it
must be borne in mind how largely German literature,
mistrusting its own vocation, occupied itself with imi-
tation of foreign models : —

" Said the ape to the fox, * Name to me an animal so clever
that I cannot imitate.' The fox answered, ' Name to me an

156 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

animal so insignificant that would think of imitating you.'
Writers of my country, need I express myself more plainly ? "

A more questionable sarcasm is embodied in the Fable
of the Furies : —

" Said Pluto to the messenger of the gods, ' My Furies are
getting old and dull ; I must have a fresh supply. Go, then,
Mercury, and procure for me in the upper world three doughty
women for that office.' Mercury went. Shortly after, Juno
said to her handmaid, 'Do you think. Iris, that you could find
for me, among the race of mortals, three perfectly strict and
chaste maidens ? But perfectly strict they must be, you under-
stand. I wish to throw scorn on Cythera, who boasts that she
has the whole sex in subjection. Go and see if you can find
them.' Iris went. In what corner of the earth did she not
search ; but all in vain. She returned unattended. Juno met
her with the exclamation, ' Is it possible ? O chastity ! O
virtue ! ' ' Goddess,' said Iris, ' I might have brought you three
maidens who were all perfectly strict and chaste ; the three had
never smiled upon a man ; all three had stifled every spark
of love in their hearts ; but, unfortunately, I came too late.'
' Too late ! ' quoth Juno, ' how so ? ' ' Mercury had just got
hold of them for Pluto.' * For Pluto ! And what does Pluto
want of these virtuous maidens ? ' * He wants them for
Furies.' "

Lessing's fables bear the stamp of his peculiar genius.
Even here the critic predominates. They are more epi-
grammatic, less didactic, less historic than those of
other fabulists. There is in them less of observation
and more of reflection than in most compositions of the
kind. In most fables the story seems to have been first
conceived, and the moral to be a reflection upon it. In
those of Lessing the story is more obviously invented to
illustrate a foregone thought. One or two specimens
may serve as examples : —

LESSING. 157

THE WASPS.

Corruption had befallen the noble structure of a war-horse
which had been shot beneath his rider. Ever-working Nature
employs the ruins of one being for the life of another. And
so a swarm of young wasps arose from the carrion. " Oh,"
cried the wasps, " how divine is our origin ! The magnificent
horse, the favorite of Neptune, is our progenitor." The ob-
servant fabulist heard this strange boast, and it reminded him
of the modern Italians, whose conceit it is that they are noth-
ing less than descendants of the old immortal Romans, because
they were born among their graves.

THE WOLF ON HIS DEATH-BED.

The wolf lay at the last gasp, and cast a searching look on
his past life. " It is true I am a sinner," he said, " but I trust
not one of the worst. I have been guilty of some wrong acts,
but I have also done many good ones. I remember how once
a bleating lamb, that had strayed from the flock, came so near
to me that I might have throttled it ; but I did not harm it.
At the same time I heard, with the most astonishing indiffer-
ence, the mocking taunts of a sheep, although I had nothing to
fear from protecting dogs." " I can testify to all that," said
his friend, the fox, who was helping him prepare for death ; " I
remember all the circumstances of the case : it was when you
were choking so horribly with that bone which afterward the
good-natured crane extracted from your throat."

THE BLIND HEN.

A hen, which had become blind, being accustomed to scratch
for food, continued the operation after the loss of her sight.
What did it avail the industrious fool ? Another hen, who had
the use of her eyes, and wished to spare her tender feet, kept
close to her side, and had all the benefit of the scratching. As
often as the blind hen turned up a corn, the seeing one de-
voured it. The industrious German collects the materials
which the witty Frenchman uses.

158 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Lessing was too thorough a critic, and too wise and
modest a man, not to be able to criticise himself. With
the same measure with which he meted to others, he
could measure his own writings and pronounce upon
their worth. In the exercise of this self-criticism he
disclaimed for himself the title of poet. He says : —

"It is true, men have sometimes done me the honor to rank
me in that class ; but they have misconceived me. ... I do not
feel springing within me the living fountain which struggles
forth of its own force, and by its own force shoots up in rich,
fresh, and pure streams. I have to squeeze everything out of
myself by pressure and pipes. ... I have therefore always been
shamed or vexed when I have heard or read anything in dis-
praise of criticism. It has been said to stifle genius, and I had
flattered myself that I had derived from it something which
approaches very near to genius."

It is certainly true that Lessing lacks some of the
qualities which we are accustomed to associate with the
name of poet ; and if these be rigorously insisted on as
indispensable to constitute a member of the craft, he can
hardly be said to come within the line which separates
poetry from prose. The understanding is disproportion-
ately active in him ; passion is weak ; of fancy, of poetic
feeling, there is almost nothing. He is no singer, and
no orator ; he seems to have no perception of the charm
of rhythm or of eloquence. There is not in all his writ-
ings what might be called a melodious strain or a stirring
speech ; no glow, and no sweetness. With the excep-
tion of some passages of enlivening wit, all is cold, hard,
dry. We have the frame-work of a poem, the bony
structure, with too little filling of flesh and blood. But,
on the other hand, if the power of literary invention, of
pure creation, — if the faculty of apt characterization,

LESSING. 159

founded on correct observation of human life ; if the
production of a work of fiction, a rounded whole, in
which the parts are nicely adjusted, the characters nat-
ural, the plot well contrived, and which, after the lapse
of a century, still holds its place in the admiration of the
reader, — if these things entitle a man to be called a
poet ; if a poet be defined according to the literal mean-
ing of the word, a maker, — then surely Lessing may
rank as such.

German literature is indebted to him for some of its
best dramatic works. His " Minna von Barnhelm "
struck out a new path in the line of local comedy, and
exerted a marked influence on the mind of the period
when it appeared.

A work of far greater importance, one of the choice
gems of modern dramatic art, is his " Emilia Galotti,"
a tragedy which is still a favorite on the German stage.
This play is remarkable for the simplicity of its plot, the
close connection of all its parts, its apt characterizations,
and the onward sweep and cumulative force of its action,
which occupies but a few consecutive hours. The catas-
trophe is borrowed from the story of the Roman com-
moner who slays his daughter to save her from the
clutches of a licentious noble. But here the resemblance
ends. All the circumstances are different ; in this case
the father but follows the suggestion and executes the
will of his victim.

An Italian prince, sovereign of a petty realm, at a
time when princes possessed unlimited, irresponsible
power, falls in love with a young maiden, Emilia, daugh-
ter of Odoardo Galotti. The new passion deprives his
mistress, the Countess Orsina, of the place she has held
in his affections ; a letter from her requesting an inter-

160 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

view at his villa in Dosalo remains unread. He learns
that Emilia is betrothed to Count Appiani, and that the
very day on which the action of the play begins is to be
their wedding-day. His confidant, Marinelli, the un-
scrupulous pander to his vices, suggests to him the pos-
sibility of preventing the marriage and getting possession
of the bride. The prince empowers him to take such
measures as he may deem needful to accomplish this
end. Accordingly, Marinelli engages a bravo with his
accomplices to attack the carriage which is to convey
Appiani, Emilia, and her mother to the wedding, as it
passes Dosalo, the country residence of the prince. The
father, Odoardo, is to come later on horseback. The
attack is made. Appiani, against whom Marinelli has
a personal grudge, is killed. The mother and daughter,
supposing the assailants to be robbers, seek refuge in the
nearest dwelling, not knowing it to be the castle of the
prince, who has thus, as he imagines, secured his victim.
The carriage with the body of Appiani returns to the
city. Odoardo, who was to follow after, hears of the
catastrophe, and, without suspecting its author and mo-
tive, spurs on to the castle in quest of his wife and
daughter. There, before he is admitted to their pres-
ence, he encounters the Countess Orsina, who has come
to Dosalo expecting the interview with the prince which
she had requested in her unopened letter, and has learned
from Marinelli what has happened. Her jealousy sus-
pects a rival in Emilia, and puts the right interpretation
on the slaughter of Appiani and the capture of the bride.
Slie imparts her suspicion to Odoardo, who secretly pre-
pares himself for the worst. The prince meets him with
great affability and a show of warm sympathy, affects to
condole with him, and regrets the pretended necessity

LESSING. 161

of detaining Emilia as a witness in the trial by which
the murder of Appiani is to be investigated and avenged.
The mother had already returned to the city in company
with the Orsina, at Odoardo's request, and was to send
a carriage for her daughter. The father sees through
the plot, — a devilish device of Marinelli, — but restrains
himself and requests a private interview with his daugh-
ter, which is accorded to him. The meeting between
parent and child is one of deep sorrow, but awakens in
both stern resolve. Both are convinced of the hopeless-
ness of her position, of the impossibility of escaping the
machinations of the prince and his pander. At last
Emilia reminds Odoardo of the story of Yirginius, and
regrets in a tone of reproach that such fathers are no
longer to be found in the world. Odoardo assures her
that the race is not extinct, and plunges his dagger in
her breast.

One of the best drawn characters in the play is the
Countess Orsina, the former mistress of the prince. She
had written to him to meet her at Dosalo, but the prince,
possessed by his new passion, has lost his interest in her,
and has not even read her letter. She comes to Dosalo,
expecting an interview with her lover, and is met in an
antechamber by Marinelli. She is about to pass on,
when Marinelli stops her.

Mar. (holding her back). Whither would you, my lady ?

Ors. Where I ought to have been long since. Do you think
it is proper for me to be bandying words with you in the ante-
chamber, while the Prince expects me in yonder apartment ?

Mar. You are mistaken, my lady. The Prince does not ex-
pect you. He cannot ; he will not meet you here.

Ors. And yet he is here, — here in consequence of my
letter ?

Mar. Not in consequence of your letter.

11

162 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Ors. You say he received it.

Mar. Received, but did not read it.

Ors. (with vehemence). Did not read it? {More gently.) Did
not even read it ?

Mar. I am sure it was from absent-mindedness, not from
contempt.

Ors. Qiaughtily). Contempt ! Who supposes that ? To
whom do you find it necessary to say that ? You are an im-
pudent comforter, Marinelli ! Contempt ! Am I a person to
be despised ? {In milder tones, with a touch of sadness.) It is
true, he no longer loves me. That is decided. And in the
place of love there came into his soul something else. That is
natural. But why must it be contempt ? It need only be in-
difference. Is it not so, Marinelli ?

Mar. Certainly! certainly!

Ors. {mockingly). Certainly ? Oh, the wise man whom one
can make say what one will ! Indifference ! Indifference in
the place of love. That is, nothing in the place of something.
For you shall know, you mimicking little courtier, — you shall
learn from a woman, — that indifference is an empty word, a
mere sound, to which nothing answers. The soul is indifferent
only to that which is not in its thought, — only to that which
is nothing to it. And to be indifferent only to a thing which is
no thing is the same as not being indifferent at all. Am I too
high for you, man ?

Mar. Who does not know, my lady, that you are a phi-
losopher ?

Ors. Am I not ? Yes, yes, I am one. But now I have let
it be seen that I am one Oh, fie ! if I have let it be seen, is it
strange that the Prince despises me ? How can a man love a
thing that, in spite of him, will think ? A woman who thinks
is as disgusting as a man who paints. She must laugh, do
nothing but laugh, in order to keep the stern lord of creation
in perpetual good humor. Well, then, what shall I laugh at
in a hurry, Marinelli ? Ah, yes, at the accident of my writing
to the Prince to come to Dosalo, — at his not reading my letter,
and yet coming to Dosalo ! Ha ! ha ! Really, a curious acci-

LESSING. 163

dent ! Very funny ! very droll ! And you do not join in my
laugh, Marinelli ? Surely, the stern lords of creation may laugh
with us, though we must not think with them. (Serious and
commanding.) Laugh, I tell you !

Mar. Presently, my lady, presently.

Ors. Blockhead ! And meanwhile the opportunity slips by.
No, do not laugh. For look you, Marinelli, what makes me
laugh so heartily has also its grave, very grave side, like
everything else in the world. Accident I Did I say it was
an accident that the Prince did not think of meeting me here,
and yet is forced to meet me ? Believe me, Marinelli, the word
accident is blasphemy ! Nothing under the sun is accidental, —
least of all that of which the design is so apparent. Almighty,
all-merciful Providence, forgive me, that to this foolish sinner
I called that an accident which is so evidently thy work !
(Impatiently to Marinelli.) Take care how you tempt me
again to such wickedness.

[ The Prince enters ; he crosses the hall without stopping,
saying, as he passes,']

Prince. See there, our fair Countess ! How sorry I am,
Madame, that I cannot avail myself, to-day, of the honor of
your visit. I am busy ; I am not alone. Another time, my
dear Countess, another time. At present, do not stop, — do
not wait, on no account. And you, Marinelli, I am expecting
you. [^£Jxit.

Mar. There, my lady, you have it from his own lips what
you would not take from mine. . . .

Ors. Busy ! Not alone ! Is that all the apology I am
thought worthy of ? Whom does one not dismiss with such
excuses ? Any bore, any beggar. No additional lie for me ?
Not one little lie more for me ? Busy ! — about what ? Not
alone ! — who is with him ? Come, Marinelli, for pity, dear
Marinelli, tell me a lie on your own account ! A lie, you
know, costs you nothing. What is his business ? Who is with
him ? Tell me ; say the first thing that comes into your
mouth, and I will go.

164 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Marinelli then tells her that Count Appiani, who as
she has heard has been shot by robbers, was to have
been married that day to Emilia Galotti, then present
with the prince. She immediately suspects the plot,
and believes the prince to have been the real author of
the murder.

Ors. (clapping her hands). Bravo ! bravo ! I could kiss the
devjl who has tempted him to commit this deed.

Mar. Whom ? Tempted ? To what deed ?

Ors. Yes, I could kiss him, even if you were that devil your-
self, Marinelli ! Come, look me straight in the eye.

Mar. Well.

Ors. Do you not know what I think ?

Mar. How can I ?

Ors. Had you no hand in it ?

Mar. In what ?

Ors. Swear ! No, don't swear ; you might be guilty of an-
other sin. Yes, on the whole, swear away ! One sin, more or
less, for a man who is damned at any rate, — what signifies it ?
Had you no hand in it ?

Mar. You frighten me. Countess.

Ors. Eeally ? Does your good heart suspect nothing ? Well,
then, I will tell you something that shall make every hair on
your head stand up. Come here ! \^She advances her mouth to
his ear as if to whisper, but screams at the top of her voice.']
The Prince is a murderer !

Mar. Countess, are you out of your senses ?

Ors. Out of my senses ? {Laughing aloud.) Ha ! ha ! ha !
I have seldom or never been so well satisfied with my senses
as now. Depend upon it, Marinelli ; but it is between us two.
( Whispers.) The Prince is a murderer, — the murderer of
Count Appiani ! , He was not slain by robbers, but by tools of
the Prince, — by the Prince. . . .

Mar. Countess, it might cost you your head —

Ors. If I should say that to others. So much the better !
so much the better! To-morrow I will proclaim it in the

LESSING. 165

market-place. And whoever contradicts me, he was the
Prince's accomplice. Good-by !

" Nathan the Wise " is neither comedy nor tragedy in
the common acceptation, but a grand dramatic picture,
in which the interest resides not so much in the plot or
the action, as in the self -portrayal of the characters and
the truth of the sentiment, — or rather the value of the
truth they are made to illustrate. The motive is reli-
gious tolerance ; and in no other poem, in all the range of
literature, has the virtue of tolerance found such adequate
expression, such apt vindication. On the whole, though
ill-adapted to the stage, though wanting in theatrical
effect, and without the qualities which secure a wide
popularity, — such popularity as the author obtained for
his "Emilia Galotti," — "Nathan the Wise" must be
regarded as Lessing's greatest work, as it was his last ;
greatest, I mean, of his original creations. It is the one
which best represents the author's innermost self, a spirit
above all parties and sects and ecclesiastical limitations ;
believer in the one universal religion, — the religion of
love for God and man ; too wise and broad to be the
votary of any exclusive creed. It is, next to " Faust,"
the most truly German, the most thoroughly national
work. Moreover, it is the only one of Lessing's plays
in which he has adopted the metrical form. But so
slight is his perception of rhythmical beauty that noth-
ing is gained by his rugged verses. The scene of this
drama is laid in Jerusalem ; the time is the third cru-
sade, — or rather the truce between Christian and Mus-
sulman which succeeds that crusade. The principal
characters are Saladin, renowned in the history of that
age ; Nathan, a wealthy Jewish merchant ; a Knight
Templar, and the Patriarch of Jerusalem. These rep-

166 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

resent the three monotheistic religions which, previous
to our knowledge of India, were supposed to be the great
religions of the world, — Judaism, Christianity, and Ma-
hometanism. The intent is to show that names and
forms and confessions are of no importance, compared
with those fruits of the Spirit, those moral graces,
which constitute the sole criterion of a true religion.
In accordance with this design, the Christian ecclesi-
astic is represented, as in that age he was likely to be,
the least Christian of the three, — bigoted, ambitious,
relentless, cruel. The Mahometan sovereign is a man
of large and liberal views ; and the despised Jew, com-
passionate, tolerant, humane, — the real Christian, as
the lay-brother, when he hears the story of his wrongs
and good deeds, confesses : " Nathan, you are a Chris-
tian ; a better Christian never was." A party of Chris-
tian fanatics had massacred his wife and seven sons ;
but he had, nevertheless, adopted a Christian orphan,
thrown upon his mercy, and brought her up as his own
child. The bigoted patriarch, hearing of this, would
have him burned at the stake, because the girl had not
been reared in the Christian faith. At the close of the
piece her parentage comes to light ; her mother was a
Christian, but her father was Saladin's brother, and her
lover, the Templar, turns out to be her own brother.

A story from Boccaccio, which suggested the drama,
is inwoven in the course of the action. The Sultan,
thinking to entrap Nathan, demands of him which of
the three religions — the Jewish, the Mahometan, or
the Christian — he regards as the true one. Nathan,
divining his purpose, begs time for consideration. Hav-
ing debated the matter with himself, he answers Sala-
din's question with the story of the three rings.

LESSING. 167

Nathan. An eastern monarch, in ancient time, possessed a
ring of inestimable value, wliich had the property of making
the wearer, who wore it with that faith, beloved of God and
man. This ring he bequeathed to his favorite son, with the
provision that he should leave it again to his favorite ; and that
thus it should descend from sire to son, and that in each gener-
ation the son who inherited the ring should be the prince of the
house. Agreeably to this provision, the ring came at last into
the hands of a father of three sons, of whom each was equally
dear to him ; and to each of whom, separately, unknown to the
other two, he had weakly promised the ring and the succession.
That he might not seem to either of the sons false to his prom-
ise, he had employed a skilful jeweller to make two fac-similes
of the hereditary ring ; and so perfect was the workmanship
that these spurious rings were not distinguishable, even by the
father himself, from the true one. On his death-bed he sum-
mons privately each of his sons, one after the other, and delivers
to him one of the rings, as if it were the true one and carried the
succession. Scarcely was the father dead when each of the sons
comes forward with his ring, and each claims to be chief of the
house. Investigations are made : they quarrel, they prosecute,
in vain ; the true ring is undemonstrable {after a pause, in
which he awaits the Sultan's answer), — almost as undemon-
strable as for us at present the true faith.

Saladin. How? Is that to be the answer to my ques-
tion?

Nathan. It is only to excuse me if I cannot trust myself to
distinguish the rings which the father made with the design
that they should not be distinguished.

Saladin. The rings! I should think that the religions I
have named to you are very distinguishable, even in respect to
dress, — even in the matter of meat and drink.

Nathan. Only not in respect of their grounds. For do they
not all ground themselves on history, written or oral ? And
history must be received on trust, must it not ? Well, then,
whose truth are we least disposed to call in question ? Surely,
the truth of those whose blood we share, who from our child-

168 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

hood have given us proofs of their love, — who have never
deceived us except for our good.

Saladin {aside). By the Living ! the man is right. I am
silenced.

Nathan. Let us return to our rings. As I said, the sons
prosecuted. Each swore to the judge that he had received the
ring directly from the hand of his father. . . . Each assevered
that his father could not have been false. Rather than suspect
that of such a dear father, he must accuse his brothers of
treachery, although he was disposed to believe all that is best
of them ; and he would find means to convict the traitors and
to be revenged on them.

Saladin. Well — and the judge ? I am anxious to hear
what you will make the judge say. Speak !

Nathan. The judge said, " If you do not quickly summon
your father, I shall dismiss you from my tribunal. Do you
think I am here to solve riddles ? Or do you wait for the true
ring to open its mouth ? But, hold ! I hear that the true ring
possesses the magic power to make one beloved of God and
man. That must decide. . . . My advice to you is that you
take the matter exactly as it lies. If each of you has received
his ring from his father, let each believe his ring to be the true
one. It is possible that the father meant to suffer no longer
the tyranny of the one ring in his house. Certain it is that he
loved all three of you, and loved you equally, since he would
not oppress two in order to favor one. Well, then, let each of
you, for his own part, be zealous of an unbribed, free, unpreju-
diced love. Let each compete with the others in demonstrating
the virtue of the stone in his own ring, and illustrate that virtue
with gentleness, with hearty concord, with beneficence, with
fervent devotion to his will. And then, if the virtues of these
stones shall manifest themselves in your children's children's
children, I will summon you again a thousand times 'thousand
years hence before this tribunal. Then a wiser than I will sit
on this judgment-seat and pronounce sentence. Go ! " So
spake the modest judge. . . . Saladin, if you feel yourself to
be this promised wiser man —

LESSING, 169

Saladin {rushing towards him and seizing his hand, which
he holds to the end of the scene). I, who am dust ! I, who am
nothing ! Nathan, dear Nathan, the thousand times thousand
years of your judge have not yet expired. His tribunal is not
mine. Go ! go ! but be my friend.

Lessing did not live to see the crowning work of his
genius brought upon the stage. It was not until two
years after his death that the first representation was
hazarded in Berlin, and then with small success on ac-
count of the incompetence of the actors. Twenty years
later it was brought forward under better auspices b\^
Goethe and Schiller in Weimar, and by Iffland in Ber-
lin. Since then, though apparently ill adapted as I have
said for scenic representation, it has been performed on
nearly every stage in Germany. Says Stahr : —

'• In our days, the almost incredible event has happened that
Lessing's ' Nathan,' in a Greek translation, with the title of
* The Wise Old Jew,' has been brought by Greek actors on the
stage at Constantinople. i At the first representation but few
Turks were present, mostly police officers. When the piece
was repeated on the following day, the Turkish public pre-
ponderated. Their attention and interest were extraordinary.
Many times they seemed disposed to receive Nathan's frankness
before the throne of Saladin with less magnanimity than did
the Sultan himself. But the story of the three rings was re-
ceived with unexampled enthusiasm; and at its close there
broke forth a round of applause in which the most reserved
' lights of the harem joined with eager satisfaction.' "

" Nathan the Wise " was the last work of Lessing
which can be considered as belonging to the department
of general literature. His "Education of the Human

^ The translator was Kaliourchos, a Greek, who had studied in
Germany.

170 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Race," which succeeded it, — a treatise whose influence
on the progress of enlightened thought it is impossible
to overestimate, — closes his literary labors. It was
his last testament to his nation, and contains, in a few
pages, the substance of his philosophy of religion. The
closing words have a special significance, as indicating
the future contemplated by the wTiter, whose end was
at hand : —

" Why should I not come again as often as I am fitted to
acquire new knowledge and new faculties ? Do I carry away so
much that it would not be worth the while to come again ? Or
because I forget that I have been here before ? 'T is well that
I do forget ; the memory of former lives would impede the best
use of the present. And what I must forget now, is it forgotten
forever ? Or because I shall have lost too much time ? Lost ?
What have I to neglect ? Is not all eternity mine ? "

MENDELSSOHN. 171

CHAPTER XI.

MENDELSSOHN.

CLOSELY connected with the name of Lessing, in the
literary annals of his day, was that of his friend
and co-worker Mendelssohn, — a name more familiar
to us in its musical than in its literary sense.

Moses Mendelssohn, grandfather of Felix the great
composer, was born in Dessau in 1729. Lessing's junior
by only eight months ; a philosopher in the truest, the
original, etymological sense of the word, a veritable
lover of wisdom, — in any country but Germany he would
be counted great in that line. But because he gave only
the results of his speculations, and gave them in a clear,
intelligible, popular form without technical gibberish ;
and also, it must be confessed, because he did not dis-
cuss the deeper, insoluble problems of the mind, — he
does not rank with metaphysicians of the first class, the
great, transcendental lords whom we all glorify, whom
a few read, whom some understand, or think they do,
which answers the same purpose. He gives us the fin-
ished product without the machinery which Goethe satir-
izes through the mouth of Mephistophiles : —

" Then the philosopher steps in
And shows that it could not have otherwise been ;
The first was so, the second so, —
Therefore the third and fourth are so.
Were not the first and second, then
The third and fourth could never have been."

172 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Mendelssohn, in short, was a metaphysician without
the jargon of the schools. He obtained from the Berlin
Academy the first prize (Kant being his competitor) for
his essay on the Nature of Evidence in Metaphysical
Science. Kant's essay, Hettner thinks, was by far the
deeper of the two, but the judges could not understand it,
— which is very likely. The Academy were so pleased
with Mendelssohn's essay that they wanted to make him
a member ; but Frederick the Great, to whose approval
the candidates for that honor must be submitted, would
have no Jew in his Academy. We may be sure that
Frederick was actuated by no religious scruples in this
matter ; he had quite other reasons of his own for his
hostility to the Jews.

Mendelssohn was a Jew, — a German by country, but
not a German by nation. German proper, as spoken by
Christian Germans, was not his native tongue. He
might have picked up something of it through the ear,
but to read it and to write it he had to learn it as a
foreign language, — and to learn it by stealth. For so
obstinate was the bigotry of the stricter Jews of his day,
so inveterate their hatred of their Christian persecutors,
that as late as 1746 the synagogue at Berlin expelled a
Jew boy from the city for being detected in carrying a
German book through the streets on one of his errands.

Mendelssohn's father, Mendel, was a scribe of the
synagogue, whose business it was to make copies of the
Thora, or Law, and to teach Jewish children their reli-
gion. The boy was precocious, and developed extraor-
dinary mental capacity, which so stimulated the father's
ambition that not content with the progress his child
was already making he urged him on, to the permanent
detriment of his physical well-being. His growth was

MENDELSSOHN, 173

stunted, and a spinal disease, caused by the overworking
of his brain, deformed him for life.

Nothing in the history of literary men is more inter-
esting and more instructive than the pursuit of knowl-
edge under difficulties, — the struggle with poverty and
social disadvantage, from which great scholars have
issued victorious and won for themselves enduring fame.
At the age of fourteen this Jew-boy, a puny, diminutive
hunchback, impelled by thirst for knowledge, found his
way to Berlin, where his teacher, Frankel, having been
called to the office of chief Rabbi of the synagogue in
that city, had preceded him. For several years his only
means of support was a small pittance which he received
as a copyist in the service of Frankel. A small room in
a garret he occupied free of cost ; he subsisted for the
most part on dry bread, and has left it on record that
he marked with lines on his loaf the portion to be con-
sumed each day, so as not to trench on the day following.
All this time he continued his studies, and had the cour-
age — it required a good deal — to break through the
restraints imposed by the Jewish authorities, and to
make himself acquainted with Christian literature. Un-
assisted, with great difficulty, he learned Latin. A con-
trolling love of philosophy led him to study a Latin
translation of Locke's " Essay on the Understanding,"
laboriously looking out the words in a dictionary until
he had mastered a sentence, and then pausing to con-
sider its import. He then went to work upon Cicero,
and acquired some knowledge of the ancient schools of
philosophy, — the Academy, the Stoics, and Epicureans.
And now he was so fortunate as to make the acquaint-
ance of a fellow Jew, Aaron Gumperz, with whose assist-
ance he mastered French and English, and enlarged his

174 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

intercourse with modern philosophy. Material advan-
tage, as well as moral, resulted from this acquaintance.
It introduced him to the knowledge of a rich silk manu-
facturer, Bernhard, who received him into his family as
private tutor to his children, and afterward made him
his book-keeper and foreign correspondent. Mendelssohn
finally became a partner in the business. There was an
end of all pecuniary trouble.

In 1754 there befell him a stroke of good fortune,
scarcely less important than the patronage of Bernhard.
He made the acquaintance of Lessing. They were both
of the same age ; they met, and soon formed an attach-
ment which lasted for life. The acquaintance had its
origin in Lessing's passion for the game of chess. Read-
ers of " Nathan the Wise " — whose hero, by the way,
was suggested by Mendelssohn — will remember the
prominence given to chess in that drama. Lessing, then
resident in Berlin, was wont to seek relief from his lite-
rary labors in that most intellectual of all games ; and
Gumperz, the friend of both, recommended Mendels-
sohn as a match for him. From adversaries in sport,
they became friends in earnest. The benefit which the
Jew, athirst for knowledge, derived from intercourse
with the thoroughly educated scholar, the most cultured
man of his time, was immense. He was put upon the
right track ; to passionate endeavor was added method
and direction. Lessing, on his part, discerned in Men-
delssohn all the promise of his future career, and wrote
to Michaelis, at Gottingen, concerning him, —

" He is actually a Jew ; a man of some twenty odd years,
who, without any instruction, has made great attainments in
languages, in mathematics, in philosophy, and poetry. I fore-
see that he may become the glory of his people, if his co-

MENDELSSOHN. 175

religionists, whom, unhappily, a persecuting spirit has always
impelled to make war on such characters, will suffer him to
ripen. His honesty and his philosophical turn of mind fore-
shadow a second Spinoza without the errors of the first."

In the same year, through Lessing's mediation, Men-
delssohn was introduced to Nicolai, who writes : " I soon
became better acquainted with this (in the highest sense
of the word) noble and excellent man ; in a few months
we were intimate friends." Nicolai diverted his atten-
tion somewhat from metaphysical studies, and directed
it to polite literature. " I am becoming something of a
hel esprit ^^^ he wrote to Lessing, then absent from Berlin.
" Who knows but I may soon write verses ? Madame
Metaphysic must pardon me ; she maintains that friend-
ship must be founded in similarity of tastes. I find, on
the other hand, that similarity of tastes may result from
friendship." In 1755 Lessing gave Mendelssohn Shaftes-
bury's " Characteristics " to read, and asked him what
he thought of it. " It is well enough," said Mendel-
ssohn ; " but that is a kind of thing I can do also."
" Can you, indeed ? " replied Lessing ; " w^hy don't you
doit?" Some time after Mendelssohn brought him a
manuscript, which he begged him to read. " When I
have leisure," said Lessing, " I will look it over." In
several subsequent visits he waited for Lessing to give
him his judgment upon it ; but Lessing discoursed of
other things, and Mendelssohn was too modest to broach
the subject. At last, however, he plucked up courage,
and inquired after the manuscript. " Oh, your manu-
script ! Yes, really, you must excuse me ; I will attend
to it shortly. Meanwhile, take this little volume, ex-
amine it at your leisure, and tell me how you like it."
Mendelssohn opened the volume, which bore the title,

176 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

" Philosophical Conversations," and found, to his sur-
prise, that it was his own work, which Lessing had got
published without his knowledge. " Take it," said Les-
sing, " put it into your pocket, and this Mammon along
with it," — handing him the money for the copyright ;
" it may be of use to you." Thus Mendelssohn — un-
awares and prematurely, as to his own intent — came
before the public as an author. But now, the ice once
broken, the author's career once initiated, there fol-
lowed in rapid succession several publications of greater
or less value, — and in 1767 his great work, " Phaedon ;
or Concerning the Immortality of the Soul," prefaced
by an essay on the life and character of Socrates. In
1768 there followed a second edition, and in 1769 a
third. The work was translated into most of the lan-
guages of Europe. His biographer ^ says : —

*' The subject, the manner of treatment, and especially the
elegance of the style excited universal attention. The learned
world, up to that time, had known but three Jews who had
written in any other language than the Hebrew, — Maimonides,
Spinoza, and Orobio, a Jewish physician (1687). That a Jew,
then living, could write philosophical works in German, and
that in a style which in perspicuity and elegance excelled
everything that Germany had yet produced, was an entirely
new phenomenon. Thenceforth the circle of Mendelssohn's
admirers was greatly extended. The scholars of the capital
sought him out ; and no traveller, who made any pretensions
to culture, visited Berlin without endeavoring to become ac-
quainted with him."

The work was to have been dedicated to his friend
Abbt, whose conversations had suggested it. But Abbt
died June, 1767, while the sheets were going through

1 Dr. G. B. Mendelssohn.

MENDELSSOHN. 177

the press, and the Preface contains a touching tribute
to the departed, in which the author has reared a fit
monument to his memory. Mendelssohn planned his
work on the basis of the " Phaedon " of Plato, and took
Plato for his model in his treatment of the subject. He
calls it a cross between a translation and an original
essay. In addition to Plato, he avails himself of the
thoughts of the more important among the philosophers
who have handled the same question in subsequent time,
especially Plotinus, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Wolff. He
says : —

" My object is not to exhibit the grounds which the Greek
sage may have had in his day for belief in immortality, but
those which in our age, after the efforts of so many great minds
devoted to the subject, would satisfy a man like Socrates, who
must have a reason for the faith that is in him. I run the risk
of making my Socrates a disciple of Leibnitz ; but no matter, I
must have a heathen in order not to be obliged to enter on the
question of revelation."

In accordance with this design, the narrative portion
of Plato's " Phaedon " — the character of Socrates, as
it there appears, constituting the immortal charm of the
book — is faithfully preserved, while the reasonings
which Plato puts into his mouth (so unsatisfactory,
most of them, to modern thought) are replaced by ar-
guments based on modern views, and appreciable by the
modern understanding. In the Greek '' Phaedon " Soc-
rates, having given his proofs, or his reasons for believ-
ing in the immortality of the soul, launches forth into
wild speculations concerning the future abode and des-
tination of the soul, which add nothing to the value of
the work, and serve only to betray the ignorance of the
ancients concerning the physical structure of the globe.

12

178 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

All this Mendelssohn omits, and substitutes instead a
confession on the part of Socrates of his inability to
throw any light on the question of the future where-
abouts : —

" Whether the souls of the godless are to endure cold or heat,
hunger or thirst ; whether they will wallow in the Acherusian
bog ; whether they will pass the time of their purgation in the
gloom of Tartarus or the flames of Pyriphlegethon ; whether
the blessed will inhale the pure air of heaven and bask in the
splendor of dawn in a world glittering with gold and jewels, or
feed on nectar and ambrosia bosomed in eternal youth, — of all
that, my friend, I know nothing. If our poets and allegorists
know, let them give assurance thereof to others. ... As for
me, I content myself with the conviction that I shall enjoy for-
ever the Divine protection ; that in the life to come, as in
this, a holy and just Providence will rule over me, and that my
true happiness will consist in the beauty and perfection of my
mind, — temperance, justice, liberty, love, knowledge of God,
co-operation with his purposes, and devotion to his will. These
blessings await me in the future to which I hasten ; more I
need not to know in order to enter with courageous trust the
way which shall lead me thither."

By the publication of the " Phaedon " Mendelssohn
became suddenly famous, and remained for a time the
most conspicuous luminary in the literary firmament of
his country. This will not seem strange, if we consider
that native popular literature in Germany was then in
its infancy. Lessing had not yet published his more
important works. Klopstock, after the publication of
the first three cantos of the " Messiah," had gone silent
for a time. The splendid constellation of the Weimar
epoch had not yet risen. Kant's great work had not yet
stirred to its depths and fundamentally regenerated the
German mind. Mendelssohn was the hero of the hour,

MENDELSSOHN. 179

the cynosure of the waiting minds of his time. If not
profound, as judged by a later standard, he was yet
sufficiently so to satisfy the thinkers, — Kant himself
acknowledging his merit in that kind ; at the same time,
he was sufficiently vernacular and intelligible to please
the less laborious, average reader, and to give him the
comfortable feeling that he too could read philosophy
and understand it.

Next in importance to the "Phaedon" — a companion-
piece to that, discussing the proofs of Deity, as the
" Phaedon " discusses those of immortality — is the
Morgenstunden, — " Morning Hours," so-called, because
it embodies the substance of lessons in theology given
in the morning, before taking his place in the counting-
room, to his own children and other lads associated
with them. The subject for him was not merely an oc-
casion of intellectual gymnastic, — a gratification sought
in the exercise of his reasoning powers, — but an affair of
the heart, the deepest interest of his life. He says : —

" Without the conviction of this truth life has for me no rel-
ish, prosperity no joy. Without God, Providence, and Immor-
tality, . . . life below seems to me — to use a well-known and
oft misused figure — like a journey in wind and storm, without
the comforting prospect of finding shelter and rest in some
lodging when the day shall end."

His success in proving the existence of God is neither
greater nor less than that of most others who have at-
tempted the same task before and since. That is not a
truth to be established by demonstration, for the simple
reason that it lies nearer and deeper than all the facts
and considerations that may be adduced in its support.
The author builds mainly on the so-called *• ontological

180 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

argument," by which the existence of God is deduced
from the idea we have of an all-perfect Being. Exist-
ence, it is claimed, is an essential element in that idea.
We cannot conceive of an all-perfect infinite Being ex-
cept as necessarily existing ; but we do conceive of such
a Being, therefore he must exist. Kant has exposed the
fallacy of this reasoning, by which it is attempted, as he
says, to shell a fact out of a thought. Whatever force
there is in it amounts to this, — that, since the effect can-
not be greater than the cause, it is reasonable to suppose
that our idea of an all-perfect Being must come from such
a Being. In other words, the idea is best explained as an
infinite Being's revelation of himself in the finite mind.

The publication of the " Morgenstunden " was poste-
rior by ten years to that of the " Phaedon." Kant's
" Kritik " had appeared meanwhile, but the revolution
it was destined to work in philosophy was scarcely an-
ticipated. Mendelssohn knew it only by report ; and,
indeed, was too much enfeebled by disease at that time
to grapple with its terrible " all-to-nothing-crushing "
logic.

Meanwhile Mendelssohn had been delivered from the
pressure of poverty and want which weighed so heavily
on his early years. He had become a partner in the
firm in which he had served as clerk ; he had married ;
he had a home ; his income, if not very ample, was yet
sufficient to maintain him in comfort, and to enable him
to entertain the numerous friends and visitors who
sought his society. Nothing was wanting to his full
enjoyment of life but bodily health. This blessing
through life was denied him. His infirmities increased
with his years. The weakness of his digestive organs
necessitated a severe asceticism in the matter of food.

MENDELSSOHN. 181

No encratite of old could be more abstemious ; it seemed
impossible that a man in active life should subsist on so
spare a diet. Rising through the year at the hour of
five, his morning hours until ten were given to literary
labor. In the evening came friends, the social enter-
tainment ending with a supper, at which the viands and
wines set before his guests were untasted by himself.
Instead of these, a glass of sweetened water was the
limit of his indulgence.

Among Mendelssohn's other visitors, Lavater also,
passing through Berlin, paid his respects to the author
of " Phaedon." Charmed, as were all who knew him,
with the pure and noble spirit which breathed in his
conversation as well as his works, Lavater could not
forgive so good a man — so believing, so religious — for
being a Jew. Why should not a man who had all the
moral qualities which go to make a Christian be a Chris-
tian by confession ? His own Christianity, as Goethe
testifies, was apt to be aggressive, with more of zeal
than of tact. With the best intentions, but regardless
of what might be supposed to be Mendelssohn's feelings
in such a matter, he dedicated to him his translation of
Bonnet's " Inquiry into the Evidences of Christianity,"
with an open letter requesting liim to examine the book ;
if he found the argument faulty to refute it, exposing
its errors ; but if, on the other hand, he found it satis-
factory, to do what policy, as well as love of truth and
honesty required, — what Socrates would have done in
such a case, — meaning that he should forswear Juda-
ism and be baptized. Mendelssohn's son and biographer
is charitable enough to say that Lavater may have been
actuated by real kindness in this appeal, affording the
Jew a convenient occasion for improving his civil status

182 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

by becoming a Christian citizen. Whatever the intent,
the effect on Mendelssohn was very disastrous. It
placed him in the awkward dilemma, either to exas-
perate his co-religionists by repudiating the faith of his
fathers, or to scandalize orthodox Christians by seeming
to despise the claims of the Gospel. The challenge
found him physically disabled, weak, and suffering be-
yond his ordinary state. But he rallied himself to
reply in such a manner as to justify his loyalty to
Judaisin, without disrespect to the Christian faith. He
had some misgivings in view of the censorship of the
press, without whose approval no book or pamphlet in
those days could get itself published. He must seem,
of course, to prefer Judaism to Christianity, and thus
inferentially to impugn the established faith. He wrote
to the Consistory, sending some sheets of his " Eeply,"
and offering to submit the whole to their judgment. He
received an answer which attests the high esteem in
which he was held by Christian authorities : —

" Herr- Moses Mendelssohn may print his writings without
submitting them singly or collectively to the Consistory for
their judgment upon them, inasmuch as his known wisdom and
modesty are a pledge that he will write nothing which can give
public offence."

The affair attracted the general attention of the read-
ing world. Mendelssohn was allowed on all hands to
have acquitted himself with masterly skill in the deli-
cate position in which he was thus thoughtlessly placed,
while Lavater was universally blamed, — and indeed, on
reflection, blamed himself for the indiscreet zeal with
which he had invaded the sanctity of the inner life.

Scarcely less vexatious than the original invasion were

MENDELSSOHN. 183

the numerous letters with which Mendelssohn, after he
had published his " Reply," was pestered by pertina-
cious disputants, who craved explanations, and persisted
in controverting this point and that in his statement
of the grounds of his retention of his own against the
solicitation of the Christian faith. The meek, retiring
scholar, with whom it was a principle never to engage
in religious discussions with disciples of other creeds,
found himself dragged before the public, and entangled
with endless controversies on the one subject on which
of all others he desired to keep his thoughts to himself.
These annoyances, combined with bodily ails of long
standing, induced an attack of nervous prostration
which long interrupted and threatened to terminate
forever his literary career. Intellectual effort of every
kind was strictly forbidden as endangering his mental
sanity, if not his life. For six or seven years he desisted
from writing. To shut out thought, he would sometimes
employ himself in counting the tiles on the roofs of the
opposite houses. He avoided his study on the upper
floor; but happening to enter it one day, after a long
interval, he found, to his dismay, that his practical
housewife had utilized table and shelves for purposes
undreamed of in his philosophy. Jars and gallipots
mocked him from every available space ; jellies and
jams offered other nutriment than he was used to seek
in those sacred places. He shuddered ; " So it will look
here," he thought, *' after I am dead. Am I then al-
ready a ghost revisiting my old haunts ? " Sadder sen-
sations he had seldom known than those which possessed
him as he descended the stairs to the family parlor.

As a Jew and a philanthropist, Mendelssohn was in-
terested in the moral elevation of his people, whose

184 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

mind and character had suffered deep debasement from
the civil degradation to which Christian oppression had
doomed them. To this end he wrote in Hebrew for the
education of Hebrew youth. And the first work which
he pubHshed after his recovery from years of illness
was a German translation of the " Pentateuch." It was
printed in Hebrew letters for the sake of conciliating
Jewish bigotry, which condemned the use of German
books. One object at which he aimed in this publica-
tion was to convert his kinsmen in the faith to the use
of pure German in the place of the barbarous compound
of the two languages then in use, — a jargon which
Mendelssohn thought as demoralizing as it was disgust-
ing : it served to enhance and perpetuate the antago-
nism between the Jewish and the Christian citizen.
The project encountered fierce opposition on the part
of the bigoted Rabbis, who more than reciprocated the
aversion of the Christian, and who feared the weakening
of their authority from closer approximation between
the two. What the Hebrew wanted of the German was
his money, not his diction. Mendelssohn's version was
condemned, and the ban of excommunication decreed
against all who should use it. But the wise man's labor
was not lost, though he lived not to rejoice in its fruits.
Another generation adopted his counsel ; his translation
was studied, and continues to be studied, by the Jewish
youth of Germany. Their language improved, and their
manners in the same proportion. From the German of
the Bible they advanced to familiar converse with Ger-
man literature ; they took on intellectual and social pol-
ish ; and to Mendelssohn's word and work, more than
to any other cause, it is due that the German Jew has
become respectable in the eyes of his fellow-citizens.

MENDELSSOHN, 185

In 1783 he published his translation of the "Psalms ;"
and in the same yeat appeared his " Jerusalem ; or, Con-
cerning Religious Domination and Judaism," — one of his
most important productions, of which Kant writes : —

" Herr F. will tell you with what admiration for its insight,
its fineness, and its wisdom, I have read your ' Jerusalem.' I
regard the book as the harbinger of a great though slowly ap-
proaching and advancing reformation, which will affect not only
your nation but others. You have known how to give your
religion a degree of freedom of conscience which it has not been
supposed capable of, and which no other can boast."

In 1785 appeared the " Morgenstunden," of which I
have already spoken, and which, his biographer thinks,
surpasses in clearness and elegance of style all his pre-
vious writings. Soon after its publication, F. H. Jacobi
came out with his treatise on the doctrine of Spinoza, in
the form of letters addressed to Moses Mendelssohn. In
this work he maintains that Lessing, who had died some
four years previous, was a follower of Spinoza, and that
his views of religion must be interpreted in conformity
with that doctrine. By Mendelssohn, the uncompromis-
ing theist, this allegation was received as a slander on
his departed friend, which he resented with all the in-
dignation that friendship could inspire. The accusation
had been made before, and Jacobi and Mendelssohn had
already engaged in a controversy on the subject ; but this
renewal of the charge aroused in the latter a mental
agitation too great for his slender and enfeebled body.
In fact, it was the death of him. He wrote rapidly, un-
der great excitement, his vindication of the departed, in
the form of " Letters to the Friends of Lessing ; " and on
his way to the publisher with the manuscript of this his

186 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

last work he contracted a cold, from the effects of which
he died on the 4th of January, 1786. The "Letters"
appeared as a posthumous publication.

Heine, with characteristic cynicism, says of this work :

" The zeal and the defence were as laughable as they were
superfluous. Rest quiet in your grave, old Moses ! Your
Lessing, to be sure, was on the way to that dreadful error,
that pitiable calamity, — Spinozism. But the All-highest, the
Father in heaven, rescued him at the right moment by death.
Be quiet ; your Lessing was not a Spinozist, as slander would
have it. He died a good deist, like you and Nicolai and Tel-
ler, and the Universal German Library."

Mendelssohn's genius was predominantly critical. His
literary sense was exceptionally fine ; and his artistic
perceptions, as developed in the essay on the " Sublime
and Naive," so acute, that I am inclined to believe that
Lessing, the greatest of critics, may have derived some
suggestions from his Jewish friend in return for the
many he imparted to him. Such a writer cannot be
adequately represented by extracts. His merit consists
rather in the perfection of the whole than in the bril-
liancy of parts, — rather in the orderly evolution of a
theme than in striking quotable sayings.

The following specimen is taken from his minor philo-
sophical writings, and was suggested by Rousseau's then
recent defence of the so-called " State of Nature," — an
essay which obtained the prize from the Academy at
Dijon, in France : —

" When one considers what a multitude of learned societies
flourish in Europe in our day, and how they are all at work
for the extension and diffusion of the arts and sciences, one
can hardly doubt that this century is the most enlightened from
the foundation of the world. Almost every corner of France

MENDELSSOHN. 187

and Germany is rescued from oblivion by little learned guilds,
which yearly enrich our libraries with a respectable volume of
their proceedings, and attach considerable pecuniary gains to
the discovery of certain truths. People may say what they
will, the old love of truth was quite too breadless. What suc-
cess could so needy a gentlewoman as Truth then was expect
to find in a covetous world ? In our day they hang at least a
few gold-pieces round her neck, in order to lure lovers from all
quarters who shall court her favor for the sake of her coins.

" In France there is a sufficient number of such little guilds ;
and for several years past that of Dijon has attracted to itself
the attention of scholars. In the year 1750 it offered its cus-
tomary prize for an answer to the question whether the arts
and sciences have been conducive to moral improvement ? . . .
Now, suppose it had been made out that morals have not im-
proved, but rather deteriorated, we Germans would think that
we ought to concern ourselves with making our truths more
practical, with bringing knowing and doing into closer relation.
But how much better a certain citizen of Geneva has inter-
preted the meaning of said learned society ! Rousseau — that is
the name of this learned Genevan — has found out that the real
purpose of the Academy was to know whether it is better to be
an intelligent man or a fool ; that is, whether mankind act
rationally in striving after wisdom. He has written his essay
accordingly ; and, lo ! he has secured the prize.

" In answering this droll question our Genevan has done
wonders. In passionate language he has demonstrated, to the
comfort of all fools, that human beings engage in nothing so
base as when they labor to be wise ; and that every one who
detects this propensity in himself should beat his head until he
has beaten the dangerous illusion out of it. Assuredly, the
self-willed Caliph Omar, who commanded his people to heat the
public baths with the famous library of Alexandria, — that uni-
versal treasury of arts and knowledges, — was, in comparison
with our more self-willed Genevan writer, a promoter of sci-
ence. Omar despised only the wisdom of all other peoples,
and regarded the Koran and its expositors as the only books

188 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

which, by their wisdom, goodness, and piety, can make men
rational and blest. But seriously to maintain that human kind
would be happier if they had never reflected, or if they could
now prevail upon themselves to annihilate the results of their
reflections and investigations, — that beats the Arab !

" Rousseau had at heart more important objects, which he
was not willing at once to bring forward. It needed another
question proposed by the same Academy to fully loose his
tongue. That question was. What is the origin of inequality
among men, and is it founded in natural laws ? . . . This was
water to Rousseau's mill. He understood the question to mean,
whether mankind would not have acted more in conformity
with their nature if they had continued to roam the forest, and
had remained as like, each to each, as one monkey is like an-
other. Our readers will easily guess how a Rousseau, regard-
ing as he does art and science as the most direct sources of
corruption, would answer this question. In fact, he has not
shunned to heap upon the whole human race the most unheard-
of reproaches. He maintains that all civilized nations have
become corrupt through their love of society ; that the orang-
outangs and the pongos — two species of apes — are worthier
creatures than all members of society, and that the prevailing
desire to perfect themselves will pursue them from one misfor-
tune to another with no possible help for their misery.

" We will not dwell upon the method by which he endeavors
to support his singular opinion. Whoever is curious may learn
it from the lately-published translation of his treatise. On the
other hand, it is time to place before our readers the following
communication sent us by our Swiss correspondent. ...

" * Gentlemen, — You desire to know how the essay of Herr
Rousseau, concerning the inequality among men, has been received
in our Republic.

" ' No sooner had the essay been given to the public than we
heard in all the coffee-houses, in all assemblies, and even not sel-

MENDELSSOHN. 189

dom in the council chamber, hot disputes, pro and con^ concerning
social life. Some even went further than Rousseau himself. Pen-
etrated with tender compassion for our misery, they are far from
thinking that we are past help. They held, on the contrary, that
it is still possible to restore the desired original state of man,
and to change this valley of tears to a blessed paradise. It could
be done by abolishing the cursed meum and tuum, dissolving social
connections, and driving men back into the wilderness which, to
their hurt, they have forsaken. "Look around you," they were
often heard to say, "beloved fellow-citizens; see what evil and
misery those hateful names — Society, Property, Inequality of
Rank — have wrought among the inhabitants of the earth. High-
waymen, parasites, sycophants, thieves, misers, insatiable usurers,
are the consequences of property. Incest, adultery, jealousy, lov-
ers' despair we owe to the institution of marriage and the notions
of beauty to which society has given rise. War, slander, slavery,
contempt would cease if we could disband society and restore
equality among men. We will put an end to this nonsensical
business. I beseech you, for the sake of humanity, for your own
happiness' sake, repent! Let your hair and your nails grow again;
they are the native ornaments of the natural man. Abandon these
proud edifices, these almost indestructible monuments of the folly
of your ancestors and of your old cherished prejudices. Gather
sticks and fagots from the nearest thicket, set fire to them, cast
into it your childish household goods, your health-destroying ap-
parel; let the smoke ascend to the clouds, and incite all the
wretched inhabitants of earth to imitate you. Then around this
glorious bonfire we will frolic awhile like the savages in the forests
of Dahomey ; and when it has burned down we will bid each other
a tender farewell, and never see each other again. Each shall rove
naked and alone and free through the wide expanse of Nature.
When he is tired, he shall lie down by the side of some brook and
sleep undisturbed. How happy, how contented and peaceful are
the apes, the orang-outangs, and the pongos! Ought not the envi-
able contentment in which they live to arouse your jealousy ? We
too, beloved brethren, — we too might satisfy our hunger with
acorns, quench our thirst with water, and beneath some aged oak
enjoy the sweets of repose. And what do we fools want more than
food and drink, idling and sleep ? " ' "

190 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

CHAPTER XIL

THE UNIVERSAL GERMAN LIBRARY. — FRIEDRICH NICOLAI.

A N important function in modern literature, unknown
■^^^ to elder time, is that of critical journalism. In
Germany, during the latter third of the eighteenth cen-
tury, this function was exercised with praiseworthy zeal,
with marked ability, and, on the whole, to good purpose,
by the " Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek " (Universal
German Library), the earliest critical journal of wide
and commanding influence in Germany ; not the first in
chronological order, but the first which had the ear of
the general public. Started by Friedrich Nicolai in 1765,
and during the greater part of its history edited by him,
devoted mainly to reviews and discussions of current
German literature, and continued to the year 1805, the
" Bibliothek " was during those years a power in literary
Germany whose importance is incalculable. To say that
it was to Germany what the " Encyclopaedic," founded
by Diderot and d'Alembert, was to France — a compari-
son sometimes made — is only so far true as both were
champions of intellectual freedom, but is otherwise un-
just to the moral influence of the German periodical.

In literature the " Bibliothek " encouraged Germanism,
— native forms and native talent, — as against the French
classicism of Gottsched, who for many years had ruled
the taste and given the law to his countrymen. It fav-
ored English rather than French models, but without

THE UNIVERSAL GERMAN LIBRARY. 191

espousing the cause of the Swiss party, — Bodmer and
Breitinger, — in their contest with Gottsched. Nicolai
had already, in a previous publication, called these
w^ould-be Swiss dictators to order, comparing them to the
magistrates of a small city, who, because their word is
law within their own borders, flatter themselves that they
are looked up to with admiration by the rest of the world.
Of Bodmer's weak epics he had said, that, inasmuch as an
epic poem is the supreme product of the human mind, a
poet who will insist on writing epic after epic must either
be a miracle of Nature, or a very enthusiastic believer in
his own capacity for such achievement.

The " Bibliothek " would allow of no dictatorship such
as Germany had submitted to in time past; it tolerated no
exclusive authority, but recognized excellence in various
kinds, and in its earlier, better days endeavored to do
justice to real worth without regard to prejudice or pre-
cedent. In this way it became a liberator of the German
mind, and supplied a stimulus to native talent before
unknown. As an instance of the fairness with which it
was conducted, it is mentioned that when Goethe's works
were to be reviewed, the editor, whom Goethe had held
up to ridicule, committed the task to other hands, fearing
for himself some bias of personal resentment.

In philosophy and religion, the " Bibliothek " repre-
sented and constituted itself the foremost champion of
what in the history of German literature is known as
the Aufkldrung, This, as a marked and memorable
epoch of that history, demands some notice.

The word Die Aufkldrung may be rendered, as nearly
as we can hit it in English, " Enlightenment." It means
emancipation from the bondage of old superstitions,
deliverance from the night of unreason, the triumph of

192 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

the understanding over mystifications, ecclesiastical and
other ; in a word, free thought as opposed to dogma.
In this sense the Aufkldrung was not peculiar to Ger-
many. The eighteenth century, and especially the latter
half of the eighteenth century, witnessed the same recoil
from old tradition in England and France as well. In
the former country, Toland, Collins, Tyndal, Woolston,
Chubb, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, Hume, and later, with
more aggressive spirit, Thomas Paine, appeared as an-
tagonists of ecclesiastical authority and the prevalent
creed. The philosophy of the seventeenth century, along
with its other results and mental revolutions, had borne
this fruit. The old mediasval philosophy took upon itself
to be the interpreter of religion, and wrought in the ser-
vice of the Church. Descartes, the pioneer of the new,
would owe nothing to authority ; he would begin at the
beginning, and, to make sure that no prejudice or habit
of thought derived from the old remained to vitiate his
system, would allow nothing which he had not first
proved. " I will doubt all," he declared ; that is, " I
challenge all." The doubt which with him was merely
formal and experimental, a terminus a quo^ became in
another generation a terminus in quern. The influence
of Locke undesignedly took the same direction. The
principles propounded by that cautious sage reached
further than he knew, and engendered a progeny he
little expected. Toland quoted his authority in a work
which was publicly burned by the hangman, and would
have brought upon its author the vengeance of the law
had he not been forewarned and escaped. Locke had vin-
dicated the reasonableness of Christianity, and Toland
assumed to occupy the same ground when he published
his work with the title " Christianity not Mysterious "

THE UNIVERSAL GERMAN LIBRARY. 193

But the magistrates of Dublin seemed to have thought
that if Christianity were not mysterious, the bottom was
out of everything. Anthony Collins, a disciple and per-
sonal friend of Locke, wrote, sometime after the master's
death, a Discourse on Freethinking, which roused a hor-
net's nest of critics, who allowed indeed that thought
should be free, but insisted that it must be the right
kind of thought. It must be allowed that these writings,
although claiming the support of Locke's principles, were
not conceived in his spirit, and were not in accord with
his intent. But it must also be allowed that the prin-
ciples were logically susceptible of the application given
them by these writers. Admit the autonomy of reason,
and you cannot invoke authority to dictate the conclu-
sions at which reason shall arrive. Hume, the arch
sceptic, the final outcome of Locke's philosophy, dis-
cerned the irreconcilable conflict between the claims of
authority and reason. " I am the better pleased," he
says, at the close of his essay on the impossibility of
proving miracles, " with the method of reasoning here
delivered, as I think it may serve to confound those
dangerous friends, or disguised enemies, of the Christian
religion who have undertaken to defend it by the prin-
ciples of human reason. Our most holy religion is
founded on faith, not on reason ; and it is a sure method
of exposing it, to put it to such a trial as it is by no
means fitted to endure."

In France the revolt against ecclesiastical authority,
conducted by such men as Voltaire, Condorcet, Diderot,
and others, contributors to the " Encyclopsedie," as-
sumed more formidable proportions. More radical in
its negations, more fierce in its assaults, more diffused
in its influence, it was one of the primary agencies in

13

194 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

effecting the overthrow of the ancient order, — the great
Revolution, with its terrors and its woes.

In Germany the Aufkldrung was a milder type of the
same protest. It was not destructive, but reformatory ;
not infidelity in any true sense, but rationalism. Weak
in principle, shallow of insight, and barren of ideas, it
sought to square everything by the rule and measure of
the sensuous understanding ; enthroned the gesunder
Menschenver stand — sound common-sense — as supreme
arbiter, flouted all mysteries, discredited the deeper
experiences, ignored the graver questions of the soul,
and bounded its views by the narrow horizon of every-
day life. Its one merit — and that was a high one in
those days — was its brave defence of intellectual free-
dom, its steady and consistent advocacy of the right of
private judgment against bigotry and pedantry in Church
and school. In this respect it rendered good service to
literature, and deserves the thanks of the nation, though
the nation has outgrown its need.

Of this Aufkldrung the " Allgemeine deutsche Biblio-
thek " was the organ, and Nicolai the chief and inde-
fatigable champion.

Christoph Friedrich Nicolai was born in Berlin on the
18th of March, 1733, the son of a bookseller. He was
sent as a boy to the Orphanotrophium in Halle, — a
school founded near the close of the previous century
by Hermann Franke, the celebrated philanthropist, one
of the greatest benefactors of his time. In this institu-
tion — where orphans without means received gratuitous
instruction — other children were also taught at mod-
erate charges. The strictness of the religious disci-
pline here practised — a discipline not equally suited to

FRIEDRICH NICOLAI. 195

all natures — created in young Nicolai a repulsion to
which, in an autobiographical notice, he ascribes the
aversion to '' show-religion " which characterized his
riper years. He was afterward placed at the Realschule
in Berlin, and then, in his seventeenth year, sent to
Frankfort-on-the-Oder to receive his initiation in the
bookseller's trade, to which he was destined by his
father. Here he devoted his leisure hours to the study
of languages and philosophy, under the influence of
Baumgarten, Professor of Philosophy in that city, who
has the credit of founding the science of aesthetics, to
which he gave the name. Nicolai made himself ac-
quainted with the system of Wolff, the reigning philos-
ophy of that time ; also, with the Greek and Latin
classics, and to some extent with the English poets, —
then already beginning to supplant the French in the
favor of his countrymen. His first publication, put
forth anonymously, was a vindication of Milton against
the absurd attack of Gottsched, who charged the poet
with having stolen the " Paradise Lost " from Latin au-
thors,— on the ground, perhaps, of Lauder's " Auctorum
Miltoni facem praelucentium," in which the "Adamus
Exsul " of Grotius is mentioned as having furnished
Milton with a portion of his argument. Gottsched, who
had all his life maintained the supremacy of French
literature, — who had modelled his own writings, and
endeavored to model those of his countrymen, after the
French pattern, — beheld with indignation the dawn of
a preference for the English, and hoped by his sovereign
word to extinguish the dangerous rival.

Meanwhile, Nicolai's father had died, his elder brother
had succeeded to the book-selling business, and Fried-
rich returned to Berlin to act as his assistant. But the

196 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

life of an author was more attractive, and the greater
part of his time and talent thenceforth, and even after
tlie death of his brother had devolved upon him the main
burden of the firm, was devoted to literary labor. In
1755 he produced a work which excited general interest
by its bold criticism of the prominent authors of the
day, entitled " Briefe iiber den itzigen Zustand der
schonen Wissenschaften in Deutschland." In 1757 he
edited a magazine with the title, "Bibliothek der schonen
Wissenschaften und der freien Kiinste." This soon
passed into other hands, and was succeeded in 1759 by
another, which Nicolai conducted with the aid of Les-
sing and of Mendelssohn, — the " Litteratur briefe," a
critical journal, which discussed literary subjects with
freedom and vigor, and (as might be expected from
Lessing's co-operation) from a height of critical intui-
tion before unknown. Says Hettner : —

*' His mighty word [that is, Lessing's] struck Hke a purify-
ing thunderbolt into the sultry, stifling azote of the pretentious
mediocrity which surrounded him. Out of every line speaks
the loftier mood of the Seven Years' War. Felix Weisse com-
pares the amazement produced by the * Litteraturbriefe ' to the
terror which heralded the appearance of the Prussian soldiers
on the battlefield. At the same time its criticism was in the
highest sense creative ; the banner of Shakspeare, which until
then had been but a dim and distant vision, now unfurled itself
in its purity and power, and became thenceforth the object
of aspiration to the newly-quickened desire for nature and
nationality."

It was only, however, while Lessing was associated
with it that the new journal maintained its high posi-
tion, and exercised its full power. When he removed
to Breslau, and from there contributed only occasional

FRIEDRICH NICOLAI. 197

brief essays, it lost the chief element of its success. It
took a different turn ; high literary criticism gave place
to essays aiming at theological and moral enlighten-
ment ; until, finally, iii 1765, its editor and his co-workers
dropped it, and issued in its place the new periodical
already mentioned, which made this aim its specialty, —
the " Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek."

Nicolai's literary activity did not confine itself to the
labor bestowed on these periodicals. A man of inde-
fatigable industry, he wrote various works of consider-
able note in their day, most of which were inspired by
the same zeal for enlightenment, contending against
superstition, intolerance, and what he regarded as the
errors and evils of the time. The most important of
these is the work entitled "The Life and Opinions of
Master Sebaldus Nothanker," — a satire directed against
the ecclesiastical bigotry and persecution which, in spite
of the thunders of the " Bibliothek,'' still pursued its
baleful course. Sebaldus Nothanker, the hero, is an
honest, pious village clergyman, who on account of his
liberal sentiments incurs the ill-will of his fanatical
bishop (superintendent), is deposed from office, de-
prived of his livelihood, and driven to various shifts
for a maintenance, until, by a fortunate accident, he
obtains a competence for his declining years. This
narrative forms the ground-work of many severe at-
tacks on the prevalent wrongs and abuses of society.
The prime object is to unmask the hypocrisy of certain
Orthodox divines, who attempted to impose on the pub-
lic their own private interest as the interest of religion
and " even of Almighty God." But other typical char-
acters, easily recognized in the personnel of the story,
come in for a share of the author's satire. The work

198 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

was a happy hit, and had an immense success. Four
large editions were soon exhausted. It gave rise to a
whole literature of attacks and vindications, translations
into various languages, and plentiful imitations. The
Empress Catharine was so delighted with it that she
sent the author a gold medal, and in an autograph let-
ter requested him to forward to her immediately all
future productions of his pen. Lessing and Wieland
gave it high praise ; and even Fichte, while fiercely
censuring Nicolai on other grounds, acknowledged the
merits of this production.

The following extract will give some notion of the
humor of the book. Among the characters it satirizes
is that of an epicure, — a certain Count Nimmer, — to
whom, as an influential nobleman, the ejected clergy-
man applies for intercession with the ecclesiastical au-
thorities. The Count, suffering with a fit of indigestion
from yesterday's surfeit, is reclining on a lounge and
sipping his morning chocolate. Sebaldus approaches
with many bows, and stammers something, which the
Count understands to be an inquiry after his health : —

" Not very well, my dear Herr Pastor ; my troublesome
morning cough torments me more and more every day. I
can't eat. Yesterday I ventured to partake of a woodcock
pasty, and to-day my stomach is still oppressed with it. I am
too feeble. Even melons no longer agree with me, and pine-
apples cause flatulence. For to-day, I have merely ordered a
ragout Jin. I must fast to-day, in order to restore the tone of
my stomach. But, dear Herr Pastor, is n't it a sad thing not
to be able to eat ? "

The poor minister, who has fasted from necessity, and
sees starvation before him, replies : —

FRIEDRICH NICOLAL 199

" Yes, your Grace, — almost as bad as to have nothing to eat.
I am almost afraid I shall be in that predicament."

The Count, who is ignorant as yet of the object of his
visit, supposes him to refer to the difficulty of obtaining
foreign delicacies on account of the war, — the Seven
Years' War, then raging in Germany, — and, without
waiting for further explanation, interrupts him, —

" You are right, dear Herr Pastor, there will soon be noth-
ing more to eat ; this wretched war spoils everything. I spent
last winter most miserably ; the oysters arrived very irregu-
larly. The whole winter long 1 did n't so much as see a black
grouse from Prussia ; no wild ducks either from that quarter.
You know, Herr Pastor, I am a German patriot ; I can't en-
dure French dishes. Their consommes a la Gardinale, their
cotelettes d'agneau f rites won't do for me. Dear Herr Pastor,
we must remember that we are Germans ; we may, to be sure,
put up with good French sauces, but otherwise our diet must
be German. And I know the best things to be had in all Ger-
man provinces. Now, there are few people in this part of the
country who understand what a Pommeranian murane is, or a
flinder from the isle of Hela, or a hrasse from Berlin. These
things I used to get formerly every post-day. But now, Herr
Pastor, it is all done with. Last March I ordered a 'pdte from
Hanau, and a spiced Schwartenmagen from Frankfort-on-the-
Main ; and the Prussian hussars captured them at Fulda on the
way. Who the devil would have thought that the fellows
would leave their winter quarters in March ? In October I sent
for field-fare from the Harz Mountains, and the Liickner men
gobbled them up. In February I should have had pheasants
from Bohemia but for the troops stationed at Wilsdruf. And
the French are no better. Last month, at Bielefeld, they stole
my Westphalian hams and the champagne in which they were
to be boiled : it is clear that they care more for Westphalian
hams than they do for the peace of Westphalia. The caviare
sent me from Konigsberg the Russians intercepted at Kosslin,

200 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

and shipped it at Kolberg : I should like to know what busi-
ness their fleet had with my caviare. I ordered crabs from
Sonnenburg (Herr Pastor, those are the best crabs for size and
flavor), but they will go into the maws of the Swedes."

All this while the poor pastor had not been able to
get in a word. But the footman at this point announced
breakfast, and the Count — premising that he always left
the choice of the breakfast to the cook, that his appetite
might gain by surprise — insisted that Sebaldus should
share the meal with him.

" Let us see what we have got to-day. Aha ! a capon with
truffles ; not so bad ! Let me help you."

At last the preacher found opportunity to represent
the distress of his family, and to beg the Count to inter-
cede for him with the president of the Consistory. The
Count replies : —

*^ Ah ! so you want my intercession ? I am sorry I cannot
serve you. I have ceased going to town ; the table there is so
bad, — and especially at the president's. I will never in all my
life visit him again. A half year ago he gave me onion soup
and smoked Niiremberg sausages ! I don't understand how a
human being can subsist on such food."

Of Nicolai's other writings, the most noticeable are
his " Travels in Germany and Switzerland," " Anecdotes
of Frederic the Great," " Life and Opinions of Sempro-
nius Gundibert, a German Philosopher," " The History
of a Fat Man, in which are three Marriages, three
Mittens, and a good deal of Love," and a curious and
learned treatise " On the Use of False Hair and Wigs in
Ancient and Modern Time."

When Goethe's " Sorrows of Werther " appeared and
took the civilized world by storm, Nicolai, to show his

FRIEDRICH NIC OLA I. 201

disapproval of the work, — its sentimentality, and espe-
cially its tragic ending, suicide from hopeless love, —
published a foolish parody, entitled '* The Joys of Young
Werther," in which, the hero's pistol being loaded with
chicken's blood, he survives the suicidal attempt, mar-
ries Charlotte, and is happy ever after.

His " Sempronius Gundibert " was an attack on Kant,
whose philosophy was then a recent dispensation, flush
with its early renown. It was not a wise undertaking,
and suggests the well-meant but mistaken zeal of the
dog who barked at the first railway train that passed
his master's premises. In fact, it did not arrest the
triumphant career of that philosophy. Nevertheless, it
must be confessed that the author of " Gundibert " de-
tects weak points in the Konigsberger's argument, espe-
cially in the " Kritik der praktischen Yernunft ; " and,
regarding the matter from the utilitarian, Gradgrind
point of view, he has a good deal to say against the ex-
pediency of a plain man's troubling himself with Kantian
metaphysics. Nicolai himself was something of a Grad-
grind, — a man for whom the loftiest and the deepest in
poetry, philosophy, and religion had no charm; with
whom hard facts and every-day experience weighed more
than all the sublimities and profundities and abstrac-
tions of the schools. Yery un-German in this respect,
more akin to the English mind. He had even a touch
of English humor, — or at any rate affected it, — as will
be seen in the following extract from his Introduction
to the " History of a Fat Man " : —

" We are accustomed to judge the unknown by the known.
This is even a rule with the learned. And therefore I wajrer
that the learned reader, when he sees the title of this book, will
immediately review in his memory all the fat men of ancient

202 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

and modern time, in order to compare them with our fat man.
But I will also wager that the learned reader will experience
what very often happens to learned people. They reason
from their indwelling learning and wisdom concerning men and
human affairs so strictly, so critically, so wisely, so cogently,
so incontrovertibly, that every one must be satisfied of the cor-
rectness of their propositions, unless it should happen that no
one understands them, — of which they are apt to complain.
Nevertheless, it not unfrequently occurs that not one of their
inferences and conclusions is found to hit the fact when they
come out of their studies, their gymnasiums, lyceums, univer-
sities, academies of the sciences and fine arts, or whatever may
be the name of the learned forcing-houses in which, by means
of much learned manure and not a little learned smoke, all
human knowledge and understanding are brought to maturity
much earlier than with poor ignorant mortals who do not fer-
tilize their immortal mind either by much reading or specula-
tion, and whose miserable fortune it is merely to work and
to act.

" So far as the learned friends of the author remember, there
are — without reckoning three fat kings, and fat prelates with-
out number — only seven very celebrated short and fat men.
If now the learned reader supposes that our fat man resembles
one of these, or any other fat man that may occur to him, it
is ten to one again that the learned reader is mistaken. . . .
Especially we entreat you, kind reader, not to connect in your
thought our fat man with any king who may have been short
and fat. We are not going to speak of kings at all.

" Not a word more then of Charles, the fat king of Germany
and France, who wanted his wife, after ten years of married
life, to prove her continued virginity by contact with red-hot
iron ; nor of Louis, the fat king of half France, who, in order
to make sure of heaven, died on a cross strewn with ashes ; nor
of the short and fat king of England, who married three Kates,
two Anns, and a Hannah ; nor of all the other short and fat
kings of the world. . . . The remarkable seven fat men, with

FRIEDRICH NICOLAL 203

whom one might be inclined to compare our hero, are Ther-
sites, in ancient time ; of later date, Sancho Panza, Falstaff,
Gil Perez, uncle of the celebrated Gil Bias ; the fat man of
Otaheite, who was so exalted that with due gravity he caused
his wives every day to stuff the food into his mouth; and
two fat, short persons in Tristram Shandy, Dr. Slop, the man-
midwife, and the little bandy-legged drummer, who was keep-
ing guard at the gate of Strasburg when a stranger from the
Promontory of Noses rode into town with the biggest nose
ever seen, — of which the world and posterity would have had
no idea had not the celebrated Slawkenbergius taken care to
give an exact description of it."

Every one has heard of Nicolai's spectral visitations.
In 1791 great mental trouble had seriously impaired
his bodily health and produced a disease of the brain,
which caused him to see ghosts, — first singly, then in
numbers, coming and going, occupying his room, and
haunting him for months. It seemed to be the nemesis
and irony of fate that the man who all his life had been
fighting against popular illusions, superstitions, and ex-
ceptional wonders of every kind, should be doomed to
experience in his own person the most remarkable case
of spectral illusion, or pseudopsy, on record. But Nico-
lai in this affliction was true to himself and his doctrine :
he stood his ground against the ghosts ; he recognized
them at once as figments of the brain, the effect of dis-
ease, and subjected them to calm philosophic observa-
tion. He recovered his health, and continued to write
and to publish twenty years longer, until his death in
1811, at the age of seventj^-eight.

It is sad when an author outlives himself, and fails
to perceive that he has lost his grasp of the public
mind, — when no longer guiding the current of his time

204 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

he yet persists to put in, on every occasion, his super-
fluous and unheeded word. " I wonder that you will
still be talking, Signor Benedick ; nobody marks you."
For half a century Nicolai had been the oracle of the
reading multitude of his nation, and had ruled, not in-
deed the philosophic and scientific, but the popular mind
of his time. Had he only known when his reign was
over and his mission done ! could he only have under-
stood that he who has the bride is the bridegroom !
could he only have opened his eyes to perceive the rising
of a new sun, and hailed it with the hearty confession,
— " He must increase, but I must decrease " ! In Ger-
many, as nowhere else, faction and fashion sway the
republic of letters. I had learned in my youth to think
of Nicolai as a shallow twaddler, and nothing more.
Such was the impression I got from the spokesmen of
the dynasty which supplanted his rule. It is only re-
cently that I have learned, by personal acquaintance
with his writings, to do him justice, to find real merit
in the writer and the man. He fought a good fight in
his day against bigotry and persecution and false pre-
tension of every kind, and deserves high honor as one of
the liberators of the German mind. Hettner says : —

" It is time to finally cease from speaking of Nicolai only in
terms of contempt and scorn. An age which shall do justice
once more to the great merits of the Aufkldrung period, cannot
fail to do justice also to the great merits of Nicolai. To be
sure, it is Nicolai's own fault that the follies of his old age
caused the fame of his youth and manhood to be forgotten.
Like Gottsched, he had the misfortune to live too long in a fast
living age ; Uke Gottsched, he could not bring himself to con-
fess that his way of thinking, and his influence, had been al-
ready overtaken by a younger and more advanced generation.

FRIEDRICH NICOLAL 205

His writings and letters sufficiently testify that there lay in his
nature an invincible propensity to self-conceit and vanity. This
propensity had been fed and increased by the early fame which
had been conceded to him by the best men of his time, and by
the important and commanding position which he held for long
decades at the head of the most significant and influential jour-
nals. Gradually it had become a fixed idea with him that his
knowing and thinking were the model and rule for all knowing
and thinking ; or, as Fichte, in his polemic, says, ' that he had
thought of everything that was right and useful in any depart-
ment, and that all which he had not thought, or would not
think, was useless and false. I, Friedrich Nicolai, think differ-
ently ; by that you can see that you are wrong.' . . . When
Lessing, with his religious and philosophic feeling, outgrew the
narrowness of the empty and vague ideas of the Aufkldrung,
Nicolai saw in the new departures of his friend only love of
contradiction, aimless taste for singularity, or even miserable
contentiousness. When, with Goethe and Schiller, a new poe-
try spi'ung up in which there was once more deep and original
passion, in which the fulness and entireness of human nature,
sensibility, and imagination resumed their rights, — when Kant,
and afterward Fichte and Schelling, created a new philosophy
which was real philosophy once more, and not a mere thresh-
ing of the straw of English deism, — Nicolai, in the pride of his
perverted self-consciousness, considered himself called to be the
guardian and protector of good taste and sound common-sense,
and wrote in satirical novels, in contributions to the 'Allge-
meine deutsche Bibliothek,' in ^ Letters of a Traveller,' and
would-be scientific works, those foolish fanfaronades which had
the melancholy effect that our greatest poets and thinkers have
handed him down as the archetype of all empty heads and
wrong heads, and thereby disfigured the true natural features
of his better past. All around, there was blossoming and flour-
ishing the new time which has become the classic age of our
German poetry and science. But Nicolai, with silly recusance
and peevish irritation, fought against everything that lay out-
side of his horizon, and deprived of the counsel and aid of his

206 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

old friends Leasing and Mendelssohn, lost himself at last in the
flattest loquacity, in the dreariest and most repulsive book-
making and book-selling fussiness, and even where he was in
the right, — as in his restless unearthing of the secret hiding-
places and creeping ways of the Jesuits, in his ever-watchful
pursuit of enthusiasts, ghost-seers, and miracle-mongers, —
brought upon himself, by his senseless exaggeration and his
flat diffusiveness, the curse of ridiculousness. ... It is the
most important, but also the most difficult, problem in the art
of life for a writer, as he grows old, to discern when the time
has come for him to hold his tongue."

WIELAND. 207

CHAPTER XIII.

WIELAND.

T HAVE spoken of the movement known in the
-*- German literary world as the Aufklarung, — a
movement initiated by Nicolai and represented by the
Universal German Library. The influence of this move-
ment was less apparent in the poetry than it was in the
prose writings, and especially those of the second-class
essayists of the day. Lessing, although associated with
Nicolai in his earlier efforts, was on the whole unaffected
by it ; and Klopstock, as the head of wliat Gervinus calls
the " Seraphic School," still controlled the more serious
portion of his countrymen in the interest of a sentimen-
tal, rhapsodical, and somewhat narrow-eyed piety. In
the latter part of the century there came a strong reac-
tion against this tendency, initiated by Christoph Martin
Wieland, born in Oberholtzheim, in Swabia, 1733.

Wieland did not at once emancipate himself from
Klopstock' s sway. He followed for a while the leading
of that spirit, and figures in the earlier stage of his
career as a religious enthusiast. His youthful produc-
tions, his " Anti-Ovid," his " Trial of Abraham," his
Psalms, his " Letters from the Dead to Surviving
Friends," are inspired with a moral and spiritual fervor
which, if not profound, is very sincere, and which
strangely contrasts with the worldly tone of his subse-
quent writings. Scarcely any two authors differ more

208 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

from each other than Wieland differs from himself in the
earlier and later epochs of his literary history. In youth
a Christian moralist, in his riper years an ethnic and an
epicurean ; in both characters and in every period of his
life an indefatigable workman. At the age of seventeen
he published a didactic poem in six books, entitled " The
Nature of Things," and from that time forward never
ceased writing, until in 1813 death, at the age of four-
score, arrested his pen. Tt would occupy more space
than I can spare even to name by their respective titles
the multitudinous productions — novels, poems, satires,
philosophical and historical essays — which make up the
forty-nine volumes of Gruber's edition of his works.
Besides this mass of original writings, he translated
Shakspeare (the first German translation), Horace's
Epistles and Satires, Cicero's Epistles, and the works of
Lucian, and was editor successively of several journals
and magazines, of which the best known is " Der deutsche
Merkur." Whatever may be thought of the quality of
his work in these performances, one cannot but admire
the immense fecundity of the man.

Wieland, like Klopstock, was fortunate in the enjoy-
ment of an assured pecuniary support and ample leisure
for literary pursuits. The son of a Lutheran clergyman,
he manifested as a boy a remarkable precociousness of
intellect ; reading Latin with ease at the age of seven,
and planning an epic poem at the age of twelve. In his
fifteenth year he was put to school in a gymnasium near
Magdeburg, and in his seventeenth entered the University
of Tubingen nominally as a student of law, but devoting
himself to literature. After leaving the university he
spent some time in Switzerland with Bodmer, who had
been attracted by his writings, and to whose influence

WIELAND. 209

we owe some of the most marked of the spiritual poems
already named, especially " The Trial of Abraham " and
" Letters from the Dead." At this period, with a reli-
gious zeal bordering on fanaticism, he characterizes poets
of a secular and Anacreontic turn as " vermin creeping
at the foot of Parnassus," and calls upon the court-
preacher Sack, in Berlin, to denounce from the pulpit
the offence of their frivolous lays. In 1759 he returned
to Biberach, the home of his childhood, and there re-
ceived the appointment of Kanzleidirector, which he held
for ten years. He was then called by the Elector of
Mainz to the professorial chair of philosophy and belles-
lettres in the University of Erfurt, and in 1722 was in-
vited by the dowager duchess Anna Amalia of Weimar
to take charge of the education of the two princes, her
sons Karl August (afterward Grand Duke of Weimar,
the friend of Goethe) and Constantine. This office he
accepted ; and when with the adult age of his pupils its
function expired, he continued to reside at Weimar, re-
ceiving in the name of other offices, which were sine-
cures, or nearly so, an annual stipend from the Govern-
ment during the remainder of his life.

While residing at Biberach the direction of his mind,
and with it of his writings, had undergone a complete
revolution. The religious zealot, the moral purist, had
become, not in practice but in theory, almost a libertine.
Leading a pure and blameless life, his poetry took on a
sensual, not to say licentious, tone, which gave great
offence to his former friends. The disciples of the
Klopstock school in Gottingen burned his books, and
Lavater called upon all good Christians to pray for the
renegade sinner. Certainly it is much to be regretted
that Wieland, in the strong reaction against the senti'

14

210 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

mentalism and pietism of the " Seraphic School " and
the crude opinions of his own youth, — a reaction in-
duced by intercourse, under the patronage of Count
Stadion at Biberach, with a higher class of society, and
by the study of Italian and French literature, — that he
should have suffered himself to be betrayed into such
compositions as *' Das Urtheil des Paris," " Der neue
Amadis," " Die Grazien," and others of like import. It
could hardly fail that the author's morals should be
called in question by readers who knew nothing of him
but his writings. But at Weimar, where personal ac-
quaintance forbade such suspicions, he was greatly re-
spected and beloved. The duchess mother, a wise and
noble woman, remained through life the poet's fast
friend; and Wieland was the first to experience that
patronage of genius which afterward Karl August ex-
tended to Herder, Goethe, Schiller, and others, and
which gave to his little capital its well-deserved title,
" the Athens of Germany."

Not all that Wieland wrote in this stage of his literary
life is chargeable with those offences which disgrace the
works I have named. The " Musarion," a poem of much
beauty, whatever its moral defects, is not immoral in its
purpose. It aims to show how easily stern moralists,
disciples of Zeno and Pythagoras, may be tempted to
transgress ; and how, on the contrary, a woman who is
no prude, who allows herself great freedom of manner,
may nevertheless resist temptation and maintain her
virtue.

His " Agathon," a prose romance, appears to have
been the author's favorite work. It is thought to em-
body his own experience (indeed the author hints as
much in his Preface), and suggests the practical conclu-

WIELAND. 211

sions to be drawn from that experience. He took the
historic Agathon, the disciple of Socrates, for his nomi-
nal hero, but invested him with the character of the Ion
of Euripides, and in the person of this youth of Greek
costume and surroundings he portrays his intellectual
and moral self. The work therefore may be considered
as the " Apologia vitae suae." But to the general reader
it is more interesting as a story than as literary self'
portraiture. Gervinus says : —

" The work is, as to its form, an Alexandrian romance, with
love affairs, separations, and reunions, pirates, slave-sales, trials
of virtue and defeats, soliloquies, a tossing about from one ad-
venture to another, from the crown to the beggar's gown, from
rapture to despair, from Tartarus to Elysium. . , . The Greek
coloring is not well hit ; the scenes and persons are from the
age of Socrates, while the tone is from the letters of Aristae-
netus and Alciphron. The bombast and tinsel of the latest time
are brought into strange connection with the Athenian sage.
All this is characteristic of the author's levelling propensity,
as it is that his Plato imperceptibly becomes Socrates, that his
Socrates and even his Diogenes change to Aristippus, to Horace,
to Lucian, and all at last merge in Wieland. More important
than the form is the moral import of this romance. It is in-
tended to show how far a poor mortal, with only natural powers,
may advance in wisdom and virtue, how much we are influenced
by our relations, and how we become wise and good only by
experience, by errors, by constant working on ourselves, by
frequent changes of mind, and especially by good society and
good examples. For this purpose the author brings his platonic
Agathon, with his youthful enthusiasm and his philosophy, —
which makes human happiness to consist in a contemplative
life, and assigns a contemplative life to the groves of Delphos, —
into antagonism with the sophist Hippias, whom he makes the
representative of that new philosophy which Wieland had
learned from the English and the French. All turns on the

212 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

question whether enthusiasm or self-seeking, spiritual love or
sensual, ideas of the divinity or the animality of man, wisdom
or prudence, are most consonant with the truth. The evil
principle represented by Hippias is theoretically assailed, but
practically it conquers. Agathon's belief in revelation and his
strict principles are wrecked on this practical secular philoso-
pher ; his innocence is wrecked on Danae ; but he still retains
in secret an inextinguishable attachment to the favorite ideas
of his youth."

Wieland outgrew this second phase of his intellectual
life as he had outgrown the first. Reflection, public
opinion, and the censure of approved critics convinced
him of his mistake in exalting sensual themes. His
" Conversations with a Pastor," an essay published in
1775, is partly a confession and partly a sophistical ex-
tenuation of his offences in that direction. To say that
he repented would be saying too much ; that term
would imply that he had sinned against his conscience
in sending forth into the world those objectionable com-
positions. But such was not the case. It was not a
moral but an assthetic offence which he seemed to him-
self to have committed in so doing. It was not a sin of
the heart but of the head of which he had been guilty.
His heart was not in those writings any more than it
had been in the pious rhapsodies which preceded them.
In both cases he had supposed that that was the true way
to write, and had written accordingly ; in both cases he
found that he was mistaken, and abandoned that way
accordingly. He was no more a sensualist than he was
a pietist ; the real nature of the man was no more ex-
pressed in the one style than it was in the other. The
truth is, — and this is the main defect of the writer and
the man, — there was no real nature to be expressed, no

WIELAND. 213

deep reality, no original bias, no interior necessity deter-
mining him one way rather than another. He had no
root in himself. A man who was altogether swayed and
determined from without, he took his cue from occasion,
from the latest impression, from the tone of the society
in which he moved. Such a nature of course is incom-
patible with true genius ; and genius, in the stricter
and more limited sense of the term, he had not, but
extraordinary giffcs, exceptional talent, — such talent as
sometimes culminates into the altitude of genius, and is
capable of the same effects.

This talent is conspicuous in his " Oberon," his great-
est poem, and the work on which the author's fame must
ultimately rest. " Oberon " is an epic in twelve cantos,
of which the hero and a portion of the fable are taken
from an old French romance, entitled " Huon of Bor-
deaux." Sir Huon is the hero, but the Oberon who gives
his name to the poem is not the Oberon of the French
story, but the Oberon of Shakspeare's " Midsummer-
Night's Dream " and Chaucer's "Merchant's Tale." The
interests of the two — the knight and the fairy king —
are finely interwoven, and furnish the two main motives
which govern the plot and determine the course of the
story. Sir Huon journeying to Bagdad by order of
Charlemagne, whence he is to fetch the beard of tlie caliph
together with his daughter, as the condition of his res-
toration to his country and the recovery of his paternal
estates, encounters Oberon, who assists him in that en-
terprise with his magic gifts, with the horn which sets
every one a dancing who is guilty of any secret fault,
and the cup which yields of itself a never failing draught.
On the other hand, the knight, by his marriage with
Rezia the caliph's daughter, and their unconquerable

214 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

fidelity, proof against the hardest trials, is the means of
reconciling Oberon with Titania, whom the fairy-king
had sworn to banish from his presence until a tried and
faithful couple should prove the existence on earth of
unchangeable constancy.

In the way of artistic construction, in adaptation of
part to part, in harmonious wholeness, this masterpiece
of Wieland has never been surpassed. In form it is a
perfect epopee, and the subject-matter, though not abso-
lutely free from the vice of the author's second period,
is in that respect mostly unobjectionable. The portrait-
ures are spirited, the interest well sustained, and the
rhythmical movement — the versification with varying
numbers and varying rhyme according to the exigencies
of the language — has that marvellous flowing ease which
makes metre and rhyme seem spontaneous and acciden-
tal, and which justifies the contemporary designation of
Wieland as " the poet of the Graces." The elan of the
first verse reminds one of the Greek and Latin epics, —

" Noch einmal sattlet mir den Hippogryphen, ihr Musen! "

A more graceful, and I may add a more charming, poem
of equal length I have not found. William Taylor thinks
that no poem since Tasso's "• Gerusalemme " is so well
fitted to be a " European classic." The Schlegels hailed
it as the revival of the Romantic interest, and Goethe
wrote to Lavater concerning it these memorable words :
" So long as poetry remains poetry, gold gold, and crys-
tal crystal, Oberon will be loved and admired as a mas-
terpiece of poetic art."

Wieland has been called the German Voltaire. The
comparison is unjust, and altogether misapprehends, as
it seems to me, the characteristics of the two writers.

WIELAND. 215

The only resemblance between them lies in the versa-
tility of their talent and in their want of original insight
and strong convictions. Wieland has nothing of Vol-
taire's bitterness, and very little of his irreverence or
persiflage ; and though, for a German, defective in depth
and earnestness, he is, compared with Voltaire, both
earnest and profound. He is French in the perspicuity
of his style, but not French in the method of his mind.
The writer to whom I would soonest compare him, as a
writer of prose, is his favorite Lucian. As a poet, he
seems to me to resemble Ovid among the ancients, and
Ariosto among the moderns.

Wieland is not to be ranked with the foremost poets
of his nation. No one would think of placing him by
the side of Goethe or Schiller ; but among poets of the
second class he holds a distinguished position, and no
one has more truly conceived or more elaborately de-
scribed the qualifications of the poet : —

" Senses so sharply tuned that the slightest breath of Nature
causes the entire organ of the soul to vibrate like an asolian harp,
and every sensation to give back with heightened beauty and the
purest accord the melody of things ; a memory in which nothing
is lost, but everything imperceptibly coalesces into that fine, plas-
tic, half spiritual substance from which fancy breathes forth its
own new and magical creations ; an imagination which by an
inward, involuntary impulse, idealizes each individual object,
clothes abstractions in definite forms, . . . which bodies forth
all that is spiritual, and spiritualizes and ennobles all that is
material ; a warm, tender soul, which kindles at every breath,
all nerve, sensation, and sympathy, — which can imagine nothing
dead, nothing unfeeling in Nature, but is ever ready to impart
its own excess of life, of feeling and passion to all about it, to
metamorphose ever with the greatest ease and rapidity itself into
others and others into itself; a passionate love for the wonder-

216 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

ful, the beautiful, and the sublime in the material and the moral
world ; a heart which beats high at every noble deed, and
shrinks with horror from everything base, cowardly, unfeeling.
Add to all this a cheerful temperament, quick circulations, — add
also an inborn propensity to reflect, to search within, to rove in
an ideal world, and, together with a social disposition and deli-
cate sympathy, an ever predominant love for solitude, for the
silence of the forest, for all that disengages the soul from the
burdens by which it is hampered in its own free flight, or that
rescues it from the distractions which interrupt its pursuits."

The judgments pronounced on the merits of Wieland
and the tendency of his writings by some of the more
prominent historians of German literature have not been
favorable, although it is conceded that he exercised an
important influence on the literary action of his time.
The criticism of Gervinus on " Agathon " I have already
quoted. Yilmar, who is even more patriotic and anti-
gallican, declares Wieland to have been " the represent-
ative in Germany of the age of Louis XY.," of that kind
of culture which, " indifferent to everything higher,
concerned itself only with the cheerful enjoyment of
life, the culture of sensualism, of frivolity. To show,"
he adds, " that there are no ideals, that there is noth-
ing great, worthy, or noble, is the everywhere plainly
discernible and often even expressly affirmed aim of
Wieland's poetry. It is the practical materialism im-
ported to us from Yoltaire, La Mettrie, Diderot, and
the so-called Encyclopaedists ; the popular philosophy
of the man of pleasure, with whom all wisdom con-
sists in the most prudent and complete exploitation of
sensual enjoyment, and all morality in the doctrine
' live and let live,' in the most refined egoism." He
continues : —

WIELAND. 217

" When this Frenchified world and its loose, frivolous tone
declined with the beginning of the present century, and in the
course of its second decennium vanished altogether, then the
relish for Wieland's poems also declined, and in the third decen-
nium (1820-1830) not only entirely disappeared, but gave place
to a not unjustifiable repugnance; so that they are now forgotten,
are no more read, and with few exceptions deserve not to be
read. ... If the poet is he who unlocks the deeps of the hu-
man heart, who knows how to represent and to elicit the deepest
sorrow and the highest joy, who shows in the changing images
of this transitory life the deep seriousness of the permanent and
eternal, who truly feels and teaches us to feel truly, then we
must altogether deny to Wieland the predicate of poet in the
proper and higher sense."

This criticism strikes me as unduly hard and one-
sided. If it does not exaggerate the vice of a consider-
able portion of Wieland's writings, it errs in imputing
to all his works what is true only of a part ; and it over-
looks his real merits, the grace of his style (especially as
a prosaist), the fascinating play of his fancy, and his
genial humor. Because he is not an idealist, because he
is not characteristically and peculiarly German, it would
make him out to be nothing. In spite of all such strict-
ures, " Oberon," if not so much read, or with the same
enthusiasm as it was on its first appearance (and what
poem of a past century is ?), will always be regarded by
impartial critics as a poem of rare beauty ; and Wieland's
prose will always remain a model in its kind. Still, it
must be confessed, as I have said elsewhere,^ that " his
excellence lies rather in the manner than the matter.
He is more graceful than energetic, more agreeable than
impressive, more sportive than profound. ' Words that

1 Prose Writers of Germany, p. 128.

218 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

burn ' are not found on his page, nor thoughts that make
one close the book and ponder and rise up intellectually
new-born from the reading. But then he has charms of
manner that lure the reader on and hold him fast. And
when I speak of him as not profound, I speak in refer-
ence to German standards. Unlike the generality of his
countrymen, he occupied himself rather with the shows
of things than their substance, with phenomena rather
than with laws. He loved to discourse pleasantly rather
than to investigate conscientiously, or to settle precisely.
As Goethe says, he cared less for a firm footing than a
clever debate."

I give in Sotheby's translation an extract from the
" Oberon." The version, though not the best that can
be imagined, is spirited and tolerably faithful, and is said
to have been highly commended by Wieland himself.

The passage I quote is from the second canto, where
Sir Huon, on his mission to Bagdad, accompanied by his
faithful squire Scherasmin, finds himself as day declines
in a wood, which Scherasmin knows to be the residence
of Oberon the fairy king. The squire, overwhelmed by
superstitious fear, attempts in vain to fly, and to persuade
the knight to fly. Overtaken with a tempest, they are
suddenly brought up by a procession of monks and nuns,
who have been celebrating Saint Agatha's day. Oberon
appears and winds his magic horn, which compels the
whole company, with the exception of Sir Huon, who
alone is wholly guiltless, and therefore not subject to the
spell, to whirl in dance : —

** Now on they journey till the daylight dies,
And slowly sinks to evening's glimmer gray.
Before their course a gloomy forest lay.

WIELAND. 219

* Tempt not that dangerous path, Sir Knight! 'Tis said

That none who enter there return again.

You smile, and deem, I see, my caution vain.
Yet trust me, Sir, beneath that haunted shade

A tiny, wicked goblin holds his court.

There foxes, harts, and deer alone resort.

Who once were men like us, in form the same.

Heaven knows in what wild skin our human frame
Shall be ere dawn arrayed, to make the demon sport.'

Meanwhile the wandering travellers onward go
Unwares within the circuit of a wood,
Whose mazy windings, at each step renewed,

In many a serpent-fold twined to and fro.
So that our pair to lose themselves were fain.
The moon full-orbed now gained the ethereal plain,
And as her beams through wavy branches played.
The twinkling fairy dance of light and shade

Confused their wildered eyes, that sought the path in vain.

* Sir,' Scherasmin exclaimed, * amid the maze

Of this deep labyrinth, perplexing art,

To puzzle wanderers, well has played her part.

The only chance to 'scape these crooked ways
Is for good luck to follow — one's own nose.*
This counsel (wiser than the learn'd suppose)
Ere long conducts them to that middle space
Where all the walks that wind from place to place

At once with circling rays a central star enclose.

And while they gazed around in mute despair,

'Mid the wild woods a distant castle gleams;

As woven from the evening's rosy beams
It lifts itself and glitters in the air.

In Huon's mind delight and terror stole.

In doubt if truth or fancy charm his soul.

Breathless he moves, as drawn by magic hand,

And sees the castle's golden gates expand.
And forth a silver car drawn on by leopards roll,

A boy more beauteous than the God of love,
In smiling Cytherea's soft embrace,

220 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Sat in the silver car with heavenly grace,
And held the silken reins and onward drove.

' Fly,' Scherasmin exclaims, ' he comes! we're dead I '*
And seized Sir Huon's steed and swiftly fled.
' You're lost, forever lost, if you delay! '
' How fair he is! ' cries Huon. ' Fair? Away!
A thousand times more fair, a thousand times more dread J

A tempest winged with lightning, hail, and rain
O'ertakes our pair; around them midnight throws
Darkness that hides the world; it peals, cracks, blows,

As if the uprooted globe would split in twain ;
The elements in wild confusion flung,
Each wars with each as fierce from chaos sprung.
Yet heard from time to time amid the storm
The gentle whisper of the aerial form

Breathed forth a lovely tone that died the gales among.

' Why dost thou fly? Thy happiness thou fliest!
Come back, come Huon! dare in me confide!
Hear me ! to happiness thy path I guide ! '

Onward through thick and thin they dash again.
Beat by the blast and flooded by the rain,
When, lo! a cloister wall impedes their rash career.

A new adventure ! On that day befalls
The yearly feast in honor of the name
Of holy Agatha, most gracious dame.

The guardian of these girl-confining walls.
And there, not distant far, a cloister stood
Of youths. Saint Antony's high-pampered brood.
That eve the cloister-race their choirs had joined,
And both a common pilgrimage designed.

As nun and monk befits, in social neighborhood.

Back they returned, and near the cloister moat,
On as they wind in order pair by pair,
The rattling tempest thunders from the air ;

Cross, standards, scapularies, wildly float,

Sport of the blasts ; and through each folded veil
In torrents stream the wind and driving hail.

WIELAND. 2'21

All ranks and orders in confusion lost
Mingle in comic mood diversely tossed,
And scamper here and there as wind and rain assail.

Here, as they pant together, monks and nuns,

Through the thronged convent gate that open stood,
'Mid the confusion of the cloister brood

Now Scherasmin with headlong fury runs :
That holy ground a haven he vainly deems,
And safe 'mid guardian saints himself esteems.
Soon Huon comes, and while with courtly grace
The knight permission begs, and checks his pace.

Swift, as a meteor darts, the dwarf amid them gleams.

At once the storm is fled. Serenely mild

Heaven smiles around, bright rays the sky adorn.
While, beauteous, as an angel newly-born

Beams in the roseate dayspring, glowed the child.
A lily stalk his graceful limbs sustained.
Round his smooth neck an ivory horn was chained.
Yet lovely as he looked, on all around
Strange horror stole, for stern the fairy frowned.

And o'er each saddened charm a sullen anger reigned.

He to his rosy lip the horn applies.

And breathes enchanting notes of wondrous sound.

At once then Scherasmin in giddy round
Reels without stop. Away the old man flies,

Seizes a hoary nun without a tooth,

Who dies to dance as if the blood of youth
Boiled in her veins. The old man deftly springs.

Cloister and convent bum with equal rage.

Nor hoary hairs nor rank the dance withstand.

Each sinner takes a sister by the hand,
And in the gay contention all engage.

Not soon such ballets shall be seen again;

No rules or discipline the choir restrain.

Then at his ^ word relenting Oberon waves
His lily wand. The charm dissolves in air;

1 Huon's intercession.

222 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

Saint Antony's fat wards like statues stare ;
And pale, as newly risen from their graves,

Haste the dishevelled dames with decent grace

Their veils and robes in order to replace.

But to such capers Scherasmin unused

Feels with the ball his whirling brain confused,
And thinks his heart will burst, and sinks upon the ground."

The following is from " The Abderites '' : —
THE LAW-SUIT CONCERNING THE ASS'S SHADOW.

This affair, like most of the great events of history, had its
origin in a very trifling occasion. A certain dentist, by the
name of Struthion, by birth and ancestry a Megarensian, had
settled in Abdera ; and being, as is likely, the only one of his
profession in the country, his practice extended through a con-
siderable portion of southern Thrace. His usual way to obtain
customers was to visit the fairs in all the great and little towns for
more than thirty miles around, where, besides his tooth-powders
and tooth-washes, he occasionally for a considerable profit sold
patent-medicines for hypochondria, hysterics, diseases of the
chest, and troublesome humors. He kept for these journeys a
stout ass, which on such occasions was laden with his own short
and thick-set person, and with saddle-bags full of medicines and
provisions. Now, it so fell out that just as he was about to
visit the fair at Gerania his ass had foaled, and consequently
was not in a condition to make the journey. Struthion there-
fore hired another ass for his first day's journey, the owner of
which accompanied him on foot, in order to take care of the
beast and ride it back to town. The road lay across an exten-
sive heath. It was in the height of summer, and the day was
excessively hot. The dentist, who began to find it intolerable,
looked piningly about for some shady spot where he might dis-
mount and obtain a breath of fresh air. But far and wide there
was neither tree nor shrub, nor any object visible that might
afford a shade. Finally, not knowing what else to do, he halted,
dismounted, and sat down in the shadow of the ass.

W IE LAND. 223

" Eh, Mister, what are you doiDg there ? " said the owner of
the ass. " What do you mean by that ? "

" I am sitting in the shadow awhile," replied Struthion, ** for
the sun beats upon my skull beyond all endurance."

" No, no, my good sir, that is not in the bargain. I have let
you the ass, but nothing was said about the shadow."

^' You are jesting, my friend ; the shadow goes with the ass,
as a matter of course ! "

" Hi ! by Jason, that is not a matter of course ! " said the ass-
keeper, with a look of defiance. " The ass is one thing ; the
ass's shadow is another. You have hired the ass of me for so
much ; if you wanted to hire the shadow besides, you should
have said so. Without a word more, get up and continue your
journey, or else pay me a reasonable sum for the ass's shadow ! "

" What ! " cried the dentist. *' I have paid for the ass, and
now am I to pay for the shadow, too ? Call me three times an
ass, myself, if I do that. The ass is for this day mine, and I
will sit in his shadow as often as I please, and I will continue
to sit in it as long as I please. That you may depend upon."

" Is that your serious intention ? " asked the other, with all
the phlegm of an Abderite ass-driver.

" I am perfectly serious," replied Struthion.

" Then my gentleman may come back with me directly to
Abdera, — to a magistrate. There we will see which of us is
right. As Priapus shall help me and my ass, I will see who
shall take my ass's shadow from me against my will ! "

The dentist was greatly tempted to set the ass-driver right by
the strength of his arm. He had already clenched his fist for
the purpose ; but when he surveyed his man more closely, he
thought best to let his uplifted arm gradually fall again, and to
try once more the effect of milder arguments. But he only
wasted his breath. The rough fellow insisted on being paid for
the shadow of his ass ; and as Struthion was just as determined
not to pay, there was no other way but to return to Abdera, and
to lay the matter before the city judge.

The city judge, Philippides, to whom all disputes of this kind
had in the first instance to be referred, was a man possessed of

224 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

many good qualities, — honest, sober, devoted to the work of
his office. He listened to every one with the greatest patience,
gave people friendly directions, and was universally reputed to
be incorruptible. For the rest, he was a good musician, made
collections of objects of natural history, had written some plays,
— which, according to the custom of the city, had been well
received, — and was sure, whenever a vacancy occurred, to ob-
tain the office of nomoph)'lax. With all these excellences, the
good Philippides had but one fault ; and that was, that when-
ever two parties appeared before him, the one who spoke last
always appeared to him to be in the right. The Abderites were
not so stupid as not to have observed that ; but they thought
that a man who had so many good qualities might be pardoned
this one fault.

So, then, the dentist Struthion and the ass-driver Anthrax
rushed, all on fire as they were, into the presence of this worthy
judge, and both at once, with great vociferation, presented their
complaint. He listened to them with his usual patience ; and
when at last they had ended, or were tired of shouting, he
shrugged his shoulders, and thought the case one of the most
complicated that had ever been brought before him.

" Which of you two," he asked, " is, properly speaking, the
plaintiff ? "

" I,'* answered Struthion ; " I prefer my complaint against
the man of the ass for having violated our contract."

" And I," said the other, " bring a complaint against the den-
tist for taking, without payment, what he had not hired of me."

" So we have two plaintiffs," said the judge ; ** and who is the
defendant ? A curious suit ! Relate to me the whole case once
more ; but one at a time, for it is impossible to understand any-
thing when you are both screaming together."

" May it please your Honor," said the dentist, " I hired of
this man the use of the ass for the day. It is true, nothing was
said about the ass's shadow ; but who ever heard of inserting in
such a contract a clause about shadow ? By Hercules ! this is
not the first ass that was ever hired in Abdera."

WIELAND. 225

** The gentleman is right, there," said the judge.

"The ass and his shadow go together," continued Struthion;
" and why should not one who has hired the ass have the usu-
fruct of his shadow ? "

" The shadow is an accessorium ; that is clear," said the
judge.

" Honored Sir," cried the ass-driver, ** I am a plain man. I
know nothing about your oriums ; but this my four senses tell
me, that I am not bound to let my ass stand in the sun for
nothing, in order that another man may seat himself in his
shadow. I let the ass to this gentleman, and he paid me half
the price in advance ; that I own. But the ass is one thing ;
the shadow another."

" That is true," muttered the judge.

" If he wants the shadow, let him pay half the price of the
ass itself. I demand nothing but what is reasonable, and I beg
you to help me to my rights."

The judge was sorely perplexed.

" Where is the ass ? " he finally asked, that being the only
thing that occurred to him in his anxiety to gain time.

" He is standing in the street before the door, your Honor."

*' Bring him into the court-yard," said Philippides.

The owner of the ass hastened to obey the order ; he consid-
ered it a good sign that the judge wanted to see the principal
personage in the controversy. The ass was led in. Pity he
could not express his own opinion of the case ! But there he
stood, — quietly looked, with ears erect, first at the two gentle-
men, then at his master, twitched his mouth, let his ears fall
again, — and said never a word.

" There, see yourself, kind Mr. Judge ; is not the shadow
of such a handsome stately a^s worth two drachmas between
friends, especially on such a hot day ? "

A process regarding the shadow of an ass would doubtless
have attracted attention in any city of the world ; it may be im-
agined what a sensation it caused in Abdera. Scarcely had the

15

226 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

report of it gone forth, when from that moment all other topics
of social entertainment were abandoned, and everybody dis-
coursed about this suit with as much interest as if he had per-
sonally a great deal to gain or to lose by it. Some declared
themselves for the dentist, others for the ass-driver. Even the
ass himself had his friends, who thought that he ought, by a
writ of intervemendOf to come in for damages, as having suffered
the greatest injury of the three, by being expected to stand
in the burning sun in order that the dentist might sit in his
shadow. In a word, said ass had cast his shadow over all
Abdera ; and the matter was pursued with an animation, a zeal,
an interest, which could not have been greater if the salvation of
the city and the republic had been at stake.

The names " Shadow " and " Ass " began all at once to be
heard in Abdera, and in a short time were universally employed
to designate the two parties.

And with the acquisition of a name, the zeal on both sides
increased to that extent that it was no longer permitted to any
one to be neutral. " Are you a Shadow or Ass ? " was always
the first question which citizens put to each other when they
met in the street or in the tavern. And if it happened to a
Shadow, in one of these places, to be the only one of his party
among a number of Asses, he must either betake himself to
flight or apostatize on the spot ; or else, with vigorous kicks, to
be turned out of doors. . . . The mutual bitterness soon reached
that degree that a Shadow would rather starve into a real ghost
than purchase a three-pence worth of bread from a baker of the
opposite party.

The women, too, as may be supposed, took sides, and you
may be sure with not less heat. Indeed, the first blood shed
in this strange civil war came from the nails of two huckster
women, who had pitched into each other's physiognomy in the
public square. It was remarked, that by far the larger number
of the Abderitesses took the side of Anthrax ; and where, in
any house, the husband was a Shadow, one might be sure that

WIELAND. 227

the wife was an Ass, and usually as passionate and indomitable
a she-ass as one can imagine.

Among a number of other partly baleful, partly ridiculous
consequences of this party spirit, which took possession of the
Abderite women, it was not one of the least that many a love
affair was suddenly broken off, because the Seladon would
rather renounce his claims on the beloved than give up his
party ; as, on the other hand, many a one who for years had
been suing for the favor of some fair one, and had not suc-
ceeded in overcoming her antipathy by any of the measures to
which lovers usually resort in such cases, now, of a sudden,
found that he needed no other title to the happiness to which
he aspired than to satisfy his lady that he was — an Ass.

228 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

CHAPTER XIY.

HERDER.

THE literature of a nation has been often fructified
by writers who have produced no complete work
which can be regarded as a measure and interpreter of
their genius, — writers who have swayed the mind of
their time by pregnant hints, by luminous suggestions,
by discovery of hidden or neglected treasures, by open-
ing new views, by research and illustration, rather
than by original works of literary art. Such was Cole-
ridge in English literature ; such were the Schlegels in
Germany ; and — greater than Coleridge or the Schle-
gels — such was Johann Gottfried Herder, a man of
intellectually colossal proportions, who wrote on nearly
every topic of literature and art, and touched no subject
which he did not illumine, but who in all his volumi-
nous writings produced no one great masterpiece — no
finished whole — which may be regarded as a worthy
monument of such a mind and such a life. Even his
principal work, and that by which he is best known
abroad, — his " Philosophy of History," — is not a sys-
tematic treatise, but a collection of materials, as the
name imports, " Ideen zur Philosophic der Geschichte
der Menschheit." Yet no one, not even Lessing, did
more to raise the literature of his country, and to
stimulate the national mind. What Lessing initiated

HERDER. 229

by negative methods, — by demonstrative criticism, by
checking false tendencies, by emancipating his country-
men from enslavement to mistaken ideals, from the
tyranny of foreign rules, from the worship of strange
gods, — Herder seconded and advanced by diffusion of
positive ideas, by his unprovincialism, his cosmopolitan
breadth ; by bringing the literatures, not of classical
Europe only, but of all nations, civilized and savage,
into view ; especially by directing attention to the pri-
mal fountains of song, to the poetry of the people, —
Volkspoesie, — as distinguished from that which is intel-
lectual and artificial.

Lessing's i"nfluence was that of critical authority : he
saw everything in the dry light of the understanding ;
his judgments were based on rule and measure. In
Herder's aesthetic there mingled sentiment, the loving
thought, the moral sympathy with which his catholic
heart embraced the most diverse and even contradictory
in literature, — the Oriental, the classic, the romantic,
Greek, and mediaeval song. His influence was due not
so much to accredited judgment as it was to admiring
advocacy and prophetic enthusiasm.

The circumstances of his nativity and childhood were
such as are commonly supposed to be more conducive
to moral growth and the formation of a manly character
than to intellectual development.

The father, sexton of the parish church, and teacher
of a primary school for girls in the little town of Moh-
rungen, in East Prussia, where Herder was born in
1744, was too poor to aid his son in the way of a liberal
education. But he inspired in him his own exact sense
of duty and order, his persevering industry, his incor-
ruptible integrity, his awful reverence. The domestic

230 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

economy was pinched to the verge of want ; but penury-
does not always freeze the current of the soul. In young
Herder the strength of the current defied the frost ;
wealth of native endowment compensated the stern pri-
vations of the house.

The rector of the city school, whose name was Grimm,
and whose discipline answered to the name, laid deep
and strong in the boyish mind the foundations on which
in riper years was reared the solid and vast structure
of Herder's learning, enforcing with inexorable strict-
ness the knowledge of grammatical rules, and dwelling
on every lesson until all that could be wrung from it
had been thoroughly appropriated by the memory and
the understanding. To his best scholars — of whom
young Gottfried was one — he was so far indulgent
that he took them with him in his walks, and made
them hunt for the herbs which furnished his daily tea.
On rare occasions he would even bestow on them a
cup of the tea itself, with a minute portion of sugar.
This was a distinction never to be forgotten ; and
Herder did not forget it when adverting, in conversa-
tion with friends, to the scenes and events of his boy-
hood. To native shyness and timidity, confirmed by the
discipline of the school, he added extreme sensibility.
He speaks of being moved to tears when, as a school-
boy, he read Homer's comparison of the generations of
men to the leaves of a season.^ The passage is a
beautiful one, but probably no school-boy before or since
was ever affected by it in that way. His love of knowl-
edge was insatiable, but poverty precluded the coveted
supply of books. Borowski relates that when in his
walks through the streets he saw one lying in the

1 Iliad, vi. 146.

HERDER. 231

window of any house, he would knock at the door and
request the loan of it.

There came to Mohrungen a clergyman by the name
of Trescho, who, perceiving in Herder a youth of un-
common promise, took him into his house in the capac-
ity of famulus^ — a relation involving professional aid,
but requiring no menial service. The advantage to
Herder of this position was the use of Trescho's well-
stocked library, which was granted to him without stint.
One night, when the youth had retired to his room with
a lighted candle and an armful of books, the master,
careful before going to bed himself to ascertain if the
candle were duly extinguished, found the floor strewn
with books, some of which were lying open, young
Herder in the midst of them fast asleep, and the can-
dle burning. The books were mostly Latin and Greek
classics. On being reproved the next morning for his
carelessness, and questioned if he could make use of
such books, he answered, modestly, " I am endeavoring
to understand them." " Then," says Trescho, " I discov-
ered that, instead of a Mohrungen school-boy, I had before
me a man who must be transplanted to quite another
school for the development of his great mind, unless
a species of intellectual murder were to be perpetrated
upon him, and a life, which appeared to have been cre-
ated for great ends, extinguished with its first breath."

It does not appear, however, that Trescho contributed
in any way to promote this transplanting. The youth
seemed doomed, with all his aspirations, and in spite
of these and other indications of a literary calling, to
forego the advantages of a thorough intellectual training,
and even perhaps to earn his bread by mechanical labor,
when — by a turn of fortune which Herder afterward

232 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

regarded as a part of that special Providence which at
several points in his history he believed had interposed
in his behalf — he attracted the notice of an army sur-
geon belonging to a regiment stationed at Mohrungen
on its return from the Seven Years' War. This officer
proposed to take him to Konigsberg, and to furnish him
with the means of studying surgery ; in return for which
young Herder was to translate a medical treatise, the
work of his patron, into Latin. To Konigsberg he went,
and the medical treatise was translated into excellent
Latin ; but the plan of a surgical profession was frus-
trated by an invincible repugnance contracted in the
dissecting-room, where, on his first visit, he fainted
away. Never after could he even bear to hear of a sur-
gical operation. His position was embarrassing. Only
as a student of medicine could he look for support ; but
to return to Mohrungen would have been a confession
of weakness and defeat. With some slight help from
home, with encouragement from friends in Konigsberg,
and the hope of being able to earn a little by literary
work, he determined to remain and to study theology,
which had always been his preference among the learned
professions. In vain his would-be patron represented to
him that as a physician, especially in St. Petersburg, —
whither he ought to go, — he might make his fortune,
whereas the life of a Prussian clergyman was one of
perpetual struggle and privation. As a theologian he
had himself inscribed ; and as such, after a satisfactory
examination, he was matriculated in the University of
Konigsberg. It was a good fight which the brave young
student fought with extreme poverty in the earlier por-
tion of his academic life, — bare bread, and not too
much of that, being often his only diet. Later, he ob-

HERDER. 233

tained the post of teacher in the Collegium Fredericia-
num, and from that time forth the pressure of want was
removed.

At the University he heard, among other celebrities,
the illustrious Kant, for whom, he entertained the rever-
ence due to the foremost mind of his time. But the
nihilism of the Critical Philosophy did not accord with
Herder's affirmative spirit and his craving for positive
convictions. So far from being a disciple of that phi-
losophy, he became in after years its active opponent,
assailing its fundamental principles in an essay which
he entitled " Metakritik zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft."
The strongest influence he experienced in Konigsberg
was exercised by John George Hamann, a writer of note,
by reason of his oracular utterances styled " The Magi-
cian of the North," — a man whom many of his contem-
poraries extol, and to whom even Goethe ascribes extra-
ordinary merit. The reputation which Hamann enjoyed
in his own day is not justified to the present generation
by his published writings, which have passed into general
neglect. But a man of extraordinary intellect he must
have been to have so impressed the best minds of his
time. I suppose the influence he exerted on such was
due to certain hints and suggestions anticipating the
thought and literary bias of the coming age, which
others wrought out, rather than to any finished or really
valuable performance of his own. Then, too, a universal
censor — and such Hamann appears to have been — is
apt to get credit for powers he does not possess. He
who blames the doings of others must, it is thought, be
able, if he chose, to do better himself, — a natural l^ut
very mistaken conclusion. Goethe, speaking of his own
experience of the man, says : —

234 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

" He was as much a riddle to us then as he has always been
to his country. His * Sokratische Denkwiirdigkeiten ' excited
attention, and were especially welcome to those who could not
reconcile themselves with the dazzling spirit of the time. They
led one to surmise a deep-thinking, thorough man, who, being
well acquainted with the visible world and literature, recognized
at the same time something secret, unfathomable, and had his
own peculiar way of talking about it. . . . In his endeavor to
effect the impossible, he grasps after all the elements, — the
deepest, most secret intuitions, where nature and mind encounter
each other, luminous flashes of intelligence which gleam from
such encounter, significant images which float in those regions,
impressive sayings of sacred and profane writers, with all sorts
of humorous additions. These together constitute the wondrous
whole of his communications. When we find that we cannot
join him in the deeps, nor walk with him on the heights ; that
we cannot possess ourselves of the images which hover before
his mind, and in an endless stretch of literature cannot make out
the sense of a mere intimation, — it grows thicker and darker
about us the more we study him ; and this darkness will in-
crease with future years, because his allusions were especially
directed to certain momentarily dominant peculiarities in litera-
ture and life."

So Goethe prophesied, and so it has come to pass ;
and Hamann is left to perish in the obscurity in which
while living he chose to dwell. Gervinus, a less friendly
critic, speaks of him as starting a hundred important
and unimportant questions without contributing in the
least to their solution, except by showing how little oth-
ers had contributed ; " always reserved, because equally
conscious of his superiority and his weakness, and be-
cause, being a man of extremes, he would rather be
nothing if he could not be everything ; always abound-
ing in scattered thoughts and suggestions, which often,

HERDER. 235

like lightning, gave forth a dazzling light, never clear-
ness and warmth ; sometimes even a delusive gleam, like
that of will-of-the-wisps. He is the real negative princi-
ple opposed to our elder literature; . . . his writings
are thrown into the nation like yeast, not food in them-
selves, but producing on the whole a needful ferment."
Certain it is that Herder was indebted to him as to no
one else for the earlier tone and the general direction of
his literary labors. From Hamann he derived the im-
pulse which led him to the study, and created in him
the love, of Oriental, especially of Hebrew, literature.
From Hamann he derived his taste for parables and
paramyths ; from Hamann his life-long interest in the
Volkspoesie--i\\Q peoples' poetry — of all nations, which
he manifested by diligent researches in that direction,
and by translations from various languages. Hamann
taught him English ; they read " Hamlet " together,
which Herder knew almost by heart.

In 1764, at the age of twenty, he received and ac-
cepted an invitation to the double office of preacher and
assistant teacher of the Cathedral school in the city of
Riga, in Russia, — a Livonian city, inhabited chiefly by
Germans of the Lutheran faith. Here he spent five of
the most important and happiest years of his life, made
many life-long friends, and wrote his " Kritische Wal-
der," and his " Fragmente zur deutschen Literatur."
An urgent desire to see more of the world before setting
himself fairly to his life's work, induced him to resign
his office. In 1769 he went to France, where he re-
mained long enough to acquire the command of the
French language, intending afterward to visit other por-
tions of Europe, and to make himself acquainted with
the best educational establishments abroad, with a view

236 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

to found, on his return, with the assistance of the Gov-
ernment, a model school at Riga. In Paris he became
acquainted with d'Alembert, with Arnauld, with Dide-
rot, and other distinguished men of the time.

While in Paris he received from Denmark an invita-
tion to accompany, as teacher, the young prince of Hol-
stein-Eutin on his travels. The appointment was to
cover the term of three years, and the prince's tutor,
Herr von Kappelmann, was to be one of the party.
With much hesitation. Herder finally accepted the office.
It obliged him to abandon his scheme of a high-school at
Riga, but on the other hand presented an opportunity
which might never be repeated of foreign travel. He
was expected to preach for the benefit of the prince in
places where there was no evangelical church ; to repeat
with him the substance of the lectures he might attend
in the universities he should visit; to read with him
the Latin classics, and to aid him in forming a good
German style. For this he was to receive, in addition
to his travelling expenses, an annual stipend of three
hundred thalers, and to be considered a candidate for
the next vacant office of preacher, or of professor at
the University of Kiel, at the expiration of the three
years. By the advice of Resewitz, who communicated
the proposal. Herder stipulated for an additional one
hundred thalers for the defraying of his travelling ex-
penses to Eutin, where he was to meet his charge, and
for continued support after their travels, until he should
receive the promised office. When these terms were
settled, he left France and proceeded to Belgium, where,
after inspecting the principal works of art in Brussels
and Antwerp, he set sail from the latter place for Am-
sterdam, and barely escaped death by shipwreck on the

HERDER, 237

passage. In a dark night the vessel struck a sand-bank
on the coast of Holland, not far from the Hague, and
there stuck fast. Signal-guns were fired all night, and
in the morning fishermen came to the rescue with their
boats. With difficulty, through a heavy sea, they brought
off the passengers and the crew, amid storm and surf, to
the nearest shore. They had scarcely landed, when the
vessel went to pieces before their eyes. Herder, who in
those years was an ardent admirer of Ossian, occupied
these hours of terror with the songs of the storm-
breathing bard. In a letter to a friend, inserted in his
essay entitled " Ossian and the Songs of Ancient Peo-
ples," he wrote : —

" I read Ossian in situations where few others have read him.
You know the adventure of my voyage, but you cannot imagine
the effect of such a voyage as one feels it at the time. ... To
hover between heaven and the abyss on a plank on the open all-
wide sea, member of a little State governed by stricter laws
than the Republic of Lycurgus ; in the midst of the spectacle of
a quite other living and working nature, with the songs of the
old Skalds in one's head, one's whole soul filled with them, in
the very places they commemorate ; . . . across the sands where
the Vikings with their sword and their love roamed through the
seas on ' the steeds of the earth-girdle ' (their ships), past the
coasts where Fingal's deeds were done and Ossian's songs of
sorrow were sung, in the same air, the same world, the same
silence : believe me, Skalds and Bards read there very differ-
ently from the reading of them at the professor's desk, — Homer,
amid the ruins of Troy ; Argonauts, Odysseys, and Lusiads, by
swelling sail and rattling rudder ; the tale of ' Uthal and Nina-
thoma,' in sight of the island of which it tells. . . . The feeling
is still in me of that night, when on a foundering ship, no longer
moved by storm or flood, washed by the sea, breathed upon as
with spirits' breath by the midnight wind, I read Fingal, and
hoped for morning."

238 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

In Amsterdam and Leiden Herder made the acquaint-
ance of some of the eminent scholars of the country ;
and passing on from there to Hamburg he spent some
happy days in company with Lessing, then a visitor in
that city, whom he had long known and admired as a
writer, and to whose merits he afterward reared a
fitting monument in his *' Denkmal Gotthold Ephraim
Lessings."

In Eutin he was graciously received by the duke and
duchess, the parents of the prince in whose education he
was called to assist. For this noble pair he entertained
through life a reverential and affectionate regard. After
a few months spent at their court, he entered on the jour-
ney in which he was to accompany the prince and his
tutor, and travelled with them as far as Strasburg.
But the choice of the tutor had proved an unfortunate
one, and Herder found himself so much at variance with
von Kappelmann in his views concerning the manage-
ment of their charge, that he wrote to the duke to be
released from his engagement. Seeing no other way of
adjusting the difficulty, the duke reluctantly consented
to accept his resignation ; and Herder, who had long
been suffering with a troublesome disease in one of his
eyes, remained in Strasburg, awaiting the result of an
operation from which the occulist Lobstein promised a
radical cure. Meanwhile, in Darmstadt, one of the cities
in which the party had tarried for some weeks on their
route, he had made the acquaintance of a lady of rare
intelligence, Mary Caroline Flachsman, his future wife.
That the attraction on his part was fully reciprocated on
hers appears from her own enthusiastic confession : —

" On the 19th of August, Herder preached in the Castle
Church. I heard the voice of an angel and words of the soul

HERDER, 239

such as I had never heard before. I cannot describe the pecu-
liar, unique impression which I then experienced for the first
time. A messenger from heaven stood before me in human
form. In the afternoon I saw him and stammered my thanks.
From this time forth our souls were one, and are one. Our
finding each other was the work of God. A more perfect un-
derstanding, a more intimate relation, between two souls there
cannot be."

In Strasburg Herder spent unhappy months in close
confinement in the hands of the physician to whom he
had intrusted the care and cure of his eye. Repeated
operations, attended with great pain, which he bore with
heroic fortitude, proved unsuccessful ; the disease, which
consisted in a stoppage of the lachrymal duct, was aggra-
vated rather than relieved by unskilful treatment ; time
and money had been spent in vain ; his sight was not
impaired, but a life-long blemish disfigured his otherwise
noble countenance. His only gain from the weary six
months of this trial was a personal acquaintance with
Goethe, then a student of law at Strasburg, who was
often, as Herder wrote to his betrothed, his only visi-
tor, and whose goodness of heart the sufferer warmly
commends.

We find him next, by invitation of Count Wilhelm
of Schaumburg-Lippe, in 1770, established at Biicke-
burg on the Weser as court preacher and primate of
that little principality. During the five years of his
residence there he wrote some of his most important
works ; among others his " Earliest Records of the
Human Race," and the first part of his " Ideas for
a Philosophy of History ; " and thither, in 1773, he
brought from Darmstadt the accomplished bride who
more and more brightened his earthly lot, and than

240 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

whom, it is likely, no literary man had ever a truer
helpmate.

In 1776 there came to him from the Hanoverian
government a call to the office of fourth Professor of
Theology and University preacher in the University of
Gottingen. For that University he had always enter-
tained a strong predilection, and had coveted a position
on its staff of instruction ; but the call was burdened
with conditions which made him hesitate. Not having
received the degree of Doctor of Theology, he must sub-
mit to an examination and give proof of his orthodoxy.
While debating with himself the acceptance of these
terms he received, through the mediation of Goethe, an
invitation from the Grand Duke of Weimar to fill the
office of Superintendent of the ecclesiastical department
of his State. The office of superintendent in the Lutheran
church corresponds to that of bishop in the English.
To this invitation he gave at once a joyful assent ; and
on the second of October, 1776, at the age of thirty-two,
he entered with his family the little capital, the German
Athens, where he spent the remainder of his life.

Fitter position, if the auspices held good, more com-
plete adaptation of the man to the place, had seldom
fallen to any scholar's lot. In the Grand Duke he was
sure of a wise, high-minded, and generous patron. Two
devoted and admiring patronesses he found in the two
duchesses, — the reigning duchess, and the duchess dow-
ager Amalia. In Goethe he had a stanch and efficient
friend; in Wieland,von Knebel, Dahlmann, Einsiedel,and
many others, the choicest literary society and intellectual
fellowship. But with all these advantages, and all the
attractions of such a community, his life in Weimar was
not the elysium he expected to find it. Patronage and

HERDER. 241

friendsllip he gratefully enjoyed ; but something more
was demanded by an enterprising spirit that sought
satisfaction in useful and beneficent action. Society,
even of the best, is but the occasional feast ; the staff
of life for every man is his daily work. And here it
was that Herder found himself baffled and thwarted and
hampered in unlooked-for ways at every turn. Official
jealousy, blind prejudice, unreasoning opposition to need-
ful reform, collision with narrow, intractable minds, de-
feated his plans and embittered his life ; and when in
1789 a second invitation to Gottingen, unhampered by
the former offensive conditions, was extended to him by
the Hanoverian government, approved in London and
urged by Heyne and other influential friends, it was only
a feeling of strong obligation to the Grand Duke that
prevented its acceptance. Even that could not prevent,
in after years, some feeling of regret at having declined
the last chance of a better lot. He often bewailed the
failure of his life. " 0 mein verfehltes Leben ! " he
would say, comparing the reality of his experience with
the fond ideals of his youth. Meanwhile, against all
discouragements and misapprehensions, he labored with
unflagging zeal in the work of his office, preaching elo-
quent sermons, preparing manuals, inspecting schools,
examining and placing candidates, and introducing such
reforms in church discipline as the bigotry of his asso-
ciates would allow. And still, amid all the pressure of
official duties, he found time for the literary labors which
he ever regarded as his true vocation, and sent forth into
the world in rapid succession the works which have made
him famous. His completed " Philosophy of History,"
his " Adrastea," his " Letters for the Furtherance of Hu-
manity," his " Spirit of Hebrew Poetry," his " Yolkslie-

16

242 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

der," his " Cid," are the products of this period. These
and other works, which might have been a life-task for
ordinary men, were his amusement and the solace of
many bitter woes. A life of official drudgery was further
relieved by an unlooked-for gleam of good fortune and
the intercalation of a year of rest. The dream of his
youth was fulfilled at last in the opportunity of Italian
travel. His wife as biographer writes : —

" In the year 1788, on the 10th of March, we received by
mail a gift of two thousand florins rhenish, in ducats, with a
letter from an unknown hand. The letter ran thus : ^ Do not
reject this slight offering of the greatest veneration ; do not repay
my good-will with contempt, nor deprive me of the sweet con-
solation of thinking that even I may contribute to the ease and
satisfaction of a great man. Be not offended, for my wish and
aim are pure. Forget the unknown who writes this, and also
the occasion of the writing. You will never learn who I am.
Be silent concerning it, as I shall ever be silent.' '*

The letter was franked to Eisenach, about twenty-five
miles from Weimar; it bore two addresses, in one of
which Weimar was spelt ai instead of ei. The cover
showed hard use, as if coming from a distance ; and the
letter itself indicated three different hands, of which two
at least were feminine. The donor was never ascer-
tained. The gift was most opportune; the domestic
economy had fallen into debt, and pressing arrears could
now be paid.

The saying, " It never rains but it pours," seemed
likely to be verified. Ten days after this event, — which
of course was kept secret during Herder's lifetime, — a
note from the Grand Duke informed him that his salary,
which had hitherto amounted but to twelve hundred

HERDER. 243

thalers, would be increased by three hundred thalers out
of the Duke's private purse. A few weeks later came a
letter from Freiherr von Dalberg, canon of Worms and
Speyer, inviting Herder to accompany him in a journey
to Italy. A furlough was readily granted by the Duke,
and on the 6th of August of that year, two months after
Goethe's return. Herder started on his tour.

His Italian experience, if not so fruitful as Goethe's,
— owing in part to weaker affinities ; in part to less
thorough preparation, — was nevertheless an important
epoch in his life. He writes to his wife : —

" In how many things this journey has made me wiser ! How
many sides of my being it has touched, gently or roughly, of
whose existence I was scarcely aware ! This I know for a cer-
tainty : it has opened my eyes with regard to men, and forced
me to recognize what is really valuable in life ; and especially
to appreciate truth and love, of which there is so little in the
world. Thus Italy, and Rome especially, has been for me a
high-school, not so much of art as of life. You will find, when
I return, that I am grown more serious ; but do not fear my
seriousness, — it will only bind me the closer to you and to all
my beloved."

I am led to suspect from this and other passages in
his letters that Rome, on the whole, was a disappoint-
ment to him. Its treasures and its glories did not com-
pensate the discomfort of the stranger in a far country,
sighing for the blandishments of his Northern home,
dearer to him than all that art and antiquity could offer.
The exceeding sensitiveness of his nature, and what
may be termed the preponderant subjectivity of his
mental life, made the rubs and annoyances, social and
other, of foreign travel more galling to him than to more
robust natures. Herein he differed from Goethe, who

244 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

could come out of self and live in objects, and who when
in Rome was all there. Herder, for one thing, found
the wife of his friend Dalberg — in whose society and
by wliose invitation he had undertaken the journey —
a thorn in his side, and finally left the party and took
separate lodgings. Altogether, he appears to have been
ill at ease. He writes : —

*' Rome enervates the mind ; ... it is the grave of a per-
ished world, in which one soon accustoms one's self to quiet
dreaming and dear idleness. It has not, to be sure, that effect
upon me ; I do not easily let a day pass without seeing sights,
or busying myself about something. Yet for me, too, it is a
grave from which I begin to wish myself away."

And yet he received attention which must have been
gratifying, not only from his own countrymen then resi-
dent in Rome, but from native nobles as well ; cardi-
nals, monsigniori, and others paid their court to the
stranger. " But all this," he says, " is mere spectacle,
and begins to weary me. Still it is well to have seen
this spectacle, since there is no time to think of any-
thing more serious." The person who seems to have
interested him most was the celebrated lady-painter
Angelica Kaufmann, to whom, while in Rome, he sat
for his portrait. He again writes : —

" The Angelica is a tender, virginal soul, like a Madonna, or
a little dove. In a small company, with two or three, she is
altogether lovely. But she lives very retired, I might say in
a pictorial, ideal world, in which the bird but touches fruits
and flowers with her little bill. Her old Zucchi [the Venetian
painter whom she married] is a brave man in his way ; but he
always seems to me like an old Venetian as represented on the
stage."

HERDER. 245

On his return to Rome, after a brief sojourn at Naples,
he writes to his wife : —

" Altogether, Angelica is my best comforter. The more I
become acquainted with her, the more I learn to love this maid-
enly artistic nature, — a true celestial Muse, full of grace, deli-
cacy, modesty, and an unspeakable goodness of heart.

" Her impression will be a life-long benefit to me, as of one
far removed from all flirtation, vanity, and falsehood. Of all
that, she knows nothing ; and with all her humility and angelic
transparency and innocence, she is perhaps the most cultivated
woman in Europe. ... I let her read lately the passage in
your letter in which you speak of her. She suddenly burst into
tears, and it was long before she regained her composure. She
said to me lately, in her quiet way, that she wished to die with
us at least, since she could not live with us ; at any rate, that
she must make your acquaintance if she did not die too soon. I
believe for a certainty we have in her a true soul-treasure of
our life. As soon as she has leisure, she means to paint her
picture for you."

His letters from Italy are mostly addressed to his
family ; and a pleasant view of German home life, and
of Herder's affectionate nature is given in his letters to
his children. He wrote to each singly, but the following
is to the whole household : —

Rome, Oct. 15, 1788.
My dear good Children, — You have given me so much
pleasure with your letters that I owe several to each one of you,
and I mean very soon to pay the debt. To you, dear good
Gottfried, I shall write about Roman antiquities ; to you, dear
August, of beautiful gods and goddesses ; to you, brave Wil-
helm, of fine buildings, the rotunda and others; to you, stal-
wart Adelbert, of Italian oxen, cows, and trees ; to you, little

246 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Louise, of gardens and beautiful pictures ; to you, dear Emil,
of grapes and other nice things. ... I am glad, dear children,
that you are so industrious, obedient, and well behaved. I thank
you, Gottfried, that you take such good care of my library, and
write me such nice letters ; you, too, dear August and good Wil-
helm. And I am pleased that Herr Krause gives such a good
account of your drawing. It is a grief to me every moment that
I can't draw. I am like a dumb man who has thoughts, but can't
express them. Therefore, dear children, learn to draw well, and
be diligent, too, in studying languages. And, Gottfried, it
would do no harm if you should begin to play the piano again,
so that you may learn to play with real expression. When I
read your letter to Herr Rehberg, who is an excellent painter,
— the letter in which you say that you mean to be an Albrecht
Dtirer, — he asked me why I did n't bring you with me. But
it is too soon for that; you must learn a great many things be-
fore you go to Italy. It is good that you have begun Greek ;
it is the finest language on earth. Be very industrious. Dear
Luischen, you are learning very pretty hymns ; and your little
notes to me are very nice. I like especially the hymn, " Thy
ways to God commend." You must also learn some verses of
the hymn, " I '11 sing to Thee with Heart and Mouth ; " it is a
beautiful hymn, that. Dear Emil, I would like to see you in
your little new beaver dress ; but you will have done wearing
it when I come back. Be careful of it, you good little boy, and
mind you love me. Your little letters give me much pleasure ;
you are very smart and a little Gottfried. And now, good-by,
all of you, my dear good children, — Gottfried, August, Wil-
helm, Adelbert ; and you my little woman and little Emil, who
are so fond of writing to me. Good-by ! Behave well ; be
happy and diligent and obedient. Farewell ! all of you.

If in Rome Herder felt, as so many others have done,
oppressed and unnerved by the genius of the place, in
Naples, on the contrary, whither he went by invitation
of the Duchess Amalia, he was all himself again. Nature

HERDER, 247

was more to him than antiquity and art. The climate,
the sea, the delicious air soothed and renewed him in
body and mind. He writes : —

" I am happy in Naples. ... In spite of the cold [the winter
was one of unusual severity, surprising the Neapolitans with
the rare visitation of snow and ice], the air here is such as I
never before experienced, — balmy and refreshing. Freed from
oppressive Rome, I feel myself quite another person, — spirit-
ually and bodily new born. ... I can believe the Neapolitans,
that when God wishes to have a good time, he just posts himself
at the window of heaven and looks down on Naples. I see, or
begin to feel, how one might be a Greek. . . . Oh, if I only had
you all in Naples ! If we could live out our bit of life here !
You, a Grecian, ought to live here. . . . No cloud can come
or remain on any one's brow in this atmosphere ; one gives it
to the winds. . . . Rome is a den of murderers compared with
this ; and I now see very well why I was never happy there. . . .
Farewell, angel ! think of your lonely Ulysses by the sea-shore.
All good spirits be with you ! my longing sends them to you over
sea and mountains, and draws you oft hither in my thoughts."

In the midsummer of 1789 Herder returned to Wei-
mar, where the call to Gottingen still awaited his deci-
sion. His friends would not hear of his leaving Weimar,
and insisted that he should not accept before consulting
with them. Everything was urged with wild exaggera-
tion that could prejudice him against University life,
compared with which, it was alleged, his present posi-
tion was a path of roses. *' Goethe," says his wife, "now
showed himself a true friend ; he would not interfere ;
he would not mislead ; he only spoke of the danger of a
change at Herder's time of life, and begged that he and
his wife would consider as calmly as possible the two
situations." It was long before Herder could decide.

248 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

" The voice of his genius was for Gottingen ; " but. as I
have said, his gratitude to the reigning family, a feeling
of obligation to continue in their service, and the wishes
of friends whom he greatly esteemed, prevailed against
his better judgment. With a heavy heart and strong
internal struggle, he renounced what seemed to him a
fairer lot. Whether it would have proved so is very
doubtful. The truth is, it was not in Herder's over-
sensitive and self-willed nature to adjust himself com-
pletely with the world as it was and is ; to fall into
pleasant official relations with his fellow-men, or to find
satisfaction anywhere but in the circle of his family
and nearest friends. Heaven had bestowed on him one
gift, than which no fairer ever falls to the lot of man, —
a perfect wife. Would he reckon truly with his destiny,
the rubs and stings of public converse, so grievous to
his soul, were compensated by that one gift. He had
drawn the highest prize in the lottery of life, and could
claim no right to anything more.

The remaining fourteen years of his life were spent in
Weimar, where the pressure of official duty and frequent
illness (for his bodily constitution was prematurely
broken) allowed little time for literary labor. And yet
some of his most important works are the product of
this period, — among others, the " Adrastaea," the " Let-
ters for the Promotion of Humanity," the " Letters on
Persepolis," the closing part of his contributions to the
" Philosophy of History," and his translation of the
" Cid."

In the first years of this century an affection of the
eyes, which gave him the feeling, as he expressed it, of
looking through a veil, impaired the free use of books
and pen, and would, had his life been prolonged, have

HERDER. 249

ended in total blindness. From this calamity, which
meant more to him than to most men, he was saved by
death. With failing vision his health, which had long
been declining, declined more rapidly, until after a brief
illness, in which his son Gottfried was his attendant
physician, he passed without a pang to his final rest.
On the 18th of December, 1803, Weimar lost, if not its
brightest genius, its most devout and consecrated soul.
A mourning city, with literary friends from abroad,
assisted at his obsequies ; the funeral sermon — pro-
nounced, as is usual in Germany, at the grave — was
listened to by more than four thousand hearers. "Light,
Love, Life," is the epithet inscribed on his tombstone.
Tributes from all quarters, in verse and prose, expressed
the wide sympathy of his spiritual peers, — among them
one from the Archbishop of Tarento at Naples, in Latin
distich, addressed to the Duchess Amalia, the honored
friend of both.

The most appreciative, as well as the most glowing, of
these tributes flowed from the pen of Jean Paul. Says
this grateful friend and enthusiastic admirer : —

" If he was misunderstood by opposing times and parties, it
was not altogether without fault of his own. His fault was that
he was no star of first or any other magnitude, but a whole
cluster of stars, out of wliich each one spells a constellation to
suit himself. . . . Men with powers of various kinds are always
misunderstood ; those with powers of only one kind seldom. . . .
If he was no poet, — as he often indeed thought of himself and
other very celebrated ones, planting himself as he did close by
the Homeric and Shakspearian standard, — then he was merely
something better ; and that is, a poem, an Indian-Greek epos,
made by some purest god. . . . Greece was to him the highest ;
and however universal and epic-cosmopolitan his taste, he still
clung, like a much-wandered Odysseus, after his return from all-

250 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

blossom lands, to his Greek home. . . . Few minds are learned
after the same grand fashion as he. . . . Many are clasped by
their learning as by a withering ivy ; but he as by a grape-vine
. . . He combined the boldest freedom of philosophy with the
most pious faith. . . . His life was a shining exception to the
often-tainted life of genius. He sacrificed like the ancient priests,
even at the altar of the Muses, only with white garments."

To the greater part of this panegyric the students of
Herder will cordially assent; but not, I think, to the
view which claims for its subject a Grecian order of
mind. Such claim is vitiated by the dilettante and an-
thological character, so to speak, of Herder's genius.
With all his learning and immense capacity he has given
to the world, as I have said, no one great work, — nei-
ther drama, nor epic, nor novel, nor history, — no
finished whole of wider scope than the parables and
paramyths, and occasional short poems contained in his
" Zerstreute Blatter." His genius was encyclopaedic, not
plastic. He was no artist ; he wanted the shaping
power, which, united to his warm poetic feeling and
wondrous wealth of intellect, would have made him the
first poet of his age. The forty volumes of Miiller's
edition of his writings, though exhibiting no complete
work, are otherwise a literature in themselves, — an
encyclopaedia of theology, philosophy, history, biography,
criticism, ethnology, antiquarian research, and poetic
lore ; and, added to all, numerous translations and par-
aphrases of poems and songs, from the Spanish " Cid "
to such trifles as " John Anderson my Jo," and " Love
will find out the way." An indefatigable Uttirateur,
but no artist. Like King David, he collected materials
from all quarters, but it was not given to him to rear a
temple therewith.

HERDER. 251

It would be difficult to say what work of Herder is
especially representative of the genius of the man ; they
all represent it, inasmuch as the moral sentiment pre-
dominates in them all. A few quotations may suffice to
illustrate, not so much his literary talent, as the tone of
his mind. Take his definition of Humanity, — an idea to
which Herder was largely instrumental in giving the
prominence it has in modern thought: —

" Humanity is the characteristic of our race ; but only as
tendency is it native to man, — it must be developed by educa-
tion. We do not bring it complete into the world ; but in the
world it is to be the goal of our endeavor, the sum of our dis-
cipline, — it is to constitute our worth. We know no angel in
man ; and if the daemon that rules us is not a humane daemon,
we become tormentors of our fellow-men. The divine in our
species is therefore the cultivation of humanity. To this have
contributed all great and good men, — law-givers, inventors,
philosophers, poets, artists ; every noble person in his place, by
the education of his children, by the faithful discharge of his
duties, by example and work, institution and doctrine. Human-
ity is the prize and outcome of all human endeavors, — as it
were the art of our race. Its cultivation is a work that must be
prosecuted without end, or we relapse, both high and low, into
animality, brutality."

The following is from the " Tithon and Aurora" : —

" ' Whatsoever is born must die,' says the Brahman ; and
that which seeks to defer its downfall by artificial methods, in
resorting to such methods has already outlived itself. . . . All
orders and institutions of Society are the offspring of Time*
The ancient Mother produced, nourished, educated them ; she
adorned and gave them their outfit ; and after a longer or
shorter term of life she buries them, as she buries or renews
herself. . . . What we call outliving ourselves, which is a kind
of death, is with the souls of the better sort but the sleep which

252 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

precedes a new waking ; a relaxation of the bow which prepares
it for new use. So rests the fallow field, in order to produce
more plentifully hereafter. So dies the tree in winter, that it
may put forth and blossom anew in the spring. Destiny never
forsakes the good, so long as he does not forsake himself and
ignobly despair. The genius which seemed to have departed
from him returns to him again at the right moment, bringing
new activity, prosperity, and joy. . . . Sacrifice to this Genius,
though you see him not ! Hope in returning Fortune, when even
you deem her far off. If your left side is sore, lay yourself on the
right; if the storm bent your sapling one way, bend it the other
way till it stands straight again. You have wearied your memory,
then exercise your understanding. You have striven too labori-
ously after seeming, and it has deceived you ; now seek being, —
that will not deceive. Unmerited fame has spoiled you ; thank
Heaven that you are rid of it ! and seek in your own worth a
fame which cannot be taken away. . . . The Serpent of time
often casts her slough, and brings to the man in his cave, if not
the fabled jewel on her head and the rose in her mouth, at least
medicinal herbs, which procure for him oblivion of the past and
restoration to new life.

" Philosophy abounds in remedies designed to console us for
misfortunes endured ; but unquestionably its best remedy is when
it strengthens us to bear new misfortunes, and gives us a firm
reliance on ourselves. The illusion which weakens the faculties
comes mostly from without. But the objects which environ us
are not ourselves. It is sad indeed when the situation in which
a man is placed is so embittered that he has no disposition to
touch one of its grapes or flowers, because, like apples of Sodom,
they turn to ashes in his hands. But the situation is not him-
self ; let him like the tortoise draw in his limbs, and be what he
can and ought. The more he disregards the consequences of his
acts, the more repose he has in action. . . . The fountain does
not stop to calculate through what regions of the earth its
streams shall flow ; it flows from its own fulness with an irre-
pressible motion. That which others show us of ourselves is
only appearance. It has always some foundation, and is never

HERDER. 253

to be wholly despised ; but it is only the reflection of our being
in them mirrored back to us from their own, — often a broken
and blurred image, not our being itself. ... In the heart we
live, and not in the thoughts. The opinion of others may be a
favorable or unfavorable wind in our sails. As the ocean its
vessels, circumstances may now detain and now further us, but
ship and sail, compass, helm, and oar are still our own. Never
then, like old Tithon, grow gray in the conceit that your youth
has passed away; rather with new-born activity let a new
Aurora daily spring from your arms."

254 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

CHAPTER XV.

GOETHE.

I. — THE MAN.

/^^ ENIUS of the supreme order presupposes a nature
^-^ of equal scope as the prime condition of its being.
The Gardens of Adonis require little earth, but the oak
will not flourish in a tub ; and the wine of Tokay is the
product of no green-house, nor gotten of sour grapes.
Given a genuine great poet, you will find a greater man
behind, in whom, among others, these virtues predomi-
nate, — courage, generosity, truth.

Pre-eminent among the poets of the modern world
stands Goethe, chief of his own generation, challenging
comparison with the greatest of all time. His literary
activity embraces a span of nigh seventy years in a life
of more than four score, beginning, significantly enough,
with a poem on " Christ's Descent into Hell " (his ear-
liest extant composition), and ending with Faust's —
that is, Man's — ascent into heaven.

The rank of a writer — his spiritual import to human
kind — may be inferred from the number and worth of
the writings of which he has furnished the topic and
occasion. " When kings build," says Schiller, speaking
of Kant's commentators, " the draymen have plenty to
do." Dante and Shakspeare have created whole libra-
ries tlirough the interest inspired by their writings.

GOETHE. 255

The Goethe-literature, so-called, — though scarce fifty
years have elapsed since the poet's death, — already
numbers its hundreds of volumes.

I note in this man first of all, as a literary phenome-
non, the unexampled fact of supreme excellence in sev-
eral quite distinct provinces of literary action. Had
we only his minor poems, he would rank as the first of
lyrists. Had he written only " Faust," he would be the
first of philosophic poets. Had he written only " Her-
mann and Dorothea," the sweetest idyllist ; if only the
" Marchen," the subtlest of allegorists. Had he written
never a verse, but only prose, he would hold the highest
place among the prose-writers of Germany. And lastly,
had he written only on scientific subjects, in that line
also — in the field of science — he would be, as he is,
an acknowledged leader.

Noticeable in him also is the combination of extraor-
dinary genius with extraordinary fortune. A magnifi-
cent person, a sound physique, inherited wealth, high
social position, official dignity, with eighty-three years of
earthly existence, compose the frame-work of this illus-
trious life.

Behind the author, behind the poet, behind the world-
renowned genius, a not unreasonable curiosity seeks
the original man, the human individual as he walked
among men, his manner of being, his characteristics as
shown in the converse of life. In what soil grew the
flowers and ripened the fruits which have been the de-
light and the aliment of nations ? In proportion, of
course, to the eminence attained by a writer, — in pro-
portion to the worth of his works, to their hold on the
world, — is the interest felt in his personality and be-
havior, in the incidents of his life. Unfortunately, our

256 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

knowledge of the person is not always proportioned to
the lustre of the name. Of the two great poets to whom
the world's unrepealable verdict has assigned the fore-
most place in their several kinds, we know in one case
absolutely nothing, and next to nothing in the other.
To the question. Who sung the wrath of Achilles and
the wanderings of the much-versed Odysseus ? tradition
answers with a name to which no faintest shadow of a
person corresponds. To the question. Who composed
"Hamlet" and "Othello"? history answers with a per-
son so indistinct, that recent speculation has dared to
question the agency of Shakspeare in those creations.
What would not the old scholiasts have given for satis-
factory proofs of the existence of a Homer identical with
tlie author of the Iliad and the Odyssey ? What would
not the Shakspeare clubs give for one more authentic
anecdote of the world's great dramatist ?

Of Goethe we know more — I mean of his externals —
than of any other writer of equal note. This is due in
part to his wide relations, official and other, with his con-
temporaries ; to his large correspondence with people of
note, of which the documents have been preserved by the
parties addressed ; to the interest felt in him by curious
observers living in the day of his greatness. It is due
in part also to the fact that, unlike the greatest of his
predecessors, he flourished in an all-communicating, all-
recording age ; and partly it is due to autobiographical
notices, embracing important portions of his history.

Two seemingly opposite factors — limiting and quali-
fying the one the other — determined the course and
topics of his life. One was the aim which he pro-
posed to himself as the governing principle and purpose
of his being, — to perfect himself, to make the most of

GOETHE. 257

the nature which God had given him ; the other was a
constitutional tendency to come out of himself, to lose
himself in objects, especially in natural objects, so that
in the study of Nature — to which he devoted a large
part of his life — he seems not so much a scientific
observer as a chosen confidant, to whom the discerning
Mother revealed her secrets.

In no greatest genius are all its talents self-derived.
Countless influences mould our intellect and mould our
heart. One of these, and often one of the most potent, is
heredity. Consciously or unconsciously, for good or for
evil, physically and mentally, the father and mother are
in the child, as indeed all his ancestors are in every man.

Of Goethe's father we know only what the son him-
self has tol5 us in his memoirs. A man of austere
presence, from whom Goethe, as he tells us, inherited
his bodily stature and his serious treatment of life, —

*' Vom Vater hab ich die Statur,
Des Lebens ernstes fiihren."

By profession a lawyer, but without practice, living in
grim seclusion amid his books and collections; a man
of solid acquirements and large culture, who had trav-
elled in Italy, and first awakened in Wolfgang the long-
ing for that land ; a man of ample means, inhabiting
a stately mansion. For the rest, a stiff, narrow-minded,
fussy pedant, with small toleration for any methods or
aims but his own ; who, while he appreciated the supe-
rior gifts of his son, was obstinately bent on guiding
them in strict professional grooves, and teased him with
the friction of opposing wills.

The opposite, in most respects, of this stately and
pedantic worthy was the Frau Rathin, his youthful wife,

-^7 "

258 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

young enough to have been his daughter, — a jocund,
exuberant nature, a woman to be loved ; one who blessed
society with her presence, and possessed uncommon
gifts of discourse. She was but eighteen when Wolf-
gang was born, — a companion to him and his sister
Cornelia ; one in whom they were sure to find sympa-
thy and ready indulgence. Goethe was indebted to her,
as he tells us, for his joyous spirit and his narrative
talent, —

<' Von Miitterchen die Frohiiatur
Und Lust zu fabuliren."

Outside of the poet's household, the most important
figure in the circle of his childish acquaintance was his
mother's father, from whom he had his name, — Johann
Wolfgang Textor, the Sehultheiss, or chief magistrate, of
the city. From him Goethe seems to have inherited the
superstition of which some curious examples are re-
corded in his life. He shared with Napoleon and other
remarkable men, says Yon Miiller, the conceit that little
mischances are prophetic of greater evils. On a journey
to Baden-Baden with a friend, his carriage was upset and
his companion slightly injured. He thought it a bad
omen, and instead of proceeding to Baden-Baden chose
another watering-place for his summer resort. If in his
almanac there happened to be a blot on any date, he
feared to undertake anything important on the day so
marked. He had noted certain fatal days ; one of these
was the 22d of March. On that day he had lost a val-
ued friend ; on that day the theatre to which he had
devoted so much time and labor was burned ; and on
that day, curiously enough, he died. He believed in
oracles; and as Rousseau threw stones at a tree to learn

GOETHE. 259

whether or no he was to be saved (the hitting or not
hitting the tree was to be the sign), so Goethe tossed
a valuable pocket-knife into the river Lahn to ascertain
whether he would succeed as a painter. If behind the
bushes which bordered the stream he saw the knife
plunge, it should signify success ; if not, he would take
it as an omen of failure. Rousseau was careful, he
tells us, to choose a stout tree, and to stand very near.
Goethe, more honest with himself, adopted no such pre-
caution ; the plunge of the knife was not seen, and the
painter's career was abandoned.

Wordsworth's saying, " The child is father of the
man," — a saying which owes ^ its vitality more to its
form than its substance, — is not always verified, or its
truth is not always apparent in the lives of distinguished
men. I find not much in Goethe the child prophetic of
Goethe the man. But the singer and the seeker, the
two main tendencies of his being, are already apparent
in early life. Of moral traits, the most conspicuous in
the child is a power of self-control, — a moral heroism,
which secured to him in after life a natural leadership
unattainable by mere intellectual supremacy. An in-
stance of this self-control is recorded among the anec-
dotes of his boyhood. At one of the lessons which he
shared with other boys, the teacher failed to appear. The
young people awaited his coming for a while, but toward
the close of the hour most of them departed, leaving
behind three who were especially hostile to Goethe.
" These," he says, " thought to torment, to mortify,
and to drive me away. They left me a moment, and
returned with rods taken from a broom which they had
cut to pieces. I perceived their intention, and supposing
the expiration of the hour to be near, I immediately

260 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

determined to make no resistance until the clock should
strike. Unmercifully, thereupon, they began to scourge
in the cruellest manner my legs and calves. I did not
stir, but soon felt that I had miscalculated the time, and
that such pain greatly lengthens the minutes." When
the hour expired, his superior activity enabled him to
master all three, and to pin them to the ground.

In later years the same zeal of self-discipline which
prompted the child to exercise himself in bearing pain,
impelled the man to resist and overcome constitutional
weaknesses by force of will. A student of architecture,
he conquered a tendency to giddiness by standing on
pinnacles and walking on narrow rafters over perilous
abysses. In like manner he overcame the ghostly ter-
rors instilled in the nursery, by midnight visits to
church-yards and uncanny places.

To real peril, to fear of death, he seems to have
had that native insensibility so notable always in men
of genius, in whom the conviction of a higher destiny
begets the feeling of a charmed life, — such as Plutarch
records of the first Caesar in peril of shipwreck on the
river Anio. In the French campaign (1793), in which
Goethe accompanied the Duke of Weimar against the
, armies of the Republic, a sudden impulse of scientific
curiosity prompted him, in spite of warnings and remon-
strances, to experiment on what is called the " cannon-
fever." For this purpose he rode to a place in which he
was exposed to a cross fire of the two armies, and coolly
watched the sensations experienced in that place of
peril.

Command of himself, acquired by long and systematic
discipline, gave him that command over others which
he exercised in several memorable instances. Coming

GOETHE. 261

from a ball one night, — a young man fresh from the
University, — he saw that a fire had broken out in the
Judengasse, and that people were standing about help-
less and confused without a leader ; he immediately
jumped from his carriage, and, full-dressed as he was,
in silk stockings and pumps, organized on the spot a
fire-brigade, which averted a dangerous conflagration.
On another occasion, voyaging in the Mediterranean, he
quelled a mutiny on board an Italian ship, when cap-
tain and mates were powerless, and the vessel drifting
on the rocks, by commanding sailors and passengers to
fall on their knees and pray to the Virgin, — adopting the
idiom of their religion as well as their speech, of which
he was a master.

As a student, first at Leipsic, then at Strasburg, in-
cluding the years from 1766 to 1771, he seems not to
have been a very diligent attendant on the lectures in
either university, and to have profited little by profes-
sional instruction. In compliance with the wishes of
his father, who intended him for a jurist, he gave some
time to the study of the law ; but on the whole the prin-
cipal gain of those years was derived from intercourse
with distinguished intellectual men and women, whose
acquaintance he cultivated, and the large opportunities
of social life.

In Strasburg occurred the famous love-passage with
Friederike. Brian, which terminated so unhappily at the
time, and so fortunately in the end, for both.

Goethe has been blamed for not marrying Friederike.
His real blame consists in the heedlessness with which,
in the beginning of their acquaintance, he surrendered
himself to the charm of her presence, thereby engaging
her affection without a thought of the consequences

262 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

to either. Besides the disillusion, which showed him,
when he came fairly to face the question, that he did
not love her sufficiently to justify marriage, there were
circumstances — material, economical — which made it
practically impossible. Her suffering in the separation,
great as it was, — so great indeed as to cause a danger-
ous attack of bodily disease, — could not outweigh the
pangs which he endured in his penitent contemplation
of the consequences of his folly.

The next five years were spent partly in Frankfort
and partly in Wetzlar, partly in the forced exercise of
his profession, but chiefly in literary labors and the use
of the pencil, which for a time disputed with the pen the
devotion of the poet-artist. They may be regarded as
perhaps the most fruitful, certainly the most growing,
years of his life. They gave birth to " Gotz yon, Ber-
lichingen" and the "Sorrows of Werther," to the first
inception of "Faust," and to many of his sweetest lyrics.
It was during this period that he made the acquaintance
of Charlotte Buff, the heroine of the " Sorrows of Wer-
ther," from whom he finally tore himself away, leaving
Wetzlar when he discovered that their growing interest
in each other was endangering her relation with Kestn^iu
her betrothed. In those years, also, he formed a matri-
monial engagement with Elizabeth Schonemann (Liji),
the rupture of which, I must think, was a real misfor-
tune for the poet. It came about by no fault of his.
Her family had from the first opposed themselves to the
match on the ground of social disparity. For even in
mercantile Frankfort rank was strongly marked; and
the Goethes, though respectable people, were beneath
the Schonemanns in the social scale. Goethe's gen-
ius went for nothing with Madam Schonemann ; she

GOETHE, 263

wanted for her daughter an aristocratic husband, not
a literary one, — one who had wealth in possession, and
not merely, as Goethe had, in prospect. How far Lili
was influenced by her mother's and brothers' represen-
tations it is impossible to say ; however, she showed
herself capricious, was sometimes cold, or seemed so to
him, while favoring the advances of others. Goethe
was convinced that she did not entertain for him that
devoted love, without which he felt that their union
could not be a happy one. They separated ; but on her
death-bed she confessed to a friend that all she was, in-
tellectually and morally, she owed to him.

In 1775 our poet was invited by the young duke of
Saxe- Weimar, Karl August, — whose acquaintance he
had made at Frankfort and at Mentz, his junior by two or
three years, — to establish himself in civil service at the
Grand-Ducal^ourt. The father, who had other views for
his son, and was not much inclined to trust in princes,
objected ; many wondered, some blamed. Goethe him-
self appears to have wavered with painful indecision, and
at last to have followed a mysterious impulse rather than
a clear conviction or deliberate choice. His Heidelberg
friend and hostess sought still to detain him, when the
last express from Weimar drove up to the door. To her
he replied in the words of his own Egmont : —

" Say no more ! Goaded by invisible spirits, the sun-steeds
of time run away with the light chariot of our destiny ; there is
nothing for it but to keep our courage, hold tight the reins, and
guide the wheels now right, now left, avoiding a stone here, a
fall there. Whither away ? Who knows ? Scarcely one re-
members whence he came."

It does not appear that he ever repented this most
decisive step of his life-journey, nor does there appear to

264 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

have been any reason why he should. A position, an
office of some kind, he needs must liave. Even now, the
life of a writer by profession, with no function but that
of literary composition, is seldom a prosperous one ; in
Goethe's day, when literature was far less remunerative
than it is in ours, it was seldom practicable. Unless he
had chosen to be maintained by his father, some em-
ployment besides that of book-making was an imperative
necessity. The alternative of that which was offered —
the one his father would have chosen — was that of a
plodding jurist in a country where forensic pleading
was unknown, and where the lawyer's profession offered
no scope for any of the higher talents with which Goethe
was endowed. On the whole, it was a happy chance that
called him to the little capital of the little Grand-Duchy^Di-
Saxe- Weimar. If the State was one of petty dimensions
(a kind of pocket-kingdom, like so many of the principal-
ities of Germany), it nevertheless included some of the
fairest localities, and one at least of the most memora-
ble in Europe, — the Wartburg, where Luther translated
the Bible, where Saint Elizabeth dispensed the blessings
of her life, where the Minnesingers are said to have
held their poetic tournament, —

*' Heinrich von Ofterdingen,
Wolfram von Eschenbach."

It included also the University of Jena, which at that
time numbered some of the foremost men of Germany
among its professors. It was a miniature State, and a
miniature town ; one wonders that Goethe, who would
have shone the foremost star in Berlin or Vienna, could
content himself with so narrow a field. But Vienna and
Berlin did not call him until it was too late, — until
patronage was needless ; and Weimar did. A miniature

GOETHE. 265

State, — but so much the greater his power and freedom
and the opportunity of beneficent action.

No prince was ever more concerned to promote in every
way the welfare of his subjects than Karl August ; and in
all his works undertaken for this purpose, Goethe was his
foremost counsellor and aid. The most important were
either suggested by him or executed under his direction.
Had he never written a poem, or given to the world a
single literary composition, he would still have led, as a
Weimar official, a useful and beneficent life. But the
knowledge of the world and of business, the social and
other experience gained in this way, was precisely the
training which he needed — and which every poet needs
— for the broadening and deepening and perfection of
his art. Friedrich von Mliller, in his valuable treatise of
" Goethe as a Man of Affairs," tells us how he traversed
every portion of the country to learn what advantage
might be taken of topographical peculiarities, what pro-
vision made for local necessities. " Everywhere — on
hilltops crowned with primeval forests, in the depths of
gorges and shafts — Nature met her favorite with friendly
advances, and revealed to him many a desired secret."
Whatever was privately gained in this way was applied
to public uses. He endeavored to infuse new life into
the mining business, and to make himself familiar with
all its technical requirements. For that end he revived
his chemical experiments. New roads were built, hy-
draulic operations were conducted on more scientific
principles, fertile meadows were won from the river
Saale by systematic drainage, and in many a struggle
with Nature an intelligently persistent will obtained the
victory.

Nor was it with material obstacles only that the

266 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

poet-minister had to contend. In the exercise of the
powers intrusted to him he often encountered the fierce
opposition of party interest and stubborn prejudice, and
was sometimes driven to heroic and despotic measures
in order to accomplish a desired result, — as when he
foiled the machinations of the Jena professors in his
determination to save the University library, and when,
in spite of the opposition of the leading burghers, he
demolished the city wall.

In 1786 Goethe was enabled to realize his cherished
dream of a journey to Italy. There he spent a year and
a half in the diligent study and admiring enjoyment of
the treasures of art which made that country then, even
more than now, the mark and desire of the civilized
world. He came back an altered man. Intellectually
and morally he had made in that brief space, under new
influences, a prodigious stride. His sudden advance
while they had remained stationary separated him from
his contemporaries. The old associations of the Weimar
world, which still revolved its little round, the much-
enlightened traveller had outgrown. People thought
him cold and reserved. It was only that the gay, im-
pulsive youth had ripened into an earnest, sedate man.
He found Germany jubilant over Schiller's " Robbers "
and other writings representative of the " storm-and
stress " school, which his maturity had left far behind,
his own contributions to which he had come to hate.
Schiller, who first made his acquaintance at this time,
writes to Korner : —

" I doubt that we shall ever become intimate. Much that to
me is still of great interest he has already outlived. He is so
far beyond me, not so much in years as in experience and cul-
ture, that we can never come together in one course."

GOETHE. 267

How greatly Schiller erred in the supposition that
they never could become intimate, how close the inti-
macy which grew up between them, what harmony of
sentiment, how friendly and mutually helpful their co-
operation, is sufficiently notorious.

But such was the first aspect which Goethe presented
to strangers at this period of his life ; he rather re-
pelled than attracted, until nearer acquaintance learned
rightly to interpret the man, and intellectual or moral
afiinity bridged the chasm which seemed to divide him
from his kind. In part, too, the distance and reserve of
which people complained was a necessary measure of
self-defence against the disturbing importunities of social
life. '' From Rome," says Friedrich von Miiller, " from
the midst of the richest and grandest life, dates the
stern maxim of ' Renunciation ' which governed his sub-
sequent being and doing, and which furnished his only
guarantee of mental equipoise and peace."

His literary works hitherto had been spasmodic and
lawless effusions, the escapes of a gushing, turbulent
youth. In Rome he had learned the sacred significance
of art. The consciousness of his true vocation had been
awakened in him ; and to that, on the eve of his fortieth
year, he thenceforth solemnly devoted the remainder of
his life. He obtained release from the more onerous of
his official engagements, retaining only such functions
as accorded with his proper calling as a man of letters
and of science. He renounced his daily intercourse with
Frau von Stein, though still retaining and manifesting
his unabated friendship for the woman to whom in
former years he had devoted so large a portion of his
time, and employed himself in giving forth those im-
mortal words which have settled forever his place

268 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

among the stars of first magnitude in the intellectual
world.

Noticeable and often noted was the charm and (when
arrived to maturity) the grand effect of his personal pres-
ence. Physical beauty is not the stated accompaniment,
nor even the presumable adjunct, of intellectual great-
ness. In Goethe, as perhaps in no other, the two were
combined. A wondrous presence ! — on this point the
voices are one and the witnesses many. " Goethe was
with us," so writes Heinse to one of his friends ; " a
beautiful youth of twenty-five, full of genius and force
from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot ; a
heart full of feeling, a spirit full of fire, who with eagle
wings ruit immensus ore profundoy Jacobi writes :
" The more I think of it, the more impossible it seems
to me to communicate to any one who has not seen
Goethe any conception of this extraordinary creature
of God." Lavater says : " Unspeakably sweet, an in-
describable appearance, the most terrible and lovable
of men." Hufeland, the chief medical celebrity of Ger-
many, describes his appearance in early manhood :
*' Never shall I forget the impression which he made as
' Orestes ' in Greek costume. You thought you beheld
an Apollo. Never was seen in any man such union of
physical and spiritual perfection and beauty as at that
time in Goethe." More remarkable still is the testimony
of Wieland, who had reason to be offended, having been
before their acquaintance the subject of Goethe's sharp
satire. But immediately at their first meeting, sitting
at table '•' by the side," he says, " of this glorious youth,
I was radically cured of all my vexation .... Since this
morning," he wrote to Jacobi, " my soul is as full of
Goethe as a dew-drop is of the morning sun." And to

GOETHE. 269

Zimmermann : " He is in every respect the greatest, best,
most splendid human being that ever God created."
Goethe was then twenty-six. Henry Crabbe Robinson,
who saw him at the age of fifty-two, reports him one of
the most *' oppressively handsome " men he had ever
seen, and speaks particularly, as all who have described
him speak, of his wonderfully brilliant eyes. Those eyes,
we are told, had lost nothing of their lustre, nor his
head its natural covering, at the age of eighty.

Among the heroic qualities notable in Goethe, I
reckon his faithful and unflagging industry. Here was
a man who took pains with himself, — liess sich 's sauer
werden, — and made the most of himself. He speaks
of wasting, while a student in Leipsic, " the beautiful
time ; " and certainly neither at Leipsic nor afterward
at Strasburg did he toil as his Wagner in " Faust "
would have done. But he was always learning. In the
lecture-room or out of it, with pen and books or gay
companions, he was taking in, to give forth again in dra-
matic or philosophic form the world of his experience.

A frolicsome youth may leave something to regret in
the way of time misspent ; but Goethe the man was
no dawdler, no easy-going Epicurean. On the whole,
he made the most of himself, and stands before the
world a notable instance of a complete life. He would
do the work which was given him to do. He would not
die till the second part of " Faust " was brought to it
predetermined close. By sheer force of will he lived till
that work was done. Smitten at four-score by the death
of his son, and by deaths all around, he kept to his task.
" The idea of duty alone sustains me ; the spirit is wil-
ling, the flesh must." When " Faust " was finished, the
strain relaxed. " My remaining days," he said, " I may

270 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

consider a free gift ; it matters little what I do now, or
whether I do anything." And six months later he died.

A complete life ! A life of strenuous toil ! At home
and abroad, — in Italy and Sicily, at Ilmenau and Carls-
bad, as in his study at Weimar, — with eye or pen or
speech, he was always at work. A man of rigid habits ;
no lolling or lounging. " He showed me," says Ecker-
mann, " an elegant easy chair which he had bought to-
day at auction. ' But,' said he, ' I shall never or rarely
use it ; all indolent habits are against my nature. You
see in my chamber no sofa ; I sit always in my old
wooden chair, and never, till a few weeks ago, have
permitted even a leaning place for my head to be added.
If surrounded by tasteful furniture my thoughts are
arrested ; I am placed in an agreeable but passive state.
Unless we are accustomed to them from early youth,
splendid chambers and elegant furniture had better be
left to people without thoughts.' " This in his eighty-
second year !

A widely-diffused prejudice regarding the personal
character of Goethe refuses to credit him with any
moral worth accordant with his bodily and mental gifts.
It figures him a libertine, — heartless, loveless, bad. I
do not envy the mental condition of those who can rest
in the belief that a really great poet can be a bad man.
Be assured that the fruits of genius have never grown,
and will never grow, in such a soil. Of all great poets
Byron might seem at first glance to constitute an ex-
ception to this — I venture to call it — law of Nature.
Yet hear what Walter Scott, a sufficient judge, said of
Byron : —

" The errors of Lord Byron arose neither from depravity of
heart — for Nature had not committed the anomaly of uniting

GOETHE. 271

to such extraordinary talents an imperfect moral sense — nor
from feelings dead to the admiration of virtue. No man had
ever a kinder heart for sympathy, or a more open hand for the
relief of distress ; and no mind was ever more formed for enthu-
siastic admiration of noble actions."

The case of Goethe requires no appeal to general
principles. It only requires that the charges against
him be fairly investigated; that he be tried by docu-
mentary evidence, and by the testimony of competent
witnesses. The mistake is made of confusing breaches
of conventional decorum with essential depravity.

That Goethe was faulty in many ways may be freely
conceded. But surely there is a wide difference between
not being faultless and being definitively bad. To call
a man bad, is to say that the evil in him preponderates
over the good. In the case of Goethe the balance was
greatly the other way. It has been said that he abused
the confidence reposed in him by women; that he en-
couraged affection which he did not reciprocate, for
artistic purposes. The charge is utterly groundless ;
and in the case of Bettine has been refuted by irrefra-
gable proof. To say that he was wanting in love, heart-
less, cold, is ridiculously false. Yet the charge is con-
stantly reiterated in the face of facts, — reiterated with
undoubting assurance, and a certain complacency which
seems to say, " Thank God ! we are not as this man
was.'' There is a satisfaction which some people feel
in spotting their man, — Burns drank ; Coleridge took
opium ; Byron was a rake ; Goethe was cold : by these
marks we know them. The poet found it necessary, as
I have said, in later years, under social pressure, for the
sake of the work which was given him to do, to fortify
himself with a mail of reserve. And this, indeed, con-

272 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

trasted strangely with his former abandon^ and with the
customary gush of German sentimentality. It was com-
mon then for Germans who had known each other by
report, and were mutually attracted, when first they
met, to fall on each other's necks and kiss and weep.
Goethe, as a young man, had indulged such fervors ;
but in old age he had lost this effusiveness, or saw fit
to restrain himself outwardly, while his kindly nature
still glowed with its pristine fires. He wrote to Frau
von Stein, " I may truly say that my innermost condi-
tion does not correspond to my outward behavior."
Hence, the charge of coldness. Say that Mount ^tna
is cold : do we not see the snow on its sides ?

But he was unpatriotic ; he occupied himself with
poetry, and did not cry out while his country was in
the death-throes — so it seemed — of the struggle with
France ! But what should he have done ? What could
he have done ? What would his single arm or dec-
lamation have availed ? No man more than Goethe
longed for the rehabilitation of Germany. In his own
way he wrought for that end ; he could work effectu-
ally in no other. That enigmatical composition, — the
" Marchen," — according to the latest interpretation in-
dicates how, in Goethe's view, that end was to be accom-
plished. To one who considers the relation of ideas to
events, it will not seem extravagant when I say that to
Goethe, more than to any one individual, Germany is
indebted for her emancipation, independence, and pres-
ent political regeneration.

It is true, his writings contain no declamations against
tyrants, and no tirades in favor of liberty. He believed
that oppression existed only through ignorance and blind-
ness, and these he was all his life-long seeking to remove.

GOETHE. 273

He believed that true liberty is attainable only through
mental illumination, and that he was all his life-long
seeking to promote.

He was no agitator, no revolutionist ; he had no faith
in violent measures. Human welfare, he judged, is not
to be advanced in that way ; is less dependent on forms
of polity than on the life within. But if the test of
patriotism is the service rendered to one's country, who
more patriotic than he ? Lucky for us and the world
that he persisted to serve her in his own way, and not
as the agitators claimed that he should. It was clear to
him then, and must be clear to us now, that he could
not have been what they demanded, and at the same
time have given to his country and the world what
he did.

As a courtier and favorite of Fortune, it was inevitable
that Goethe should have enemies. They have done what
they could to blacken his name ; and to this day the
shadow they have cast upon it in part remains. But of
this be sure, that no selfish, loveless egoist could have
had and retained such friends. The man whom the
saintly Fraulein von Klettenberg chose for her friend,
whom clear-sighted, stern-judging Herder declared that
he loved as he did his own soul ; the man whose thought-
ful kindness is celebrated by Herder's incomparable
wife, whom Karl August and the Duchess Luise cher-
ished as a brother ; the man whom children everywhere
welcomed as their ready play-fellow and sure ally,
of whom pious Jung Stilling lamented that admirers
of Goethe's genius knew so little of the goodness of
his heart, — can this have been a bad man, heartless,
cold?

18

274: HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

II. — GOETHE AS WRITER.

I HAVE said that to Goethe, above all writers, belongs
the distinction of having excelled, not experimented
merely, — that, others have also done, — but excelled in
many distinct kinds. To the lyrist he added the drama-
tist, to the dramatist the novelist, to the novelist the
mystic seer, and to all these the naturalist and scientific
discoverer. The history of literature exhibits no other
instance in which a great poet has supplemented his
proper orbit with so wide an epicycle.

In poetry, as in science, the ground of his activity was
a passionate love of Nature, which dates from his boy-
hood. At the age of fifteen, recovering from a sickness
caused by disappointment in a boyish affair of the heart,
he betook himself with his sketch-book to the woods.
" In the farthest depth of the forest," he says, " I sought
out a solemn spot, where ancient oaks and beeches formed
a shady retreat. A slight declivity of the soil made the
merit of the ancient boles more conspicuous. This space
was inclosed by a thicket of bushes, between which peeped
moss-covered rocks, mighty and venerable, affording a
rapid fall to an affluent brook."

The sketches made of these objects at that early age
could have had no artistic value, although the methodi-
cal father was careful to mount and preserve them. But
what the pencil, had it been the pencil of the greatest
master, could never glean from scenes like these, what
art could never grasp, what words can never formulate,
the heart of the boy then imbibed, assimilated, resolved
in his innermost being. There awoke in him then those

GOETHE. 275

mysterious feelings, those unutterable yearnings, that
pensive joy in the contemplation of Nature, which leav-
ened all his subsequent life, and the influence of which
is so perceptible in his poetry, especially in his lyrics.
It inspired among others the wild little poem called

"GANYMEDE."

How in morning splendor

Thou round me glowest,

Spring beloved !

How through my heart thrills

The holy joy

Of thy warmth eternal,

Infinite Beauty!

Oh, that I might clasp thee

Within these arms!

Lo ! on thy breast here

Prone I languish,

And thy flowers and thy grass

Press themselves on my heart.

* Thou coolest the torturing

Thirst of my bosom,

Love-breathing morning wind,*

Warbles the nightingale.

Summoning me from the misty vale.

I come, I come!

Whither, ah ! whither?

Up, upward it draws me.
The clouds are nearing ;
Downward the clouds stoop,
Bend to love's yearning.
Here ! Here !
In your embraces
Upward.

Embracing, embraced, up I
Up to thy bosom.
All-loving Father I

276 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

The first literary venture by which Goethe became
widely known was " Gotz von Berlichingen," a dramatic
picture of the sixteenth century, in which the principal
figure is a predatory noble of that name. A dramatic
picture, but not in any true sense a play, it owed its
popularity at the time partly to the truth of its portrait-
ures, partly to its choice of a native subject and the
truly German feeling which pervades it. It was a new
departure in German literature, and perplexed the critics
as much as it delighted the general public. It antici-
pated by a quarter of a century what is technically called
the Romantic School.

" Gotz von Berlichingen " was soon followed by the
" Sorrows of Werther," one of those books which, on
their first appearance have taken the world by storm,
and of which Mrs. Stowe's " Uncle Tom's Cabin " is the
latest example. It is a curious circumstance that a great
poet should have won his first laurels by prose compo-
sition. Sir Walter Scott eclipsed the splendor of his
poems by the popularity of the Waverley novels. Goethe
eclipsed the world-wide popularity of his " Werther " by
the splendor of his poems.

Of one who was great in so many kinds, it may seem
difficult to decide in what department he most excelled.
Without undertaking to measure and compare what is
incommensurable, I hold that Goethe's genius is essen-
tially lyrical. Whatever else may be claimed for him,
he is first of all, and chiefly, a singer. Deepest in his
nature, the most innate of all his faculties, was the
faculty of song, of rhythmical utterance. The first to
manifest itself in childhood, it was still active at the age
of fourscore. The lyrical portions of the second part of

GOETHE. 277

" Faust," some of which were written a short time before
his death, are as spirited, the versification as easy, the
rhythm as perfect, as the songs of his youth.

As a lyrist he is unsurpassed, I venture to say un-
equalled, if we take into view the whole wide range of
his performance in this kind, — from the ballads, the best
known of his smaller poems, and those light fugitive
pieces, those bursts of song which came to him without
effort, and with such a rush that in order to arrest and
preserve them he seized, as he tells us, the first scrap
of paper that came to hand and wrote upon it diagonally,
if it happened so to lie on his table, lest, through the
delay of selecting and placing, the inspiration should be
checked and the poem evaporate, — from these to such
stately compositions as the " Zueignung," or dedica-
tion of his poems, the " Weltseele " and the " Orphic
Sayings,^' — in short, from poetry that writes itself, that
springs spontaneously in the mind, to poetry that is
written with elaborate art. There is this distinction,
and it is one of the most marked in lyric verse. Com-
pare in English poetry, by way of illustration, the
snatches of song in Shakspeare's plays with Shak-
speare's sonnets ; compare Burns with Gray ; compare
Jean Ingelow with Browning.

Goethe's ballads have an undying popularity ; they
have been translated, and most of them are familiar to
English readers. Here is a translation of one of them
which has never been published.

THE FISHER.

The water rushed, the water swelled;

A fisher seated nigh
Cool to the heart his angle held,

And watched with tranquil eye.

278 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

And as he sits and watches there,

Behold the waves divide ;
With dripping hair a maiden fair
Uprises from the tide.

She sang to him, she spake to him:

'* With human arts, Oh, why.
Why lurest thou my favored brood

In daylight's glow to die ?
Ah, knewest thou how cheerily

The little fishes fare,
Thou 'dst dive with me beneath the sea

And find contentment there.

*' Doth not the blessed sun at noon

His beams in ocean lave ?
Doth not the ripple- breathing moon

Look lovelier in the wave ?
Doth not the deep-down heaven invite

The wave-transfigured blue ?
Doth not thine own fair face delight,

Seen through the eternal dew? "

The water rushed, the water swelled,

It laved his naked feet;
A longing through his bosom thrilled

As when two lovers greet.
She spake to him, she sang to him, —

With him then all was o'er.
She half compels, while half he wills.

And straight is seen no more.

Of the lyric poems there are some which form a class
by themselves, — unrhymed lyrics ; and not only un-
rhymed but without fixed metre, the measure varying
with every line. They have a nameless charm, which
makes us forget our metrical traditions. In these poems
the author, like Pindar, numeris fertur lege solutis.
Such are the pieces entitled " Meine Gottin," " Gesang

GOETHE. 279

der Geister iiber den Wassern," " Mahomet's Gesang,'
" Schwager Kronos," " Wanderer's Sturmlied," "• Pro-
metheus," " Ganymed," " Grenzen der Menschheit,"
" Das Gottliche," etc. The " Harzreise im Winter "
(a journey to the Harz in the winter) was suggested by
an actual journey which Goethe made on horseback from
Weimar to the Harz mountains in winter. The journey
had three distinct aims, which furnish the three motives
of the poem. First, he wished to visit the iron mines of
the Harz with a view to the resumption of work in cer-
tain old mines in the Duchy of Weimar. Secondly, he
meant to visit a misanthropic youth in Clausthal, who
had written to him for sympathy. And lastly, he had
agreed to join a party of sportsmen from Weimar who
were intending to hunt bears and wild boar, which then
abounded in that locality. So much is necessary to ex-
plain the allusions in the piece.

HARZ-JOURNEY IN WINTER.

As soars the hawk

On heavy morning clouds,

With downy pinions resting,

Intent on prey,

Soar thou my song !

For a God hath to each

His path prescribed,

Where the happy rush swift

To the joyful goal.

But he whose heart is

Shrunk with misfortune,

He vainly struggles

Against the strong bond

Of the iron thread,

Which only the Fate's bitter shears

Shall one day sever.

280 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

To awful thickets
Press the wild game,
And together with the sparrows
Long since the wealthy-
Have slunk to their bogs.

'Tis easy following
Where Fortune leads,
Like the comfortable train
On mended ways after
A prince's entrance.

But who goes apart there?

His path is lost in the bush.

Behind him the thicket

Closes together;

The grass stands straight again,

The desert devours him.

His wounds who shall heal

To whom balm became poison?

Who out of love's fulness

Drank hatred of man?

First despised, then a despiser,

Devouring in secret

His own worth in

Unsatisfied selfhood?

Is there, Father of love,
A tone in thy psalter
That can speak to his ear? —
Oh, comfort his heart!
Ope thou his clouded eye
To the thousand springs
That beside him in the desert
Gush for the thirsting.

Thou who createst

Joys in abundance

So each one's cup runneth over,

Bless the brothers of the chase

On the track of their game,

GOETHE. 281

In youthful wantonness

Of frolic slaughter,

Late avengers of the mischief

Against which vainly

For years the peasant

Strove with his club.

But envelop the lone one

In thy gold clouds !

With winter green entwine, Love,

Till blossoms the rose again,

The moist locks of thy poet !

With torch dimly gleaming
Thou lightest him
Through fords by night,
Over ways that are fathomless.
Through fields that are desolate ;
With the thousand-colored morning
Laugh'st into the heart of him,
With the biting storm
Thou bearest him aloft.
Winter-streams from the rock
Rush into his psalms,
And an altar of sweetest thanksgiving
Is to him the dreaded mountain's
Snow-piled summit,
With spirit-forms crowned
By boding nations.

Thou 1 standest with unexplored bosom,

Mysteriously revealed

Above the astonished world.

And gazest through clouds

On their realms and their glory.

Which thou waterest from the veins

Of thy brothers beside thee.

" Mahomet's Song " describes the course of a river,
and is meant to typify the progress of a great religious

1 The Brocken.

282 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

dispensation. It is a fragment that remains of the plan
of a drama which Goethe meditated, having for its
theme the life of Mahomet.

MAHOMET'S SONG.

See the rock-born spring,

Joy-glittering

Like a star-gleam !

Above the clouds his

Youth was nourished

By kind spirits

In the bush amid the clifEs.

Youthful, fresh,

From the cloud he dances down, —

Down upon the marble rocks, and thence

Shouts back again

Toward heaven.

Through mountain-passes
He chases the gay pebbles,
And with early leader-step
Sweeps along with him
His brother fountains.

In the valley down below
Flowers spring beneath his step,
And the meadow
Lives by his breath.

But no valley's shade detains him.

And no flowers

That cling about his knees,

And flatter him with eyes of love.

Toward the plain his course he steers

Serpentining.

Brooklets nestle

Fondly to his side. He enters

Now the plain in silvery splendor,

GOETHE. 283

And the plain his splendor shares.

And the rivers from the plain,

And the torrents from the mountains

Shout to him and clamor: "Brother!

Brother ! take thy brothers with thee, — -

With thee, to thy ancient father,

To the everlasting ocean,

Who with outstretched arms awaits us.

Arms, alas ! which vainly open

To embrace his longing children.

For the greedy sand devours us

In the dreary waste ; the sun-beams

Suck our blood, or else a hill

To a pool confines us. Brother!

Take thy brothers from the plain !

Take thy brothers from the mountains I

Take them with thee to thy sire."

Come ye all, then !

Now in grander volume swelling,

All his kindred

Proudly bear their prince aloft!

And in rolling triumph he

Gives names to countries ; cities

Start to life beneath his feet.

Irrepressibly he rushes,

Leaves the city's flaming spires;

Domes of marble, a creation

Of his wealth, he leaves behind.

Cedar-palaces the Atlas
Bears upon his giant shoulders;
Over him a thousand banners
Rustle waving in the breeze,
Testifying of his glory.

Thus he bears along his brothers.
And his treasures and his children;
Thundering joy he bears them on
To the waiting father's heart.

284 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

In the Elegies written after his return from Italy, the
author figures as a classic poet inspired by the Latin
Muse. The choicest of these elegies — the " Alexis und
Dora " — is not so much an imitation of the ancients as
it is the manifestation of a side of the poet's nature
which he had in common with the ancients. He wrote
as a Greek or Roman might write, because he felt his
subject as a Greek or Roman might feel it.

" Hermann und Dorothea," which Schiller pronounced
the acme not only of Goethean but of all modern art,
was written professedly as an attempt in the Homeric ^
style, motived by Wolfs " Prolegomena " and Yoss's
" Luise." It is Homeric only in its circumstantiality,
in the repetition of the same epithets applied to the
same persons, and in the Greek realism of Goethe's
nature. The theme is very un-Homeric ; it is thoroughly
modern and German, —

" Germans themselves I present, to the humbler dwelling I lead
you,
Where with Nature as guide man is natural still." ^

This exquisite poem has been translated into English
hexameters with great fidelity, by Miss Ellen Frothing-
ham.

" Iphigenie auf Tauris " handles a Greek theme, ex-
hibits Greek characters, and was hailed on its first
appearance as a genuine echo of the Greek drama.
Mr. Lewes denies it that character ; and certainly it is
not Greek, but Christian, in sentiment. It differs from
the extant drama of Euripides, who treats the same
subject, in the Christian feeling which determines its
denouement.

1 " Doch Homeride zu sein, auch noch als letzter, ist schon."

2 From the Elegy entitled " Hermann und Dorothea."

GOETHE. 285

Iphigenia, having escaped the sacrifice to which she
was doomed at Aulis, by the interposition of Diana, is
conveyed by the Goddess to Tauris. There, having
gained the favor of Thoas, king of the country, she be-
comes a priestess of Diana, but continues to lament her
exile. Her brother Orestes, who has slain his mother
to avenge the murder of Agamemnon, and for this act
is pursued by the Furies, consults the oracle at Delphos,
and is bidden by Apollo, as the price of his release, to
fetch his sister from Tauris. Orestes understands by
this Apollo's sister Diana, whose image he is to capture
and bring to Greece ; he does not know that his own
sister is still living. He proceeds to Tauris with his
friend Pylades. But the custom of Tauris requires that
every stranger who lands on the coast shall be sacrificed
to Diana. Accordingly, the two friends are seized and
brought to the temple, where Iphigenia is to prepare the
sacrifice. A recognition takes place between brother
and sister ; and this is the most effective passage in the
play of " Euripides," and one of the most pathetic in the
Greek drama. The problem now is how the sacrifice
may be evaded, and Iphigenia escape from Tauris with
her brother and his friend. Here it is that the ancient
and modern treatment of the theme diverge most widely.
Euripides solves the problem by an act of fraud. Under
pretence of purifying the image, which had been pol-
luted by the touch of one guilty of kindred blood, it is
carried to the sea, where the Grecian vessel waits, and
secretly conveyed on board. The friends embark ; Thoas
pursues them, but Athena appears and announces the
will of the Gods that they should be suffered to depart
in peace. To Goethe, whose aim was to represent Iphi-
genia a model of feminine dignity, as the saint by

286 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

whose virtue the guilt resting on the house of Atreus is
atoned, fraud seemed inconsistent with such a char-
acter. He solves the problem partly by a different
interpretation of the oracle which occurs to Orestes, —
namely, that by the sister whom he was to bring away
was meant not Apollo's but his ow7i sister ; and partly
by the moral influence which Iphigenia exerts over
Thoas, who, moved by her persuasion, consents to their
departure.

Look on us, King! an opportunity

For such a noble deed not oft occurs.

Refuse, thou canst not; give thy quick consent.

Thoas.
Then go!

Iphigenia.

Not so, my King! I cannot part
Without thy blessing, or in anger from thee.
Banish us not ! the sacred right of guests
Still let us claim : so not eternally
Shall we be severed. Honored and beloved
As mine own father was art thou by me ;
And this impression in my soul remains.
Should even the meanest peasant of thy land
Bring to my ear the tones I heard from thee,
Or should I on the humblest see thy garb,
I will with joy receive him as a guest,
Prepare myself his couch, beside our hearth
Invite him to a seat, and only ask
Touching thy fate and thee. Oh, may the Gods
To thee the merited reward impart
Of all thy kindness and benignity !
Farewell! Oh, do not turn away, but give
One kindly word of parting in return !
So shall the wind more gently swell our sails,
And from our eyes with softened anguish flow
The tears of separation. Fare thee well!

GOETHE. 287

And graciously extend to me thy hand
In pledge of ancient friendship.

Thoas {giving his hand).
Fare thee wellli

The song of the *' Fates," which Iphigenia recites, is
familiar to many through Dr. Frothingham's felicitous
version ; but I cannot deny myself the pleasure of pre-
senting it for the benefit of any who may not have met
with it.

SONG OF THE PARCAE.

*' The Gods be your terror,
Ye children of men !
They hold the dominion
In hands everlasting,
And they can exert it
As pleaseth them best.

*' Let him fear them doubly
Whome'er they 've exalted!
On crags and on cloud-piles
The couches are planted
Around the gold tables.

** Dissension arises, —
Then tumble the feasters,
Reviled and dishonored,
In gulfs of deep midnight,
And wait ever vainly,
In fetters of darkness,
For judgment that 's just.

** But they remain seated,

At feasts never-failing,

Around the gold tables.

They stride at a footstep
. From mountain to mountain ;

1 Swanwick's version.

288 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Through jaws of abysses

Steams toward them the breathing

Of suffocate Titans,

Like offerings of incense,

A light-rising vapor.

*' They turn — the proud masters —
From whole generations
The eye of their blessing,
Nor will in the children
The once well-beloved
Still eloquent features
Of ancestor see."

So sang the dark Sisters:
The old exile heareth
That terrible music
In caverns of darkness, —
Remembereth his children,
And shaketh his head.

A large portion of Goethe's productions have taken
the dramatic form ; yet he cannot be said, theatrically
speaking, to have been, like Schiller, a successful dram-
atist. His plays, with the exception of " Egmont " and
the First Part of " Faust," have not commanded the
stage ; they form no part, I believe, of the stock of any
German theatre. The characterizations are striking, but
the positions are not dramatic. Single scenes in some
of them are exceptions, — like that in " Egmont," where
Clara endeavors to rouse her fellow-citizens to the rescue
of the Count while Brackenburg seeks to restrain her,
and several of the scenes in the First Part of " Faust."
But, on the whole, the interest of Goethe's dramas is
psychological rather than scenic. Especially is this the
case with " Tasso," one of the author's noblest works,
where the characters are not so much actors as meta-

GOETHE, 289

physical portraitures. Schiller, in his plays, had always
the stage in view. Goethe, on the contrary, wrote for
readers, or cultivated reflective hearers, not spectators.
In the Prelude on the stage, in " Faust," he may be sup-
posed to express his own views in the sentiments which
he puts into the mouth of the poet : —

*' Speak not to me of yonder motley masses,
Whom but to see puts out the fire of song.
Hide from my view the surging crowd that passes,
And in its whirlpool forces us along." ^

The manager says : —

*' But the great point is action; every one
Comes as spectator, and the show 's the fun.
Let but the plot be spun off fast and thickly,
So that the crowd shall gape in broad surprise,
Then you have made a wide impression quickly,
And you 're the man they'll idolize." ^

To which the poet replies : —

*' You do not feel how mean a trade like that must be,
In the true artist's eyes how false and hollow!
Our genteel botchers well I see
Have given the maxims that you follow." ^

When I say, then, that Goethe, compared with Schiller,
failed of dramatic success, I mean that his talent did not
lie in the line of plays adapted to the stage as it is ; or
if the talent was not wanting, his taste did not incline to
such performance. He was no play-wright.

But there is another and higher sense of the word
dramatic^ where Goethe is supreme, — the sense in which
Dante's great poem is called Commedia, a play. There
is a drama whose scope is beyond the compass of any

1 Taylor's version. 2 Brooks's version.

19

290 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

earthly stage. — a drama not for theatre-goers, to be seen
on the boards, but for intellectual contemplation of men
and angels. Such a drama is " Faust," of which I shall
speak hereafter.

Of Goethe's prose works, — I mean works of prose
fiction, — the most considerable are two philosophical
novels, " Wilhelm Meister" and the "Elective Affinities."

In the first of these the various and complex motives
which have shaped the composition may be compre-
hended in the one word education,- — the education of
life for the business of life. The main thread of the
narrative traces through a labyrinth of loosely connected
scenes and events the growth of the hero's character, —
a progressive training by various influences, passional,
intellectual, social, moral, and religious. These are rep-
resented by the personnel of the story. In accordance
with this design, the hero himself, if so he may be called,
has no pronounced traits, is more negative than positive,
but is brought into contact with many very positive char-
acters. His life is the stage on which these characters
perform. A ground is thus provided for the numerous
portraits of which the author's large experience furnished
the originals, and for lessons of practical wisdom derived
from his close observation of men and things and his
life-long reflection thereon.

" Wilhelm Meister," if not the most artistic, is the
most instructive, and in that view, next to " Faust," the
most important, of Goethe's works. In it he has em-
bodied his philosophy of life, — a philosophy far enough
removed from the epicurean views which ignorance has
ascribed to him, — a philosophy which is best described
by the term ascetic. Its key-note is Renunciation.

GOETHE. 291

" With renunciation begins the true life," was the au-
thor's favorite maxim ; and the second part of " Wil-
helm Meister " — the Wanderjahre — bears the collateral
title, Die Entsagenden ; that is, the ''Renouncing" or
the " Self-denying." The characters that figure in this
second part — most of whom have had their training in
the first — form a society whose principle of union is
self-renunciation and a life of beneficent activity. Un-
fortunately, the Wanderjahre is an unfinished work, —
a collection of materials, of disconnected essays and
stories, which the author in his old age was too much
occupied with other matters to fuse into one whole.

In the first part — in the Lehrjahre — we have a
very striking history of religious experience under the
title, " Confessions of a Beautiful Soul," suggested by
Goethe's reminiscences of Fraulein von Klettenberg, —
a deeply religious woman, a friend of his youth, to whom
he owed his sharpest and most enduring impressions of
the seriousness of life. The " Confessions " are inter-
esting not only to the thoughtful and sympathetic reader
as the genuine reflex of a pious Christian soul, but to all
students of Goethe as attesting his thorough apprecia-
tion and reverent love of the saintly character there por-
trayed. He had not shared — he could not share — her
experience, but he could prize it at its true worth. He
desired to comprehend and loved to contemplate it, as
he did all good and beautiful things. At the same time,
the character and conversation of the wise Uncle, whom
the writer of the " Confessions " introduces into her
story, are evidently designed by Goethe, who could tol-
erate no one-sidedness, to indicate the practical limita-
tion of religious enthusiasm and its true place in the
whole of life.

292 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

The most fascinating character in "Wilhelm Meister "
— the wonder and delight of the reader — is Mignon,
the child-woman, — a pure creation of Goethe's genius,
without a prototype in literature. Readers of Scott will
remember Fenella, the elfish maiden in " Peveril of the
Peak." Scott says, in his Preface to that novel : " The
character of Fenella, which from its peculiarity made a
favorable impression on the public, was far from being
original. The fine sketch of Mignon in Wilhelm Meis-
ter's Lehrjahre, — a celebrated work from the pen of
Goethe, — gave the idea of such a being. But the copy
will be found to be greatly different from my great pro-
totype ; nor can I be accused of borrowing anything save
the general idea."

As I remember Fenella, the resemblance to Mignon is
merely superficial. A certain weirdness is all they have
in common. The intensity of the inner life, the unspeak-
able longing, the cry of the unsatisfied heart, the devout
aspiration, the presentiment of the heavenly life which
characterize Mignon are peculiar to her ; they constitute
her individuality. Wilhelm has found her a kidnapped
child attached to a strolling circus company, and has
rescued her from the cruel hands of the manager.
Thenceforth she clings to him with a passionate devo-
tion, in which gratitude for her deliverance, filial affec-
tion, and the love of a maiden for her hero are strangely
blended. Afflicted with a disease of the heart, she is
subject to terrible convulsions, which increase the ten-
derness of her protector for the doomed child. After
one of these attacks, in which she had been suffering
frightful pain, we read : —

" He held her fast. She wept ; and no tongue can express
the force of those tears. Her long hair had become unfastened

GOETHE. 293

and hung loose over her shoulders. Her whole being seemed
to be melting away. ... At last she raised herself up. A mild
cheerfulness gleamed from her face. ' My father,' she cried,
' you will not leave me ! you will be my father ! I will be your
child.' Softly, before the door, a harp began to sound. The
old Harper was bringing his heartiest songs as an evening
sacrifice to his friend.'*

Then bursts on the reader that world-famed song, —
in which the soul of Mignon, with its unconquerable
yearnings, is forever embalmed, — " Kennst du das
Land " : —

*' Know'st thou the land that bears the citron's bloom ?
The golden orange glows 'mid verdant gloom,
A gentle wind from heaven's deep azure blows,
The myrtle low, and high the laurel grows, —
Know'st thou the land ? ^

Oh, there 1 oh. there 1
Would I with thee, my best beloved, repair.

*' Know'st thou the house, the column's stately line?
The hall is splendid, and the chambers shine.
And marble statues stand and gaze on me ;
Alas ! poor child, what have they done to thee ?
Know'st thou the house ? ^

Oh, there! oh, there!
Would I with thee, my guardian, repair.

" Know'st thou the mountain with its cloudy slopes?
The mule his way through mist and darkness gropes ;
In caverns dwells the dragon's ancient brood,
Tumbles the rock, and over it the flood, —
Know'st thou the mountain ? ^

There! oh, there I
Our pathway lies; oh, father, let us fare! "

1 Literally, " know'st thou it well ? " But the word " well," in this
case, does not answer to the German wohl.

294 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

The " Elective Affinities " has been strangely misin-
terpreted as having an immoral tendency, as encour-
aging conjugal infidelity, and approving " free love."
That any one who has read the work with attention to
the end could so misjudge it, seems incredible. Pre-
cisely the reverse of this, its aim is to enforce the
sanctity of the nuptial bond by showing the tragic con-
sequences resulting from its violation, though only in
thought and feeling. Edward, the hero, is meditating
a divorce from his wife, with a view to a union with
Ottilie, her niece, who has attracted him, and who un-
reflectingly has suffered herself to be attracted by him.
The death of an infant, of which she is the accidental
cause, awakens in her the consciousness of her position,
— of the precipice on which she stands ; and remorse for
having reciprocated Edward's affection causes her own
death. Edward, too weak to rouse himself, dies from
grief for her loss. The characters are drawn with con-
summate skill ; that of Ottilie, in particular, is one of
the sweetest and most touching pictures in all the range
of modern fiction. It is in reference to her that Marga-
ret Fuller says : " Not even in Shakspeare have I felt
more strongly the organizing power of genius." And
again : " The virgin Ottilie, who immolates herself to
avoid spotting her thoughts with passion, gives to that
much-abused book, ' Die Wahlverwandtschaften,' the pa-
thetic moral of the pictures of the Magdalen."

Here, a word concerning one merit of Goethe which
seems to me not to have been sufficiently appreciated by
even his admirers, — his loving skill in the delineation
of female character ; the commanding place he assigns
to woman in his writings ; his full recognition of the
importance of feminine influence in human destiny.

GOETHE. 295

The prophetic utterance, which forms the conclusion of
" Faust," — " The ever womanly draws us on," — is the
summing up of Goethe's own experience of life. Few
men had ever such wide opportunities of acquaintance
with women. If, on the one hand, his loves had re-
vealed to him the passional side of feminine nature, he
had enjoyed, on the other, the friendship of some of the
purest and noblest of womankind. Conspicuous among
these are Fraulein von Klettenberg and the Duchess
Luise, whom no one, says Lewes, ever speaks of but
in terms of veneration. No poet but Shakspeare, and
scarcely Shakspeare, has set before the world so rich a
gallery of female portraits. They range from the lowest
to the highest, — from the wanton to the saint. There
are drawn in firm lines, and limned in imperishable
colors, Elizabeth, Adelaide, Friederike, Lotte, Marianne
(in "Die Geschwister "), Clara, Margaret of Parma,
Iphigenie, Leonora, Gretchen, Eugenie, Dorothea, Otti-
lie, Charlotte, the Baroness (in '* Die Unterhaltungen
deutscher Ausgewanderten"), the Countess (in " Wil-
helm Meister "), Philine, Aurelia, Mignon, Hersilie,
Natalie, Therese, Makaria, — each bearing the stamp of
her own individuality, and each confessing a master's
hand. These may be considered as representing dif-
ferent phases of the poet's experience, — different
stadia in his view of life. " The ever womanly draws
us on." So Goethe, of all men most susceptible of femi-
nine influence, was led by it from weakness to strength,
from dissipation to concentration, from doubt to clear-
ness, from tumult to repose, from the earthly to the
heavenly.

296 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

"FAUST."

Goethe appears to have derived his knowledge of the
Faust legend partly from the work of Widmann, pub-
lished in 1599,1 partly from another more modern in its
form which appeared in 1728, and partly from the pup-
pet plays exhibited in Frankfort and other cities of Ger-
many, of which that legend was then a favorite theme.
He was not the only writer of that day who made use
of it. Some thirty of his contemporaries had produced
their " Fausts " during the interval which elapsed be-
tween the inception and publication of his great work.
Oblivion overtook them all, with the exception of Les-
sing's, of which a few fragments are left ; ^ the manu-
script of the complete work was unaccountably lost on
its way to the publisher, between Dresden and Leipsic.

The composition of " Faust," as we learn from Goethe's
biography, proceeded spasmodically, with many and long
interruptions between the inception and conclusion.
Projected in 1769 at the age of twenty, it was not com-
pleted till the year 1831, at the age of eighty-two. The
reasons for so long a delay in the case of a writer who
often composed so rapidly have been widely discussed
by recent critics. The true explanation, I think, is to
be found in the fact of the author's removal to Weimar
when only a small portion of the work had been written,
when only the general conception and one or two lead-
ing ideas were present to his thought, and before the
plan of the whole was matured. That change of resi-
dence, with the new interests, the official duties, the

1 The earlier work of Spiess (1588) was translated into English, and
furnished Marlowe with the subject matter of his " Dr. Faustus."
^ See Appendix.

GOETHE. 297

multiplicity of engagements attending it, made a thorough
break in Goethe's literary life. Several works begun or
planned were left unfinished, " Faust " among the rest.
Some of these were never resumed, and the same fate
would apparently have befallen " Faust " but for the
urgent solicitation of friends. He took the manuscript
with him to Rome, and from there he wrote in 1788 to
friends at home that he was going to work upon his
" Faust " again, and that he thought he had recovered
the thread of the piece. For " thought " Bayard Taylor
says, " felt sure ; " but Goethe's language is not so
decided.^ The thread of an unfinished work after the
lapse of fifteen years is not easily recovered ; my own
opinion is that Goethe never did recover it, and hence
the long delay in the completion of the work. We know
at any rate that the only addition made to it then was
the scene in the witch's kitchen. That, as we learn from
Eckermann, was written in the villa Borghese, the most
unlikely place in the world for such a composition : in
the midst of southern and classic associations this ex-
travaganza of northern diablerie ! In 1790 a fragment
of the First Part was published, wanting several of the
best scenes in the work as we now have it. Then again
there is a long gap. Meanwhile he had become ac-
quainted and intimate with Schiller, and at his insti-
gation made several unsuccessful attempts to finish
" Faust." Grief for Schiller's death, which occurred in
1805, caused new delay ; but at last, in 1808, the First
Part was published entire as we now have it, in a uni-
form edition of the author's works. Meanwhile a por-
tion of the Second Part, comprising the whole of the
third act, had been already composed. This was pub-

1 "Ich glaube" is his expression.

298 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

lished separately in 1827, with the title, " Helena ; a
Classico-Romantic Phantasmagoria." With the excep-
tion of parts of the first act in 1828, nothing more of the
Second Part of " Faust " appeared in print during the
author's lifetime. But the octogenarian had rigorously
bound himself to finish it if possible before, as he said,
the great night should come " in which no man can
work." Fortunately the closing scenes were already
written. Slowly and painfully the work proceeded at
intervals during the three remaining years, and was not
completed until within seven months of his death.

Had ever a poet's masterpiece such a genesis ! Birth-
pangs extending over sixty years !

The history of its composition reveals itself here and
there in the finished work, especially in the Second Part.
The first half of the fifth act gives one the impression
of an outline not filled up, indications instead of repre-
sentations, a design imperfectly executed. Single pas-
sages, striking in themselves, are loosely connected ; and
this first half bears no proportion to the last. The fourth
act is rich in suggestion, but labors in the structure.
The third act, an exquisite poem in itself, is an inter-
lude, and does not further the development of the plot.
The same may be said of the classical Walpurgis Night
in the second. In short, although one grand design may
be supposed, in the poet's mind, to have comprehended
and clinched the whole, the want of unity in the execu-
tion of the Second Part is painfully apparent to all in
whose estimation the interest of single portions does not
compensate for the halting of the plot. Even the First
Part, with all its grandeur and its fire, its pathos and its
sweetness, bears marks of interruption in its composi-
tion. A single prose scene contrasts with strange though

GOETHE. 299

not unpleasant effect the metrical movement of the rest.
Gaps and seams and joints and splicings are here and
there apparent. The work is too great to be injured by
them, but they bear witness of arrested and fitful com-
position. The Waljpurgisnachtstraum, or " Oberon and
Titania's Golden Wedding," is lugged in with no motive
in the drama, whose action it only serves to interrupt.
In old English poems the divisions are sometims called
Fyttes (" fits "). It has seemed to me that the term
would be an apt designation of the scenes in " Faust."
They were thrown off by the author as the jit took him.

But the effect of the long arrest, which after Goe-
the's removal to Weimar delayed the completion of the
*' Faust," is most apparent in the wide gulf which sepa-
rates, as to character and style, the Second Part from
the First. So great indeed is the distance between the
two, that without external historical proofs of identity
it would seem from internal evidence altogether improb-
able, in spite of the slender thread of the fable which
connects them, that both poems were the work of one
and the same author. And really the author was not
the same. The change which had come over Goethe on
his return from Italy had gone down to the very springs
of his intellectual life. The fervor and the rush, the
sparkle and foam of his early productions had been re-
placed by the stately calm and the luminous breadth of
view that is born of experience. The torrent of the
mountains had become the river of the plain ; romantic
impetuosity had changed to classic repose. He could
still, by occasional efforts of the will, cast himself back
into the old moods, resume the old thread, and so com-
plete the first " Faust." But we may confidently assert
that he could not, after the age of forty, have originated

300 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

the poem, any more than before his Italian tour he could
have written the second "Faust," purporting to be a
continuation of the first. The difference in spirit and
style is enormous.

As to the question which of the two is the greater
production, it is like asking which is the greater,
Dante's " Commedia " or Shakspeare's " Macbeth " }
They are incommensurable. As to which is the more
generally interesting, no question can arise. There are
thousands who enjoy and admire the First Part, to one
who even reads the Second. The interest of the former
is poetic and thoroughly human ; the interest of the
other is partly poetic, but mostly philosophic and scien-
tific. The one bears you irresistibly on, — you forget
the writer and his genius in the theme ; the other draws
your attention to the manner, and leaves you cold and
careless of the theme. The transition from the first to
the second is like the change from a hill country to a
richly-cultured champaign; from the wild picturesque-
ness of Nature to the smooth perfection of Art. In one
respect, at least, the Second Part is nowise inferior to
the First, — namely, in rhythmical beauty. It abounds
in metrical prodigies, — proof at once of the marvellous
plasticity of the language and the technical skill of the
poet, whose versification at the age of four-score exhibits
all the ease and dexterity of youth, and to whom it seems
to have been as natural to utter himself in verse as in
prose.

The symbolical character of " Faust " is assumed by
all the critics, and in part confessed by the author him-
self. Besides the general symbolism pervading and mo-
tiving the whole, — a symbolism of human destiny, — and

GOETHE. 301

here and there a shadowing forth of the poet's private
experience, there are special allusions — local, personal,
enigmatic conceits — which have furnished topics of
learned discussion and taxed the ingenuity of numerous
commentators. We need not trouble ourselves with
these subtleties. But little exegesis is needed for a
right comprehension of the true and substantial import
of the work.

The key to the plot is given in the Prologue in
Heaven. The Devil, in the character of Mephisto-
pheles, asks permission to tempt Faust; he boasts his
ability to get entire possession of his soul and drag him
down to hell. The Lord grants the permission, and
prophesies the failure of the attempt : —

" Be it allowed ! Draw this spirit from its Source if you
can lay hold of him ; bear him with you on your downward
path, and stand ashamed when you are forced to confess that
a good man in his dark strivings has a consciousness of the
right way."

Here we have a hint of the author's design. He does
not intend that the Devil shall succeed ; he does not
mean to adopt the conclusion of the legend and send
Faust to hell. He had the penetration to see, and he
meant to show, that the notion implied in the old popu-
lar superstition of selling one's soul to the Devil — the
notion that evil can obtain the entire and final posses-
sion of the soul — is a fallacy; that the soul is not
man's to dispose of, and cannot be so traded away. We
are the soul's, not the soul ours. Evil is self-limited ;
the good in man must finally prevail. So long as he
strives, he is not lost ; Heaven will come to the aid of
his better nature. This is the doctrine, the philosophy.

302 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

of " Faust." In the First Part, stung by disappointment
in his search of knowledge, by failure to lay hold of
the superhuman, and urged on by his baser propensities
personified in Mephistopheles, Faust abandons himself to
sensual pleasure, — seduces innocence, burdens his soul
with heavy guilt, and seems to be entirely given over to
evil. This Part ends with Mephistopheles' imperious
call, — " Her zu mir," — as if secure of his victim. Be-
fore the appearance of the Second Part, the reader was
at liberty to accept that conclusion. But in the Second
Part Faust gradually wakes from the intoxication of
passion, outgrows the dominion of appetite, plans great
and useful works, whereby Mephistopheles loses more
and more his hold of him ; and after his death is baffled
in his attempt to appropriate Faust's immortal part, to
which the heavenly Powers assert their right.

Such is a brief outline of the fable. And this is
the issue prefigured in the Prologue in Heaven. But
whether this was Goethe's original plan is somewhat
doubtful. The Prologue in Heaven was not written
until the larger portion of the First Part had been pub-
lished. It seems not unlikely that Faust's salvation
was an after-thought, and that Goethe's original design
was to follow the legend and consign his hero to the
Devil at the end of his career. We may suppose that
riper thought rejected such an ending, and occasioned
the temporary arrest of the whole undertaking, until the
idea of the Prologue in Heaven occurred to him as offer-
ing a way of escape from the sorry finale of the legend-
ary " Faust," and a better treatment of the theme.

But the Prelude on the Stage proposes to traverse the
entire circle of creation, and to pass " with considerate
rapidity from heaven through the world to hell." This

GOETHE. 303

seems to imply the intention, after all, to make hell the
terminus of Faust's career. And yet the Prelude on the
Stage we know to have been written after the publica-
tion of the first instalment of the play, — probably at the
same time with the Prologue in Heaven. Here then is a
contradiction, — the Prelude pointing downward to the
Pit, as the woful consummation of the plot ; the Prologue
in Heaven directing to the skies. The contradiction
can be solved only by supposing that the author forgot
himself for the moment, and wrote in the sense of his
original design.

Another discrepance has been noticed by the critics.
Christian Hermann Weisse was the first to call atten-
tion to certain passages, from which it is evident that
Goethe's first intention was to represent Mephistopheles
as the emissary of the Earth-Spirit, whom Faust invokes
in the first scene of the First Part. The Prologue in
Heaven, which as I have said was an after-thought,
provided another and better way of introducing this
leading character; but the passages referring to the
former method were suffered to remain, either from in-
advertence or want of time and will to rewrite them.
And so we have in the First Part of " Faust " these
croppings-out of an earlier formation of the poet's mind,
like the upheavals of a lower stratum of the earth's
crust. It is a proof of the author's genius, that with
all these irregularities the play has won for itself the
suffrage of two generations, and maintains its place as
the literary masterpiece of modern time.

The Prologue in Heaven was at first an offence to
English readers, on account of its seeming irreverence.
The earlier translators omitted it, or all that portion
which follows the Song of the Angels. Anster thinks

304 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

to evade the difficulty by using the German " der Herr "
instead of " the Lord." But the Prologue, as 1 said, sug-
gests the motive of the piece, and foreshows the conclu-
sion. To omit it is to prejudice the right understanding
of the whole. And as to irreverence, it is not necessary
to adopt Mr. Lewes' apology drawn from mediaeval use
in the Miracle Plays, whose representations of Deity are
accompanied with familiarities of speech quite shocking
to modern sentiment. The Faust legend was not a
mediaeval production, and the puppet-plays founded upon
it are not to be classed with the old miracle-plays. Nor
had these puppet-plays, any more than the legend itself^
a prologue in heaven ; rather, some of them, a prologue
in hell. The Prologue is Goethe's own conception, sug-
gested, as he tells us, by the Book of Job ; but nothing
could be farther from the poet's intention than to trav-
esty or degrade that venerable poem. The alleged irrev-
erence of Mephistopheles' conference with " the Lord "
requires no other excuse than that Goethe's devil was
bound to speak in character. He is the spirit that de-
nies ; the mocking spirit. His whole being is a mockery
of the Holy ; he can speak only as he is. Madame de
Stael would have had him spiteful and defiant ; it was
Goethe's choice to make him sceptical and scoffing, — a
kind of exaggerated, infernal likeness of Voltaire, of
whom Goethe says that in his youth he could have
strangled him for his irreverent treatment of the Bible.
In reality there is no more irreverence in Mephistopheles'
talk than in that of Satan in Job ; what distinguishes
them is the humor ; so foreign to the Hebrew, so charac-
teristic of the modern mind.

If the Prologue was suggested by the Book of Job, the
Song of the Angels with which it opens has no parallel

GOETHE. 305

in Job, or, so far as I know, in any other poem ancient
or modern. The mixture of simplicity and majesty in
these wonderful verses, which so fascinated and amazed
the poet Shelley, makes the translation of them difficult
beyond the ordinary difficulty of metrical version. I
venture the following as approaching more nearly the
tone, if not the letter, of the original than any I have yet
seen. The angels speak in the inverse order of their
rank.

Raphael.
The sun with brother orbs is sounding

Still, as of old, his rival song,
As on his destined journey bounding
With thunder-step he sweeps along.
The sight gives angels strength, though greater

Than angels' utmost thought sublime.
And all thy lofty works. Creator,
Are grand as in creation's prime !

Gabriel.

And fleetly, thought transcending, fleetly

The earth's gay pomp is spinning round,
And paradise alternates sweetly

With night terrific and profound.
There foams the sea, its broad wave beating

Against the cliff's deep rocky base,
And rock and sea away are fleeting

In everlasting spheral chase.

Michael.

And storms with rival fury heaving

From land to sea, from sea to land.
Still as they rave a chain are weaving

Of linked efl&cacy grand.
There burning desolation blazes.

Precursor of the thunder's way,
But, Lord, thy servants own with praises

The gentle movement of thy day.
20

306 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

All Three.
The sight gives angels strength, though greater

Than angels' utmost thought sublime;
And all thy lofty works, Creator,

Are grand as in creation's prime!

This splendid overture is followed by the comic mock
humility and mock compassion of Mephistopheles, who
professes to have no command of high-sounding words,
has nothing to say about suns and worlds, has only
eyes for man, sees with pity how mortals torment them-
selves, and thinks they would be better off without
that ray of heavenly light which they call reason, and
of which the only use they make is to be more beastly
than any beast. He compares them to grasshoppers
that undertake to fly, — make a leap, and, plump ! are
down in the dirt.

The Lord. Is that all you have to say ? Have you nothing
but complaints to offer ? Will nothing on the earth ever suit
you?

Meph. No, Lord ; I find everything there as bad as ever. I
pity mankind, with their daily misery ; I really have n't the
heart to torment them !

The Lord. Knowest thou Faust ?

Meph. The doctor ?

The Lord. My servant.

Meph. Truly, he serves you after a strange fashion. The
fool subsists on no earthly food or drink. The ferment of his
mind drives him all abroad. He is half conscious of his
madness.

*' From heaven he asks each fairest star,
And from the earth each highest zest;
And all that 's near and all that 's far
Fails to content his stormy breast."

GOETHE. 307

The Lord replies, that though Faust at present serves
him in a confused way, he (the Lord) will soon lead him
into clearness. Then follows the permission to tempt
Faust, and the Lord's prediction of the mortification and
defeat of the tempter.

Mephistopheles.
All right! Long time will not be needed;

I 'm not concerned about the how;
And when at last I have succeeded,

A hearty triumph you '11 allow ;
Dust he shall eat, and in it glory,
Like my Aunt Serpent, famed in story.

The drama opens with a passionate soliloquy of Faust,
who complains that all his studies in Medicine, Philos-
ophy, and Theology have been fruitless ; they have
brought him no nearer to the heart of things. What
he most desires to know, they have not taught him ; and
what they have taught him yields no satisfaction.

** So here I stand, alas! poor fool,
As wise as when I entered school."

Baffled and disconsolate, he resolves to apply himself
to magic. The mystic volume of Nostradamus is be-
fore him ; he turns over the leaves, dwells with admi-
ration on the sign of the macrocosm, and finally invokes
the Earth-Spirit, whose appearance at first overwhelms
him with terror, but rallying himself, he cries : —

Faust. Shall I yield to thee, flame image ? Here am I, —
Faust, thy equal !

Spirit.

In floods of life, in action's storm,
Above, beneath,
To and fro I am weaving,
Now birth, now death;

308 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

A deep ever heaving,

With change still flowing,

With life all glowing,

At the roaring loom of Time I ply.

And weave the live garment of Deity.

Faust. Thou, who sweepest the wide world round, active
Spirit, how near I feel myself to thee !

Spirit. Thou resemblest the spirit whom thou comprehend-
est, not me.

Faust. Not thee ! Whom then ? I, image of the Godhead,
not even thee !

At this point he is interrupted by the entrance of his
famulus Wagner, in whom we have the type of the dry
prosaic pedant of Goethe's day. Wagner has heard loud
speaking, and thinks Faust is reciting a Greek tragedy.
He wishes to profit by the art, for in these days he has
heard the actor may instruct the preacher. Yes, Faust
says, if the preacher plays the actor, as is sometimes the
case.

Wagner. But delivery makes the success of the orator; I
feel that I am very backward in this.

Faust. Seek an honest gain. Be no fool with sounding bells.
Intelligence and good sense need little art for their delivery ;
they deliver themselves.

Wagner is dismissed, and then Faust's monologue
continues. The thought of his rejection by the Earth-
Spirit rankles in his breast. Baffled in his hope of de-
liverance from the galling limitations of his lot, thrown
back again on the dreary inanities of the old scholastic
life, he meditates suicide as the only escape from what
has become an intolerable load. He takes from his
shelves a phial filled with the deadly potion, which is to
bring him release, —

GOETHE. 309

** I welcome thee, thou only saving potion,
Take thee in hand with genuine devotion.

The sight of thee my cruel grief assuages,
Allays the storm that in my bosom rages.

The spirit's flood within me ebbs away,
It draws me seaward; lulled to blissful dreaming,
I see the mirror wave beneath me gleaming,

New shores invite me and another day."

He pours the liquid into an antique, curiously-carved
cup, and puts it to his lips, —

'* With this last draught my ransomed soul reborn,
Pledges its greeting to the unknown morn."

At that moment he hears the well-known Easter music,
the peal of the church-bells, and the choral song, —
" Christ ist erstanden." ^ His hand is arrested, his
purpose halts ; soothing memories of childhood's happy
years, associated with those familiar strains, take pos-
session of his soul, and win him back to life, —

*' Sound on, ye heavenly notes! your sweetness tames me;
Tears flow at length, and earth once more reclaims me."

The next scene, the liveliest in the play, presents the
gayeties of Easter Sunday as they are still witnessed in
Germany. The city pours forth its population. In the
country, outside of the gates, pleasure-parties are swarm-
ing in all directions ; there is singing and dancing.
Faust, accompanied by Wagner, is greeted with respect
by the peasants, who remember with gratitude the ser-
vices rendered by his father, a physician, in which he
also assisted, in the time of the pestilence. Faust dis-

1 See Appendix.

310 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

claims any merit ; and afterward, in conversation with
Wagner, disparaging medical science, declares his belief
that his father's medicines had destroyed more lives
than the plague. " But let us not dim the blessing of
the hour," he says, " with these melancholy thoughts."
See how the green-embowered cottages shimmer in the
glow of the setting sun, —

" He sinks, he vanishes, the day is done.

Yonder he speeds, and sheds new hfe forever.
Oh, had I wings to rise and follow on

Still after him with fond endeavor !
Then should I see beneath my feet

The hushed world's everlasting vesper,
Each summit tipped with fire, each valley's silence sweet,

The silver brook, the river's molten jasper;
And nought should stay my God-competing flight,

Though savage mountains now with all their ravines,

And now the ocean, with its tempered havens,
Successive greet the astonished sight.

The God at length appears as he were sinking,
But still the impulse is renewed ;

I hasten on, the light eternal drinking.
The day pursuing, by the night pursued;

Above, the sky, beneath, the ocean spread.

A glorious dream ! Meanwhile the sun has sped.

In vain the spirit plies her active wings

While still to earth the earth-born body clings."

Wagner, pedant and Philistine, cannot sympathize
with these yearnings. " I have had my whims," he
says, " but I never experienced such an impulse as that.
One soon sees one's fill of woods and fields. From book
to book is my delight."

The scene now reverts to Faust's study. Mephisto-
pheles appears. Having entered in the likeness of a
dog, he is compelled by Faust's conjuration to assume

GOETHE. 311

the human form. When questioned as to his real nature,
he replies : —

Meph. I am a portion of that power which always wills the
bad, and always produces the good.

Faust. What mean you by that riddle ?

Meph. I am the spirit who always denies. And rightly, for
all that comes into being deserves only to perish. Therefore,
it were better that nothing came into being. So, then, all
that you call sin, destruction, — in short, evil, — is my proper
element.

A colloquy ensues, at the close of which Mephisto-
pheles wishes to depart, but is prevented by the figure of
the pentagram on the door-sill. Faust refuses to re-
move the obstruction ; he has the Devil imprisoned, and
means for the present to keep him. Mephistopheles ap-
pears to acquiesce, and calls upon his spirits to entertain
his jailer with a song. They put him to sleep with
that wonderful composition known in German as the
Einsehldferungslied (the ''lullaby"), the peculiarity of
which consists in a series of suggestions of beautiful
objects, which succeed each other so rapidly that the
mind, prevented from dwelling on any one of them, is
hurried on from image to image as in a dream. Here
is a brief extract from Brooks's translation : —

** Purple and blushing,
Under the crushing
Wine-presses gushing,

Grape-blood o'erflowing
Down over gleaming
Precious stones streaming,

Leaves the bright glowing
Tops of the mountains,
Leaves the red fountains,

312 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Widening and rushing,

Till it encloses
Green hills all flushing,

Laden with roses.'*

When the song ceases, Faust is found to have fallen
into a deep sleep ; then Mephistopheles, as lord of the
rats and mice, summons a rat to nibble away the penta-
gram, and so makes his escape.

In the following scene he reappears. A contract is
concluded, by which Mephistopheles engages to serve
Faust, to be at his beck and call in this world, if Faust
on his part will bind himself to do the same for Mephis-
topheles hereafter. " The hereafter," says Faust, " need
not trouble me much ; my joys and sorrows spring from
this world : once destroy this, and I care not what hap-
pens. If ever I shall lie down satisfied ; if ever you can
flatter me into thinking that I am happy ; if ever you
can cheat me with enjoyment ; if ever I shall say to the
passing moment, ' Stay ! thou art so fair ! " — then you
may lay me in fetters ; then may the death-bell sound,
and time for me be no more."

This scene contains the celebrated curse which Faust
in his despair pronounces on the world and all its joys :

*' Yet cursed be henceforth all that borrows

A magic lure to charm the breast;
That — prisoned in this cave of sorrows —

Would dazzle me or lull to rest.
Cursed, before all, the high opinion

With which the mind itself deludes ;
Cursed be Appearance, whose dominion

Its shows on human sense intrudes;
Cursed all that to ambition caters

With honor and a deathless name;
Cursed all that as possession flatters, —

GOETHE. 313

As wife and child, and goods and game.
Cursed when with hope of golden treasure

He spurs our spirits to the fight ;
And cursed be Mammon, when for pleasure

He lays the tempting pillow right.
Cursed be the grape's entrancing potion,

And cursed be love's delicious thrall ;
And cursed be hope and faith's devotion,

And cursed be patience more than all."

To this curse respond invisible spirits : —

*' Woe! Woe!

Destroyed it thou hast,

The beautiful world,

With the blow of thy fist

To ruin hast hurled.

This hath a demigod shattered!

Sadly we the lost surrender.

Fairer now,

Earth's Son, in splendor

Rarer now.

Oh, recreate it !

In thine own bosom build it again! '*

Then follow the scene in which Mephistopheles, dis-
guised as Faust, mystifies the youth who comes to enter
the university ; the scene in which he fools and foils the
roystering students in Auerbach's cellar ; and the scene
in the witches' kitchen, in which Faust receives the po-
tion that renews his youth.

After that Margaret is brought upon the stage ; and
the rest of the play, with the exception of the " Wal-
purgis Night," is occupied with the loves of Faust and
Margaret, and with Margaret's unhappy fate. This con-
stitutes no part of the Faust-legend ; it is an episode of
Goethe's own creation. But the interest of this episode

314 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

is so intense, its pathos so overpowering, that the inter-
polation has become the real bearer of the drama. It is
this that " Faust " first suggests and stands for with the
mass of readers.

The character of Margaret is unique ; its duplicate is
not to be found in all the picture galleries of fiction.
Shakspeare, in the wide range of his feminine personnel,
has no portrait like this. A girl of low birth and vulgar
circumstance, imbued with the ideas and habits of her
class, speaking the language of that class from which
she never for a moment deviates into finer phrase, takes
on, through the magic handling of the poet, an ideal
beauty. Externally common and prosaic in all her ways,
she is yet thoroughly poetic, transfigured in our con-
ception by her perfect love. To that love, unreasoning,
unsuspecting, — to the excess of that which in itself is no
fault, but beautiful and good, — her fall and ruin are due.
Her story is the tragedy of her sex in all time. As
Schlegel said of the " Prometheus Bound," — " It is not
a single tragedy, but tragedy itself." When Mephisto-
pheles with a sneer suggests that she is not the first who
incurs the doom that befalls her, Faust, in his transport
of penitent compassion, bursts forth with the reply :

" "Woe ! woe ! by no human soul to be comprehended ; that
more than one being has sunk into the depth of this wretched-
ness ; that the first did not atone for all the rest with her
writhing death-agony in the sight of the Ever-pardoning ! "

It is important to note, as throwing light on the au-
thor's design, that surrendered as he is to the reckless
pursuit of pleasure, Faust's better nature is not utterly
extinguished, but asserts itself from time to time in
strong rebellion against the dominion of his baser appe-

GOETHE. 315

tites. The potion administered to him in the witches'
kitchen has inflamed his animal passions, and after his
first encounter with Margaret he bids Mephistopheles to
deliver her at once into his arms. Mephistopheles de-
clares this to be impossible, but engages, when Margaret
is absent, to conduct Faust to her chamber. While
there, overcome, it would seem, by the spirit of the
place, the abode of purity and innocence, he repents
his purpose, upbraids himself, and vows never to re-
turn. He will not pursue the game. The box of jewels
which Mephistopheles has brought as a lure he does
not care to leave. Mephistopheles ridicules his scru-
ples, and himself deposits the jewels in the girl's
wardrobe.

Again, after making her acquaintance and winning
her affection, he still resists the temptation to abuse the
power he has over her. He seeks to escape, by leaving
the city and betaking himself to the wilderness. But
Mephistopheles discovers his retreat, and works on his
compassion by representing how Margaret pines for him.
Faust replies : " Thou monster, begone ! do not speak to
me of that beautiful creature. Urge not the desire for
her on my already half-crazed senses." But finally, as if
feeling impelled by irresistible fate, he exclaims : " Hell,
thou wilt have this victim ! Help, devil ! what must be,
let it be done quickly. Let her doom fall upon me, that
we may both go to perdition together ! " And at last,
obliged to flee the city on account of the death of Valen-
tine, whom he has killed in a duel, after plunging into a
vortex of mad dissipation, indicated by the revels of the
Walpurgisnaeht^ when he hears of the arrest of Mar-
garet, he does not leave her to her fate, but returns to
rescue her at the risk of his life.

316 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Margaret is brought before us in a series of tableaux
representing the successive stages of her life's short
tragedy. We have the coy maiden, as she comes from
confession, resenting the offer of the cavalier's arm. We
have the young woman entrapped by her sex's love of
fmery, made aware of her beauty, rejoicing in her trink-
ets. We have her at the spinning-wheel, now pierced by
the fatal dart.

*' Meine Ruh ist bin,
Mein Herz ist schwer,
Ich finde sie nimmer
Und nimmer mehr."

Then, after her fall, pouring forth her immeasurable
anguish at the feet of the Mater dolorosa.

** Ach neige

Du Schmerzensreiche

Dein Antlitz gnadig meiner Noth."

Next, with the guilt of a brother's blood on her soul,
we have that overpowering scene in the church, where
the whispers of an accusing spirit, suggesting judgment
and hell torments, alternate with the victim's sighs of
agony and the words of Celano's awful hymn ; and where
you almost feel, as you read, the tremor from the swell
of the mighty organ.

Accusing Spirit. How different it was, Gretchen, in those
days when you came to the altar here, an innocent child, and
stammered your prayers out of the little worn book, your heart
half filled with childish sport and half with God. Gretchen !
what have you now in your head, what misdeed in your heart ?
Are you praying for your mother's soul whom you caused to
sleep over into the long, long pain ? On your threshold whose
blood ? And under your heart what is it that already begins to
swell and stir, distressing with its bodeful presence ? "

GOETHE. 317

Gretchen. Woe ! woe ! Could I only get rid of these
thoughts that go over and over me and persecute me !

" Dies irae, dies ilia

Sol vet saeclum in favilla."

Accusing Spirit, Wrath is on you ; the trumpet sounds, the
graves tremble ; your heart, new created for fiery torments,
starts quaking from its dusty rest.

Gretchen. Could I but away from here ! It seems as if the
organ took away my breath ; the singing melts my heart within
me.

*' Judex ergo cum sedebit
Quidquid latet adparebit,
Nil inultum remanebit."

Gretchen. How close it is ! The pillared walls confine me,
the vaulted ceiling oppresses me. Air !

Accusing Spirit. Hide would you ? Sin and shame cannot
be hidden. Air ? Light, would you ? Alas, for you !

** Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?
Quem patronum rogaturus?
Cum vix Justus sit securus."

And finally the scene in the prison, whose tragic in-
tensity literature has never paralleled, and can never ex-
ceed. The lover and would-be deliverer finds his victim
a raving maniac. She does not recognize him, thinks
he is the executioner come before the time. In vain
he kneels to her, till at last a certain tone in his voice
pierces through all the layers of her imagination, and
recalls the beloved. " Where is he ? I heard him call
Gretchen ! Through all the howling and clatter of hell,
through all the grim devilish mocking, I knew the sweet
loving sound." But her mind soon wanders again ; she
returns to her raving. He cannot persuade her to go
with him. He attempts to take her by force.

318 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Gretchen. Let me alone ! I will not suffer any violence ; do
not grasp me with such murderous hands. I once did every-
thing to oblige you.

Faust. The day is dawning ; my love, my love !

Gretchen. Day ? Yes, the day is coming ; the last day
draws nigh. It should be my wedding day. Tell no one that
you have been with Gretchen already. Alas, for my bridal
wreath ! It is done for. We shall see each other again, but
not at the dance. There is a crowd — they press ; no sound is
heard : the square, the streets cannot contain them. The bell
tolls, the wand is broken. I am dragged to the block ! Already
every one feels aimed at their own necks the blade which is
aimed at mine. The world lies dumb as the grave.

Faust. Oh, that I had never been born !

Then Mephistopheles appears to tell them there is not
a moment to lose, — " Come, or I will leave you both in
the lurch ! " Gretchen thinks she sees the Devil rising
out of the ground, and exclaims : —

" He is come for me ! . . . Tribunal of God ! I have resigned
myself to thee. . . . Thine I am ; Father, save me ! Ye an-
gels, heavenly host, encamp around me, — guard me ! Henry,
I fear thee ! "

Meph. She is doomed !

A voice from above. Is saved !

Meph. to Faust. Hither to me ! {He disappears with Faust.)

A voice from within, dying on the ear. Henry ! Henry !

So the First Part ends. The reader is allowed to sup-
pose — and most readers did suppose — that the author
meant it should be inferred that the Devil had secured
his victim, and that Faust, according to the legend, had
paid the forfeit of his soul to the powers of hell.

But Faust reappears in a new poem, — the Second
Part. He is there introduced sleeping, as if burying in

GOETHE. 319

torpor the lusts and crimes and sorrows of his past
career. Pitying spirits are about him, to heal his woes
and promote his return to a better life. Ariel addresses
them : —

" Ye who hover round this head in airy circle, conduct your-
selves here also after the manner of noble elves ! Allay the
grim conflict of the heart, withdraw the fiery bitter darts of
self-reproach, purge his soul of the horrors of past experience.
Four are the pauses of the night ; fill them out kindly, without
delay. First, lay his head upon the cool pillow; then bathe
him with dew from Lethe's stream. The cramp-stiffened limbs
will soon become supple, as strengthened he rests to meet the
day. Fulfil the fairies' fairest task ; give him back to the holy
light."

Then follows, with exquisite melody, the choir of the
elves ; and then Ariel announces the coming day, which
to spirit-ears comes with a thunder-crash. " Hark ! "
she says, " it is the storm of the Hours ! " Faust
awakes, and says : —

" The pulses of life beat with fresh vigor to greet the ethe*
real dawn! Thou, Earth, wast constant this night also, and
breathest new-quickened at my feet. Already thou beginnest
to enfold me with joy ! Thou rousest and stirrest in me a
mighty resolve to aspire evermore to the highest being."

Any attempt to analyze, much more to expound, the
occult meanings and mysteries of the Second Part of
" Faust " would far exceed the scope of this essay. As
the First Part deals with individual character and des-
tiny, so the Second spreads before us the great wide
world of public life. We have the imperial court, with
its jealousies and intrigues, its gayeties, its financial
embarrassments, which Mephistopheles relieves by a
Mephistophelian device, — the issue of a paper currency ;

320 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

we have war, we have industrial enterprise, — and in
the midst of these we have two interludes ; in the sec-
ond act the " Classical Walpurgis Night," which com-
mentators interpret as symbolizing a mediation between
the classic and romantic in literature and art ; and for
the whole of the third act we have the " Helena," sup-
posed to symbolize moral education through the influ-
ence of tlie beautiful.

By the discipline of these varied experiences Faust is
led on through the hundred years of his earthly life to
the supreme moment when, contemplating in imagina-
tion the benefit which must accrue to coming genera-
tions from his labors, — a free people on a free soil, —
he exclaims : " Might I see that consummation, I could
say to the moment, * Tarry, thou art so fair ! ' the
trace of my earthly days will endure for aeons. ... In
anticipation of that exalted happiness, I already enjoy
that highest moment ! " Then, in accordance with his
own stipulation in the compact with Mephistopheles, he
sinks back and expires. The Lemures seize him and
lay him in the grave. Mephistopheles claims Faust's
soul, and summons his spirits — the lean devils, with
long crooked horns, and the stout devils, with short
straight horns — to aid him in securing his prey. An-
gels come to the rescue ; they scatter roses, which purify
the air and charm the sleeper with dreams of paradise,
singing, as they scatter, —

*' Roses with tender ray,
Incense that render aye,
Hovering, fluttering,
Secret life uttering.
Leaf -winged, reposing here,
Blossoms unclosing here,
Hasten to bloom !

GOETHE. 321

{To Faust.)
Spring round thee beaming

Purple and green, —
Paradise dreaming,

Slumber serene! "

But the breath of the demons blasts and wilts the
falling roses ; they shrivel, and at last take fire, and fall
flaming and scorching on the hellish crew until they are
forced to retreat, — all but Mephistopheles, who stands
his ground ; but, entranced by the beauty of the angels,
he neglects his purpose, and fails to secure the immortal
part of Faust, which the angels appropriate and bear

aloft : —

" This member of the upper spheres
We rescue from the Devil,
For whoso strives and perseveres
May be redeemed from evil."

The last two lines may be supposed to contain the au-
thor's justification of Mephistopheles' defeat and Faust's
salvation. Though a man surrender himself to evil, if
there is that in him which evil cannot satisfy, an im-
pulse by which he outgrows the gratifications of vice,
extends his horizon and lifts his desires, pursues an
onward course until he learns to place his aims outside
of himself, and to seek satisfaction in works of public
utility, — he is beyond the power of Satan ; he may be
redeemed from evil.

One could wish, indeed, that more decisive marks of
moral development had been exhibited in the latter
stages of Faust's career. But here comes in the Chris-
tian doctrine of Grace, which Goethe applies to the
problem of man's destiny. Faust is represented as

saved by no merit of his own, but by the interest which

21

322 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Heaven has in every soul in which there is the possibility

of a heavenly life.

And so the new-born ascending spirit is committed by

the Mater gloriosa to the tutelage of Gretchen, — " una

poenitentium," — now purified from all the stains of her

earthly life, to whom is given the injunction, —

" Lift thyself up to higher spheres!
When he divines, he '11 follow thee."

And the Mystic Choir chants the epilogue which embod-
ies the moral of the play, —

•' All that is perishing

Types the ideal ;
Dream of our cherishing

Thus becomes real.
Superhumanly

Here it is done;
The ever womanly

Draweth us on."

THE MARCHEN.

In the summer of 1795 Goethe composed for Schiller's
new magazine, " Die Horen," a prose poem known in
German literature as Das Mdrchen, — " The Tale ; " as
if it were the only one, or the one which more than an-
other deserves that appellation.

It is not to be supposed that the author himself
claimed this pre-eminence for his production. The defi-
nite article must be taken in connection with what
precedes it in the " Unterhaltungen Deutscher Ausge-
wanderten ; " it was that tale which the Abbe had prom-
ised for the evening's entertainment of the company.

Goethe gave this essay to the public as a riddle which
would probably be unintelligible at the time, but which

GOETHE. 323

might perhaps find an interpreter after many days,
when the hints contained in it should be verified. Since
its first appearance commentators have exercised their
ingenuity upon it, perceiving it to be allegorical, but
until recently without success. They made the mistake
of looking too far and too deep for the interpretation.
Carlyle, who in 1832 published a translation of it in
" Eraser's Magazine," and who pronounces it " one of
the notablest performances produced for the last thou-
sand years," says : " So much however I will stake my
whole money capital and literary character upon, that
here is a wonderful Emblem of Universal History set
forth," etc.

But Goethe was not the man to concern himself with
such wide generalities. He preferred to deal with what
is present and palpable, and the inferences to be deduced
therefrom.

Dr. Hermann Baumgart in 1875, under the title
" Goethe's Marchen, ein politisch-nationales Glaubens-
bekennntiss des Dichter's," wrote a commentary on
" The Tale," which gives what is probably the true ex-
planation. If it does not solve every difficulty, it solves
more difficulties and throws more light on the poem
than any previous intepretation had done. I follow his
lead in the exposition which I now offer.

" The Tale " is a prophetic vision of the destinies of
Germany, — an allegorical foreshowing at the close of
the eighteenth century of what Germany was yet to be-
come, and has in great part already become. A position
is predicted for her like that which she occupied from
the time of Charles the Great to the time of Charles Y.,
— a period during which the Holy Roman Empire of

324 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Germany was the leading secular power in Western
Europe.

That time had gone by. Since the middle of the six-
teenth century Germany had declined, and at the date of
this writing (1795) had nearly reached her darkest day.
Disintegrated, torn by conflicting interests, pecked by
petty rival princes, despairing of her own future, it
seemed impossible that she should ever again become
a power among the nations.

Goethe felt this ; he felt it as profoundly as any Ger-
man of his day. He has been accused of want of pa-
triotism, and incurred much censure for that alleged
defect. He certainly did not manifest his patriotism
by loud declamation. During the War of Liberation he
made no sign. Under the reign of the Holy Alliance
he did not side with the hotheads — compeers of Sand
— who placed themselves in open opposition to the Gov-
ernment. He could not echo their cry. They were
revolutionists ; he was an evolutionist. And they hated
him, they maligned him, they invented all manner of
scandal against him. They accused him of abusing the
affections of women for literary purposes ; they even
affected to depreciate his genius. Borne pronounced
him a model of all that is bad. Menzel wrote : " Mark
my words : in twenty, or at the longest thirty, years he
will not have an admirer left ; no one will read him."
There was nothing too bad to be said of Goethe ; he was
publicly held up for reprobation and scorn. It was as
much as one's reputation was worth to speak well of
him.

Goethe, I say, was charged with want of patriotism.
He was no screamer ; but he felt profoundly his coun-
try's woes, and he characteristically went into himself

GOETHE. 325

and studied the situation. The result was this wonder-
ful composition, — " Das Marchen."

He perceived that Germany must die to be born again.
She did die, and is born again. He had the sagacity to
foresee the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire, — an
event which took place eleven years later, in 1806. The
Empire is figured by the composite statue of the fourth
King in the subterranean Temple, which crumbles to
pieces when that Temple, representing Germany's past,
emerges and stands above ground by the River. The
resurrection of the Temple and its stand by the River is
the denouement of the Tale. And that signifies, alle-
gorically, the rehabilitation of Germany.

The agents that are to bring about this consumma-
tion are the spread of liberal ideas, signified by the gold
of the Will-o'-wisps ; Literature, signified by the Ser-
pent ; Science, signified by the Old Man with the Lamp ;
and the Church, or Religion, signified by his wife. The
Genius of Germany is figured by the beautiful Youth,
the disconsolate Prince, who dies of devotion to the Fair
Lily. The Lily herself represents the Ideal.

Having premised thus much, I now proceed to unfold
the Tale, with accompanying comments, omitting how-
ever some of the details, and presenting only the organic
moments of the fable.

In the middle of a dark night (the dark period of
German history) the ferryman asleep in his hut by the
side of a swollen river is awakened by the cry of parties
demanding to be ferried across the stream.

Here let us pause a moment. The Hut, according to
Baumgart, is the provisional State (Nothstaat), — the
government for the time being. The Ferryman then is
the State functionary, who regulates and controls civil

326 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

intercourse. The River represents that intercourse, —
the flow of current events, — swollen by the French
Revolution. Now, a river is separation and communica-
tion in one. The Rhine, which separates Germany from
France, is also a medium of communication between the
two. What is it then that the River in the " Marchen "
separates and mediates ? This is a difficult question. No
interpretation tallies exactly with all the particulars of
the allegory. The most satisfactory is that of a separation
and a means of communication between State and people ;
between official, established tradition and popular life.

To return to the story. The Ferryman, roused from
his slumbers, opens the door of the hut, and sees two
Will-o'-wisps, who are impatient to be put across. These
are the bearers of the new ideas, which proved so stimu-
lating to the German mind, — giving rise to what is
known in German literature as the Aufklarung (" en-
lightenment "). Why called Will-o'-wisps ? They come
from France, and the poet means by their flashes and
vivacity, as contrasted with German gravity, to indicate
their French origin. They cause the Ferryman much
trouble by their activity. They shake gold into his boat
(that is, talk philosophy, — the philosophy of the French
Encyclopaedists) ; he fears that some of it might fall
into the stream, and then there would be mischief, —
the stream would rise in terrible waves and engulf him.
(The new ideas were very radical ; and if allowed to
circulate freely in social converse might cause a revo-
lution.) He bids them take back their gold. " We can-
not take back what we have once given forth." (The
word once spoken cannot be unspoken.)

When they reach the opposite shore the Ferryman de-
mands his fare. They reply, that he who will not take

GOETHE. 327

gold for pay must go unpaid. He demands fruits of the
earth (that is, practical service), which they despise.
They attempt to depart, but find it impossible to move.
(Philosophy without practical ability can make no head-
way in real life.) He finally releases them on their
promise to bring to the River three cabbages, three arti-
chokes, and three onions.

I am not aware that there is any particular signifi-
cance in the several kinds of vegetables here specified.
The general meaning is, that whoever would work
effectually in his time must satisfy the necessities of
the time, — must pay his toll to the State with contri-
butions of practical utility.

The Ferryman then rows down the stream, gathers
up the gold that has fallen into the boat, goes ashore
and buries it in an out-of-the-way place in the cleft of a
rock, then rows back to his hut. Now, in the rock-cleft,
into which the gold had been cast, dwelt the Green Ser-
pent. The Serpent is supposed to represent German
Literature, which until then had kept itself aloof from
the world, had wandered as it were in a wilderness ; but
the time was now come when it was to receive new light
and be quickened with new impulse. She hears the chink
of the falling gold-pieces, darts upon them, and eagerly
devours them. They melt in her interior, and she be-
comes self-luminous, — a thing that she had always been
hoping for, but had never until then attained. Proud of
her new lustre, she sallies forth to discover if possible
whence the gold which came to her had been derived.
She encounters the Will-o'-wisps, and claims relationship
with them.

" Well, yes," they allow, " you are a kind of cousin ;
but you are in the horizontal line, — we are vertical. See

328 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

here." They shoot up to their utmost height. " Pardon
us, good lady, but what other family can boast of any-
thing like that ? No Will-o'-wisp ever sits or lies down."

The Serpent is somewhat abashed by the comparison.
She knows very well that although when at rest she can
lift her head pretty high, she must bend to earth again
to make any progress. She inquires if they can tell her
where the gold came from which dropped in the cave
where she resides. They are amused at the question,
and immediately shake from themselves a shower of
gold pieces, which she greedily devours. " Much good
may it do you, madam." In return for this service they
desire to be shown the way to the abode of the Fair Lily,
to whom they would pay their respects. (The Fair Lily
represents Ideal Beauty.) The Serpent is sorry to in-
form them that the Lily dwells on the other side of
the river.

" On the other side ! " they exclaim, " and we let our-
selves be ferried across to this side last night in the
storm ! But perhaps the Ferryman may be still within
call, and be willing to take us back." " No," she says ;
" he can bring passengers from the other side to this, but
is not permitted to take any one back."

The interpretation here is doubtful. It may mean
that while a jealous Government is willing to assist in
the deportation of questionable characters, it will have
nothing to do with them on its own ground.

But besides the government ferry, there are other
means of getting across. The Serpent herself, by making
a bridge of her body, can take them across at high noon.
(Literature, in its supreme achievements, — its meridian
power, — becomes a vehicle of ideas which defies political
embargo.)

GOETHE. 829

But Will-o'-wisps do not travel at noonday. Another
passage is possible at morning and evening twilight, by
means of the shadow of the great Giant. The Giant's
body is powerless, but its shadow is mighty, and when
the sun is low stretches across the River.

Here all commentators seem to agree in one inter-
pretation. Says Carlyle, " Can any mortal head, not a
wigblock, doubt that the Giant of this poem is Super-
stition ? " This is loosely expressed. Unquestionably
superstition, in the way of fable or foreboding, stretches
far into the unknown. But it is a shadow, according to
" The Tale," which possesses this power. Now, to make
a shadow two things are needed, — light, and a body
which intercepts the light. The body in this case is
popular ignorance ; that is the real Giant. Superstition
is that Giant's shadow, — strongest and longest, of
course, when the sun is low.

Thus instructed, the Will-o'-wisps take their leave,
and the Serpent returns to her cave.

Now follows the scene in the subterranean Temple,
the Temple of the Four Kings, by which we are to
understand historic Germany, — the Germany of old
time. The Serpent has discovered this Temple, and
having become luminous is able to see what it contains.
There are the statues of four kings. The first is of
gold, the second of silver, the third of bronze, the fourth
a compound of several metals. The first king, who
wears a plain mantle and no ornament but a garland of
oak leaves, represents the rule of Wisdom and acknowl-
edged worth. The second, who sits, and is highly dec-
orated,— robe, crown, sceptre, adorned with precious
stones, — represents the rule of Appearance (^ScheiTi), —
majesty supported by prestige and tradition. The third,

330 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

also sitting, represents Government by Force. The
fourth, the composite figure in a standing posture, rep-
resents the Holy Roman Empire of Germany. The
Serpent has been discoursing with the Gold King, when
the wall opens, and enters an old man of middle stat-
ure, in peasant's dress, carrying a lamp, with a still
flame pleasing to look upon, which illumines the whole
Temple without casting any shadow. This lamp pos-
sesses the strange property of changing stones into gold,
wood into silver, dead animals into precious stones, and
of annihilating metals. But to exercise this power it
must shine alone ; if another light appears beside it, it
only diffuses a clear radiance, by which all living things
are refreshed.

The bearer of this lamp is supposed, by Baumgart, to
represent Science ( Wissenscha/t') ; but it seems to me
that his function includes practical wisdom as well.
What is signified by the marvellous properties of the
lamp must be left to each reader to conjecture.

" Why do you come," asks the Gold King of the Man
with the lamp, " seeing we already have light ? " " You
know that I cannot enlighten what is wholly dark," is
the reply. (Wisdom does not concern itself with what is
unsearchable, — with matters transcending human ken.)
" Will my kingdom end ? " asks the Silver King. " Late
or never." The Brazen King asks, " When shall I
arise ? " The answer is, " Soon." " With whom shall
I combine ? " " With your elder brothers." What will
the youngest do ? " inquired the King. " He will sit
down," replied the Man with the lamp. " I am not
tired," growled the fourth king. (The Empire, even at
that date, was still tenacious of its sway.)

Again the Gold King asks of the Man with the

GOETHE. 331

lamp, " How many secrets knowest thou ? " " Three,"
replied the Man. " Which is the most important ? " asks
the Silver King. " The open secret," the Man replies.

It sometimes happens that a truth or conviction is, as
we say, " in the air," before the word which formulates
it has been spoken ; it is an open secret. Thus, in the
closing months of 1860, " Secession " was in the air ; it
was our open secret.

"' Wilt thou open it to us also ? " asks the Brazen
King. "When I know the fourth," replied the Man.
" I know the fourth," said the Serpent, and whispered
something in the ear of the Man with the lamp. He
cried with a loud voice, " The time is at hand ! " The
Temple resounded, the statues rang with the cry ; and
immediately the Man with the lamp vanished to the
west, the Serpent to the east.

Here ends the first act of this prophetic drama. The
Man with the lamp returns to his cottage, where the
Old Woman — his wife — greets him with loud lamenta-
tions. " Scarcely were you gone," she whimpers, " when
two impetuous travellers called ; they were dressed in
flames, and seemed quite respectable. One might have
taken them for Will-o'-wisps. But they soon began to
flatter me, and made impertinent advances." " Pooh !
they were only chaffing you. Considering your age, my
dear, they could n't have meant anything serious." " My
age, indeed I always my age ! How old am I, then ?
But I know one thing. Just look at these walls ! See
the bare stones ! They have licked off all the gold ; and
when they had done it, they dropped gold pieces about.
Our dear pug swallowed some of them ; and see there !
the poor creature lies dead."

332 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

The Old Woman represents the Church, — the ac-
cepted traditional religion. There is a beautiful fitness
in this symbolism. Science and religion, knowledge and
faith, are mutually complemental in human life. The
little pug may mean some pet dogma of the Church ;
Baumgart suggests belief in the supernatural, to which
modern enlightenment (the gold of the Will-o'wisps)
proves fatal. The little pug dies ; but a doctrine which
perishes, which becomes obsolete as popular belief, may
become historically precious as myth. This is what is
meant when it is said, farther on, that the Old Man with
his lamp changes the pug to an onyx. Moreover, when
such myth is embraced by poetry, it acquires a new,
transfigured, immortal life. Thus the gods of Greece
still live, and live forever, in Homer's song. In this
sense, with this aim, the Man with the lamp sends the
onyx pug to the Fair Lily, whose touch causes dead
things to live.

The Old Woman had incautiously promised the Will-
o'-wisps (in order, we may suppose, to get rid of them)
to pay their debt to the Eiver, of three cabbages, three
artichokes, and three onions. But why did they visit
her cottage at all; and why so intent on the obsolete
gold on its walls ? The answer is, modern culture knows
full well that the Church is the depositary of many pre-
cious truths which, though no longer current in the form
in which they were once clothed, approve and justify
themselves when restated and given to the world in a
new form. So they — the New Lights — say in effect to
the Church, " Old Lady, you are somewhat out of date ;
if you mean to keep your place and vindicate your right
to be, you must throw yourself into the life of the time ;
you must contribute something useful to forward that

GOETHE. 333

life. It is through you that the new philosophy must
discharge its debt to the River " (that is, to the life of
the time).

The Man with the lamp approves and seconds the
commission intrusted to his wife by the Will-o'-wisps,
and at dawn of day loads her with the cabbages, the
artichokes, and the onions destined for the River, to
which he adds the onyx as a present to the Fair Lily.
The first part of her mission is a failure. On her way
to the ferry she encounters the Shadow of the blunder-
ing Giant stretching across the plain. The Shadow un-
ceremoniously puts its black fingers into her basket,
takes out three vegetables, — one of each kind, — and
thrusts them into the mouth of the Giant, who greedily
devours them. (Some freak of popular ignorance inter-
cepts and impairs the practical benefit which the new
culture, through the Church, had hoped to confer on the
age.)

The Ferryman refuses to accept the imperfect offering
as full satisfaction of the Will-o'-wisps' debt, and only
consents at last to receive it provisionally, if the Old
Woman will swear to make the number good within
twenty-four hours. She is required to dip her hand in
the stream and take the oath. She dips and swears.
But when she withdraws her hand, behold ! it has turned
black ; and, what is worse, has grown smaller, and seems
likely to disappear altogether. (The apparent dignity of
the Church is impaired by contact with vulgar life.)

" Oh, woe ! " she cries. " My beautiful hand, which I
have taken so much pains with and have always kept so
nice ! What will become of me ? " The Ferryman tries
to comfort her with the assurance that although the
hand might become invisible, she would be able to use

334 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

it all the same. " But," says she, " I would rather not
be able to use it than not have it seen." (Here is a
stroke of satire on the part of the poet, implying that
the Church cares more for the show of authority than
for the substance.)

Sad and sullen the Old Woman takes up her basket
and bends her steps toward the abode of the Fair Lily.
On the way she overtakes a pilgrim more disconsolate
than herself, — a beautiful youth, with noble features,
abundant brown locks, his breast covered with glittering
mail, a purple cloak depending from his shoulders. His
naked feet paced the hot sand ; profound grief appeared
to render him insensible to external impressions. The
Old Woman endeavors to open a conversation with him,
but receives no encouragement. She desists with the
apology, " You walk too slow for me, sir. I must hurry
on, for I have to cross the River on the Green Serpent,
that I may take this present from my husband to the
Fair Lily." " You are going to the Fair Lily ?" he cried ;
" then our roads are the same. But what is this present
you are bringing her ? " She showed him the onyx pug.
" Happy beast ! " he exclaimed ; " thou wilt be touched
by her hands, thou wilt be made alive by her ; whereas
the living are forced to stand aloof from her lest they
experience a mournful doom. Look at me," he con-
tinued, " how sad my condition ! This mail which I
have worn with honor in war, this purple which I have
sought to merit by wise conduct, are all that is left me
by fate, — the one a useless burden, the other an un-
meaning decoration. Crown, sceptre, and sword are
gone ; I am in all other respects as naked and needy as
any son of earth. So unblest is the influence of her
beautiful blue eyes ! they deprive all living beings of

GOETHE. 335

their strength, and those who are not killed by the
touch of her hand find themselves turned into walking
shadows."

This is finely conceived. The Youth, the Prince who
has lost sceptre and sword, represents the Genius of Ger-
many, once so stalwart and capable in action, now (at
the time of Goethe's writing) enervated and become a
melancholy dreamer from excessive devotion to the Lily,
that is, excessive Idealism ; whereby

*' Enterprises of great pith and moment

their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action."

Such was Germany in those days. And even later,
Freiligrath compared her to Hamlet, in whom

" The native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."

The travellers cross the bridge which the Serpent
makes for them. The Serpent herself straightens out
her bow and accompanies them. On the way the Will-o'-
wisps, invisible in broad day, are heard whispering a re-
quest to the Serpent that she would introduce them to
the Lily in the evening, as soon as they should be any
way presentable. The Lily receives her visitors gra-
ciously, but with an air of deep dejection. She imparts
to the Old Woman her recent affliction. While her pet
canary-bird was warbling its morning hymn, a Hawk ap-
peared in the air and threatened to pounce upon it. The
frightened creature sought refuge in its mistress's bosom,
and, like all living things, was killed by her touch. (The
Hawk represents the newly awakened, impatient spirit of
German Patriotism, which scared into silence the lighter
lyrics of the time.)

336 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

The Old Woman presents the onyx pug, and the Lily
is delighted with the gift. Her touch gives it life. She
plays with it, caresses it. The melancholy youth who
stands hy and looks on is maddened with jealousy at the
sight. " Must a nasty little beast be so fondled, and re-
ceive her kiss on its black snout, while I, her adorer, am
kept at a distance ? " At last he can bear it no longer,
and resolves to perish in her arms. He rushes towards
her ; she, knowing the consequence, instinctively puts
out her arms to ward him off, and thereby hastens the
catastrophe. The youth falls lifeless at her feet.

Here ends the second act. The Genius of Germany is
apparently extinct. Can it be revived ? The third and
final act foreshows its revival, — the political rehabilita-
tion of Germany. I am compelled by want of space to
omit, in what follows, many of the accessories, — such
as the female attendants of the Lily, the mirror, the last
desperate freaks of the Giant, etc., — and to keep myself
to the main thread of the story.

The first object now, on the part of those interested,
is to prevent corruption, which would make resuscitation
impossible. So the Serpent forms with her body a cor-
don around the lifeless form of the Youth to protect it,
" Who will fetch the Man with the lamp ? " she cries,
fearing every moment that the sun will set and dissolu-
tion penetrate the magic circle, causing the body of the
Youth to fall in pieces. At length she espies the Hawk
in the air, and hails the auspicious omen. (Patriotism
still lives.)

Shortly after, the Man with the lamp appears.
" Whether I can help," he says, " I know not. The
individual by himself cannot do much, but only he who

GOETHE. 337

at the proper moment combines with many." (All who
have their country's salvation at heart must join their
forces in time of need.)

Night comes on. The Old Man glances at the stars
and says, " We are here at the propitious hour ; let each
do his duty and perform his part." The Serpent then
began to stir ; she loosened her enfolding circle, and slid
m large volumes toward the River. The Will-o'-wisps
followed. The Old Man and his Wife seized the basket,
lifted into it the body of the Youth, and laid the Canary-
bird upon his breast. The basket rose of itself into the
air, and hovered over the Old Woman's head. She fol-
lowed the Will-o'-wisps. The Fair Lily with the pug in
her arms followed the Woman, and the Man with the
lamp closed the procession. The Serpent bridged the
River for them, and then drew her circle again around
the basket containing the body of the Youth. The Old
Man stoops down to her and asks, " What are you go-
ing to do ? " " Sacrifice myself," she answers, " rather
than be sacrificed." The Man bids the Lily touch the
Serpent with one hand and the body of the Youth with
the other. She does so, and behold! the Youth comes
to life again, but not to full consciousness. Then
the Serpent bursts asunder. Her form breaks into
thousands upon thousands of glittering jewels. These
the Man with the lamp gathers up and casts into the
stream, where they afterward form a solid and perma-
nent bridge.

The Old Man now leads the party to the cave. They
stand before the Temple barred with golden lock and
bolt. The Will-o'-wisps at the bidding of the Old Man
melt bolt and lock with their flames, and the company
are in the presence of the Four Kings. " Whence come

22

338 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

ye ? " asks the Gold King. " From the world," is the
reply. " Whither go ye ? " asked the Silver King. " Into
the world." " What would ye with us ? " asked the
Brazen King. " Accompany you," said the Old Man.
" Who will govern the world ? " asked the Composite
King. " He who stands on his feet," is the answer.
" That am I," said the King. '* We shall see," said
the Old Man, " for the time is come."

Then the ground beneath them began to tremble ; the
Temple was in motion. For a few moments a fine shower
seemed to drizzle from above. " We are now beneath
the River," said the Old Man. The Temple mounts up-
ward. Suddenly a crash is heard ; planks and beams
come through the opening of the dome. It is the old
Ferryman's hut, which the Temple in its ascent had de-
tached from the ground. It descends and covers the Old
Man and the Youth. The women, who find themselves
excluded, beat against the door of the Hut, which is
locked. After a while the door and walls begin to ring
with a metallic sound. The flame of the Old Man's lamp
has converted the wood into silver. The very form has
changed ; the Hut has become a smaller temple, or, if you
will, a shrine, within the larger.

Observe the significance of this feature of "The Tale."
The Hut, as was said, represents the existing Govern-
ment. New Germany is not to be the outcome of a vio-
lent revolution forcibly abolishing the old, but a natural
growth receiving the old into itself, assimilating and
embodying it in a new constitution.

When the Youth came forth from the transformed Hut,
it was in company with a man clad in a white robe, bear-
ing a silver oar in his hand. This was the old Ferryman,
now to become a functionary in the new State.

GOETHE. 339

As soon as the rising sun illumined the cupola of the
Temple, the Old Man, standing between the Youth and
the Maiden (the Lily), said with a loud voice, " There
are three that reign on earth, — Wisdom, Show, Force."
When the first was named, up rose the Gold King ; with
the second, the Silver. The Brazen King was rising
slowly at the sound of the third, when the Composite
King (the Holy Roman Empire) suddenly collapsed into
a shapeless heap. The Man with the lamp now led the
still half-conscious Youth to the Brazen King, at whose
feet lay a sword. The Youth girded himself with it. " The
sword on the left," said the mighty king, " the right hand
free." They then went to the Silver King, who gave the
Youth his sceptre, saying, " Feed the sheep." They came
to the Gold King, who, with a look that conveyed a pater-
nal blessing, crowned the Youth's head with a garland of
oak leaves, and said, " Acknowledge the Highest."

The Youth now awoke to full consciousness ; his eyes
shone with an unutterable spirit, and his first word was,
" Lily ! " He clasped the fair maiden, whose cheeks
glowed with an inextinguishable red, and, turning to the
Old Man, said, with a glance at the three sacred figures,
'^ Glorious and safe is the kingdom of our fathers ; but
you forgot the fourth power, that which earliest, most
universal, and surest of all rules the world, — the power
of Love." " Love," said the Old Man, smiling, " does
not rule, but educates ; and that is better."

And so the Temple stands by the River. The Old
Woman, having at the bidding of her husband bathed in
its waves, comes forth rejuvenated and beautified. The
Old Man himself looks younger. Husband and wife (Sci-
ence and Religion) renew their nuptial vows, and pledge
their troth for indefinite time.

340 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

The propliecy is accomplished. What Genius pre-
dicted ninety years ago has become fact. The Temple
stands by the River, the bridge is firm and wide. The
Genius of Germany is no longer a sighing, sickly youth,
pining after the unattainable, but, having married his
ideal, is now embodied in the mighty Chancellor whose
state-craft founded the new Empire, and whose word is
a power among the nations.

APPENDIX TO FAUST.
I.

LESSING'S "FAUST."

All that we know of the plan of Lessing's " Faust " is de-
rived from a letter written after his death by Engel to Karl
Lessing, a younger brother of the poet. In this letter he com-
municates a sketch which Lessing had confided to him of the
yet unfinished work.

Satan is represented holding a council and receiving reports
from his agents of their doings on the earth. One devil boasts
of having destroyed by fire a pious poor man's hut, and left him
utterly destitute and lost. " Yes," says Satan, " lost to us in-
deed, and forever. To make a pious poor man still poorer is
only to bind him more closely to God." The second boasts of
having wrecked a ship containing a company of usurers. " They
all perished," he says, " and they are now yours." '^ Traitor ! "
replies Satan, " they were mine already ; had you suffered them
to live, they would have spread ruin far and wide, and caused
many to sin. All that we lost by your folly. Back with you
to hell ! you are destroying my kingdom." Finally there comes
a devil who reports that he has accomplished no deed as yet,

GOETHE, 341

but has an idea, which if he can realize it will put all that the
rest have done to shame : that is, to rob God of his favorite, —
" a solitary studious youth devoted entirely to wisdom, for her
sake renouncing every passion, and therefore dangerous to us
if ever he becomes a teacher of the people ; but as yet I have
found in him no weakness by which I can get hold of him."

*' Fool! " says Satan, "has he not a thirst for knowledge? "

" Above all mortals."

*' Then leave him to me; that is sufficient for his ruin."

And he resolves at once to brin^ about that ruin. But the
angel of Providence, who has been hovering over the assembly,
foretells to us the spectators the fruitlessness of Satan's strategy
in the solemn but gently uttered words which are heard from
on high, " Ye shall not prevail ! " The youth to be seduced is
Faust, whom the angel saves by burying him in a deep sleep
and creating in his place a phantom Faust, on whom the devils
try their arts, and who, just as they feel secure of their prey,
vanishes, and leaves them gnashing their teeth with rage ; while
to the real, sleeping Faust all that has happened to the phan-
tom is a dream, from which he awakes, thankful for the warning
vision, and more than ever confirmed in his virtues and wisdom.

From this it appears that Lessing, no more than Goethe,
could accept the idea of eternal perdition for the seeker after
knowledge implied in the popular legend.

Of the two or three fragments of his drama, there is one im-
pressive scene in which Faust summons devils in order to select
a servant from among them. He questions them as to their
swiftness. One professes to be swift as the arrows of pesti-
lence ; another travels on the wings of the wind ; another is
borne on the beams of light. These are rejected as measuring
their swiftness by material standards ; they are Satan's messen-
gers in the world of bodies. Turning to his messengers in the
world of spirits, Faust asks of one, —

How swift art thou ?

Spirit. Swift as the thoughts of men.

342 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Faust. That is something! Yet the thoughts of men are not
always swift ; not when truth and virtue challenge their service, —
then they are very slow. (To another.) How swift are you?

Spirit. Swift as the vengeance of the avenger.

Faust. Of the avenger ? Of what avenger?

Spirit. Of the Mighty, the Terrible, who has reserved vengeance
for himself alone, because he delights in it.

Faust. Devil, you blaspheme, for I see you are trembling. Swift
said you as the vengeance of — I had almost named him. No 1
let him not be named among us. Swift call you his vengeance?
Yet I still live, I still sin.

Spirit. That he still permits you to sin is his vengeance.

Faust. That I should first learn this from a devil ! No, his ven-
geance is not swift. Away with you! {To the last spirit.) How
swift are you?

Spirit. Neither more nor less swift than the transition from good
to evil.

Faust. Ah, you are the devil for me! Swift as the transition
from good to evil! Yes, that is swift, — nothing swifter than that.
Get you gone, ye terrors of Orcus! Away! The transition from
good to evil, — I have experienced how swift that is ; I have ex-
perienced it!

n.

TRANSLATION OF THE EASTER SONG.

Chorus of Angels.

Christ has arisen !
Joy ! ye dispirited
Mortals, whom merited,
Trailing, inherited
Woes did imprison !

Chorus of Women.

Costly devices
We had prepared.
Shroud and sweet spices,
Linen and nard.

GOETHE. 343

Woe! the disaster!
Whom we here laid,
Gone is the Master,
Empty his bed !

Chorus of Angels.

Christ hath arisen
Loving and glorious,
Out of laborious
Conflict victorious.
Hail to the risen !

Chorus of Disciples.

Hath the inhumated,
Upward aspiring, —
Hath he consummated
All his desiring?
Is he in growing bliss
Near to creative joy ?
Wearily we in this
Earthly house sigh.
Empty and hollow, us
Left he unblest ?
Master, thy followers
Envy thy rest.

Chorus of Angels.

Christ hath arisen
Out of corruption's womb!
Burst every prison I
Vanish death's gloom!
Active in charity,
Praise him in verity !
His feast, prepare it ye !
His message bear it ye !
His joy declare it ye !
Then is the Master near,
Then is he here.

344 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

CHAPTER XYL

SCHILLER.
I.

TN the public square in Weimar there is a group of
-■- statuary representing Goethe and Schiller on one
pedestal, holding one wreath, which either seems willing
to concede to the other, and neither to claim for him-
self. To which of the two, as the greater poet, that
crown more fitly belongs, is a question on which differ-
ent opinions were entertained by their own contempo-
raries. And even now, though settled in favor of Goethe
by the critics and the highest culture, if submitted to a
plebiscite, to be decided on grounds of personal prefer-
ence and enjoyment of their works, it is Schiller, most
likely, that would carry the vote.

Carlyle, comparing the two, pronounces Goethe the
national poet. If by " national " is meant the most idio-
matically German, I agree with him. But if the test of
nationality is national acceptance, the poet's popularity
with his own countrymen, then surely it is Schiller
rather than Goethe to whom that title must be ascribed.
The former is emphatically the poet of the people. His
is the larger audience and the fuller response. Goethe
speaks with greater authority to men of high culture ;
but his works are read by comparatively few. Except
in his songs, whose popularity is unbounded, it cannot

SCHILLER. 345

be said of him that the common people hear him gladly.
But Schiller, who addresses the average intellect, is
everywhere at home, — the inmate of the house, the idol
of the heart. The centennial anniversary of his birth in
1859 was celebrated more widely than that of his rival
ten years before, — more widely and more enthusiasti-
cally than that of any other poet of old or recent time.
If popularity were the measure of genius, there would be
no question as to Schiller's superiority.

This popularity is partly due to perfect intelligibility,
absence of everything enigmatical, of everything that
puzzles and taxes the understanding in Schiller's writ-
ings, but more to the showy enthusiasm which pervades
them, — so strongly contrasting the subtle irony which
envelops those of Goethe, and which, though it may
cover profounder meanings, can never command the
general ear. A consequence of this enthusiasm, and its
natural medium, is the fiery eloquence which character-
izes Schiller's style. In this again he differs widely
from his calmer friend. Eloquence is always popular ;
and Schiller is, I think, the most eloquent of poets.
Byron alone of modern English poets approaches him
in that particular. Eloquence and poetry are quite dis-
tinct ; the one consists in forcible statement, the other
in delicate perception and subtle suggestions ; the office
of the former is to stir the feelings, that of the latter
to entertain the imagination ; the one tends to excite-
ment, the other to contemplation. Schiller, in his ear-
lier phase, like Byron, is the poet of passion rather than
of thought ; the fire of his verse eclipses the truth of
his vision, as a conflagration hides the stars. But he
lived to outgrow these hectic fervors. The fire which
burns so fiercely in his " Robbers," in " Kabale und

346 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Liebe," and "Fiesco," cooled down in the philosopliic-
artistic atmosphere of Jena and Weimar. The young
Titan ceased to storm the social Olympus ; he became
an Olympian himself, sitting at the right hand of maj-
esty, and dispensing his " Wallenstein," his " Song of
the Bell," his " Wilhelm Tell," from the serene height
of dispassionate, self-sufficing art.

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was born at
Marbach, in Wiirtemberg, then a duchy, on the 10th of
November, in 1759. The only son of a worthy and ener-
getic officer in the ducal army, he was destined by his
father for the office of preacher in the Lutheran Church.
The early education of 'the boy was shaped with refer-
ence to that destination. But Duke Charles, of Wiir-
temberg, had recently established a military school at
Ludwigsburg, and in 1772 invited the officers in his
army to send their sons thither for education at the
expense of the Government. Friedrich, at the age of
fifteen, became a beneficiary of that institution as a stu-
dent of medicine. The school was subsequently trans-
planted from Ludwigsburg to Stuttgart.

We shall expect to find in the young medical student,
between the ages of fifteen and twenty, some presage of
the future poet, — the rival of Goethe, the idol of his
nation. Of genuine poetic feeling, or poetic vision, we
find very little, but great intellectual activity and de-
cided indications of a preference for literary pursuits;
accompanying these, a blind impulsiveness, a headlong
zeal, which overpowered not only correct judgment but
true perception and even natural feeling. In an exer-
cise of self-examination required by his teacher, he
avows a devotion to the Duke exceeding all filial obli-

SCHILLER, 347

gation. In an anniversary Address to the Fraulein von
Hohenheim, he professes to see in the Duke's mistress
the ideal of feminine virtue.

Fierce extravagance, intellectual violence, was the
characteristic vice of the youth. The Duke's birthday
was celebrated by a dramatic performance, in which
the students were the actors. The play selected for the
purpose was Goethe's " Clavigo." Schiller took the
part of Clavigo. His rendering of it is reported to have
been an absurd exhibition, a frightful screaming and
roaring, furious gesticulation, provoking laughter. His
biographer, Goedeke, says : —

" The false high-flying pathos which he found in his favorite
authors, or which he put into them, ruled him humanly and
poetically. Travesty of human nature he mistook for power,
forced humor for feeling, bombastic phrases for inspiration.
The tight-laced discipline, the galling drill, which was to have
restrained his youthful spirit, served only to hasten its convul-
sive explosions. Shakspeare seemed to him cold, and was not
to his liking."

On the other hand, the wild, declamatory, aggressive
writings of that period — the Storm-and-stress period of
German literature — took complete possession of Schiller's
soul ; and while a student at Stuttgart he planned, and
in great part composed, his '' Robbers," in which all the
extravagances of that period found their highest expres-
sion, and the period itself its final consummation.

In 1778 he took the first prize in anatomy. In the
year following he received tliree prizes, — one in Materia-
medica, and two in Therapeutics. The distribution of
prizes to meritorious students was a festive occasion,
over which the Duke himself presided. That of 1779

848 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

was signalized by the presence of the Grand-Duke of
Weimar and Goethe, then visitors at Stuttgart. One
can imagine the flutter created in the breasts of the
candidates by these distinguished guests, especially the
latter, already famous, and in the full bloom of his fault-
less beauty. Goethe has not recorded the occasion ; nor
does it appear that in after years he recognized in his
friend and rival the medical student of the Carlschule.
On the other hand, it is not unlikely that Schiller, as
he went up in his stiff uniform, with his sword on his
thigh, his three-cornered hat in his hand, a hundred
literary projects and his half-finished " Robbers " in his
brain, to receive his award at the hands of his patron,
may have dreamed of one day occupying a place on
the German Parnassus by the side of the illustrious
stranger.

It was not until the close of the year 1780 that Schil-
ler was judged to have completed his academic course.
He left the Carlschule, and obtained the post of physi-
cian to a regiment of grenadiers then stationed at Stutt-
gart, with a monthly salary of eighteen florins, —
somewhat less than four dollars per week. The posi-
tion allowed him ample time for literary labors, which
unhappily were not always guided by good taste nor
directed to worthy aims. He edited the " Anthology,"
a miscellaneous collection of poems, in which Schiller's
own productions are no longer distinguishable from
those of other contributors, but for whose licentious
tone — an offence alike to good morals and aesthetic
propriety — the editor must be held responsible.

I cannot suppose that Schiller's heart was in this
work, — that the real nature of the man expressed it-
self in these erotic and erratic effusions. They repre-

SCHILLER. 349

sent the crudeness of his youth, his six years' seclusion
from all refining social influence, the contamination of
loose associates and evil example. But all Schiller was
in "The Robbers," which was now completed, and in
1781 brought out for the first time in the theatre at
Mannheim, with immense success. No work since
" Werther " had so electrified the world. More even
than " Werther " it won the popular ear, the stage com-
bining with the press to promote its circulation. The
sorrows of Werther were forgotten in the agonies of
Moor ; Gotz, with the iron fist, sunk into insignifi-
cance before this great child of the imagination.

On the other hand, grave conservatives were shocked
by its audacity, and took alarm at the drift of its senti-
ment. Said one of this class to Goethe : " Had I been God,
and about to make the world, and could I have foreseen
that ' The Robbers ' would be written in it, I would
have desisted, and forborne to create such a world."

Carlyle says that the publication of " The Robbers "
forms an era in the world's literature. It was in sub-
stance a protest against old, effete, but still oppressive
traditions, against feudal anachronisms, against the un-
righteous tyranny of custom. This protest was in the
air ; it was the spirit of the time. Aggravated in Schil-
ler's case, no doubt, by bitter experience of personal
restraint, and a certain " savageness of unreclaimed
blood," it found vent in a roar which startled the eagles
of dominion asleep on their sceptres, — a prophecy of the
storm which soon after burst upon Europe and shook
the solid world.

I fancy " The Robbers " is not much read nowadays,
except by very young people. To mature minds and
educated taste, its wild rant and monstrous exaggera-

850 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

tions are intolerable. No one repudiated that style of
composition more heartily than Schiller himself in after
years, when the influence of Goethe, the study of the
best models, and the experience of life had pruned the
excrescences and tempered the flashy fervor of his Muse.
And yet it has seemed to me that " The Robbers," with
all its absurdities and imperfections, as it was the ear-
liest, so it is in some respects the greatest, of Schiller's
plays ; it has seemed to me that the promise implied in
this firstling of his genius was never quite realized. I
find in none of his subsequent works the same force, ori-
ginality, and wealth of imagination. If the poet's art
in his later performances had learned not to " overstep
the modesty of nature," it unlearned also the force and
freedom of nature whose modesty had been overstepped.
"Mary Stuart," " Wallenstein," and "William Tell"
exhibit greater reach of thought, clearer judgment,
higher finish, maturer views of nature and life, truer
perception of the rules and limits and legitimate objects
of dramatic art; but the stamp of genius is less con-
spicuous in these compositions. Of the works of the
author's maturer years, " The Maid of Orleans " alone
displays, without its excesses, something of the glow
and intensity of "The Robbers."

The fable of "The Robbers" is simple, and, barring its
extravagance, well contrived. The old Count von Moor
has two sons. The elder, Carl, is sent to the University,
where he leads a wild life, of which he tires, and for which
in a letter he begs his father's pardon and the payment of
his debts. The younger son, Franz, who remains at home,
and in whom the author figures a consummate villain,
intercepts the letter, and pretending private information,

SCHILLER. 351

received from a correspondent at Leipsic, represents liis
brother an abandoned profligate. Then, in order to sep-
arate forever father and son, and thus to possess himself
of his brother's share of the inheritance, Franz forges a
letter, in which the old man disinherits Carl and forbids
his return. Carl, in his despair, heads a band of rob-
bers, whose exploits constitute a considerable portion of
the piece. Meanwhile Franz, impatient to get possession
of the estate, gives out that his father is dead. A mock
funeral is held, while the old man is thrown into a dun-
geon, where it is intended that he shall die of hunger.

Weary of his brigandage, desirous of revisiting the
scenes of his childhood, and of seeing, as a stranger, the
maiden to whom he was betrothed before entering the
University, Carl Moor introduces himself into the pater-
nal castle in disguise ; an accident discovers to him the
imprisonment of his father yet alive, whom he liberates,
but who dies of the shock occasioned by learning that his
favorite son is a robber. Franz, finding himself detected,
puts an end to his life to escape the vengeance with which
he is threatened, and the play concludes with Carl's dec-
laration of his intention to deliver himself up to justice.
A price has been set upon his head, and a poor laborer,
to whom he will reveal himself, shall earn the reward.

This ground-plot furnishes occasion for deeply moving
and pathetic scenes, and in such the play abounds. The
interest turns mainly on the character of Carl Moor,
which the poet represents as noble, and even sublime.
Though driven by desperation to embrace the life of an
outlaw, he is figured as better than his pursuits, elevated
above his associates, morally as well as intellectually.
He can never forget what he might have been, nor for-
give himself for what he is. In a celebrated scene of

352 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

the fourth act, the sense of his lost estate overwhelms
him with an agony of remorse. Gazing on the setting
sun, he exclaims : —

" So dies a hero ! When a boy it was my favorite thought to
live like that, to die like that. It was a boyish thought. . . .

" Oh that I could return into my mother's womb ! Oh that
I could be born a beggar ! I would ask no more than to be like
one of those day laborers yonder. I would weary myself until
the blood rolled from my temples, to purchase the luxury of one
noonday nap, the blessedness of a single tear ! "

In the fifth act self-despair drives him to the brink
of suicide, and we have this soliloquy, uttered with pistol
in hand : —

" Time and eternity linked together by a single moment !
Awful key that locks the prison of life behind me, and unbars
to me the dwelling of eternal night ! Tell me, whither, oh
whither, wilt thou lead me ? Unknown, never circumnavigated
land ! See, humanity collapses in the presence of this idea !
The strain of the finite mind gives way, and imagination, the
wanton ape of the senses, mocks our credulity with strange
shadows. Be what thou wilt, thou nameless yonder, if only
this my Self remain true. Be what thou wilt, so I can but
take my Self across with me. The things without us are but
the varnish of the man ; I am my heaven and my hell. What
if thou shouldst assign to me alone some burnt-out world, which
thou hast banished from thy sight, where solitary night and the
eternal waste were my only prospect ? I shall then people the
dumb desert with my fancies, and shall have an eternity of
leisure in which to dissect the confused image of the universal
woe ! Or wilt thou lead me through ever new births and ever
new scenes of misery to annihilation ? Can I not rend asunder
the life-thread which shall be woven for me hereafter as easily
as I do this ? Thou canst turn me into nothing, but that privi-
lege thou canst not take from me."

SCHILLER, 353

Of the scene in which Moor discovers his father in the
dungeon in which he had been immured and left to
starve by the younger son, Coleridge expressed his ad-
miration in a sonnet addressed " To the Author of ' The
Robbers '" : —

" Schiller! that hour I would have wished to die,
If through the shuddering midnight I had sent,
From the dark dungeon of the tower time-rent,
That fearful voice, a famished father's cry.
Lest in some after moment aught more mean
Might stamp me mortal."

My last quotation from " The Robbers " shall be the
closing portion of the dream which the villain Franz, on
the eve of his doom, relates to his aged confidential ser-
vant. It is a dream of the Last Judgment : —

" We all stood pale as snow, and anxious expectation throbbed
in every breast. Then I thought 1 heard my name called first
from amid the thunders of the Mount ; and my innermost mar-
row froze within me, and my teeth chattered aloud. And im-
mediately the scales began to sound, and the rock thundered,
and the hours went by. One by one they passed by the scale
on the left hand, and each one as it passed threw in a damning
sin. The scale on the left hand grew to a mountain, but the
other, filled with the blood of the Atonement, held it still
poised in air. At last there came an old man bowed down
with sorrow, his arm gnawed as he had gnawed it in his raging
hunger. All eyes turned toward him : I knew him well. And
he severed a lock from his silver hair and threw it into the
scale of transgressions ; and behold, it sank instantly to the
bottom, and the scale of Redemption rose to the sky ! Then I
heard a voice from out the smoke : ' Mercy, mercy to every
sinner on earth and in hell. Thou only art rejected ' ! "

Could Schiller have obtained a copyright for " The
Robbers " on its first publication, his fortune would have

23

354 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

been secured by a work of such wide demand. But the
profits, as usual, fell to the publishers, while the author
derived from this his first literary venture, along with
great public applause, much private annoyance. A dis-
paraging allusion to the Swiss Canton of the Grisons
provoked from that quarter a complaint addressed to the
Duke, who in his wisdom straightway laid an injunction
on the poet to write no more plays, — noch sonst so was,
" nor anything of the sort," as the edict elegantly phrased
it. The clause was understood to embrace all possible
creations of a poet's genius. Duke Charles was one of
those who believe that the world would be quite as good
a world without poetry as with it ; he judged that his
little Wiirtemberg would be a great deal better. Had
he known what was in this young army-surgeon of his
(and he might have known it, had he taken the trouble
to read the play) ; could he have foreseen how contemp-
tible his own name would one day appear beside that of
the poet, — all the more contemptible because of this
act, — he might have paused before hurling the boome-
rang whose worst effect recoiled upon himself in the loss
of his greatest subject, the greatest son of that Suabian
soil since Eberhard the Greiner. To impose silence on
a poet with such a mission was like charging the sun to
withdraw his beams, or the clouds to withhold their rain.
Yet Scliiller, whose poetic consciousness was still imper-
fectly developed, might have hesitated longer between
obedience to his genius and obedience to his Prince, had
not the mandate been accompanied by an arrest and tem-
porary imprisonment for going to Mannheim without leave
of absence to witness the performance of his play. This
personal indignity precipitated a step which would no
doubt have been ultimately taken without such incentive.

SCHILLER. 355

With the aid of a friend he made his escape from Stutt-
gart and took refuge in Mannheim, a city beyond the
jurisdiction of his oppressor.

But Mannheim, though it offered Schiller an asylum,
refused him bread. He had thrown himself upon the
world with no resource but his pen, — a very ineffectual
one in those days when employed in literary labor. One
use which he made of it was not literary but practical.
There has been found among his manuscripts a letter to
the Duke, dated from Mannheim, begging pardon for
quitting his dominions, and praying that the literary in-
junction might be removed. There is no evidence that
the letter was sent ; and one would hope that the self-
respect of the poet prevailed over hunger, or the fear of
hunger, and withheld the degrading petition.

His second dramatic attempt, his " Piesco," proved a
fiasco so far as the theatre of Mannheim was concerned.
Dolberg, theatrical manager, declined it as being unfit
for the stage. In Berlin it met with better success, but
brought no gain to the author, who in his extremity had
been fain to sell it to a publisher for eleven louis d'or
(about fifty dollars).

We next find Schiller, under the name of Ritter, a refu-
gee at Bauerbach, an estate of his patroness the Frau von
Wolzogen, mother of one of his fellow-students at the
Carlschule. Here he composed his third drama, " Luise
Millerin," afterward entitled "Kabaleund Liebe," whose
appearance created a sensation second only to that which
greeted "The Robbers." It presented a domestic tragedy
such as the state of society at that time may have made a
thing of frequent occurrence. Its characters and situa-
tions are nearer to Nature and fact than those of " The
Robbers," and if less romantic, better suited to the stage.

356 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

The substantial truth of its portraiture was attested by
the hearty and wide response of the public. It is said
that when the piece was produced for the first time at
Mannheim, in 1784, at the close of the second act the
whole body of spectators, with one accord, started from
their seats, and signified their delight with a round of
tumultuous applause. The poet, who happened to be
present in a private box, arose and acknowledged the
compliment in a few appropriate words. This was the
last triumph which Schiller won from theatre-goers in
the way of uproarious popular demonstration. His sub-
sequent productions, although of a far higher order, and
because they were of a higher order, were less adapted
to elicit such effects.

These, first three plays — "The Robbers," " Fiesco,"
and " Kabale und Liebe " — constitute a distinct and
completed phase in the literary history of the author.
These were prose compositions ; those which followed
were written in verse, and even on that account per-
haps less conducive to vulgar excitement, because more
restrained.

" Don Carlos," his next performance, marks the tran-
sition from the poet's first stage, the period of youthful
extravagance, — the Storm-and-stress period, — to the
calmer, purer style of his riper years. It is still marked,
and to some extent marred, by the vice of its predeces-
sors,— excessive idealism. The coloring is overdone,
the sentiment exaggerated, the characters extreme, —
that of Posa, especially, a wild conceit. He is the real
hero of the piece, — a more significant figure than the
Prince, whom he quite overshadows ; but his heroism is
too ideal, his magnanimity too ethereal, for the place he
occupies in the Spanish Court. But with all its faults,

SCHILLEit. 357

" Don Carlos " is still a noble work, — one of the choice
gems of dramatic literatm^e. It was not so effective on
the stage as " Kabale und Liebe," but it found as cordial
a welcome with the reading public, and obtained the
votes of a more discerning tribunal than the Mannheim
play-house. Among its best scenes, most expressive of
the spirit and manners of the age of Philip II., is the
colloquy between the King and the Chief of the Inquisi-
tion. The inexorable pride of Castilian majesty on the
one hand, and the awful power and omnipresent juris-
diction of the Romish Church on the other are typified
in the two men. The Inquisitor, an old man of ninety
years and blind, enters leaning on his staff, conducted
by two Dominicans. As he passes through the ranks
of the grandees, they all prostrate themselves on the
ground, and kiss the hem of his garment while he im-
parts his benediction.

Inq. Do I stand before the King ?

King. Yes.

Inq. I no longer expected such an interview !

King. I renew a scene of former years. Philip the Infante
asks advice of his teacher.

Inq. My pupil Charles, your great father, needed no counsel.

King. So much the happier he. I have committed murder,
Cardinal, and have no rest.

Inq. Whom have you murdered ?

King. An act of deception unexampled —

Inq. I know it.

King. What do you know ? — through whom, since when ?

Inq. For years, what you know only since sunset.

King (surprised). You have known of this man already ?
{Referring to Posa.)

Inq. His life from beginning to end is recorded in the sacred
registers of Santa Casa.

358 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

King. And yet he went about unhindered ?

Inq. His tether was long, but not to be broken.

King. He was already beyond the limits of my domain.

Inq. Wherever he might be, there was I also.

King. It was known in whose hands I was, — why was I not
cautioned ?

Inq. I give back the question. Why did you not inquire
when you threw yourself into the arms of this man ? You
knew him ; a glance unmasked to you the heretic. What in-
duced you to withhold the victim from the Holy Office ? Is it
thus that we are trifled with ? . . .

King. He has been sacrificed.

Inq. No ; he has been murdered ignominiously, sinfully.
The blood that should have been gloriously shed for our honor
has been spilt by the hand of an assassin. The man was ours.
What authorized you to meddle with the sacred property of the
Order ? God gave him to the needs of this time, in order to
make an example of boastful reason. That was my deliberate
plan. Now it is frustrated, — the work of many years. We
are robbed, and you have only bloody hands. . . . What could
this man be to you ? What new thing had he to show to you
for which you were not prepared ? Are you so little acquainted
with enthusiasm and love of innovation? The boastful lan-
guage of the would-be world-reformers, did it sound so un-
wonted in your ears ? If the fabric of your convictions can
be overthrown by words, with what face, I must ask, could you
sign the death-warrant of the hundred thousand weak souls who
for nothing worse have suffered at the stake ?

King. I craved a man. These Domingos —

Inq. Wherefore men ? Men are for you but ciphers ; noth-
ing more. Must I repeat with my gray pupil the very ele-
ments of monarchical art ? The god of this earth must learn
to dispense with that which may be denied him. If you whine
for sympathy, do you not confess yourself on a level with the
world ? . . . You have had your lesson. Now return to us
again. If I did not stand now before you, by the living God
you would have stood thus to-morrow before me !

SCHILLER. 359

King, Forbear such language! Restrain yourself, Priest!
I will not bear it ; I cannot allow myself to be spoken to in
this tone !

Inq. Why then did you summon the shade of Samuel ? I
gave two kings to the throne of Spain, and I hoped to leave
behind me a well-grounded work. I have lost the fruit of my
life. Don Philip himself causes my fabric to shake. And
now, Sire, why am I summoned ? What is wanted of me here ?
I am not disposed to repeat this visit.

King. One service more, — the last ; then may you depart in
peace. . . . My son meditates rebellion.

Inq. What do you intend ?

King. Nothing — or all.

Inq. What is meant here by all ?

King. He shall escape, if I may not cause him to be put to
death. . . . Can you establish for me a new creed which shall
justify the bloody murder of a child ?

Inq. To satisfy eternal Justice, the Son of God died on the tree.

King. Will you propagate this doctrine through all Europe ?

Inq. Wherever the cross is revered.

King. I shall sin against Nature ; can you silence her mighty
voice ?

Inq. Nature has no voice at the tribunal of faith.

King. I resign my office of Judge into your hands. May I
entirely withdraw?

Inq. Give him to me.

King. He is my only son, • — for whom have I gathered ?

Inq. Better have gathered for corruption than for liberty.

For the student of Spanish history, the unhistorie
character of Don Carlos may somewhat impair the
value of the play. Certainly, there is not much resem-
blance between Schiller's hero and the unfortunate son
of Philip II. But in a work of art poetic truth is the
first essential ; if an author is faithful in that, we can
allow him a good deal of latitude in the other kind.

360 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

In December, 1784, before it was put upon the stage,
the first act of " Don Carlos " was read by Schiller
at the Court of the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt,
where the Duke of Saxe Weimar, Karl August, the
poet's future patron, happened then to be sojourning as
guest. The Duke was much pleased, and desired to
manifest his good-will toward the author. The way in
which he did so was characteristic of the time and the
nation. Karl August's pecuniary resources were small ;
the expenses of the little duchy were scarce covered by
its income ; there was no vacant office to bestow ; he
could offer no donation. He did what he could : he
conferred on Schiller the title of Hath (" counsellor ").
The title was an empty sound ; it referred to no council-
board ; it involved no function ; no counsel was asked of,
or given by, the recipient. Still it was a title ; and a
title in Germany is an acquisition of immense impor-
tance, its recognition rigidly exacted by social etiquette,
never to be forgotten in addressing the bearer, or, with
a feminine termination, the bearer's wife. You must
say Frau Pastor in to the parson's wife as punctually as
Herr Pastor to the parson. Be the title never so humble,
it must be duly rendered, — in default of any other, a
title coined from the occupation, if not a mechanical
one : Mr. Fish-inspector, Mrs. Fish-inspector ; or, if that
functionary employs a substitute, Mr. Fish-inspector's
substitute, Mrs. Fish-inspector's substitute.

Schiller was now no longer plain Herr Schiller, but
Herr Rath, — an entirely different being in the vulgar
estimation. When he married, the title was changed for
the higher one of " Hofrath, aulic Counsellor," — equally
without office. Unfortunately, increase of honor was not
attended by increase oi means. Herr Rath continued

SCHILLER, 361

miserably poor. Theatrical managers and publishers
grew rich on the fruits of his genius, while the favorite
poet of the people starved, and began to think seriously
of resuming his medical profession as a means of sup-
port. The extent of his popularity, and what is better
of his influence on earnest minds, was unknown to him.
The newspaper press was not at that time the power
nor the medium of intelligence which it now is. The
first assurance of the reality and scope of his poetic
vocation seems to have come to him with a missive from
Dresden, containing tokens of little material, but to
him of immense moral, value from four anonymous con-
tributors, accompanied by a letter expressive of cordial
and even enthusiastic regard. One of these contribu-
tors, and the writer of the letter, was Christian Gottlieb
Korner, father of Theodore Korner, the poet, — the
Tyrta3us of his nation, and one of the choice lyrists of
modern time. Korner the elder, who held at this time
a government office at Dresden, was a man of culture,
addicted to letters and to music ; not wealthy, but able
from the income of his office to render pecuniary assist-
ance to his friends. Schiller soon became personally
acquainted with him ; they corresponded, and their pub-
lished correspondence, extending through a series of
years, is one of the chief sources of our knowledge of
the poet's history, especially of his interior life. The
friendship of this large-hearted man proved to be of
essential service, and gave a new turn to Schiller's for-
tunes. The bounty of Korner relieved him of immediate
pecuniary embarrassment ; and in course of time another
patron, the Duke of Weimar, through the mediation of
Goethe, found a place for him as Professor of History
in the University of Jena.

362 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

History had been for some time his favorite study ; in
a letter to Korner he had expressed the wish to be able
for ten years to devote himself exclusively to that pur-
suit. In 1788 the proposal of the professorship was
made to him ; in March, 1789, he received the formal
appointment, and on the 26th of May he gave his intro-
ductory lecture. Goedeke describes the scene ; the room
selected for the occasion was Reinhold's auditorium,
capable of seating eighty persons, with standing-room
for perhaps twenty more. The lecture was to begin at
six ; at half-past five the room was completely filled, —
then the vestibule, the stairs, the entry below, and new
crowds were seen from the window flocking to the place.
Finally, some one suggested that another larger lecture-
room might be found ; and word was given that Gries-
bach's auditorium, the largest in the city, could be
obtained. Upon this the whole company, those already
on the ground and those who were pressing for admis-
sion, started for Griesbach's. They ran down the long
Johannis Street at full speed, each eager to secure a
place. The occupants of the houses on either side, not
knowing what had happened, rushed to the windows,
wondering what might be the cause of the unusual tu-
mult ; the dogs barked, and the guard at the Castle
began to move. It was thought at first to be an alarm
of fire ; but on inquiry, the answer was, " The new
Professor is going to read." The larger lecture-room,
capable of accommodating from three to four hundred
hearers, was soon filled to overflowing; the vestibule
was crowded, even the stairs were occupied, and great
numbers went away unable to gain admission into the
house. The hearers were not disappointed ; the im-
pression made by the academic debutant was every way

SCHILLER. 363

satisfactory, nothing else was talked of in the city, and
in the evening Schiller was serenaded, — a thing unex-
ampled in the case of a new professor.

The enthusiasm continued for a time, — so long as the
lectures were of a general introductory character. But
when it came to the stated work of the office, to historic
details, there was a great falling off. The number of
paying hearers — one of the chief sources of a German
professor's support — was extremely small. Schiller's
salary, independent of student's fees, was but two hun-
dred thalers. In the first year, he read five lectures a
week to his class beside one public lecture. Each lecture
was a new composition written out ; and the preparation
of them — added to the delivery, the getting up of the
material, the studying of authorities — gave him, a feeble-
bodied man, more than enough to do. The strain upon
his strength was too great, and led to the sickness which
not only shortened his days, but before they were num-
bered rendered him again and again, for months at a
time, incapable of labor, and obliged him in less than
two years to relinquish the duties of his professorship.
Meanwhile he had married Charlotte von Lengefeld, to
whom he had been for some time betrothed, after hesi-
tating awhile between her and her sister Caroline. She
proved to be all that a man and a poet can desire in a
help-mate ; and to her loving care it was probably owing
that he lived to complete the works which have made
him immortal.

In 1791, the darkest of Schiller's brief and laborious
years, his case seemed utterly desperate. A severe illness
had brought him to the brink of death, and when partially
restored he was still for a long time too weak for remu-
nerative labor. The Duke either could not or would not

864 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

afford the necessary means of support until he should
fully recover his strength. Beyond his small pension
of two hundred thalers, which appears to have been
continued to him, he had no dependence or prospect.
Goethe seems not to have known of his distress, and
was not yet intimate with his brother poet.

*' But Fate will not permit
The seed of gods to die."

It could not be that the world should miss a " Wallen-
stein " or a " Song of the Bell ; " and in this sore strait
there came from a distant quarter unlooked-for aid. A
hand from the clouds replenished the failing lamp.
Baggesen, a Danish poet, a fervent admirer of Schiller,
on a visit to Jena for the purpose of seeing him, had
been informed by Reinold of his distressed circum
stances, and the impossibility of his accomplishing any-
thing more in the way of poetic creation without relief
from pecuniary cares (which incapacitated him for free
intellectual effort), and without a year's rest.

Fired by this suggestion, Baggesen, on his return to
Denmark, instituted a Schiller-festival, for the purpose
of calling the attention of his countrymen to the merits
and claims of his great contemporary. The festival was
to take place by the sea-side in the open air, and to last
three days. In the course of it Baggesen was to recite
the " Ode to Joy," one of the most spirited of Schiller's
poems, — in fact, a wild composition, whose intoxicating
effect scarce needed the addition of the wine which flowed
without stint, to excite to the uttermost the enthusiasm
of the hearers. A report of Schiller's death, which
reached Copenhagen just before the time appointed for
these festivities, did not prevent the meeting or change

SCHILLER. 365

its programme, but only gave it a more exalted char-
acter, and added to Baggesen's recitation a stanza of his
own, invoking the spirit of the departed to unite with
the revellers.

The false report was soon contradicted ; and on
Baggesen's representation of Schiller's distress, two
noble-minded men, who had also felt the fascination
of his spirit, — Count Schimmelmann, prime-minister of
Denmark, and Christian Friedrich, Duke of Schleswig-
Holstein-Augustenburg, — united in a letter to the suf-
fering poet, in which, after words of cordial respect and
expressions of gratitude for what they owed to him, they
cautiously, and with a tender regard for his self-respect,
entreated his acceptance, for three years, of an annual
pension of one thousand thalers, to enable him — such
was their apology for the boldness of the offer — to
enable him, relieved from the necessity of present exer-
tion, to fully recover the bodily health on which de-
pended the possibility of his continuing to bless the
world with the fruits of his genius. It was a beautiful
act, one of the choice bits of literary history ; and, con-
sidering the source of this opportune gift, — a tribute
rendered, a benefaction conferred, by strangers, by men
of another land and another tongue, on one whom his
own countrymen had neglected at his utmost need, —
it may be reckoned among the curiosities of literature.
Germany owes to Denmark the opportunity, the possi-
bility, of some of her choicest literary treasures ; and
may blush to remember that among all her princes, and
her thirty millions of inhabitants, not one was found to
render the service volunteered by two individuals of her
diminutive neighbor-kingdom.

An annual grant of a thousand thalers does not sound

366 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

very large in American ears ; but sums of money must
be estimated relatively to time and place. For a Ger-
man in those days, for a man like Schiller, it was an
ample pension, — more than sufficient for all his wants.
He could not hesitate to accept the generous gift. Not
for his own sake simply. Had it been a mere question
of bodily well-being, or of added years, his sensitive
nature might have shrunk from such a weight of per-
sonal obligation. It mattered little to him how long
his eyes might continue to behold the sun, and his body
to partake of the fruits of the earth. But the offer had
quite another aspect ; he viewed it grandly in the light
of the duty he owed to his genius, which was not his
own, but a sacred trust. Conscious of great designs,
of ability to gi^e to the world something greater, better,
than he had yet produced, he did not feel himself at lib-
erty to decline the only means, so far as he could see, of
bringing forth what he felt to be in him, — of fulfilling
his mission to the world. He accepted the princely gift
freely ; he accepted it grandly, not as a tribute to him-
self, but as an offering to the Muses, to whose service he
was vowed.

It is not too much to say that Schiller's resurrection
from what seemed to be helpless and hopeless prostra-
tion, to such health and activity as he afterward at-
tained, was mainly due to the princely bounty of these
foreign friends. Morally, no less than physically, their
loving tribute was a well of new life to his stricken,
fainting soul, and dates the beginning of the richest and
most brilliant epoch of his literary history.

SCHILLER. 367

11.

The first use which Schiller made of the leisure se-
cured to him by the Danish pension, after some journey-
ing which he undertook for the benefit of his health, was
to devote himself to the study of Kant, whose philosophy
was then a recent evangel, and possessed for the North
German mind an authority little less than divine. It is
characteristic of the difference between the two men that
Schiller the idealist should take to metaphysics, and
Goethe the realist to natural history. Goethe felt no
call to analyze his consciousness. " I have never cared,"
he said, " to think about thinking." And to Chancellor
Miiller he declared, "I have as much [metaphysical]
philosophy as I shall need until my blessed end ; in fact,
I could do without any." At the same time he made a
remark about Cousin, which shows that he knew very
well what belongs to the essence of philosophy. Cousin,
he said, does not understand that though a man may be an
eclectic philosopher, there can be no eclectic philosophy.

It is not surprising that, loving and admiring Schiller
as he did when once they were fairly brought into con-
tact, Goethe should lament what he regarded as misdirec-
tion in his friend's pursuit. He said : —

" I cannot but think that Schiller's turn for philosophy has
injured his poetry, because it led him to prefer ideas to Nature,
indeed almost to annihilate Nature. ... It was sad to see how
a man so highly gifted tormented himself with systems of phi-
losophy which would no way profit him."

Unquestionably, Goethe profited more by the study of
Nature than Schiller by the study of Kant; but I cannot
think that the metaphysical pursuits of the latter were

368 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

injurious in their influence on his genius, as certainly
they were not without fruit in his works. They moder-
ated the glow of his fancy, toned down the daring ex-
travagance of his language, instructed his crude thought,
and deepened the import of his words. Genius is blest
with a good digestion. Let no one think to prescribe its
dietetic. The food it elects is the food it needs ; what-
ever it devours it turns to blood. To the study of Kant
we owe the Esthetic Essays, not the least important of
Schiller's works, — essays on Grace and Dignity, on our
pleasure in the Tragic, on ^Esthetic Education, on Pathos,
on Naive and Sentimental Poetry, on the Sublime, and
other topics ; essays rich in suggestion, and which handle
abstruse themes with an ease and lucidity unknown to
the metaphysicians proper of Germany. For the rest, it
would seem that Schiller studied metaphysics as means
not as end, as stimulus not as goal, and was well aware
of the insufficiency of all metaphysical systems, — their
inability to satisfy the cravings of the mind, or to solve
the real problems of life. He hints as much in a comic
poem, " Die Philosophen," consisting of a series of hex-
ameters and pentameters, in which he describes a confer-
ence of metaphysicians in the underworld with a pupil,
who applies to them for instruction.

Pupil.

Happy to find you, my masters, in pleno together assembled.
One thing is needful ; I come hoping to gain it from you.

Aristotle.

Well then, to business, my friend. We take the Journal of

Jena
Here in hell, and we know all that is happening above.

SCHILLER. 869

Pupil.

So much the better, then ; give me (until you do, I shall stay here)
Some proposition whereby every question to solve.

First Philosopher.

Cogito ergo sum. Grant the one, and the other must follow;
For in order to think, surely a fellow must be.

Pupil.

Cogito ergo sum. But who can be always a- thinking?
Surely I often am when thinking of nothing at all.

Second Philosopher.
Since there are things, there must be an eternal thing at ih&

bottom ;
In that thing of all things we, the whole lot of us, float.

Third Philosopher.

Contrariwise, I say, except myself there is nothing ;
All else, seeming to be, is but a bubble in me.

Fourth Philosopher.
Two sorts of things I concede, — the world and the soul, we will

call them.
Neither the other knows, yet they contrive to agree.

Fifth Philosopher.

I am I, I maintain ; and if I affirm that I am not,
I not being affirmed, what is affirmed is not I.

Sixth Philosopher.

Concepts there certainly are, — a something conceived then there

must be,
Also somewhat that conceives ; these all together make three.

Pupil.

All that, gentlemen, look ye, would not lure a dog from his kennel.
Propositions I want wherein is something proposed.

24

370 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Seventh Philosopher.

Theory yields nothing certain; the truth is not found by such

seeking.
Stick to the practical text: all that I should do I can.

Pupil.

So I thought it would be ; for want of a rational answer,
Where philosophy ends, preaching of duty begins.

Hume.

Cease to consult with that set ; 't is useless, Kant has confused

them.
Ask of me ; even in hell true to myself I remain.

Question of Right.

Many a year, I confess, my nose I've made use of for smelling;
Have I a right, now I ask, thus to make use of the same?

PUFENDORF.

Serious question that. I judge that the prior possession
Favors your practice ; and so take my advice and smell on.

Intellectually, the most important event in Schiller's
life was his friendship with Goethe. The union of these
Wo men — rivals in fame, both occupying the height of
the literary world of their time, but neither claiming
above the other the a/cpordrr) Kopvcfifj, the topmost peak
of honor ; so like in their aims, so unlike in their mental
constitution and worldly fortunes ; the one raised high
above sordid cares and the little perplexities of life, the
other poor, harassed, and struggling; the one calmly
great, the other grandly aspiring — has no parallel in
literary history. It was not an easy matter for Schiller
and Goethe to unite. A mutual repulsion preceded all
cordial relations. Their first meeting, which occurred
as early as 1788, augured ill for the chances of a future

SCHILLER. 371

friendship. Schiller wrote to Korner of that first
meeting : —

" We soon made acquaintance, and without the slightest
effort. ... On the whole, I must say that my great idea of
him is not lessened by this personal acquaintance. [But, he
adds] I doubt whether we shall ever become intimate. . . .
His whole being, from the foundation, is entirely different from
mine. His world is not my world."

At another time he writes : —

" He [Goethe] has the talent of conquering men and bind-
ing them to him. He makes his existence benevolently felt,
but only like a god, without giving himself. This seems to me
consistent, well-planned conduct, calculated to secure to himself
the highest degree of selfish enjoyment. . . . He is hateful to
me, although I love his genius, and think greatly of him. . . .
It is quite a peculiar mixture of love and hatred he has awak-
ened in me, — a feeling akin to that which Brutus and Cassius
must have felt toward Caesar."

And again : —

"With Goethe, when he puts forth his whole strength, I will
not compare myself. He has far more genius than I have,
greater wealth of knowledge, a more accurate observation ; and
to all this he adds an artistic taste, cultivated and sharpened by
acquaintance with all the works of art."

After making this concession he adds, in confidence,
writing to the same most intimate friend, Korner : —

" I will open to you my heart. Once for all, this man, this
Goethe, stands in my way ; he reminds me so often that Fate
has dealt hardly with me. How lightly his genius is borne by
his destiny, and how I, up to this moment, have to struggle ! "

372 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

On the other hand, Goethe, although it was his medi-
ation which procured for Schiller the Jena professorship,
was greatly disturbed by the tone and tendency of his
dramas, and was shy of associating with one whose ide-
als were then so different from his own. Notwithstand-
ing these superficial antagonisms, it was impossible that
two such spirits should fail to obey the deeper attraction
of a common interest, and to blend at last in a cordial
union. Landor says : " If there be two great men at
opposite ends of the earth, they will seek each other."
How much rather when the two are neighbors in space !
Goethe has recorded the occasion of their first contact.
It was after a lecture, to which both had listened, on
some topic of natural history. They discussed together
the subject presented by the lecturer. The conference
developed a wide difference in the direction of their
thought, but it also revealed to each the other's strength
in his own position. Goethe, apparently determined to
establish a friendly relation, suppressed his irritation at
some of Schiller's views, and Schiller met Goethe half
way in his readiness to break the ice of reserve between
them. They soon found themselves consenting, if not
in opinion, in respect and good-will ; and the end of the
discussion was the beginning of the great duumvirate,
which formed an epoch in the lives of both, and of the
national literature over which they presided. Goethe
became a willing contributor to Schiller's journal^ the
" Horen," in which they led the thought and formed
the literary taste of the nation. They wrought together,
they conferred together, they aided one another with
mutual advice and suggestion ; and their correspond-
ence, continued to the time of Schiller's death, embrac-
ing a period of nearly ten years, reveals an intellectual

SCHILLER. 873

bond without a parallel in the history of authors. It
has been aptly characterized as " the richest epistolary
treasure in literature." ^

The following years, from 1794 to 1805, the date of
his death, were the richest, the most productive of
Schiller's life. To this period belong his most finished
works, — "Wallenstein," "Maria Stuart," "The Maid
of Orleans," the " Bride of Messina," " William Tell."
In these years were also produced, in friendly rivalry
with Goethe, those noble ballads, — "The Diver," "Hero
and Leander," "The Cranes of Ibycus," "The Fight
with the Dragon," " Fridolin," — above all, "The Song
of the Bell," the most perfect composition of its kind,
and which, had he written nothing else, would entitle its
author to immortal fame.

Schiller's genius was essentially dramatic. In true
dramatic power, in the combination of poetic thought
with dramatic position, he surpasses Goethe. He un-
derstood the stage, he appreciated its demands and its
returns, and he fitted his spirit to that mould. Goethe
would make the stage subservient to his thought ; he
sacrificed dramatic interest to philosophic. Schiller
adapted his thought to the stage, and trusted its power
to enforce his word. If Goethe is the first poet, Schiller
is the first dramatist, of his nation, — may we not say,
the greatest dramatist since the sixteenth century ?

Of the plays I have named as the product of the latter
period of Schiller's life, " The Maid of Orleans " is the
most spirited, the most effective in the representation,
unless we except " William Tell." The theme is one of
unfading interest, a point of light in a dark and tem-

1 Calvert, " Goethe, his Life and Works."

374 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

pestuous age, the shining of a " good deed in a naughty
world." It has been availed of by poets, in drama and
epic, before Schiller and since. The simplest statement
of it is a poem. In Hallam's bald phrase, " A country
girl overthrew the power of England." The bald phrase
expresses the bald fact. Henry VI. was proclaimed and
crowned King of France. The English, with the aid of
Burgundy, had possessed themselves of the greater part
of the country, and would, in all probability, have taken
Orleans, the key to all the rest, had not this " country
girl," this shepherd's daughter, come to the rescue. By
her inspired leadership the siege of Orleans was raised,
Charles VII. crowned, and France wrested from the
hands of the English. That any Frenchman could
throw contempt on Jeanne d'Arc, the savior of his
country, would seem a monstrous impiety, — and Vol-
taire's " Pucelle d'Orleans " has been characterized as a
crime against the nation. It is matter for regret that
Joan of Arc should figure in Shakspeare as a vulgar
impostor ; but we have the consolation of believing that
the First Part of " Henry VI." is not Shakspearian, or
Shakspearian only in single passages. Schiller is the only
poet of a very high order (for Southey I cannot reckon
as such) who has even attempted to do full justice to
the patriot-shepherdess in a work of art. His '* Jungfrau
von Orleans " is no doubt a highly idealized and glori-
fied presentment of the woman ; but such idealization
and glorification is not only legitimate but incumbent
on the poet in treating such a subject. He is bound to
give the pure idea of the person, divested of the earthly
accidents, abatements, and disgraces of lowly birth and
a rustic home. He has idealized her, as the old Italian
painters idealized the humble Galilean woman who bore

SCHILLER. 375

the Light of the World. His " Jmigfrau " is inspired
prophetess, warrior, and tender woman in one.

More questionable is the author's violation of historic
fact in the end which he assigns to his heroine, — death
in the arms of victory. Certainly, art has its rights
as well as history. The poet is not a chronicler ; he
has a higher function than simply to set forth facts in
verse. Nevertheless, on purely artistic grounds, in
handling a historic theme, it is hardly expedient to
contradict what is fixed, notorious, and historically im-
portant. In doing so, the author is in danger of awak-
ening a feeling of resentment unfavorable to the best
effect of his work. He loses more by falsification than
he gains by substituting a denouement agreeable to our
feelings. Schiller was not bound to reproduce the trial
of Joan for witchcraft and the condemnation to death
at the stake ; but he might, without damage to the scope
of his play, have omitted the closing scene, leaving the
rest as it stands.

The play is introduced by a prelude representing Joan
at home, her rural surroundings, her father Thibaut,
her sisters and their suitors, with her own lover Rai-
mond. Bertrand, a neighbor fresh from the city with
the latest tidings, enters the house bearing a helmet,
which he says was left in his hand by an old woman
who offered it for sale, but was borne away by the crowd
before he could strike a bargain. The Maiden, who has
listened in silence until then, stretches an eager hand
toward the helmet. " The helmet is mine," she says, —
" Mein ist der Helm, und mir gehort er zu." She has
long meditated the part she is to bear in the deliverance
of her country ; she believes herself divinely called to
the work ; the helmet thus mysteriously conveyed is

876 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

accepted as a sign from Heaven, and precipitates her
purpose. At the close of the prelude, after the rest are
dispersed, she utters her solemn farewell to the scenes
of her youth : —

" Farewell! ye mountains, ye beloved pastures,
Ye silent, peaceful valleys, fare ye well !
Joanna shall roam over you no more,
Joanna bids you evermore farewell!
Ye meadows that I watered, and ye trees
Which I have planted, may ye flourish still !
Farewell! ye grottoes and ye cooling springs ;
Thou Echo, friendly voice of this dear vale,
Who oft hast answered to my homely lay,
Farewell ! Joanna goes ; we part for aye.

*' For He who once on Horeb's mountain lone
Conversed with Moses from the bush's fire.
And bade him stand before high Pharaoh's throne;
He who elected Jesse's warlike son,
The shepherd-boy, to be his champion,
Who still to shepherds wondrous grace hath shown, —
He spake to me, his handmaid, from that tree:
* Go ! thou art sent to testify of me.

*' ' For when in battle France's courage dies,
And ruin threatens this devoted land,
Then shalt thou bid my oriflamme arise.
And like the harvest to the reaper's hand,
The conqueror shall fall before thy brand ;
Thou shalt reverse his fortune's victories,
To France's warlike sons salvation bring,
Deliver Rheims, and crown thy country's King.'

*' Heaven hath at length vouchsafed to me a sign:
This helmet God hath sent, it comes from him;
Its iron thrills me with a power divine :
I feel the valor of the cherubim,

SCHILLER, 377

With tempest's force impelling me to join
The serried hosts in front of battle grim.
The war-cry calls me to the fated ground;
The steeds are rearing, and the trumpets sound."

After this prelude the play follows in the main the
course of the story to the opening of the fourth act. The
Maiden is intrusted with the command of the French
army, which under her guidance and inspiration raises
the siege of Orleans, and pursues its victorious course
till Charles is crowned at Rheims.

But the play could not end with this consummation.
The interest of tragedy does not admit of uninterrupted
success; it demands the struggle with adverse fate.
The manner in which Schiller attempts to satisfy this
demand has seemed to me a weakness in the plot.

The Maid, against all probability and in utter contra-
diction of the character ascribed to her by the poet, and
thus far maintained, falls in love at a glance with the
English warrior Lionel, whom she has overcome in bat-
tle and is about to slay, but whose life this sudden
affection impels her to spare. Her conscience upbraids
her with this weakness, as a breach of her vow and a sin
against her mission. She is even led to doubt for a
time the reality of that mission which, if genuine, ought
to have preserved her from so grievous a fault. Accord-
ingly at Rheims, when amid the adoration of the crowd
who look upon her as a messenger from Heaven, her
father alone impugns her claim to divine inspiration,
and charges her publicly with sorcery, she makes no
reply to the charge, no attempt to vindicate herself ; and
when the archbishop adjures her in the name of God to
give assurance of her innocence, she remains immovably
silent, and refuses to touch the cross which he presents

S78 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

to her as a test. Then all forsake her; the evidence
of her guilt seems irresistible. In consideration of her
services, she is permitted to leave the city unmolested,
whi<eh she does in company with the still faithful Rai-
mond^ her rustic lover, the one individual in all the land
who stands by her in this extremity, fearing, but not
convinced of her guilt.

Awaking at last from the stupor into which her
father's ax5cusation and the misgivings of her own con-
science on account of her tenderness for Lionel had
thrown her, Joan assures Eaimond and convinces him
of her innocence of the guilt of sorcery. Meanwhile
the tide of French success has turned. The English
have gained important advantages ; a party of them,
with Isabeau at their head, have captured Joari. The
counsellors of Charles are convinced of their mistake
in banishing the Maid. Raimond has satisfied them
of her innocence; they resolve if possible to rescue
her from the hands of the enemy. Then follows that
scene of intensest interest, from which Scott borrowed
the idea of a similar one in the novel of "Ivanhoe."
Joan, a prisoner in chains, guarded by Isabeau and some
soldiers in a watch-tower, hears the report which the
warder gives from time to time from the battlements of
the tower to the party within, of the progress of the bat-
tle in which the French have engaged the English for
the recapture of the Maiden. When at last he reports
the capture of the king, Joan, after a brief prayer, rends
her chains asunder, snatches a sword from the nearest
soldier, and rushes into the field. The warder reports
her flying with the wings of the wind, faster than his
vision can follow ; he seems to see her in different places
at once; she has rescued the king from the hands of

SCHILLER. 379

his captors; the English flee, the French have posses-
sion of the field. The closing scene presents the Maid,
wounded and dying, supported by the king and the Duke
of Burgundy, followed by Agnes Sorel, — officers and
soldiers filling the background. A moment before her
death her consciousness returns ; she recognizes the
king and her own people, and calls for her banner.

" Without my banner I may not appear before my Master ;
it was intrusted to me by him ; I must lay it down before his
throne. I dare show it, for I have been true to it. See ye the
rainbow in the air ? Heaven opens its golden gates ! I see
her [the Virgin], splendent amid the angelic choir, holding the
eternal Son to her breast; she smiles, and stretches her arms
towards me.

'* I come! I come! on clouds upborne I rise;

To winged robes are changed the martial weeds.
Aloft, aloft ! the earth beneath me lies.
The pain was short, — eternal joy succeeds! "

The most finished of Schiller's dramas is " Wallen-
stein." The subject had been suggested by his studies
in the preparation of the historical monograph of the
" Thirty Years' War." As early as 1796 he began to
work at it, but found himself, as he proceeded, disap-
pointed in the availability and manageableness of the
material. For a time he abandoned the project in de-
spair, but resumed it again in the absence of any theme
more inviting, — unwilling to lose the labor already be-
stowed upon it. One objection to the story of " Wallen-
stein " as a subject for dramatic treatment, was the
preponderance of will over fate in the tragedy of Wal-
lenstein's life. His evil end was due rather to his own
character than to adverse circumstance, whereas trag-
edy should represent the hero contending with inevitable

380 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

fate. But the poet was reassured by the thought that
the same objection applies to Macbeth.

One can easily understand that the subject must have
been a difficult one to a mind like Schiller's, both on
account of the historical checks which the freedom of
fiction would encounter, and the absence from the stage
of action of any heroic character of pure and lofty type
that could kindle the moral enthusiasm, which to him
was the chief source of inspiration. This defect he
endeavored to supply by the introduction of Max Picco-
lomini, — one of the finest of his creations. On the
other hand, it was an advantage to him — and he felt
it to be so — that the characters he had to deal with in
this undertaking were not of a kind to excite his enthu-
siasm : for enthusiasm was his weakness as well as his
strength. He was always in danger of being mastered
and carried away by his theme. Here he could keep it
in due subjection, and by so doing handle it with genu-
ine artistic skill. To Goethe he writes : —

" You will be satisfied with the spirit in which I am work-
ing. I succeed entirely in keeping my material external to
myself. The subject leaves me cold. I have never expe-
rienced such indifference to the subject-matter, combined with
such interest in my task."

The study of the historic sources — the annals of the
time in which the scene is laid — was a very laborious
and to his impatience very tedious task, but was con-
scientiously performed, although he saw fit in some par-
ticulars to swerve from, historic verity. The work,
begun in 1796 but interrupted by sickness and other
hindrances, was not completed until the spring of 1799.
The separate parts of it were put upon the stage with
the best success at Weimar and Berlin. The whole was

SCHILLER. 381

given to the public through the press in June, 1800.
An edition of thirty-five hundred copies was exhausted
in two months, — a thing unexampled at that time in
the case of a work of high art.

I said that " Wallenstein " is Schiller's greatest dra-
matic work. I may add, it is the most finished dra-
matic composition, on so grand a scale, in modern time.
" Faust," of course, is a far prof ounder work, the product
of a deeper poetic nature ; but " Faust " is exceptional,
incommensurable, not to be counted in any comparison
of plays intended for the stage. Schiller's drama is a
trilogy, or series of plays, consisting of three members
closely connected one with another, yet each by itself
a perfect whole. The first, named " Wallenstein's
Camp," introduces us to the scene of action, and ex-
hibits in lively pictures the character of Wallenstein's
army and the state of the time, — a time when war had
come to be regarded as the normal condition of society,
and the soldier's profession as the real business of life,
to which all other callings are bound to contribute. Its
tone is comic ; its broad realism differs so widely from
Schiller's other productions, that the critics suspected
Goethe's hand. But all that Goethe did for it was to
furnish the author with a sermon of Abraham a Santa
Clara, which gave the cue for the preaching of the Capu-
chin, the chaplain of the camp, — an effective feature of
the play. The piece ends with a song, which celebrates
the life of the soldier, —

" He casts away life's cares and its gloom,

No fear hath he and no sorrow ;
Boldly he braves a soldier's doom, —

It may come to-day or to-morrow.
If not till to-morrow, to-day let us drain
The last dear drops in life's cup that remain.

382 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

*' Heaven sends our portion: it comes with mirth,

It comes without toil or measure,
While the peasant wrings from the stingy earth

A scanty, pitiful treasure.
He plods through life a drivelling slave,
And digs and digs, till he digs his grave.

*' Why mourneth the maiden; why wringeth her hands?
Let him go, let his memory perish !
No home hath the soldier, he heeds no bands.

Love's troth he may not cherish.
Fate hurries him on an endless race,
On earth he hath no resting-place.

** Away, then, away! leave hearts and leave homes!
Farewell to love's caresses !
While youth beats high and life's goblet foams

Away, ere the foam effervesces !
Let him who would win his life at last.
Stake life and all on the battle's cast ! "

The Second Part is called " The Piccolomini," taking
its title from the two principal characters so named, —
Octavio and Max Piccolomini, — father and son, both
leading officers in Wallenstein's army. The subject is
the plot by which, with Wallenstein's connivance, the
majority of his officers are planning to detach the army
from the Emperor, and by the aid of the Swedes and
the other Protestant forces to place him on the throne
of Bohemia. The elder Piccolomini, who unknown to
Wallenstein is attached to the Emperor and in his em-
ploy, appears to conspire with the rest, and signs their
treasonable covenant, in order to win their confidence
and frustrate their plans. But Max, a high-souled
youth, will neither join the conspiracy against the Em-
peror nor side with his father against Wallenstein,
whom he worships, — whom he believes incapable of

SCHILLER. 383

treason, and of whose daughter Thekla he is the ac-
cepted lover.

" The Piccolomini " contains many fine passages, —
among them Octavio's answer to Max's disparagement of
ancient ordinances. I give it in Coleridge's version,—
one of the few passages in which he has done justice to
the original. And here let me say that Coleridge's trans-
lation, which used to be very much praised, is in my
judgment a very poor one. He has not always appre-
hended the meaning of the German, and where he has
done so, seldom reproduces it in adequate vigorous Eng-
lish. But this is an exception : —

" My son, of those old narrow ordinances
Let us not hold too lightly. They are weights
Of priceless worth, with which oppressed mankind
Restrained the volatile will of their oppressors.
For always formidable was the league
And partnership of free power with free will.
The way of ancient order, though it winds.
Is yet no devious way. Straight forward goes
The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path
Of the cannon ball. Direct it flies and rapid,
Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches.
My son, the road the human being travels.
That on which Blessing comes and goes, doth follow
The river's course, the valley's playful windings,
Curves round the cornfield and the hill of vines,
Honoring the holy bounds of property, —
And thus secure, though late, leads to its goal."

'^ The Piccolomini " has also that beautiful song of
Thekla : —

" Der Eichwald brauset, die Wolken ziehn,
Das Magdlein wandelt an Ufers griin.'*

Of course, like all such things it is untranslatable, and
yet I am tempted to imitate it in English : —

384 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

"■ The clouds are flying, the oak-trees roar,
The maiden is pacing the green of the shore,
The waves are breaking with might, with might.
And she sends forth her sighs on the darksome night,
Her eyes with weeping beclouded.

*' My heart it is dead, and the world is drear,
There 's nothing left me to wish for here ;
Thou Holy One, take thy child, thine own!
The fulness of earthly delight I have known, —
I have lived, I have loved, I have ended."

The closing piece of the trilogy — " Wallenstein's
Death " — exhibits first his fearful struggle with himself
before taking the final irrevocable step to which his
previous action and the complication of events are driv-
ing him. He shudders at the abyss of treason, on whose
brink he stands ; but he has gone too far to retract, and
so concludes the fatal compact with the Swedes, his
country's enemies. Then comes his blind trust in Octa-
vio, founded in superstition, against the warning of the
chief conspirators ; and Octavio's counterplots, by which
he withdraws Isolani and Buttler, two of Wallenstein's
main dependants, and a large portion of the army from
their general. A more romantic interest attaches to the
fate of Max Piccolomini. Divided between his duty to
the Emperor, to whom he is bound by his oath of alle-
giance, and his love for Thekla, who is lost to him un-
less he follows the fortunes of her father, in the terrible
conflict which rends his soul he appeals to her decision.
And she — the fairest, noblest, if not the most com-
manding figure in German drama — sides with his con-
science, against his and her love, and her father's for-
tunes. She will rather have his image pure, than himself
with a taint on his name. " Go," she says, " fulfil your

SCHILLER, 885

duty ; be true to yourself, and you will be true to me.
Fate divides us, but our hearts will be one. Bloody hate
forever separates your house and mine, but we belong
not to our house." And so they part. His devoted
cuirassiers, fearing that Wallenstein might forcibly de-
tain him as a hostage, surround the house in which this
interview takes place. He hears the regimental band.
'* Blow ! blow ! " he says ; " would it were the Swedish
trumpets that are sounding, and that all the swords
which I see here were plunged in my breast. You have
come to tear me away ? Consider what you are doing ;
it is not well to choose a desperate man for a leader.
You will have me ? Well, then, you have chosen your
own destruction." The warning is verified. Eager for
death, he soon heads an attack on the Swedes, in which
he falls, and his regiment to a man is cut to pieces.
Thekla, hearing of his death and learning the place of
his interment, prevails on her companion, Neubrunn, to
accompany her on a visit to his grave ; and that is the
last we hear of her. Wallenstein breaks up his camp
and departs with a remnant of his army to Eger, to await
the arrival of his new allies the Swedes ; and there is
assassinated, together with his two associates, Illo and
Terzky, by the treachery of Buttler, his professed ad-
herent and friend, who thus avenges a private grievance,
while establishing, as he hopes, a claim to imperial favor
and promotion.

Out of many striking passages in this the most fin-
ished, I have said, of Schiller's plays, I cite in a prose
translation the one in which Wallenstein justifies his
confidence in Octavio against the earnest remonstrances
of Illo and Terzky, who believe him to be false and dan-
gerous. It illustrates the superstition which formed so

25

386 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

controlling and so fatal an element in Wallenstein's
character : —

" There are moments in the life of man when he is nearer
than usual to the spirit of the Universe, and has the privilege
of questioning Fate. It was such a moment when, in the night
which preceded the battle of Liitzen, I stood leaning against a
tree and thoughtfully surveyed the plain. The camp-fires shone
dim through the mist ; the silence was interrupted only by the
hollow clash of arms and the monotonous call of the sentinels
on their round. My whole life, past and to come, at that mo-
ment presented itself to my inner vision, and my foreboding
mind connected the most distant future with the event of the
next day. And I said to myself, ' So many are subject to thy
command ; they follow thy stars, they stake their all, as on a
lucky number, on thy single head, and have embarked in the
vessel which bears thy fortunes. But the day will come when
Fate shall scatter them. But few will remain faithful to you.
I desire to know who of all whom this camp contains is most
to be trusted. Give me a token, Fate ! Let it be he who in
the morning shall first meet me with a sign of love.' Thus
thinking, I fell asleep. And in spirit I was borne into the
midst of the battle. Great was the press. My horse was killed
beneath me. I fell, and over me leaped indifferently horse and
rider. Panting, I lay as one dying, trodden by the stroke of
their hoofs. Then suddenly an arm seized me ; it was Octa-
vio's, and immediately I awoke. It was day, and Octavio stood
before me. * My brother,' said he, ' ride not the roan to-day as
usual. Mount rather this safer beast, which I have selected
for you. Do it for love of me ; I have been warned by a dream.'
And that horse's fleetness saved me when pursued by Bannier's
dragoons. My cousin rode the roan that day, and horse and
rider I never saw again."

Illo. That was an accident.

Wall. There is no accident. What seems to us blind chance, pre-
cisely that has the deepest origin. I have it under sign and seal
that he [Octavio] is my good angel. And now not a word more.

SCHILLER, 387

And not a word more was said, for Wallenstein was
not a person to be contradicted. But when it transpired
that Octavio had after all betrayed him, Terzky dared to
reproach him for his superstitious trust, — " Oh, had you
believed me ! You see now how the stars have lied to
you ! " Wallenstein replies : —

" The stars lie not ; but this has happened in spite of stars
and fate. A false heart causes the veracious heavens to de-
ceive. Prophecy presupposes truth, but when Nature breaks
bounds, all science is at fault."

The remaining dramas are " Mary Stuart," " The Bride
of Messina," and " William Tell." " Mary Stuart " far
excels " Wallenstein " in scenic effects, but falls as far
below it in philosophic and, as it seems to me, in poetic
interest. It has not so many spirited passages as " Wal-
lenstein," or "The Jungfrau von Orleans;" but one of
surpassing beauty is the first scene of the third act,
where, in the park of Fotheringay, Mary invokes the
clouds that are flying southward in the direction of her
beloved France : —

*' Eilende Wolken Segler der Liifte,
War mit euch wanderte, wer mit euch schifftel
Griisset nur freundlich main Jugandland ! "

*' Ya hurrying clouds, voyagars of tha air,
Oh, that I could rova and sail with you!
Bear a friend's greeting to tha land of my youth! "

" The Bride of Messina " is a dramatic poem, having
for its subject the rivalry of two brothers, both lovers
of the same maiden, who turns out to be their sister.
Before the discovery of this relation, one brother in a fit
of jealousy kills the other, and after the discovery, in
the anguish of his remorse, kills himself. In this com-
position Schiller attempted to revive the chorus of the

388 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

ancient drama, — successfully, as it regards the reader,
thanks to the exquisite beauty of the choral passages ;
not so successfully, as it regards stage-effect. "- The
Bride of Messina " has never been one of the stock-pieces
of the German theatre. With actors of a high order,
and a very refined and cultivated audience, it may still
please; but its lyric and unspectacular character, like
that of "' Samson Agonistes," unfits it for ordinary dra-
matic use. As a poem, like " Samson Agonistes," it
must always hold a high rank.

Schiller's last important work was his dramatization
of the story of " William Tell," in those days still re-
garded as historical. Goethe, in his last visit to Switz-
erland in 1797, conceived the project of an epic founded
on the same theme, but soon discovered its unfitness for
that purpose. Schiller discerned its dramatic capabili-
ties, and Goethe, when apprised of his intention to give
it that form, turned over to him his notes of Swiss
scenery and other matters of local interest. With the aid
of these, of Tscudi's history, and other sources, Schiller,
who never saw Switzerland, succeeded wonderfully in
catching the spirit of Swiss life and reproducing it in
his drama. The opening scene transports us at once to
the Lake of Lucerne, into the heart of the Four Cantons.
We hear the Kanz de Yaches, and before the actors ap-
pear on the stage, the stage itself with the genius loci,
on which so much depends, are brought vividly before
us. The piece has less substance, and it seems to me
less merit, than most of Schiller's later plays. The char-
acterization is feeble, the fable thin ; the action after the
death of Gessler drags. The greater part of the fifth
act is superfluous ; the murder of Albert by Johannes

SCHILLER. 389

Paricida introduces a distinct and foreign interest. The
play really ends with the destruction of Zwing-Uri, the
stronghold of despotism. One would say that that scene,
which begins the fifth, should have been added to the
fourth act and have formed the conclusion of the piece.
On the whole, " William Tell " owes its success, I judge,
to its scenic presentments, to its Swiss atmosphere, to
our sympathy with the cause of liberty, rather than to
those higher merits which distinguish the author's best
works.

Schiller is not only Germany's greatest dramatist, he
is also one of her foremost lyrists. In his lyric poems,
arranged in three periods, we trace a marvellous progress
from the laboring tumid style, the pompous diction, the
puerile extravagance of the first period, to the ease and
finished grace of the third. In the earlier pieces the
poet's young enthusiasm expresses itself often in mon-
strous hyperbole. Thus, in the poem entitled " Laura
at the Pianoforte," he assures the young lady to whom
this poem, with several others, is addressed, that the
winds are reverentially hushed, and that Nature pauses
in her eternal course to hear her performance ; also, that
harmonies swarm from the chords she touches like new-
born seraphim from their heavens ; moreover, that the
magic tones she elicits stream forth as suns, which,
roused into being by the storm of creation, and escaped
from the giant arm of chaos, rush sparkling out of night.
Whether the worthy bookseller's daughter. Miss Margaret
Schwan, the supposed original of Laura, accepted these
statements as being a correct account of her playing, we
are not informed ; we only know that she did not accept
the offer of the author's hand.

390 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

The best known of Schiller's lyric poems are the bal-
lads, " The Ring of Polykrates," " The Diver," " Hero
and Leander," " Ritter Toggenburg," " Fridolin," and
others, — all products of the third period, whose super
lative excellence needs no praise. Of these the " Ritter
Toggenburg " is esteemed by German critics the most
poetic. I have endeavored in the following version to
catch the tone, but no version can do justice to the ex-
quisite simplicity of the original : —

THE RITTER TOGGENBURG.

♦' Knight! the love we owe a brother

I to thee may give, —
Sister's love: demand no other,

For it makes me grieve.
All thy coming and thy going

Tranquil I would see,
Nor with silent grief o'erflowing,

Meaningless to me."

Hears the knight with anguish smarting,

Dares no longer stay,
With a wild embrace at parting

Tears himself away.
At his summons round him rally

All his Switzer-band ;
With the cross bedeckt they sally

To the Holy Land.

There great deeds and valor glorious

Prove a hero's arm,
And his plume, it waves victorious

Where the foemen swarm.
And the Toggenburger's daring

Awes the Saracen ;
But the wound, his bosom tearing.

Will not heal again.

SCHILLER. 391

He has borne a year of sorrow,

He can bear no more ;
Peace from war he may not borrow.

Quits the Paynim shore.
Sees a ship with canvas swelling,

Hard by Joppa's strand;
Seeks the air that fans her dwelling.

Air her breath has fanned.

To her hall the pilgrim hies him,

Knocketh at her gate.
Thunder-tidings there apprise him

He has come too late.
" She you seek is consecrated

All with veil and vows ;
Yesterday with God was mated,

Now is Heaven's spouse."

Then the knight renounced forever

Castle, sword, and spear.
Saw his unused armor never

Nor his steed so dear.
From the Toggenburg he wended

Pilgriming unknown ;
Limbs that once with steel were splendid

Now the haircloth own.

Henceforth, lost to war and glory.

He has built his home
Where amid the lindens hoary

Shines the convent's dome.
There he sat when morn was beaming.

Sat till close of day.
Eyes with glad expectance gleaming.

Watched he there alway.

Looked to where the convent glistened

Ancient trees among.
Toward her casement looked and listened

Till the casement swung;

392 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Till the loved one he discovered,

Till her image mild
Bending o'er the valley hovered,

On the valley smiled.

Solaced then, nor further wooing.

Rested through the night,
Trusting that the day ensuing

Should renew the sight.
Every other hope resigning,

While the years went round,
Still he waited unrepining

For the casement's sound.

Till the loved one he discovered.

Till her image mild
Bending o'er the valley hovered,

On the valley smiled.
Thus one morning found him lying

Cold in death's embrace ;
Toward her casement still, in dying,

Gazed the tranquil face.

Of higher import than the ballads, foremost and grand-
est of all Schiller's poems, familiar to most of us through
Retzsch's Outlines, is " The Song of the Bell,'' — a jewel
of great price, which any language might covet and any
poet be proud to place in his crown of fame ; a poem
which embraces in one symbol the stated aspects of our
common humanity, and sings the song of fate to the
chorus of industry.

Of Schiller's external history there is little to be said
in addition to the facts already named. The last six
years of his life, with the exception of portions of the
summer, were spent in Weimar. In 1802 he received,
through the mediation of the grand duke, from the

SCHILLER, 393

German emperor, Francis II., the diploma of nobility,
which, though it could add nothing to his fame, changed
essentially his civil status. In no Christian country has
the difference between commoner and noble been more
marked than it was in Germany at that time. The
preposition von^ or the letter ?;., prefixed to a man's pa-
tronym, was a talisman which opened to the bearer a
charmed circle, closed to all beside. Schiller cared lit-
tle for it on his own account, but accepted it gladly for
the sake of his family, to whom it was important, in a
place like Weimar, to have access to everything in the
way of social entertainment which the place might af-
ford. The National Convention of France had already,
in 1792, voted him Citoyen Frangais, — in their estima-
tion the highest title in the heraldry of nations. It was
probably a reminiscence of the " Robbers " that procured
him that undesired honor. The record described him as
" le sieur Gille, publiciste allemand."

Schiller's health, so often invaded by long fits of dis-
abling sickness, received its final blow in the spring of
1805. On the 6th of May he took to his bed, from which
he rose no more. On tlie evening of the 7th, after
a short conversation on the subject of tragedy, with
his sister-in-law, he dozed, and was heard to mutter in
his sleep, "Is that your heaven? Is that your hell?"
The next day the power of speech was nearly gone.
" Brighter and brighter " were his last intelligible words,
in answer to a question how it was with him. On the
9th he died. A kiss received by his wife, as she bent
over his pillow, was the last sign he gave of conscious
life. Soon after, an electric shock seemed to pass over
his features, followed by an expression as of one trans-
figured and translated.

394 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

On the night of the 11th of May his mortal remains,
attended by few followers, were borne to the cemetery
of the church of Saint James, from whence, after a lapse
of twenty-two years, through the efforts of Ludwig, King
of Bavaria, they were transferred to the ducal vault,
where they now rest beside those of Karl August and of
Goethe.

Goethe lay dangerously ill at the time of Schiller's
death. His family feared to communicate the tidings ;
he read unusual concern in their looks. " I perceive,^'
he said, " that Schiller must be very sick." To a lady
friend the next day he said, inquiringly, " Schiller was
very ill yesterday, was he not ? " She burst into tears.
" Is he dead ? " he asked. " You have said it," she re-
plied ; " he is dead." " He is dead ! " repeated Goethe,
and covered his face with his hands.

On the 11th of August, in the same year, a memorial
service was held in honor of the deceased, in the theatre
at Lauchstedt. " The Song of The Bell " was presented
with great pomp, and was followed by an epilogue in
which Goethe celebrates with glowing verse the praises
of his brother poet. Ten years later the performance
was repeated with some alterations, and the epilogue, as
then delivered, is preserved in the full collection of
Goethe's works. I give the last two stanzas in Clarke's
translation : —

'* Many there were who while he dwelt on earth
Hardly due honor to his powers would pay,

But now are overshadowed by his worth,
And willing subjects to his magic lay.

Up to the Highest borne, a second birth

Links him with all the best that 's passed away.

Then honor him ! What life but poorly gave,

An after- world shall heap upon his grave.

SCHILLER. 395

Thus he remains with us, remains though gone,

Though ten years since he vanished from our side I
Yet all by him first taught, by him made known,

The world receives with joy, and we with pride;
And long ago that which was most his own

Has passed through countless hearts in circle wide.
4Jo like a comet vanishing away,

Th' eternal light he blends with his own ray."

396 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

A

CHAPTER XYIL

JEAN PAUL.

FAMILIAR distinction in literary character is
7 that of personal and impersonal, — of authors
who exhibit themselves in their writings, and authors
who are hidden in their theme. Of the former class,
we have among the ancients a marked example in
Plutarch ; among the moderns, in Montaigne, in Sir
Thomas Browne, in Laurence Sterne ; and quite re-
cently, in Thomas Carlyle.

To this class belongs pre-eminently the German hu-
morist Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, — commonly known
as Jean Paul, — one of the most popular writers of his
day ; and though now little read, still ranked as a clas-
sic by his countrymen. His unconventional peculiari-
ties of style gave rise to the sobriquet, der Uinzige, —
" the unique," the only. A style it is in which comic
and tragic sublimity and drollery, gorgeous fancies and
grotesque conceits, blend in wild confusion. His works
are labyrinths, in which the main theme is continually
losing itself in irrelevant episodes, — sometimes enter-
taining, often wearying, always distracting. His domi-
nant principle in composition seems to have been to omit
nothing, to work in somehow, to lug in somewhere, all
that he had ever r^ad or thought of, — a habit incompati-
ble with artistic excellence. Art requires sacrifice, sup-
pression of what is superfluous and irrelevant, in favor of

JEAN PAUL. 397

a well-proportioned, consecutive whole. Jean Paul would
sacrifice nothing. Whatever fancy suggested, must go,
into his writing. Hence, the writing is often deformed by
superfluous, however ingenious, conceits, — as a beautiful
hand is deformed by superabundant rings.

But with all this deduction, and in spite of these de-
fects, Jean Paul is a writer of a very high order, if not
of the highest, — nay, a true poet in all but the tech-
nics of poetry. In subtlety of thought, in philosophic
insight, in nice observation, in loving sympathy with
nature, in sensuous imagination, in richness of fancy, in
sublimity of vision, he is second to none of his country-
men. Few writings yield to the collector so rich a har-
vest of memorable sayings, beautiful images, portable wis-
dom. Few authors have climbed to literary eminence by
rougher ways and with heavier impediments ; and none
ever manifested a more persistent heroism in that pur-
suit. His early life was a long and doubtful struggle
with mean conditions and abject poverty, — a struggle
for existence as well as fame. Bread he could have as
a teacher; but he knew his vocation, and persisted to
write and to starve. He conquered at last, and looking
back on those trial-years could see a blessing in the
bruises and pinches of adverse fortune ; could see that
" wealth bears heavier on talent than poverty." " Under
gold mountains and thrones who knows how many a
spiritual giant may lie crushed down and buried."

What we know of Jean Paul's history comes to us
partly from his autobiography, extending to his thir-
teenth year, in the whimsical form of lectures by a pro-
fessor, and partly from biographical notices and the re-
daction of his correspondence by his friend Otto, and
his nephew Dr. Richard Otto Spazier.

398 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

The device of constituting himself professor of his
own life-history is due, T think, to a very active though
very innocent egoism; seeking in this disguise a free-
dom of self-portraiture which a more direct method
would not allow. He would seem to view himself ob-
jectively, to handle his case as it were that of another, —
a feat of which Jean Paul, of all men, was least capa-
ble. In strict consistency with his assumed position of
lecturer, he should have spoken of himself in the third
person ; but that was impossible to him. He cannot
suflficiently separate himself from himself, and so, like
other autobiographers, he makes use of the first.

The professor gives as the date of his birth the 21st
of March, 1763. He pleases himself with the thought
that he and the spring were born together. No man had
a better right to call the spring his foster-brother. No
one ever studied its aspects more lovingly, or hailed the
annual visitant with deeper emotion.

Jean Paul's birthplace was Wonsiedel, a Bavarian vil-
lage in the Fichtelgebirge. His father, Johann Christian
Christoph, teacher and organist, was the son of Johann
Richter, rector of a school in Neustadt, of whom, says
the author, nothing is known but his extreme poverty
and piety. Living on bread and beer, dividing his blame-
less days between praying and teaching, he reached
the age of seventy-six, when " doubtless," says Paul,
" through his higher connections, he was promoted to a
place in the churchyard, — the Neustadt God's acre."
He continues : —

" On his way thither, — that is, on his death-bed, — his son's
family went to visit him. * Let the aged Jacob,' said an attend-
ant clergyman, ' lay his hand on the young child and bless him.'
Accordingly, the infant professor was handed to the old man

JEAN PAUL. 399

for his benediction. . . . Pious grandfather ! often have I thought
of thy hand laid upon me, as it grew chill in death, when Fate
has led me out of dark hours into brighter ; and I dare hold
fast my faith in the efficacy of thy blessing, in a world pervaded,
governed, and quickened by spirits."

Our poet's father studied theology, and was miserably
poor of course. Half his life had elapsed before he ob-
tained a living ; meanwhile, his extraordinary talent for
music, which the professor thinks was his true vocation,
had procured for him the post of organist. He held at
the same time the office of Tertius, — that is, teacher of
the third form in descending order, in the gymnasium of
the town.

In 1765 he was called to the pastorate of Joditz, and
in that little village were passed the years of Paul's boy-
hood. A small country village, scarcely more than a
hamlet, set in a lone nook of that same Fichtelgebirge, —
one of those secluded spots which challenge your won-
der, by what accident a human settlement could ever
have sprung up in it. This out-of-the-way corner the
professor calls his spiritual birthplace. He rejoices that
his lot was cast in a rural one, and cautions every poet
against letting himself be born in a city, — the condi-
tions of city life being, as he thinks, unfriendly to the
Muse. The warning, unfortunately, came too late for
Dante, Milton, and Goethe, who ignorantly chose large
cities for their birthplaces.

The reminiscences of this Joditz period, extending to
the author's thirteenth year, are doubly characteristic.
The idiosyncrasies of the man appear in the sort of im-
pressions recorded ; the peculiarities of the writer, in the
style of the record. The narrow economy of a German
country parson ; the single room for meals and study ;

400 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

the table, contrived a double debt to pay, — writing-table
and family-board ; the rare and cheap delicacy from
the neighboring city, through the express-woman, who
trudged back and forth on foot with the heavy basket on
her back ; the delight of the first ABC book, with its
gilt covers ; the village school, where the first thing the
loving soul did was to fall in love with all the inmates,
and especially the teacher ; subsequent instruction at
home ; the weary hours spent over the Latin grammar,
which had to be memorized, relieved in one instance by
the indeclinable cornu, but aggravated by the exceptions
to the third declension ; the occasional holiday when the
father was absent on a journey ; the joy of summer hours ;
the annual visit to the Fair and the maternal grand-
parents at Hof ; the windfalls from the muscateller pear-
tree; his first love, a pock-marked peasant girl, whom
he wooed with raisins, spending his sole groschen in the
offering, — these, and other experiences of the author's

childhood,

** The smiles, the tears,
Of boyhood's years,"

live again in the quaint presentation of the biographical
lecture, and charm us with a charm which belongs to the
reflection rather than the reality.

Some mental experiences the author evokes from the
twilight of this first decade of his earthly existence,
which deserve special notice. One is the birth of self-
consciousness, a distinct recollection of the moment
when he first appropriated to himself the full signifi-
cance of the pronoun I. He says: —

" Never shall I forget what as yet I have told to no one, —
a mental transaction whereby I assisted at the birth of my self-
consciousness. I am able to name the place and the time. On

JEAN PAUL. 401

a forenoon, while yet a very young child, I was standing in the
doorway of our house and looking toward the woodyard, when all
at once the internal vision ' I am an /' rushed upon me like a flash
from heaven, and since then has remained luminously persistent.
Then for the first time my / had seen itself, and forever."

The other experience is that mysterious fear of the
supernatural, which seems in the case of Jean Paul to
have exercised an exceptional sway. Why is it that
most children are afraid of the dark ; and in the dark,
of precisely that which confessedly has least power to
harm, — the immaterial ? Hear the lecturer's confession.
The children were sent to bed in the winter evenings at
nine o'clock. Little Paul was his father's bedfellow : —

"Until he [the father] below had finished his two-hours'
night-reading, I was lying upstairs with my head under the
bed-clothes, in the perspiration of ghostly fear, and was seeing
in the dark the heat-lightning of the cloudy spirit-sky ; and it
seemed to me as if man himself were enmeshed by spirit-
caterpillars. Thus every night I suffered helplessly for two
hours, until at last my father came up, and like a morning sun
chased away the ghosts as it were dreams."

Even in broad day he was sometimes assailed by these
ghostly terrors. When there was a funeral, he had to
fetch the father's Bible from the church into the sacristy.
Courageously enough he " went on the gallop through
the dim, dumb, listening church into the narrow sacristy ;
but [on the return] who of us can picture to himself the
trembling, shuddering leaps which I made in my flight
from the pursuing ghosts close on my back, and the
horror with which I bolted through the church gate }
And if one pictures it, who will not laugh ? "

At the same time, he tells us, he was brave enough
as to physical dangers, — thunder-storms, a run-away

26

402 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

horse, anything visible, tangible ; braver than boys who
were inaccessible to ghostly terrors. This he ascribes
to lack of imagination on their part, and excess of it
on his.

Extreme sensibility, venting itself in copious tears, —
a constitutional peculiarity of Jean Paul, — appears in
this record of his early life. On one occasion, during
his father's absence, he seizes a hymn-book and rushes
to the cottage of a poor, decrepit, bed-ridden old woman,
selects such hymns as he deems appropriate to her con-
dition, and begins to read to her, but is soon obliged to
desist, choked by his own tears and sobs, she the while
philosophically indifferent.
/ Altogether, it was a lachrymose age in German life.

Klopstock's " Messiah," whatever its other defects, is
redeemed from the charge of dryness by its superabun-
dant weepings. Herder was not " unused to the melt-
ing mood ; " and when he and Jean Paul met, they
flowed together like twin streams. Was it self-satire
in the " Flegeljahre," where Walt, who is supposed to
represent Jean Paul's own youth, having met in his
walk a celebrated author, and been kindly noticed by
him, comes home suffused with tears ? " What ails you,
my boy ? " " Oh, father, I have met a great man."
The prosaic father, who knows no greatness but size, —
" Did he lick you, then ? "

The poetic feeling which pervades the author's writ-
ings was early developed in the boy, when returning
on a summer's afternoon from an errand at Hof , the
sunlit slopes of the mountains, and the moving billows
of the cornfields, and the flying shadows of the clouds,
awakened in him an objectless yearning, — part joy,
part pain. " Alas ! " he says, " it was the entire man

JEAN PAUL. 403

longing after the heavenly goods of life which lay yet
undefined and colorless in the deep, wide dark of the
heart, and caught a momentary illumination from the
streaks of sunlight which fell upon them."

Equally characteristic was his early love of music, to
which through life he was passionately addicted, and in
which he was no mean proficient. At the fair in Hof he
heard for the first time a military band, wath drum, fife,
and cymbal. It produced " in me, who was always long-
ing after musical tones, a real intoxication of the ear. I
heard, as the drunken man sees, everything double and
flying." He continues : —

" I have often endeavored at night, before dropping asleep,
— a time when imagination most readily gets hold of the key-
board of departed sounds, — to hear it again. And how blest
I am when I do hear it ! — so inwardly blest, as if my old child-
hood, like a Tithon, become immortal, reappeared, and con-
versed with me in those tones. Ah, light, thin, invisible
sounds ! They bear and harbor whole worlds for the heart.
They are as souls to our soul. ... In the dark depths of the
lowest bass roll the waves of time past and gone, while, on the
contrary, the sharpness of the highest treble cuts screaming into
the future, or summons it before us."

With the Joditz pastorate, from which in 1776 his
father was promoted to that of Schwarzenbach-on-the-
Saale, end the idyls of Richter's boyhood, and the
autobiographical lectures, with which, as self-appointed
professor, he had undertaken the story of his life. The
richer living on which his father had entered was insuf-
ficient to cancel the debts he had rashly contracted, in
the hope of pecuniary aid from his father-in-law, whose
means he had greatly overrated. Health failed, and with
failing health came melancholy, even moroseness, — -

404 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

disturbing the peace of the family, and casting the first
shadow which darkened the life of his son.

At the age of eighteen Paul was placed at the gym-
nasium in the little town of Hof, and two years later
entered the University of Leipsic, where he was matric-
ulated as student of theology. His father meanwhile
had died, bequeathing a precious memory and a load of
debt, which his widow — soon doubly bereaved in the
loss of her own parents — was unable to bear. It fol-
lows that the son, besides a fair preparation and extraor-
dinary ability and good-will, brought nothing to Leipsic
but an unexceptionable testimonium paupertatis, which
it was hoped would procure him free tuition and a free
table. Admission without pay to several courses of lec-
tures, on the strength of this certificate, he readily ob-
tained ; but free board was not provided. Nor did he
succeed in obtaining private pupils, by which means he
had hoped to defray in part the expenses of his college
course. To all inquiry after such, the answer was,
Lipsia vult expectari, — " in Leipsic one must wait for
what may turn up." He had matriculated as a student
of theology with a vague impression that he behooved to
follow in his father's steps ; but, as in the case of Les-
sing, his interest in that study as a brodstudium — "a
means of livelihood " — soon gave way to the stronger
attraction of general literature. As a matter of duty he
attended the lectures of Morus on Biblical interpretation,
and he listened with delight to Platner, then incumbent
of the chair of philosophy, of whom he wrote enthusias-
tically to his friends. For the rest, he occupied himself
chiefly with English and French writers, and with his
own compositions, having settled with himself that au-
thorship was his true vocation.

JEAN PAUL. 405

Meanwhile the family at home in Hof had been sink-
ing deeper and deeper into helpless, hopeless poverty,
until finally the means for Paul's maintenance at Leipsic
failed utterly, and he was forced, with unpaid bills for
board, to quit the University, and to share the destitu-
tion of the wretched lodge to which his mother had been
reduced, — there, if possible, to earn something by his
writing, for her and his brother's support.

He was not in those years a favorite in Hof. Apart
from the disgrace — for such it was considered — of the
fallen fortunes of the Richter family, the youth had ren-
dered himself obnoxious to public sentiment by odd be-
havior, especially in the matter of dress, in which he
had dared to affront the conventional requirements of
his time. To avoid the expense of the hair-dresser, — a
serious tax in those days of queues, curls, and powder,
— and the tedium of the daily frisure^ he had had his
hair cropped, and presented himself in that guise to the
censuring gaze of a frizzed and queued generation. For
similar reasons of economy and convenience, he had
thrown away necktie and waistcoat, exposing his uncov-
ered throat and chest. What favor or aid could such
indecency expect from grave, cravated, and buttoned-up
burghers ? No man may, in externals, offend with im-
punity the taste of his time. Paul seems to have dis-
covered at last that making enemies was not the way to
succeed in life, — that the having his own way was
hardly worth the fighting which it cost to maintain it.
Any way, he wearied of his singularity, and announced
in a circular sent to his friends his intention of return-
ing, as to head-dress at least, to the ways of the world.
Here is Carlyle's excellent rendering of this well-known
and characteristic document : —

406 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

" Advertisement.

" The undersigned begs to give notice, that, whereas cropped
hair has as many enemies as red hair, and said enemies of the
hair are enemies likewise of the person it grows on ; whereas,
further, such a fashion is in no respect Christian, since other-
wise Christian persons would practise it ; and whereas, espe-
cially, the undersigned has suffered no less from his hair than
Absalom did from his, although on contrary grounds ; and
whereas, it has been notified that the public purposed to send
him to his grave, since the hair grows there without scissors, —
he hereby gives notice that he will not push matters to such
extremity. Be it known, therefore, to the nobility, gentry, and
a discerning public in general, that the undersigned proposes on
Sunday next to appear in various important streets [of HofJ
with a short false queue ; and with this queue, as with a mag-
net and cord-of-love and magic-rod, to possess himself forcibly
of the affections of all and sundry, be they who they may."

Before leaving Leipsic, Richter had made, at the age
of twenty, his first literary venture, — a volume of sa-
tirical sketches with the title " Greenland Lawsuits "
(^Grronlandische Prozesse). Refused by the booksellers
of Leipsic, it was accepted and published by Voss in Ber-
lin, who gave the author fifty odd dollars for his work.
A second series of these satires brought him from the
same publisher double the sum. But the book did not
sell, and a third series was declined. The extracts from
the " Devil's Papers " and the " Diversions beneath the
Skull of a Giantess " met with no better fate. Ten
years elapsed before the brave scholar, who had wedded
himself to literature for better or worse and still persisted
to write, again produced a book which put money in his
purse. His mother, the minister's widow, — who es-
teemed the preacher's work the greatest in the world, —

JEAN PAUL. 407

elated by the money received for that first publication,
thought that her son who could write a book might
with diligence also attain to writing even sermons, and
she endeavored to lead his ambition in that direction.
" Sermons ! " quoth Paul ; " do you think it such a great
thing to write sermons ? I could write one in my sleep.
But a book like that, — do you suppose there is a minis-
ter in Hof who could even understand, to say nothing of
writing, it ? "

Sad years they were for Richter, sad and hungry
years, which followed his return from the University.
Laboring in his mother's cottage, in the one room which
served for parlor, kitchen, and study, — laboring amid
the din of household operations, fasting often, with sel-
dom a full meal, he fought the hard fight with want and
neglect, never, at the worst, losing faith in his final
success.

In 1790, having first tried private tutoring at Topen
with unpleasant results, and declining new offers in that
line, he removed to Schwarzenbach, a town about five
miles from Hof, to take charge of a school which had
been gathered for him, consisting mostly of the children
of his friends. Before starting, he was forced to borrow
money of his friend Otto to replenish his wardrobe. He
had taken an inventory, he said, of his property, feudal
and allodial ; it read thus : " boots, stockings, handker-
chiefs, and two copper coins ; " but in this list numbers
1, 2, 3 and 4 were wanting.

His school was managed on the principle of avoiding
all that had been amiss and painful in his own educa-
tion ; no lumbering of the memory, but much cultivating
of the perceptive faculty, and much eliciting of original
thought. The plan is given in the "Levana," — his

408 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

essay on education. He kept a note-book of the sayings
of his pupils, whose ages ranged from seven to fifteen.
Some of them are quite remarkable, and remind one
who has read it of the Record of a School taught by
Mr. Alcott, in Boston, some forty years since.

But now the poet's trial-years of want and pecuniary
distress were to end, and a new day to dawn upon his
lot. Weak natures are soured by adversity ; strong ones,
like Richter's, are exalted and ennobled by it. He aban-
doned satire, for which he had talent indeed, but no
moral vocation. Hard experience and better knowledge
of human kind had softened his temper, refined his feel-
ings, enlarged his views, and deepened his sense of the
meaning of life. By such discipline he was led to write
stories, which, while they embodied the results of his
observation, embodied also his moral convictions and
aspirations, and brought to light the deep poetry and
heroism of his nature.

The turning-point in his fortunes was a novel, designed
to represent the influence on different natures of certain
modes of education, — a work which has been likened to
Rousseau's " Emil," entitled, with but faint relation to
the contents. Die unsichtbare Loge^ — *' The Invisible
Lodge ; or Box in a Theatre," as if one should say '' Life
seen by an Invisible Spectator." The manuscript of this
he sent, by a happy instinct, to Hofrath Moritz in Ber-
lin, a man known to him only as the author of a work in
which Richter discerned, as he thought, a kindred spirit.
It is not a very welcome missive to a busy man, — a
bulky manuscript volume from an unknown person,
accompanied with the request that you will read it.

Moritz was tempted to do as most men would have
done, — to find some pretext for declining the task ; but

JEAN PAUL. 409

glancing at the first page, he was so impressed with the
quaint original style that he read on and still on, saying
to himself as he read, '* Why, this beats Wieland, — it
beats Goethe ! Who can the author be ? " For Richter
had not given his name, but a pseudonym. The end of
it was a letter to the prescribed address at Hof , in which
the writer poured forth his enthusiasm without stint :

" If you were at the end of the earth, I would fly into your
arms, though I should encounter a hundred tempests to get to
you. Where do you live ? What is your name ? Who are
you ? Your work is a jewel ! I shall know no rest until its
author reveals himself more fully."

And the author did reveal himself. In his previous
works he had written anonymously ; but now he took
the thenceforth famous name of Jean Paul.

No happier moment "• in all his noon of fame " would
Jean Paul know than that in which he poured into his
worn mother's lap a handful of gold, — the first instal-
ment of the hundred ducats which the publisher gave
for " The Invisible Lodge."

His next work, " Hesperus," which appeared in 1794,
not only deepened the impression which " The Invisible
Lodge " had made on the few whom it reached, but
greatly extended the circle of his readers and admirers,
in fact, conquered to itself the reading public of Ger-
many, and lifted its author at once to a seat in the lit-
erary pantheon of his nation.

The pay, in cash, which the author received from the
publisher for even the " Hesperus " was paltry ; but the
moral compensation was all and more than he could
reasonably expect. Earely has a writer passed so sud-
denly from deep obscurity into broad refulgent day.

410 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Letters from all parts of the land, and from all sorts of
persons, rich and poor, high and low, were poured in
upon him, all gushing with gratitude, admiration, joy ;
needy schoolmasters, in retired villages, begging but for
the loan of one of his books ; ladies of distinction, like
Sophie La Roche, soliciting his friendship ; occasionally
one charged with more substantial demonstrations of
good-will ; among others an anonymous one, afterwards
known to be from old Gleim in Halberstadt, himself
an author, and addicted to poetry not of the very best,
more illustrious by his generous patronage of genius
struggling with poverty than by his verses, which how-
ever have survived. The letter was accompanied by a
gift of fifty dollars, — equal to two hundred of our more
abundant and more luxurious times. The giver signed
himself, borrowing a name from one of Jean Paul's he-
roes, Septimus ^ Fixlein. He wrote : —

ScHERAU, May 23, 1796.
You are said to be poor, dear Herr Richter, — you, an in-
tellectual millionnaire. Such millionnaires are commonly poor,
and it is well that they are so, for the other sort write no
books ; therefore I suppose it to be your case. And because
your books give me pleasure, — much pleasure, and nothing
but pleasure, — I consider it my duty, dear Herr Richter, to
give you also a little pleasure by showing you that your read-
ers are grateful. They are all grateful, but most of them can-
not show their gratitude. And that too is all right ; else,
dear Herr Richter, you would be rich, and would write no more
books. The greetings of a grateful one to your Christian and
your Clotilde [characters portrayed by Jean Paul], and be you
as magnanimous as he is grateful.

Your most devoted servant,

Septimus Fixlein.

1 It should have been Quintus.

JEAN PAUL. 411

A nature less firm and right principled than Richter's
might have been intoxicated and thrown from its bal-
ance by these unexpected and enthusiastic demonstra-
tions of popularity, which seemed to place him in the
fore-front of the literary world of his time. In particu-
lar, the advances of sentimental women, who courted
his acquaintance, would have proved dangerous to a man
whose ideal of womanhood was less exalted, and whose
moral purity was less assured, and who did not, with
great susceptibility to feminine attractions and feminine
influence, unite a maidenly soul. The urgent attentions
of Madam von Kalb, a lady of culture and rank, prac-
tically but not legally divorced from a husband who
slighted her, might have been interpreted as inviting a
liaison; the rather that her frankly avowed principles
were not averse to such connections. From Richter
they elicited only admiration of her gifts, and gratitude
for the aid which she rendered him in becoming ac-
quainted with the celebrities of Weimar, where he spent
three weeks of ecstatic enjoyment. There, at length, he
met Herder, for whom his soul had yearned so long, and
who remained to the last the Jupiter of his pantheon,
as Herder's noble wife was its Juno. There he met
Goethe, of whom he wrote to his friend Otto that " his
eyes were flames," and his reading " but a deeper sort
of thunder, with soft rain-whisper between."

Altogether, there seems to have been something magi-
cal, inexplicable, daemonic in the fascination which Rich-
ter unintentionally exercised upon women. Attracted to
him in the first instance by his writings, they sought his
correspondence, craved his acquaintance, and when they
encountered him face to face were ready captives to the
charm of his voice, and to that smile which Madam von

.412 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Kalb forbade as being quite too dangerous. Social rank
in Germany, at that time so despotic, was not so much
waived as forgotten in his favor. Baroness Kriidener,
afterward famous as a pietist and revivalist, sought him
out in his lowly lodgings in Hof. Josephine von Sydon,
an unknown worshipper, invites him to Berlin. With
Fraulein von F. he is on the point of betrothal, when a
sudden scruple on his part intervenes. Emilie von
Berlepsch, who begins with Platonic attachment, loving
him more, she says, with the fancy than with the heart,
ends with hsemoptisis and swooning because he does
not love her well enough to marry her, which in pity he
finally resolves to do, — but after all, stops on the verge
of the sacrifice, still however retaining her friendship,
having somehow satisfied her that their union could not
be a happy one. Poor Maria Forster went mad for love
of him, and not allowed to visit him, drowned herself in
the Rhine.i

In Berlin, — whither he went in 1800, and where his
fame preceding him procured for the literary lion of the
day admission into all the best circles, both literary and
courtly ; where the Queen of Prussia, the beautiful and
unfortunate Luise, invited him to dinner at Sans Souci, —
in Berlin the tumult which he raised among feminine ad-
mirers may be inferred from a casual remark in a letter
to his friend Otto, in which he says that so much of his
hair has been begged of him, that if he were disposed to
trade in it he could make as much money by the outside
of his head as by the inside. Embarrassing such adora-
tion must have been, seeing that the man at the age of
thirty-seven was already bald. Here in Berlin at last, after
so many transient and fruitless attachments, he found the

1 This was after his marriage.

JEAN PAUL, 413

woman who satisfied all his matrimonial requirements
and completely filled his heart. He had often declared
that he could dispense with beauty of person in a wife,
but not with beauty of soul. In Caroline, daughter of the
privy counsellor Maier, he found both, — a maiden well
born, highly cultured but not rich, used on the contrary
to make the most of small means, one who could read
Plato in the original and make her own dresses and
dye and turn them, when on the eve of a ball the privy
counsellor's salary would not afford the expense of a
new one. She was fitted, intellectually and practically,
to be the wife of a genius, especially of one whose ideal
was so high and whose fortunes so lowly as those of
Richter. Her intelligence could sympathize with his
loftiest imaginings, while her prudence and savoir faire
were equal to all the necessities of their straitened
economy.

They were wedded in private, in May of 1801, and im-
mediately set out for Weimar. Jean Paul could not
consider himself fairly married until the Herders had
approved the bride and blessed the union. After trying
several cities in different parts of Germany with a view
to permanent residence, they finally, in 1804, fixed on
Baireuth in upper Bavaria as their life-long home. Its
attraction for Richter was its nearness to Hof , the abode
of his dearest friends ; his predilection also was for that
part of the country whose features were associated with
the deepest experiences of his life.

Here he spent the remainder of his days, of which nigh
on two thirds had already elapsed, in peaceful activity,
enjoying the reputation so bravely won and the wide ac-
ceptance of his works ; enjoying still more the production
of new ones. By choice Richter was an indefatigable

414 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

writer ; but even if choice had not so inclined, and had
not the force of genius impelled to labor, necessity would
not have allowed him to rest. Pecuniary ease, material
independence, he never knew. Though relieved from the
pressure of actual want, no longer menaced as in early
life by the wolf at the door, he was poor to the last.
His literary earnings were barely sufficient for the main-
tenance of his family ; and in the early years of the
century, when Germany lay paralyzed in the grasp of
Napoleon, when all trades languished, and the booksel-
ler's business in particular was almost at a stand-still,
his income as a writer would not have covered the neces-
sary expenses of his household, had it not been supple-
mented by a modest pension of four hundred dollars
annually, secured to him by the generosity, while in
office, of Prince Dalberg, and afterward assumed by the
King of Bavaria.

In 1817, on a visit to Heidelberg, he was compli-
mented by the University of that city with the academic
degree of Doctor of Philosophy. He enjoyed this as he
did other distinctions, — less for the honor's sake than
as proof of the esteem and good-will of his fellow-men.

Hitherto, in spite of the hardships and privations of
his youth, — thanks to his buoyant spirit and strong,
courageous, loving soul, — the life of Richter had been
on the whole a happy one. But now, in his fifty-ninth
year, a great calamity, the first immedicable sorrow of
his life, befell him in the death of his only son. The
youth, who inherited his father's idealism and aspira-
tions without his robust understanding and joyous tem-
perament, fell a victim, at the age of nineteen, to morbid
conscientiousness, inducing ascetic abstention in the mat-
ter of diet, and aggravated by religious irritation. Sent

JEAN PAUL. 415

to the gymnasium at Munich at the age of seventeen,
anxiety to realize his father's ambitious hopes and to
spare his father's pocket, caused him to combine a max-
imum of mental labor with a minimum of bodily com-
fort. Afterward, at the University of Heidelberg, he
came under the influence of Kanne and other pietists,
and began to entertain extravagant notions of his own
worthlessness, and to fancy that the only way to the
excellence to which he aspired lay through bodily mor-
tification. He conceived himself morally bound to equal
his father as a literary genius, and attributed his infe-
riority in that kind to moral defects, which must be
corrected by severe self-denial, while with redoubled
diligence he applied himself to intellectual labor. By
starving and plodding he would wring from himself
what Nature had denied. He attended the lectures of
Hegel, then professor of philosophy at Heidelberg, and
was worried by his inability to comprehend the subtle-
ties of that renowned dialectician, who would solve the
problem of the universe by a trick of logic. This too was
laid to the charge of his own worthlessness, and deepened
his despair. In vain his father wrote to him to eat more
and study less, and to let go Hegel, who, though confes-
sedly the most acute of modern philosophers, was none
the less *' a dialectic vampire of the inner man."

Thus fretted by self-depreciation and the sense of an
unattained, unattainable ideal on the one hand, and ex-
hausted by excess of abstinence on the other, what won-
der that the young man's health gave way ! Once so
strong and blooming, and every way promising, he came
home to Baireuth for the summer holidays a wreck in
body and mind, was attacked with brain fever, and after
a brief illness died in September, 1821, — a signal illus-

416 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

tration of that noteworthy saying of Novalis, that " the
soul is the most active of poisons."

It was a blow from the shock of which the affection-
ate father never recovered. It struck to the root of his
life. He might possibly take to himself some blame in
the matter, for had he not unwittingly prepared the way
for this sacrifice by a system of education which led the
too conscientious youth to suppose that the great end of
life is literary eminence ?

The remaining four years of Richter's life were years
of labor and sorrow, although but three-score instead of
the three-score-and-ten of Biblical allowance had been
numbered ; years not unblessed with that which should
accompany old age, but overshadowed, morally and phy-
sically, with a darkness swift deepening into funereal
night, — morally by grief for the loss of his beloved Max,
and physically by loss of his eye-sight through excessive
weeping over that loss, — tears which fixed belief in a
life to come and heavenly reunion failed to check ; tears
which ceased not to flow while even his pen was inditing
comic fancies for the entertainment of his readers. He
continued to work on his unfinished novel, — " Nicholas
Margraf ; or, the Comet," — and on other unfinished
writings ; and meanwhile began a new work, the idea
of which was suggested, or recalled, by the death of his
son, — a work on Immortality, his " Selina," — of which
he lived to complete but eight chapters.

In 1825 his failing eye-sight failed utterly ; darkness
shut down on him, made more afflictive by the wreck
of his bodily health. Both calamities had been hastened
by his own medical dilettanteism, — by optical and dietetic
experimenting. Every week new glasses, new wines,
new regime. His nephew, Otto Spazier, whom he had

JEAN PAUL. 417

summoned from Dresden to be his amanuensis, and to
aid him in preparing a final edition of his works, finds
him, the vigorous man of but five years previous, who
was wont to write in the open air in winter with only a
board to protect his feet from the snow, now wrapped
in furs, lying on the sofa, shrunken, collapsed, physi-
cally a ruin, yet with intellect still clear, memory true,
and mental vigor unabated. But the power of the
spirit over the flesh in the body's downfall is limited.
After a few week's labor with his young help-mate the
machine gave out, — the wheel was broken at the cis-
tern. One evening the rest to which he had betaken
himself for the night passed gently into the sleep whose
waking is not of this world. A lady friend had sent
him a bunch of flowers, which he tenderly fingered while
inhaling their perfume. They recalled the darlings of
his own garden. " Oh, my beautiful flowers ! " he ex-
claimed ; they were his last words. It was the 14th of
November, 1825.

His fellow-citizens vied with each other in demonstra-
tions of respect on the night of his obsequies ; the mu-
nicipal authorities, headed by tlie royal functionary.
Yon Welten, followed the body to the grave. The
Catholic pastor Oesterreich joined the train, in friendly
concord with the Protestant clergy of the city, having
himself arranged some of the ceremonies of the occa-
sion. At his suggestion, the scholars of the gymnasium
formed a part of tlie procession, bearing torches, and on
velvet cushions copies of the author's " Levana " and
the "Aesthetik." The manuscript of the unfinished
" Selina," and beside it a laurel wreath, lay on the
coffin. In the church, after select and appropriate mu-
sic, instead of the customary funeral sermon, was read

27

418 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

the beautiful passage concerning Christ from Richter'g
essay on " God in History." Fitting eulogies by those
who had a right to speak were spoken at the grave, the
body was lowered, placed beside that of his son, and
then the torches were extinguished, — fit symbol of a
cherished light put out.

We may say of Richter what he said of himself, that he
had made of himself all that the stuff would allow. What
more can be said of the best ?

As a man, Jean Paul was eminent in all the qualities
which command respect and attract good-will. There
was in him, and went out of him, a power of love which
conquered hardness and compelled return. Never had
poet more devoted friends, or reciprocated friendship with
truer devotion. His friendships were not bounded by
human kind ; the brute creation came in for a share of
his affections. He surrounded himself with dumb pets
as it were the necessaries of life. A favorite poodle ac-
companied him in all his journeyings, and must not be
excluded from any house where he visited. *' Love me,
love my dog." His birds hopped over the page on which
he was writing, he waiting the while with suspended
pen and continuing patience until they should pass. A
tame squirrel sat upon his shoulder in his walks about
town ; and once, at the christening of a friend's child,
where Jean Paul was to stand god-father, having for-
gotten to leave the creature behind, he was obliged to
put it in his pocket, and with difficulty prevented its
escape with his left, while with right hand and arm he
held the babe.

I have spoken of Richter's peculiarities of style, his ex-
uberant fancy, liis grotesque imagery, his wild rhetoric,

JEAN PAUL. 419

attracting or repelling, as I said, according to the taste
of the reader. Noticeable in his novels is the want of
method and a rational plot. We miss the progressive
unfolding of a theme, the onward movement, the charm
of expectation, the cumulative interest, the fit conclu-
sion. The author writes like one who enters on a jour-
ney v^th no determined goal in view ; or who, having
one, forgets it in adventures by the way, in the pleasant
company he falls in with, and strays into endless epi-
sodes. Or, to vary the comparison, he is a dramatist
who crow^ds his stage with characters that come and go
and exhibit their peculiarities. Scene succeeds scene ;
we enjoy them in turn, but by and by discover that we
are not getting on, that character and scene have no
relation to any central aim. We wait the denouement :
there is none, or a forced one, a makeshift ; and when
at last the curtain falls, it is not because a definite plan
has been fulfilled, but simply because the play cannot
go on forever.

Jean Paul is not merely a writer of fiction, but a
philosophic essayist as well. His work on education,
the " Levana ; " that on the principles of literary com-
position, the " Vorschule der Aesthetik ; " the unfinished
work on immortality, entitled " Selina," — show him a
profound thinker and sagacious critic. They present
a more adequate idea of the man than the " Titan," on
which he supposed that his fame as an author would
finally rest. These works abound in precious thoughts
and luminous suggestions ; but we have to regret that
in these and all his writings the style is so mannerized,
so choked with verbal conceits on the one hand, so
unnaturally compressed on the other, that the wealth
of wisdom contained in them is lost to many, and

420 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

especially foreigners, by reason of the crabbed and
deterrent rhetoric, — the dragon which guards the hid-
den treasure.

When I say that his philosophical writings best reveal
the man, I am thinking of the serious side of his nature.
But Jean Paul was a born humorist ; the comic side of
him is the one the most noted, if not the most character-
istic. He began with satire ; but for that he had no vo-
cation, and never really prospered in it, — there wanted
the vitriol in his blood, and there wanted the ice-brook's
temper in his wit. Not great as a satirist, not distin-
guished as a wit, but in the two opposites of frolic humor
and soul-subduing pathos, in comic fancy and towering
grandeur of imagination, alike pre-eminent ; a very
Shakspeare in opulence of mind, but without the plastic
cunning and without the voice of song.

Of his graver novels, the " Titan " is the most elabo-
rate, and the one which he regarded as his masterpiece.
The " Hesperus," the " Siebenkas," the " Unsichtbare
Loge " are equally good in parts, but less comprehensive
in their scope and less complete in execution. Chief
among the comic are the " Flegeljahre," " Quintus
Fixlein," the "Life of Fibel," and " Katzenberger's
Badereise."

" The Invisible Lodge " is one of the crudest of the
author's works, but contains some of his most striking
conceits. The hero, Gustav, in accordance with a whim
of his parents, is confined in a subterranean dwelling
during the first eight years of his life, in order that he
may not become callous to the beauties of Nature by
early use. He is to be introduced to them suddenly on
his ninth birthday, which falls on the first of June, when

JEAN PAUL. 421

the earth is apparelled in its brightest raiment, that so
the splendor of the universe, concealed until then, may
overwhelm him with surprise and make an indelible
impression. A tutor who enters heartily into the scheme,
a wise educator who is called the boy's " genius," has
been provided for these early years. When the time
arrives, Gustav is told by his genius that he is to die
and ascend to heaven, — so the world above ground is
figured to him. He is prepared for his ascension by
hearing for the first time a strain of music. The author
exclaims : —

" O Music ! echo of a far-off world of harmony ! sigh of the
angel within us ! When language fails and the eye and em-
braces are denied, and our hearts lie mute and lonely behind
the grating of the breast, it is th6u by whose mediation they
call to each other from their prisons and mingle their distant
sighs in the desert. ... As in real death, the Genius in this
mock death drew his pupil toward heaven by the ladder of
sense. He made the apparent death beautiful to the advantage
of the actual, so that when Gustav dies it will be with a rapture
unknown to us."

The chapter which describes the child's emerging into
daylight is entitled " The Resurrection." It begins, —

" There are four priests who stand in the wide cathedral of
Nature and sacrifice at God's altars, the hills, — ice-gray Winter
with his snowy surplice ; ingathering Autumn with harvests
under his arm, which he lays upon the altar of God, and which
man may take thence ; Summer, the fiery youth who labors
into the night to sacrifice ; and Spring, the child, with his
white church-decoration of flowers and blossoms, which, child-
like, he spreads before the sublime Spirit, and whose prayers
are joined in by all who hear him. For the children of men,
Spring is the fairest priest.

422 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

"This flower-priest was the first whom Gustav saw at the
altar. Before sunrise, on the first of June, the Genius knelt
silently beside him, and prayed with his eyes and with dumb,
trembling lips a prayer for Gustav, — a prayer which spread its
wings over all the venture of his life. A flute above ground
sounded its fond, loving call. ' We are summoned,' said the
Genius, himself overcome, 'we are summoned from earth to
heaven. Come with me, my Gustav.' The little one trem-
bled with anxious joy. The flute continues to sound ; they
ascend the heaven's ladder, — two anxious hearts almost burst-
ing with their throes. The Genius pushes open the gate and
places the child on the earth beneath the sky. Now the swell-
ing billows of the living ocean break over Gustav. With halt-
ing breath, with eye oppressed, with soul overwhelmed, he
stands before the immeasurable aspect of Nature, and clings
trembling more closely to his Genius. But when, after the
first stark amazement, he opened his mind to these instreaming
floods ; when he felt the thousand arms with which the sublime
Soul of the universe pressed him to itself ; when he was able
to contemplate the green billowy flower-life around him ; . . .
when his uplifted eye lost itself in the deep heaven, the entrance
to infinity ; . . . when he saw the mountains like other earths
encamped upon ours ; when he saw himself encompassed by
endless life, — the feathered, flying life beneath the clouds,
the humming life at his feet, the golden creeping life on all the
leaves, the living, beckoning arms and heads of the giant trees ;
when the morning wind seemed to him the mighty breath of a
coming spirit; when the fluttering foliage whispered and the
apple-tree tossed a cool leaf against his cheek ; . . . when at last
the heavens began to burn, and the trailing border of the mantle
of night disappeared in the blaze, and on the rim of the earth
the sun lay like the crown of God dropped from his throne, —
then Gustav exclaimed, ' There is God ! ' and with dazzled eye
and mind fell down upon the flowers with the greatest prayer
that ever a childish bosom contained."

JEAN PAUL. 423

VAN DER KABEL'S WILL.i

No one, since Haslau was made a royal residence, could re-
member anything, unless it were the birth of a crown prince,
which had been looked forward to with such interest as the
opening of Van der Kabel's Will.

Van der Kabel might be called the Haslau Croesus, and his
life a numismatic diversion, or a gold wash under a gold rain,
or whatever else wit might choose to term it. Seven still liv-
ing distant relations of seven deceased distant relations enter-
tained indeed some hopes of a place in his testament, inasmuch
as the Croesus had sworn to them to remember them in it ; but
their hopes were faint, for the reason that they did not espe-
cially trust him, not only because he managed everything in
such a grumblingly moral and disinterested fashion (the seven
relations being still beginners in morals), but also because he
had such a mocking way, and a heart so full of tricks and traps
that no reliance could be placed on him. The persistent smile
about his temples and his thick lips, and his sneering, piping
voice weakened the good impression which might have been
made by his nobly formed countenance and a pair of big hands
from which fell daily New- Year's presents and benefit-plays and
donations. For which reason the birds of passage represented
the man — this bird-berry tree on which they fed and roosted —
as a hidden snare, and could scarcely see the visible berries for
the invisible hair-springes.

Between two strokes of apoplexy he had made his will, and
deposited it with the magistracy. In the very act of deliver-
ing, when half dying, their certificates of deposit to the seven
presumptive heirs, he said, in his old tone, that " he hoped that
this token of his approaching end would not depress grave men,
whom he would much rather think of as laughing heirs than
as weeping ones." Only one of them — Police-Inspector
Harprecht, the cold ironist — replied to this warm irony, that
*' probably their interest in such a loss did not depend on
themselves."

1 Prom the Flegeljahre.

424 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Finally, the seven heirs appeared with their certificates at
the Council-house ; namely, the Church-Counsellor Glanz, the
Police-Inspector Harprecht, the Court- Agent Neupeter, the
Court-Solicitor Knoll, the Bookseller Pasvogel, the Morn-
ing-Preacher Flachs, and Flitte from Alsace. They claimed
the notice deposited by the late Kabel, and the regular and
formal opening of the will. The chief-executor of this was the
reigning burgomaster himself ; the sub-executors, the rest of
the City Council. The Notice and the Testament were imme-
diately produced, . . . shown to the assembled Councillors and
heirs, for inspection of the secret city-stamp ; the registered
certificates were read aloud by the city clerk to the seven heirs,
who were thereby informed that the departed had actually de-
posited such notice with the magistracy and intrusted it to the
public archives, and that on the day of the deposition he had
been of sound mind. Then, finally, the seven seals which he
himself had stamped upon them were inspected and found en-
tire. Now, after the city clerk had made a record of all this,
the will could, in God's name, be opened and read aloud by the
reigning burgomaster, as follows : —

" I, Von der Kabel, here in my house in Dog Street, Haslau, on
the 7th May, 179-, do make my will without many million words,
although I have been a German notary and a Dutch domine.

" Devising and disinheriting are universally regarded as the
most essential parts of a will. Accordingly, I bequeath to Mr.
Ecclesiastical- Councillor Glanz, Mr. Court-Solicitor Knoll, Mr.
Court-Agent Peter Neupeter, Mr. Police-Director Harprecht,
Mr. Morning-Preacher Flachs, Mr. Bookseller Pasvogel, and Mr.
Flitte, for the present, nothing. Not because, being very distant
relatives, they are entitled to no Trebellianica, or because most of
them have enough of their own to devise, but because I know from
their own lips that they esteem my poor person much more than
my large estate, which person, therefore, I leave to them, however
little may be got by it."

At these words seven long faces started up like the Seven
Sleepers. The ecclesiastical councillor, a young man still, but

JEAN PAUL. 425

famous in all Germany by his spoken and printed discourses,
was the one who felt himself most offended by such insinua-
tions. The Alsatian Flitte muttered a half-audible curse. The
morning-preacher Flachs's chin dropped down like a beard. The
City Council could hear sundry half-loud exclamations against
the late Kabel, such as " scalawag," " fool," " infidel," etc. But
the burgomaster Kuhnold beckoned with his hand, and while
the solicitor and the bookseller set all the muscles in their
faces like so many spring-traps, read on, although with forced
gravity : —

" Except my present house in Dog Street, which, just as it
stands, shall be adjudged and shall belong to that one of my seven
above-named relatives who, within the space of half an hour, to be
reckoned from the reading of this clause, shall, sooner than the
other six rivals, succeed in shedding a tear or tears in the presence
of an honorable magistrate, who shall make protocol thereof. But if
all remain dry, then the house must also lapse to the universal heir,
whom I shall immediately name."

Here the burgomaster closed the will, and remarked that
the condition might be an unusual one, but was not contrary
to law, and that the Court must adjudge the house to the first
one who should weep. He laid his watch, which indicated
half -after-eleven, on the sessions-table, and sat quietly down,
in order, with the rest of the Court, as executors of the testa-
ment, to note who should first shed the desired tears for the
testator.

That so long as the earth has stood and moved there was
ever upon it a more troubled and perplexed congress than
this of seven united dry provinces assembled for weeping, can
hardly without partiality be supposed. At first, for some pre-
cious minutes, there was mere confusion, astonishment, smiles.
The Congress saw itself too suddenly transported into the posi-
tion of that dog which, in the midst of its fiercest onset, the
enemy brought to a still stand by crying out " Watch ! " and
which suddenly stood on its hind legs and, snarling, watched.
From cursing they were too swiftly hurried up to weep. Every

426 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

one saw that genuine emotion was out of the question ; a
shower on the gallop, a hunting-baptism of the eyes, was not to
be thought of. Nevertheless, in twenty-six minutes something
might be accomplished.

The merchant Neupeter asked if it were not a cursed busi-
ness ai;id fool's trick, and would have nothing to do with it.
Nevertheless, at the thought that a house might float into his
possession on a tear he experienced a peculiar irritation of the
glands, and looked like a sick lark that is being clystered with
an oiled pin's head. The house was the pin's head.

The solicitor Knoll distorted his face like a mechanic's ap-
prentice whom one of his cronies is shaving and scraping of a
Saturday evening by a shoemaker's candle. He was fearfully
enraged at the misuse of the title " testament," and near enough
to tears of wrath.

The sly bookseller, Pasvogel, quietly addressed himself at
once to the matter in hand, and went over in a hurry every-
thing of a moving kind that he had in his shop, or on commis-
sion, and looked the while like a dog that is licking off the
emetic which the Parisian dog-doctor Demet has smeared his
nose with. Time was absolutely necessary to produce the
desired effect.

Flitte, the Alsatian, danced without ceremony in the session's
room, laughed at all the serious faces, and swore that though
he was not the richest of the lot, he could not weep in so funny
a case for all Strasburg and Alsace to boot. At last, the police-
inspector Harprecht gave him a significant look, and assured
him that if Monsieur hoped by laughter through the well-known
glands — the meibomian, the caruncula, and others — to produce
the desired drops, and thus surreptitiously to moisten his eyes
with this window-sweat, he would have him know that as little
could be gained in that way as by blowing his nose, — in which
operation, as we know, more tears flow into the eyes through
the ductus nasalis than into all the church pews during a
funeral sermon. But the Alsatian declared that he was laugh-
ing only for the fun of the thing, and not with any graver
design.

JEAN PA UL, 427

The inspector, on his part, conscious of the dephlegmatized
state of his heart, endeavored to force into his eyes something
that would answer the purpose by staring with them wide
open.

The morning-preacher, Flachs, looked like a Jew-beggar on
horseback when his horse is running away with him. Never-
theless, he might have drawn up the needful water by the
action of a heart which had already gathered about it the sul-
triest clouds, out of domestic and ecclesiastical miseries, had
not the vision of the house come floating in with a joyful
aspect that dammed the current.

Glanz, the church-councillor, who knew his own nature from
the experience of many New Years' and funeral sermons, and
was aware that he himself was the first to be moved when he
sought to awaken emotion in others, rose up, and seeing the
others hanging so long on the drying rope, said, with dignity,
that every one who had read his printed works must know that
he had a heart in his bosom which compelled him rather to
repress such sacred signs as tears, in order to rob no one, than
laboriously to elicit them for secondary purposes. " This heart
has already shed them, but secretly ; for Kabel was my friend,"
he said, and looked around. With satisfaction he perceived
that they were all sitting still as dry as corks. Especially at
this moment crocodiles, deer, elephants, witches, grape-vines,
could have wept sooner than the heirs thus disturbed and
enraged.

Flachs alone profited thereby. He thought over in a hurry
Kabel's charities and the poor frocks and gray hairs of his
female hearers at the morning service ; Lazarus with his dogs,
and his own long coffin ; moreover, the beheading of so many
victims, the sorrows of Werther, a miniature battle-field ; and
himself worrying and tormenting himself in his young years so
miserably for the sake of that clause in the will. It needed
but three strokes more with the pump-handle, and he would
fetch the water and the house.

" O Kabel, my Kabel ! " continued Glanz, almost weeping for
joy at the prospect of the coming tears of sorrow, " when at

428 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

some future day, by the side of thy breast full of love which
the earth now covers, mine also shall lie and mould — "

" I believe, worthy sirs," interrupted Flachs, standing up and
looking round with a sad and streaming countenance, " I believe
I am weeping."

He then sat down and let the tears flow more joyfully. He
had reached dry land ; he had fished away the prize-house from
the competing eyes of Glanz, who was now greatly vexed at the
effort he had made, having talked away half his appetite to no
purpose.

Flachs's emotion was duly recorded, and the house in Dog
Street awarded to him forever.

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL, 429

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL.

I. — THE SCHLEGELS.

THE brothers Sclilegel play a conspicuous part in
the literary circle which initiated and in part
constituted the Romantic School. They assumed dic-
tatorial authority and exercised a controlling influence
— salutary in the main — on the current literature of
their time. It was the influence of criticism, not of
example ; often unduly severe, but none the less potent
on that account.

Fastidiousness in criticism is a safe card. Let the
critic be so exquisite that nothing recent, and no ac-
cepted models, satisfy him, and he becomes imposing.
Let him propound some crotchet as a canon of art, and
he is sure to have followers in never so devious paths.
The pre-Raphaelism in pictorial art which prevailed a
few years since may be cited as an illustration. Art,
it was claimed, had gone astray since Giotto ; she had
become carnal : it behooved her to return to the ideal-
ism of the thirteenth century. A similar reform was
that demanded for literature by the Schlegels, both men
of learning and ability. Without creative genius they
made themselves the tongeber, the setters of literary
fashion. They did for the Romantic School what Nicolai
and the Universal German Library, in a former gene-

430 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

ration, had done for the Aufhldrung. The Aufkldrung
was defunct. To Nicolai and his school had succeeded
Lessiug and Herder, and Schiller and Goethe. But by
these the rationalism of the Aufkldrung had been merely
superseded, ignored, not antagonized ; the revolution was
not complete until the opposite principle had asserted
itself. The Schlegels, and especially Friedrich Schlegel,
proclaimed the opposite principle of spiritualism, the
characteristic principle of the Romantic School, — spirit-
ualism in the contemplation and treatment of Nature
and life, ultimating in mysticism. This principle the
self-constituted dictators proclaimed from their cathedra
in Jena in the pages of the " Athenaeum," and with auto-
cratic arrogance applied as a test to the reigning celeb-
rities of the day. Schiller was declared to be no poet ;
even Goethe was found wanting. Tieck alone satisfied
the stern requirements of their infallible standard. Falk,
in his portraiture of Goethe, records some humorous re-
marks of the poet respecting this dogmatism : —

" I allow myself the liberty to regard Schiller as a poet, and
even a great poet, notwithstanding the latest imperators and
dictators have assured us that he is not a poet. Wieland, too,
they will not accept. The question then is, Whom will they
accept ?

" A short time since, a literary newspaper — I forget whether
in Ingolstadt or Landshut — formally proclaimed Friedrich
Schlegel the first German poet and imperator in the Republic
of Letters. God preserve his Majesty on his new throne, and
grant him a long and happy reign ! Nevertheless, it cannot be
concealed that his kingdom is still encompassed by very rebel-
lious subjects, some of whom [glancing at Falk] we have in
our immediate vicinity. For the rest, the proceedings in our
German Republic of Letters are as wild as those which marked
the decline of the Roman Empire, where it ended with every-

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 431

body wanting to reign, and no one knew exactly who was
emperor. . . . Wieland and Schiller are already declared to
have forfeited their throne. How long my old emperor's man-
tle will remain on my shoulders no one can say. I myself
know not. But I am resolved, if ever it should come to that,
to show the world that kingdom and sceptre are not grown to
my heart, and to bear my dethronement with patience, as indeed
no man in this world can easily escape his fate."

Of the two brothers, Friedrich, the younger, is com-
monly affirmed to be the greater genius. It is not very
clear on what grounds this superiority is claimed for
him. Both were men of extraordinary ability, and if
Friedrich gives the impression of greater originality, it
is owing perhaps to his more eccentric and extreme
views. August Wilhelm was, as it seems to me, the
more comprehensive and talented of the two. We will
take them in the order of seniority.

August Wilhelm, son of Consistorialrath Schlegel of
Hanover, was born 1767; studied philology in Gottingen,
where he became a favorite with the poet Burger, who
called him his beloved son in Apollo, and where he
gained the prize for a Latin dissertation on the geog-
raphy of Homer, and furnished the index to Heyne's
Virgil. After leaving the University and spending some
years as a private tutor in Amsterdam, he returned to
Germany and established himself in Jena, where he re-
ceived in 1798 the appointment of Professor of Literature.
He there became intimate with Tieck and Schelling and
other men of note, and edited, in connection with his
brother, the " Athenaeum," the organ of the Romantic
School. In 1802 he went to Berlin, where he lectured
for two years on literature and art. In 1804 he made

432 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

the acquaintance of Madame de Stael, who received from
him the greater part of the information concerning Ger-
man literature embodied in her work," De FAllemagne."
He travelled four years in her company, sojourning for
a while in the principal capitals of Europe. While in
Vienna he gave the celebrated lectures on dramatic
literature, which mark an epoch in dramatic criticism.
In Sweden he was made Councillor of Legation, and re-
ceived the diploma of nobility. Returning to Germany
he distinguished himself by his political brochures, writ-
ten in German and in French, and in 1818 was called to
the chair of Literature in the new University of Bonn,
where he died, 1845.

Germany, the land of scholars, has produced few who
have so good a title to that designation as the elder
Schlegel. The range of his literary culture may be es-
timated by the fact that he wrote with equal ease in four
different languages, and was able to translate into Latin
the " Gragas " from the Icelandic and the " Bhagavat-
Gita" from the Sanscrit. Into his native German he
translated the three prime poets of three nations, —
Shakspeare, Dante, and Calderon. His Dante and his
Calderon I know only by repute, as unsurpassed and un-
surpassable. Of his Shakspeare I can say from perso-
nal acquaintance that he has made Shakspeare write in
German ; that there is almost nothing enjoyed by an
English reader in the plays which a German may not
enjoy as well. The masterly translator wrote also origi-
nal poems, and among other things a tragedy entitled
"Ion." These compositions have found no favor with
either critics or the public. They are insignificant ap-
pendages to his graver works, and would not, it is likely,
have survived without these. The chief, if not the only

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 433

merit of the lyrics is the skill with which the author man-
ages difficult metres, such as the sonnet. The mould
is correct, but utter want of inspiration discredits the
filling. They are well-constructed fabrics, and only lack
life to make them good poems. The author, in a sonnet
written to himself, claims to be the creator and the
" model of rule," — that is, of the rule of art. The son-
net is characteristic of the author's inordinate vanity.
This is a prose translation of it : —

" The first who ventured on German soil to wrestle with the
spirit of Shakspeare and with Dante ; at once the creator and
the image of the rule. How the mouth of the future will name
him is unknown, but the present generation recognizes him by
the name of August Wilhelm Schlegel."

But with all his vanity and other weaknesses, Schlegel
was a man of extraordinary powers. As a critic he
achieved a lasting fame, and in spite of some acciden-
tal partialities must be reckoned among the foremost
in that kind, — less original, perhaps, than Lessing, but
equally ingenious and profound. Many views which
are now familiar he was the first to enunciate.

I select the following from his " Lectures on Dramatic
Literature ": —

" The distinction we have just stated [the distinction between
Classic and Romantic literature] can hardly fail to appear well
founded if it can be shown that the same contrast in the works
of the ancients and moderns runs symmetrically, I might al-
most say systematically, through every branch of art as far as
our knowledge of antiquity extends ; that it is as evident in
music and the plastic arts as in poetry. . . . Rousseau acknowl-
edged the contrast in music, and demonstrated that rhythm and
melody constituted the prevailing principle of the ancients and
harmony of the moderns. . . . On the subject of the plastic arts,

28

4S4 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

an ingenious observation was made by Hemsterhuys that the
ancient painters were perhaps too much sculptors, and that the
modern sculptors are too much painters. This is the exact
point of difference, for I shall distinctly show in the sequel that
the spirit of ancient art and poetry is plastic, and that of the
moderns picturesque. By an example taken from another art,
— that of architecture, — I shall endeavor to illustrate what I
mean by this contrast. In the Middle Ages there prevailed
a style of architecture which, in the last centuries especially,
was carried to the utmost degree of perfection, and which,
whether justly or unjustly, has been called Gothic architecture.
When in the general revival of classical antiquity the imitation
of Grecian architecture became prevalent, and but too frequently
without due regard to the difference of climate and manners or
the destination of the structure, the zealots of this new taste
passed a sweeping sentence of condemnation on the Gothic,
which they represented as tasteless, gloomy, and barbarous.
This was in some degree pardonable in the Italians, among
whom a love for ancient architecture, from the remains of clas-
sical edifices which they inherited, and the similarity of their
climate to that of the Greeks, might in some sort be said to
be innate. But with us, inhabitants of the North, the first
powerful impression on entering a Gothic cathedral is not so
easily eradicated. We feel, on the contrary, a strong desire to
investigate and justify the source of this impression. A very
slight attention will convince us that the Gothic architecture
not only displays an extraordinary degree of mechanical dex-
terity, but also an astonishing power of invention ; and on a
closer examination we become impressed with the strongest
conviction of its profound character, and of its constituting a
full and perfect system in itself as well as the Grecian.

" Now for the application. The Parthenon is not more dif-
ferent from Westminster Abbey or the Church of St. Stephen
at Vienna, than the structure of a tragedy of Sophokles from a
drama of Shakspeare. The comparison between these wonder-
ful productions of poetry and architecture might be carried still
further. But does our admiration of the one compel us to

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 435

depreciate the other ? . . . We will quarrel with no one for his
predilection, either for the Grecian or the Gothic ; the world
is wide, and affords room for a great diversity of objects. Nar-
row and exclusive prepossessions will never constitute a genuine
critic or connoisseur, who ought, on the contrary, to possess
the power of elevating himself above all partial views and of
subduing all personal inclinations."

He refers the different styles of poetry to the differ-
ence in cliaracter and religion between the Greeks and
the moderns.

" With the Greeks, human nature was in itself all-sufficient.
They were conscious of no wants and aspired to no higher per-
fection than that which they could actually rittain by the exer-
cise of their own faculties. The very reverse of all this is the
case with the Christian. Everything finite and mortal is lost
in the contemplation of infinity. Life has become a shadow,
and the first dawning of our real existence opens in the world
beyond the grave. Such a religion must awaken the foreboding
which slumbers in every heart to the most thorough conscious-
ness that the happiness after which we strive we can never here
attain ; that no external object can ever entirely fill our souls ;
and that every mortal enjoyment is but a fleeting and momen-
tary illusion. When the soul, resting as it were beneath the
willows of exile, breathes out its longing for its distant home,
the prevailing character of its songs must be melancholy. Hence,
the poetry of the ancients was the poetry of enjoyment, and ours
is that of desire. The former has its foundation in the present;
the latter hovers between memory and hope."

In his lecture on Shakspeare, Schlegel vindicates the
poet from the charge of ignorance : —

" The proofs of his ignorance, on which the greatest stress is
laid, are a few geographical blunders and anachronisms. Be-
cause in a comedy founded on a tale he makes ships land in
Bohemia, he has been the subject of ridicule. But I conceive

436 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

that we should do him great injustice were we to conclude that
he did not, as well as ourselves, possess the valuable but by no
means difficult knowledge that Bohemia is nowhere bounded by
the sea. He could never in that case have looked into a map
of Germany, whereas he describes the maps of both Indies
with the discoveries of the latest navigators. In such matters
Shakspeare was faithful only in the historical subjects of his
own country. In the novels on which he worked he avoided
disturbing his hearers, to whom they were known, by the cor-
rection of errors in secondary things. The more wonderful the
story the more it ranged in a purely poetical region, which he
transfers at will to an indefinite distance. These plays, what-
ever name they bear, take place in the true land of romance
and in the century of wonderful stories. ... He had not to do
with a petty hypercritical age like ours, which is always seek-
ing in poetry for something else than poetry. His audience
entered the theatre not to learn geography and natural history,
but to witness a vivid exhibition. I undertake to prove that
Shakspeare's anachronisms are, for the most part, committed
purposely and after great consideration. It was frequently of
importance to him to bring the subject exhibited from the
background of time quite near to us. Hence in * Hamlet,'
though avowedly an old Northern story, there prevails the tone
of modish society, and in every respect the costume of the most
recent period.'*

Speaking of " Hamlet," Schlegel gives this ingenious
explanation of the bombast which characterizes the
speech of the player who is to perform in the presence
of the Court, concerning Hecuba: —

" It never occurred to them [the commentators] that this
speech must not be judged of by itself, but in connection with
the place in which it is introduced. In order to distinguish it
as dramatic poetry within the play itself, it was necessary that
it should rise above the dignified language of the play itself, in
the same proportion that the theatrical elevation does above

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 437

simple nature. Hence, Shakspeare composed the play introduced
into ' Hamlet ' in sententious rhymes full of antitheses."

Of the play of " Romeo and Juliet," founded on a story
which Shakspeare did not invent, the critic says : —

" By the manner in which he has handled it, it has become
a glorious song of praise on that inexpressible feeling which
ennobles the soul and gives to it its highest sublimity, and
which elevates even the senses themselves into soul. At the
same time it is a melancholy elegy on its frailty, from its own
nature and external circumstances ; at once the deification and
the burial of love. It appears here like a heavenly spark
which, descending to earth, is converted into a flash of light-
ning, by which two mortal creatures are almost at the same
moment ignited and consumed. Whatever is most intoxicating
in the odor of a Southern spring, languishing in the song of the
nightingale, or voluptuous in the first opening of the rose, is
breathed into this poem. But even more rapidly than the ear-
liest blossoms of youth and beauty decay, it hurries on from
the first timidly-bold declaration of love and modest return to
the most unlimited passion, to an irrevocable union ; then,
amid alternating storms of rapture and despair, to the death of
the two lovers, who still appear enviable, since their love sur-
vives them, and since by their death they have obtained a tri-
umph over every separating power. The sweetest and the
bitterest, love and hatred, festivity and dark forebodings,
tender embraces and sepulchres, the fulness of life and self-
annihilation, are here brought into close union. And all these
contrasts are so blended in this harmonious and wonderful work
into one impression, that the echo left in the mind by the whole
resembles a single but endless sigh." ^

Friedrich Schlegel, his brother's junior by five years,
was destined by his father for mercantile life, and placed

1 These quotations are from Black's translation.

438 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

in a counting-room at Leipsic ; but feeling in himself a
vocation for letters, at the age of sixteen he cut short
his apprenticeship and began to prepare for the Uni-
versity. At Gottingen and Leipsic he studied philology,
giving special attention to ancient literature. In 1797
he published an essay on the " Greeks and Romans,"
and soon after another on the "Poetry of the Greeks
and Romans." At the beginning of the century he
went as privat docent to Jena, and in company with his
brother edited " The Athenaeum," in which he promul-
gated with extravagant zeal the principles of the Ro-
mantic School, insisting first of all that poetry must not
be divorced from life ; that to constitute any one a true
poet his life must be steeped in poetry. He further un-
dertook to enforce this principle in his unfinished novel
" Lucinde," in which he advocates " free love " as alto-
gether a more poetic relation of the sexes than the hard
Philistine institution of marriage. There is nothing
coarse or sensual in the book ; on the contrary, it leans
toward mysticism, which in fact was the characteristic
proclivity of Schlegel's nature. It was rendered harmless
by its portentous stupidity, which prevented its being read
except by adventurous spirits of the School who sympa-
thized with the author, and by some hardened review-
ers. Schlegel illustrated his doctrine by eloping with
the wife of one Veit, a degenerate daughter of Moses
Mendelssohn, who left her husband and children and
accompanied him to Paris as his wife, and afterward
joined him in his apostasy when, in pursuance of his
romantic principles, he went over to the Church of
Rome. His change of faith, or rather of ecclesiastical
status, secured to him the favorable notice of the Aus-
trian Government and a friendly reception at Vienna,

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 439

whitlier he repaired, and where he was made secretary
to the Chancellor of State. In 1809, attached to the
service of Archduke Charles, he distinguished himself
as a diplomat by his official papers in the war against
Napoleon, and as a literary man by his lectures on
modern history and on ancient and modern literature.
The high estimation in which his diplomatic services
were held, caused him to be appointed in 1815 Secretary
of Legation to the German Diet. On his return to
Vienna he gave a course of lectures on the Philosophy
of Life, and edited the " Concordia," a journal aiming
to reconcile conflicting opinions in Church and State.
We next find him in Dresden lecturing on the Philoso-
phy of Language. I ought to have stated that in ear-
lier years, while in Paris, he devoted himself to the
study of the Hindu literature, and published his work
entitled " Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier,"
by which he became the pioneer of Sanscrit scholarship
in Germany.

The lectures in Dresden were not completed ; he died
while the course was in progress, on the 11th of January
1829, — died in the midst of an unfinished sentence.
The last word which he wrote was " aber." In two
hours the hand which wrote it was cold. A stroke had
finished the writing and the writer.

Friedrich Schlegel's poetry is certainly of a higher
order than his brother's. But while it escapes the hard-
ness and flatness of the latter, it runs to the opposite
extreme of fantasticism and mysticism. The best, as it
seems to me, of the poems I have examined is the " Ro-
land," — a heroic poem written in the same metre with
Longfellow's "Hiawatha." But the best of his poems
are not the best of his doings ; and had he written only

440 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

poetry, he would not have held the place he occupies in
the roll of German authors. His strength, like that of
August Wilhelm, lies in the direction of philosophic
criticism. There we must concede to him eminent
ability when even we dissent from his Romanistic views
of persons and events. This Romanistic bias is con-
spicuous in his judgment of Luther. After acknowl-
edging the beneficent influence which the writings of
the great reformer exercised on the German language,
he remarks : —

"In all his writings there is a conflict between light and
darkness ; between a firm, immovable faith and an equally in-
domitable, wild passion ; between God and himself. As to the
course he adopted at that parting of the ways, as to the use he
made of his great intellectual power, that is a matter on which
opinions now as then must differ and antagonize. As for myself
and my own judgment concerning him, I need hardly say that
the only impression made upon me by his writings and his life, is
that compassion which we always feel when we see a man of
great and exalted nature going to perdition by his own fault."

In his lectures on modern history, which manifest
great philosophic insight into the motive powers of the
times and the sources and bearings of events, he em-
phasizes a defect in Luther's character which is unde-
niable, which his own followers deplored, but of which
we may say that without it Luther could not have been
the power he was or accomplished what he did.

" He was undeniably gifted with great qualities ; and all the
defects we are obliged to lay to his charge may be comprised in
the single reproach that he was possessed with an utterly un-
bending self-will and arrogance. ... To this one quality every-
thing that by its passionate violence or otherwise appears

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 441

censurable may be traced, and everything in his peculiar views
that is repugnant to the mild and loving spirit of Christianity.
Whoever would restore the original pure form of Christianity
must act in its own mild and loving spirit. Thus did Borromeo
and Saint Theresa, with all their strictness, yet still full of love,
really reform the Church. Luther's violence was not only with-
out restraint toward his enemies, but even toward his friends
and co-reiigionists, if they did not think exactly like himself.
The expressions he permitted himself to use against Henry
VIII. appear incredible in our age. His vehemence against
the Calvinists, and against other disciples who separated from
him, and whom he seemed to regard as rebellious deserters, ex-
ceeded in passionate utterance all that he was wont to manifest
against the Anti-Christ in Rome, as he was in the habit of call-
ing the Pope. Even to effect the removal of abuses and the
reform of the ecclesiastical constitution this stormy violence
was by no means the best course ; because, from the close con-
nection of Church and State, all proceedings ought to have been
conducted with extreme forbearance, or the greatest discord
must necessarily ensue. Least of all, could a true reform of
philosophy be achieved . . . b}^ a man who could speak of Aris-
totle, the great teacher of Alexander, as nothing but ' a damned
rascally dead heathen.' "

Friedrich Sclilegel followed the track of Herder in his
wide researches into, and efforts to diffuse a knowledge
and right estimate of, the literature of all times and
nations. In that section of his essay entitled " Contri-
butions in Aid of the Study of Romantic Poetry," which
treats of the poetry of the North, he discusses the char-
acter of the Ossianic poems. It is well known that
Macpher son's publication of what purported to be a
translation from the Gaelic of the poems of Ossian, was
hailed with enthusiasm through the greater part of
Europe.

442 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

"But when the first tumult of astonishment had subsided,
and the cooler influences of reason and judgment resumed their
sway, doubts arose, in England more especially, as to the au-
thenticity of these poems. The most cursory investigation of
the old Scottish ballads in the primitive Gaelic tongue, made it
evident that Macpherson had acted most unfairly in his version
of these early poems, treating them in an arbitrary and careless
manner. At length a complete edition, in three volumes, of
the poems of Ossian, in the original language, appeared in,
London in 1807. And . . . now we [Germans] also possess
an edition of these poems, conscientiously translated from the
Gaelic original. [The poems of Ossian, from the Gaelic, in
the original metre, by Charles W. Ahlwarts, Leipsic, 1811.]
By means of this work, we are now for the first time qualified
to decide on the authenticity and true merit of the entire com-
position. Many doubts have, it is true, been raised in Eng-
land as to the authenticity of our [German] Gaelic Ossian."

But Schlegel proceeds to say that there is strong in-
ternal evideQce against the supposition that " Macpher-
son and his Scottish accomplices fabricated and invented
the whole, — an opinion which the scepticism and party
spirit of many learned Englishmen have maintained
with unreasonable pertinacity." He then proceeds to
discuss the probable date of these poems. Macpherson,
it seems, "from mistaken patriotism," anxious to give
them high antiquity, and to carry them back to the time
of the Romans, had falsified the text. The chief, styled
by Ossian " King of the Shield," he had rendered " King
of the World," and applied it to Caesar. Their date
Schlegel tliinks cannot have been earlier than the latter
portion of the ninth century.

"The exploits of Fingal and the songs of Ossian [which
celebrate them], if we assign to the former the earliest period
at which they could possibly have occurred, and suppose the lat-

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 443

ter to have been almost contemporary with the actions recorded,
cannot have been earlier than the conclusion of the ninth or
the opening of the tenth century. By a remarkable coinci-
dence, it happens that their appearance was simultaneous with
that of many other grand poetical works. The development
of the Edda, in its present form, took place about this time in
Iceland, while the knightly deeds of Charlemagne and Roland
became the theme of Norman song. The Eastern poet, Fir-
dusi, about the same time collected in his immortal work the
history of Persia and the traditions of her ancient kings and
warriors. Not much later the Spanish Cid performed those
exploits which were almost immediately celebrated in heroic
tales, and made the subject of ravishing songs and ballads.
While in Germany the song of the Nibelungen appeared, re-
lating the legend of Attila, and of his last marriage, and the
misfortunes inflicted upon Germany by the Frankish and
Gothic heroes.

" All these works appeared in the very heart of that long pe-
riod of time usually designated the night of the Middle Ages, —
a term, perhaps, well fitted to express the isolated existence of
nations and individuals, and the interruption of that universal
active intercourse which prevailed in the latter period of the
Roman dominion. ... In this view, and because the business
and occupations of the time were not then prosecuted with the
skill and dexterity of modern ages, that remarkable period
in the civilization of mankind may indeed be termed a night.
But how starlit, how radiant was that night ! Now, on the
contrary, we are wrapt in the gloom and confusion of a linger-
ing twilight. The stars which shone upon that night are dim,
many of them sunk even below the horizon, and yet no day
has risen upon us. More than once, indeed, we have been sum-
moned to hail the dawn of a new sun which was to bring uni-
versal knowledge, happiness, prosperity. But the results have
by no means justified the rash anticipation ; and if some prom-
ise seems still to herald the approach of a new day, it is but the
chill breath of the morning air which ever precedes the breaking
light."

444 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

Schlegel calls attention to a very remarkable fact, —
the absence in the poems of Ossian of any religion : —

[The Lowlands of Scotland were already Christianized, but
the] " dwellers on the rocky fastnesses of the distant Highlands,
and many chiefs of the old tribes, were either ignorant of or
refused to accept the doctrine. Nevertheless, the worship of
the Druids had long been totally extinct. This circumstance
may account for the absence of any reference in these poems
to their tenets or institutions, and also for the peculiar Ossianic
mythology, or rather the total want of any mythology. . . .
Ossian seems like a melancholy echo from the voice of a ruined
nation, the last vanishing shadow of man's departing faith in
ancient mythology. Except the spirits of departed heroes
hovering around their mountains in mist and cloud, Ossian
knows no immortal or Divine being. He names none except
Loduinn, who is probably identical with Odin, so long the
supreme divinity of Scandinavia. It is as if the unhappy race
whose last expiring groans were heard in Ossian had no longer
any divinities of their own, and therefore turned with longing
hearts to the majestic heroes and demigods of the happier Scan-
dinavian North."

I will add to these illustrations of Friedrich Schlegel
one or two extracts from the essay on the " Limits of
the Beautiful " : —

" ' The world itself is ever young,' — thus sings the poet of
Nature, — but its transitory scenes pass swiftly by. Men
come, men go, eager as in a race ; each stretches forth his
hand to seize the torch of life. ... * Fly ! ' Nature seems to
say, in seductive accents to humankind, — ' fly from thy paltry
legislations, thy miserable art, and reverently own thy alle-
giance to the generous, all-bounteous mother, whose full breast
is the source of all genuine life. There is in the human breast
a fearful unsatisfied desire to soar into infinity, — a feverish
longing to burst the narrow bounds of individuality ; and man

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 445

is often so overcome by this wild longing that his very thirst
for freedom makes him a prey to the overwhelming force of
Nature. In savage disdain he spurns the restraint of laws, and
with loveless soul pollutes the glorious excellence of his being.
Never was there any people more distinguished by their keen
enjoyment of natural pleasure, or their excess in every intel-
lectual and mental indulgence, than the Romans; never were
any people more mighty in strength, more lawless, intemperate,
and cruel than that nation, from the time when Brutus first
stained his noble name with the guilt of assassination to the
period of Nero's darker crimes. Their capacity for enjoyment
and means of supplying it were so boundless that the profu-
sion and luxury of a Roman life surpass the limits of our im-
agination. The very enormity of their crimes excites a feeling
of wonder ; indignation is almost absorbed in astonishment at
the indomitable will, the unfettered license, which could dare
their perpetration. The results of such excesses are inscribed
in characters of flame on every page of their annals, and seem
to be handed down for a warning to all coming generations.
All that the earth could furnish them was insufficient to satisfy
their unappeasable longings, till Roman vigor itself proved un-
able to withstand the ceaseless influence of revelry and riot.
Enervated and debased, they sank into total extinction."

" The highest bliss of the human soul is love. The noblest
form of love is attachment to our fatherland. I speak not
now of that mighty instinct which burned in the breast of
Roman heroes and patriots. Regulus, who with downcast
eyes tore himself from his kindred, quitted Rome, and hurried,
a noble fugitive, to the land of his enemies ; Decius, who, de-
voting himself to the infernal gods, invoked their vengeance on
his head and rushed into the arms of death, — seem to us rather
demigods than men. Compared with the heavenly, joyous
simplicity of Bulls and Sperthias, with the glowing cheerful-
ness of Leonidas, they are but barbarians ; they fulfil the law,
but without love. Patriotism was not the incitement of those
who died at Thermopylse ; they fell for the laws, or to fulfil
their vows. To die thus was the summit of their ambition.

446 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

In that pure system of government which aims at binding all
its members in one general union, there is a communion of
love, a mutual interchange of bliss for all. It was the loss of
this which the unhappy Lacedemonian, who had forfeited his
honor and was condemned by the laws of his country to perpet-
ual ignominy, could not survive. This separated the Dorians
from the Romans by a thousand glorious degrees. It was this
that gave to the life of Brasidas so bright a glow of equanimity
and peace."

" Imagine a character in which the susceptibility of the mind
is small, but the sensitiveness of the soul so boundless that the
slightest emotion thrills through every nerve of the spiritual
being. The life of any creature so constituted would be a cur-
rent of perpetual agitation, fluctuating like the storm-tossed
wave between earth and heaven, now rising as if to scale the
eternal stars, now sinking into the most fearful abyss of the
deep. . . . Such may have been the temperament of Sappho,
and this would give us a clew to the many contradictory ideas
entertained of the glorious genius so essentially and intrinsically
Greek. We too may say, — , "

" ' Still burns the passion that inspired the JEolian Muse,
Still breathes the love her lyre's low chords betray.'

One of her songs and some fragments of her verse deserve to
be numbered among the choicest treasures flung by the wreck
of a by-gone world on the stream of time, and borne on its
bosom to the shores of the present. Their lofty tenderness
seems, as it were, the offspring of a cureless melancholy.
Countless songs of a similar character have since won fame ;
but all others seem feeble and commonplace compared with
hers, and like dim earthly fires grow pale in the stainless rays
of that immortal sun."

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL, 447

II. — NOVALIS.

The fairest, purest, tenderest blossom of the Romantic
School, and, I may add, of all the schools and epochs of
German literature, is Friedrich von Hardenberg, better
known by his nom c?e jo/t^m^, Novalis, — one of those ideal
beings in whom spirit so predominates over flesh as to
give one the impression of a stranger in earthly scenes,
an ethereal visitant " moving about in worlds not real-
ized." I find no match for this rare genius among the
authors of the modern world. The name of his country-
man Korner, and among English poets those of Shelley
and Keats, suggest themselves as nearest to him in
their unworldliness, their lofty aspiration, and their early
death. Shelley especially, who died at nearly the same
age, resembles him in the ethereality of his genius. But
Novalis added to nearly all that Shelley possessed in-
tellectually a deeper intuition ; and to all that Shelley
was morally, a childlike, affectionate nature and a rever-
ent faith.

In him were united in just proportions the poet, the
philosopher, and the scientist, — by temperament a poet,
by intellectual proclivity a metaphysician of the idealist
order, by professional training a physicist, with a special
fondness for mathematics. The moral beauty of his
nature, the youtliful. loveliness of his person, won for
him the enthusiastic friendship of some of the foremost
intellects of his time, — the two Schlegels, Shelling,
Tieck, and the geologist Werner.

But what most distinguishes Novalis among his literary
contemporaries is his deep religiousness, a piety dis-
tinctively Christian,— Christian, according to the Mora-
vian fashion ; a piety which clings to the personal Christ

448 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

and rejoices in the consciousness of a personal relation
with him. In early youth, after the death of his be-
trothed, which shattered his whole being, he experienced
what is technically called a " conversion." The expe-
rience is indicated in one of his hymns. ''In a time
of utter misery," he writes, " when all my wishes lay
in the grave, and it was a torment to be still on the
earth, suddenly, as from above, the stone was rolled
away from the sepulchre, and a new life opened up
in me."

One of his brothers and his dear friend Friedrich
Schlegel became converts to the Church of Rome.
Hence the rumor that Novalis himself had joined that
communion, — a rumor which misled Goethe, and was
confirmed by Falk in his reported conversations with
Goethe. But Tieck, his intimate friend, denies the
fact, and declares that Novalis was utterly incapable
of such a step. Whoever has read with attention his
" Geistliche Lieder " must be satisfied of the truth
of that declaration. There is no trace of Romanism
in those compositions. His Christianity was altogether
of a different type; it was, as I have said, Moravian.
Yet he never joined the Moravian communion, of
which his father and mother were zealous members.
Nominally and formally he was a Lutheran ; but he
seems to have felt no special attrg^ction to any ecclesi-
astical organization. His religion was essentially un-
ecclesiastical.

Noticeable it is that devoutness in his case was not
only entirely free from formalism and cant, or any of
that outward show which often accompanies the religious
life, but consisted with the utmost freedom and bold-
ness of thought, and with utterances which might seem

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 449

shocking to conventional pietism. The same pen which
indited those devout hj^mns, —

And
And

*' Was war' ich ohne dich gewesen
Was wiird' ich ohne dich nicht sein,

" Unter tauseud frohen Stunden,"

" Ich sage jedem dass er lebt
Und auferstanden ist,"

could also write, —

" Miracles as contradictions of Nature would be a-mathemati-
cal. But there are no miracles in that sense. . . . Nothing is
miraculous to mathematics." — " If God could be man, he can
also be stone, plant, animal, element. In this way, perhaps,
there is a continuous redemption in Nature." — " We need not
fear to admit that man has a preponderating tendency to evil.
So much the better is he by nature; for only the unlike
attracts."

Friedrich von. Hardenberg, whom I have thus far de-
signated by his nom de plume, Novalis, was born 1772,
in Wiederstedt, a family estate in the county of Mansf eld
in Saxony. He was the son of Baron von Hardenberg,
director of the Saxon salt-works, a wealthy, energetic
man of business, who combined great practical ability
with a cheerful temperament, high-toned morals, and
strong religious faith ; the mother, a loving Christian
woman, whose chief interest in life was the temporal and
moral welfare of her household. Friedrich was the sec-
ond of twelve children. A sickly childhood delayed the
unfolding of his mental faculties. No bud of promise
appeared in the boy until his ninth year, when, encour-
aged by his older sister, who for that purpose took part
in his boyish tasks, he began to show what was in him.

29

450 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

At the age of eighteen he entered the University of
Jena, afterward that of Leipsic as a student of law,
and finished his academic course at Wittenberg in the
autumn of 1794.

His thirst for knowledge impelled him to seek it in
all directions. In addition to the studies embraced in
his proper curriculum, he applied himself to science and
philosophy. Impatient of sciolism and vague generali-
ties, he aimed at thoroughness in all that he undertook.
In Jena he became acquainted with Fichte, who had been
a proteg^ of his father, supported by him in school and
college ; and with Schelling, first a pupil of Fichte, whom
he soon superseded. In converse with these men he
imbibed the philosophic spirit, which guided all his in-
quiries and which animates all his writing. One of his
biographers. Just, says of him : —

" I was to be his teacher and guide, but he became my teacher.
Even in those departments in which by experience and prac-
tice I may be supposed to have had the advantage of him in
knowledge, I was forced to summon all my powers to satisfy
his spirit of investigation, which would not content itself with
the commonplace, the known, the every-day use, but sought
everywhere the refined, the profound, the hidden. He carried
me away with him, freed me from the fetters of one-sidedness
and pedantry by which an old business man is apt to become
enthralled. By his conversation and writing he forced upon me
a many-sided view of the same subject, and so far as my heavy
moulded nature would allow raised me to the contemplation
of those ideals which were always floating before his mental
vision. . . . Who would have supposed that this youth, in order
to fit himself for a man of business, did not shun the labor of
repeating and entirely remodelling the same performance twice
or thrice until it seemed to me what it ought to be ; that he
marked whole pages of synonymous or slightly differing phrases,

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 451

in order to have command of variety and precision of expres-
sion in business documents ; that he would labor at the com-
monest tasks of a practitioner with the same diligence which
he bestowed on labors more congenial to such a mind ? But
what he willed, he willed not half but wholly ; he would pursue
nothing superficially, but everything thoroughly. . . . There were
three things for which, then, and I believe until his death, he had
a decided predilection, — consistency in thinking and acting,
aesthetic beauty, and science."

From these extracts it will be seen that Novalis was
destined, not less by his own preference than by the
wish of his father, for a life of business. To this end,
he studied the principles and technicalities of trade in
Tennstedt with Just, whom I have just quoted, then
chemistry with the celebrated chemist Mingleb in Lan-
gensalza, and mineralogy with Werner in Freiberg. By
these studies he qualified himself to pass the required
examination, which procured for him, a short time before
his death, the post of assessor of the board of directors
of the Electoral-Saxon Salina, where his scientific prepa-
ration suggested important improvements which he did
not live to realize. He had no need to hurry. Accord-,
ingly, these preparatory studies, often interrupted by
illness and other disturbing events, were prolonged
through a period of six years ; and within that term,
from the close of his college days until his death, his
literary labors — the avocations of his leisure liours —
are all comprised.

While studying with Just at Tennstedt, on one of his
professional journeys he made at Grriiningen, in the
neighborhood of Arnstadt in Thiiringen, the acquain-
tance of Sophie von Kiihn, a girl of thirteen, for whom
he immediately conceived a romantic passion, like that

452 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

which the child Beatrice inspired in the boy Dante, — a
passion which for him also was the source of a vita
nuova, a new intellectual life. Tieck says : —

" The first sight of this beautiful and wondrously lovely fig-
ure was decisive for all his future. One may say that the sen-
timent which then penetrated and animated him made the
contents of his whole life. Even on childish forms there is
sometimes stamped an expression which, as being too blessedly
and spiritually fair and lovely, we call unearthly, heavenly ;
and in the contemplation of these transfigured, almost trans-
parent faces, the fear befals us that they are too delicate, too
finely woven for this life, that it is death or immortality which
gazes on us out of those gleaming eyes ; and it oftens happens
that a swift decline verifies our fear. . . . All who have known
this idol of our friend's devotion are agreed that no description
can express the grace and heavenly atmosphere in which that
unearthly being moved, the beauty and majesty which envel-
oped her. Novalis became a poet whenever he spoke of her."

Notwithstanding the difference in their ages, he ob-
tained, toward the close of the year 1795, the consent of
her parents to their betrothal ; but years must elapse
.before her maturity and his civil position would allow of
their union. The union never took place. After long
illness and a painful operation, his beloved died on the
eve of her fifteenth birthday. Hardenberg had applied
himself to medicine, had studied her case pathologically,
with the hope of saving her. He could not believe in
the possibility of her being taken from him. He was
absent at the time of her death, and his friends Avere
afraid to communicate the tidings. At last his brother
Carl took upon himself the needful office. Novalis was
stunned with the blow. As soon as he could rally, he
repaired to Arnstadt, the town nearest the family estate

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 453

of the Klihns, and obtained permission to shut himself
up for whole days in the room where Sophie had died.
A sister of the family, led by curiosity to enter the
chamber, was startled at beholding what seemed at first
an apparition of the deceased. Novalis had dressed a
lay figure in the robe and cap which she wore on tlie
sick bed, and placed the book she last read by its side,
in order to assist his imagination in recalling her idea.

For a time the mourner was disqualified for study, for
all occupation but that of brooding over his loss. It
was impressed on his mind that he should follow his be-
loved before the expiration of the year. But the year
expired and he still lived. The lapse of time, though it
left him still a mourner, had somewhat blunted the keen
edge of his affliction. His grief had changed from a
fierce passion to a tender reminiscence. It may seem
unnatural to some, but in reality it was perfectly natural
and entirely consistent with sincere devotion to the
memory of his first love that he should form a new
matrimonial engagement. There was a void in his life
which only a woman could fill. He needed a feminine
comforter, and he found one in Julie von Charpentier,
daughter of an officer of the mines in Freiberg, where he
was then ' occupied with the study of mineralogy. The
second love was less passsionate than the first, but not
less genuine, and gave rich promise of domestic happi-
ness in the culture and character of its object. But this,
too, was a promise never to be realized. The brief rem-
nant of Novalis's life did not suffice for its fulfilment.

The three succeeding years were years of peace, of
social enjoyment and vigorous action. It was during
this term that his best things were composed. But his
bodily constitution, always feeble, could never satisfy

454 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

the demands of his soul, and soon succumbed to wasting
disease. On the 25th of March, 1801, before his twenty-
ninth birthday, he fell asleep, to wake no more in the
flesh, while listening to the music of the piano, on which
his brother Carl was playing at his request. It is sel-
dom that the early death of a writer has left so strong
an impression of a great possibility lost to letters and
mankind.

The writings of Novalis, besides the unfinished novel
" Heinrich von Ofterdingen," which was to have been
his masterpiece, — an apotheosis of poesy, — are the
" Hymns to Night " (prose compositions), " The Disci-
ples at Sais," also an unfinished work, poems, and phi-
losophic aphorisms. Of the poems, by far the finest are
the hymns ; they are unsurpassed by anything I have
met with in that line, expressing deep feeling and reli-
gious experience in pure and melodious verse. The
author's father, a practical man of affairs, with no taste
for poetry, and not much liking though not opposing
Friedrich's attempts in that kind, heard one Sunday in
the Moravian chapel a hymn which affected him as he
had never before been affected by sacred song, reaching
down to the depths of his being. After the service, on the
way home, he asked a neighbor whose hymn it was that
the congregation had sung that day. " Is it possible," was
the answer, " that you do not know your son's hymn ? "

The aphorisms, or philosophical fragments, constitute
about one-half of what is left to us of Novalis's writings.
They abound in quaint suggestions and original views,
sometimes paradoxical, always thoughtful, often pro-
found ; revealing an independent thinker, careless of
systems, with a habit and reach of speculation and
meditation beyond his years.

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 455

From the Miscellaneous Fragments,

" Where a genuine vocation to philosophize predominates
(which is something more than elaboration of this or that
thought), there is progress. In the absence of such vocation
many learn to argue and form conclusions, — as a shoemaker
learns shoemaking, — without ever dreaming or giving them-
selves the trouble of ascertaining the ground of their thoughts,
which is the only sound method. With many the interest in
philosophy lasts only for a time ; often it decreases with years,
or with the invention of a system which was sought only to save
the trouble of reflection."

" The highest problem of culture is to possess oneself of one's
own transcendental self, to be the ego of one's e^o."

"... Without perfect self-knowledge we can never know
others aright."

" The more limited a system is the more it will please the
worldly-wise. Hence the system of the materialists — the sys-
tem of Helvetius and also of Locke — has been most approved
by that class of men."

" Philosophy is fundamentally anti-historic ; it proceeds from
the necessary to the actual. It is the science of the universal
sense of divination ; it explains the past from the future. The
contrary is the method of history."

" The beginning of the ego is merely imaginary. It must
have begun thus if at all. Beginning is a later idea ; it is
subsequent to the ego ; therefore the ego can have had no
beginning."

" I = Not I is the highest proposition in all science and art."

*' In order to thoroughly know a truth one must first have
contended against it."

" Designation by sounds and strokes of the pen is a wonder-
ful abstraction. Four letters [in English three] stand for God ;
a few marks for millions of things. How easy hereby becomes
the manipulation of the universe, how manifest the concentricity
of the spiritual world ! Language is the dynamic of the spirit*

456 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

realm. A word of command moves armies ; the word ' Liberty '
moves nations."

"In the same way in which we bring the movements of
thought to utter themselves in speech, to express themselves
in gesture, to stamp themselves in action, — as we move and
stop moving at will, combine or particularize our movements, —
in the same way we must learn to command the interior organs
of the body. . . . Our whole body is capable of being put in
motion by the mind. Witness the effects of fear, of terror,
sorrow, anger, envy, shame, joy, imagination. There are ex-
amples too of individuals who have acquired command over
particular portions of the body which usually are not subject
to the will. In this way every one can be his own physician,
can attain complete and certain knowledge of his interior con-
dition. Then he will be entirely independent of Nature ; will
perhaps be able even to restore lost members, to arrive at true
conclusions concerning body, soul, life, death, and the spirit-
world. Perhaps then it will only depend on his volition to
give life to stuff ; he will be able to command his senses, to pro-
duce the forms which he desires, and in the properest sense will
be able to live in a world of his own ; will be able to separate
himself from his body when it seems to him fit ; to see, hear,
feel, what, how, and in what connection, he chooses.'*

" Inoculation with death will one day enter into the healing
art."

" What is Nature ? An encyclopaedic, systematized index
or plan of the mind. Why will we content ourselves with the
bare catalogue of our possessions? Let us contemplate and
use the things themselves. The fate that oppresses is merely
the sluggishness of our spirit. By enlargement and cultivation
of our activity we can change ourselves into fate. Everything
seems to stream in upon us because we do not stream forth.
We are negative because we choose to be. The more positive
we become, the more negative the world about us will be, until
at last there will be no more negation, and we shall be all in
all. God wants gods."

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 457

" All that we experience is a communication, a revelation of
the Spirit. The time has gone by when the Spirit of God was
intelligible. The meaning of the world is lost ; we have got
stuck in the letter, and have lost the Appearing in the appear-
ance. Formerly everything was an epiphany of the Spirit ;
now we see nothing but dead repetition, which we do not under-
stand. The meaning of the hieroglyph is wanting. We are
living on the fruit of better times."

" All manifestation of power is transitional ; stationary power
is matter."

" Perhaps thinking is not externally operative only because
it is a too rapid or too enormous force ; or because things are
too good conductors of the thinking power."

" Genuine mathematics are the true element of the magician."

" One may be a first rate mathematician without being able
to cipher."

" Humanity is the higher sense of our planet, the eye which
it lifts toward heaven."

" As only spirit is truly free, so only spirit can be forced."

" Nature is an enemy of eternal possessions. According to
fixed laws she destroys all signs of property. . . . The earth be-
longs to all generations. Each has a claim upon all. The
earlier should derive no advantage from the accident of primo-
geniture. The right of property lapses at the appointed time.
. . . But if my body is a property by which I acquire citizen-
ship, as a citizen of earth I do not, by the loss of this possession,
forfeit my self. I lose nothing but my place in this public
school, and enter a higher corporation whither my beloved
fellow-pupils will follow me."

'^ The seat of the soul is where the inner and the outer world
meet. ... In sleep, soul and body are equally diffused."

" The greater part of our body, of our human nature itself,
still sleeps."

" What the senses are in animals, leaves and blossoms are to
plants. Blossoms are allegories of consciousness."

" The ideal of perfect health is interesting only in a scientific
view. Sickness is necessary to individualization."

458 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

" Everything of itself is eternal. Mortality and mutability
are precisely a privilege of higher natures. Perpetuity is a
sign (sit venia verbis) of beings devoid of spirit. Perfection is
the synthesis of eternity and time."

" The soul is the most powerful of all poisons, the most pene-
trating diffusible stimulus."

'' Every disease is a musical problem ; cure is a musical
solution."

" Might it not be possible to cure diseases by diseases ? "

" There is but one temple in the world, and that is the human
body. Nothing is more sacred than this sublime form. Bowing
to men is homage rendered to this revelation in the flesh. We
touch heaven when we touch a human body."

" Man has always expressed in his work, in his doing and
abstaining, a symbolic philosophy of his being. He announces
himself and his gospel of Nature. He is the Messiah of
Nature."

Esthetics and Literature.

" Nowhere is it more evident that it is only mind that makes
the objects and changes of Nature poetical, — that the beautiful,
which is the object of art, is not given us ready to our hand in
[material] phenomena, — than in music. All the tones which
Nature produces are rude and unspiritual. It is only to the
musical soul that the rustling of the forest, the whistling of the
wind, the song of the nightingale, the plashing of the brook,
seem melodious and significant. The musician draws the es-
sence of his art from himself ; not the least suspicion of imita-
tion can attach to him. To the painter visible nature seems to
have prepared the way, to be his unattainable model ; but in
truth the art of the painter is just as independent, as much an
a priori origination, as the art of the musician. Only this painter
makes use of an infinitely more difficult hieroglyphic than the
musician. He paints with the eye ; his art is the art of seeing
symmetrically and beautifully. Seeing with him is an active,
forming power. His picture is only his cipher, his expression,
his instrument of reproduction. . . . Properly speaking, the mu-

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL, 459

sician also hears actively, he hears from himself outward. This
reversed use of the senses is, to be sure, a mystery to most men,
but every artist must be more or less conscious of it in himself.
Almost every man has in this regard a little of the artist, — he
sees from himself outwardly, and not from without inwardly.
The main difference is this, — the artist has vivified the germ of
that self-moulding life in his organs, has increased their sensi-
bility for the mind, and consequently is able by means of them
to stream forth ideas at pleasure without external solicitation,
to use them as instruments of any desired modifications of the
actual world ; whereas in the case of the layman they only
respond to some external provocation, and the mind, like inert
matter, seems to be subject, or to subject itself, to the restraint
of the fundamental law of mechanics, according to which all
changes presuppose an external cause, and action and reaction
are equal."

" Every work of art implies an a priori ideal, a necessity in
itself by which it exists.

" Sculpture and music are opposites ; painting forms the tran-
sition from the one to the other. Sculpture gives us the artis-
tically fixed ; music, the artistically fluid."

" It is not the bright tints, the joyous sounds and the warm
air that make the spring inspiring ; it is the silent prophetic
spirit of infinite hopes, a forefeeling of glad days, of the pros-
pering of manifold natures, the presentiment of higher, eternal
blossoms and fruits, mysterious sympathy with a self-unfolding
social world."

" Goethe is quite a practical poet ; he is in his works what
the Englishman is in his wares, — extremely simple, neat, con-
venient, and durable. He has done for German literature what
Wedge wood has done for the English world of art."

" Most people do not know how interesting they are, — what
interesting things they say. A true representation of them-
selves, a record and estimate of their sayings, would amaze
them, and reveal to them an entirely new world in them-
selves."

" In cheerful souls there is no wit. Wit indicates a dis-

460 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

turbance of equipoise ; it is a result of that disturbance, and a
means of righting it."

" Every science has its god, and that god constitutes its
supreme aim : the god of mechanics is perpetual motion ; of
chemistry, a universal solvent ; of philosophy, a first and single
principle ; of mathematics, the quadrature of the circle ; of
medicine, the elixir of life, etc."

" An idea loses surprisingly if I attempt to stamp it as my
discovery and to make it a patent idea."

" Striving after originality is pedantic, coarse egoism. He
who does not treat every other man's thought as his own, and
his own as another's, is no true scholar."

*' The act of transcending self is everywhere the highest,
the primal point, the genesis of life. Flame is such an act."

" With every step toward perfection the work leaves its au-
thor, and is separated from him by more than distance of space.
With the last stroke the master sees what purports to be his
own work separated from him by a gulf whose breadth he
himself can scarcely comprehend, and which he can only cross
by an act of imagination. ... At the very moment when it
was to be wholly his own, it became more than he, its creator.
He became the unknowing organ and property of a higher
power. The artist belongs to the work, not the work to the
artist."

" Lyric poetry is the chorus, in the drama of life, of the
world. Lyric poets are a choir pleasantly compounded of
youth and age, joy, sympathy, and wisdom."

" The first man is the first ghost-seer ; to him everything ap-
pears to be spirit. What are children other than first men ?
The fresh glance of a child is farther-reaching than the pre-
sentiment of the most decided seer."

" It is only the weakness of our organs and our self-contact
which prevent us from seeing ourselves in fairy land. All
fairy tales are only dreams of that home which is everywhere
and nowhere. The higher Powers within us, which one day
like Genii will execute our will, are now the Muses that re-
fresh us with sweet reminiscences in our toilsome way."

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 461

" Everything marked deserves ostracism. Well if it can
ostracize itself. Absolutism must be expelled from the world.
While in the world one must live with the world. We live only
when we live in the sense of those with whom we live. All
that is good in the world comes from within, — to the world
therefore from without."

" A character is a perfectly formed will."

" Man consists in truth. If he sacrifices truth he sacrifices
himself. I am not speaking of lies, but of speaking contrary
to one's conviction."

" The moral idea has no more dangerous rival than the ideal
of the greatest strength."

" If a man could suddenly believe that he is moral he would
be so."

" The growth of our faculty and knowledge keeps pace with
the cultivation of our will. Whenever we are perfectly moral
we shall be able to work miracles, — that is, when we no longer
desire to work any but moral ones. The greatest miracle is a
moral act, — an act of free determination."

'* If the world is, as it were, a sediment of human nature,
the divine world is a sublimation of the same. Both take place
simultaneously ; there is no precipitation without sublimation."

" Imagination places the world to come either in the heights
or in the depths, or in metempsychosis. We dream of journey-
ing through the Universe : is not the Universe within us ? We
know not the deeps of our own spirit : inward leads the mys-
terious way. In us or nowhere is eternity with its worlds, the
past and the future."

" The reason why many people cling to Nature is, that like
naughty children they are afraid of the father, and take refuge
with the mother."

" Nothing is more essential to true religiousness than a
mediator who shall bring us into connection with Deity. . . .
In the choice of a mediator man must be absolutely free ; the
least compulsion is injurious to religion. . . . The more self-
subsistent man becomes the smaller the quantity of mediatorship
[needed], and the finer the quality, — fetiches, stars, animals,

462 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

heroes, idols, gods, a god-man. ... It is idolatry in the widest
sense to view the mediator as God himself. It is irreligion to
acknowledge no mediator."

" Praying is to religion what thinking is to philosophy."

" Where children are, there is the golden age."

" Where there are no gods, spectres rule."

" Poetry is the absolutely real : that is the core of my phi-
losophy. The more poetical the truer."

" The beautiful is the visible par excellence.

" Spirit is forever its own demonstration. The world is the
result of a reciprocal action between me and Deity."

" Scepticism is often only unripe idealism."

" Force is the infinite vowel, matter the consonant."

" Illusion is as essential to truth as the body to the soul.
Error is the necessary instrument of truth. With error I make
truth."

" We must needs be frightened when we cast a glance
into the depths of the soul. Thought and will have no
bounds."

" We ought to be proud of pain. All pain is a reminder of
our higher rank."

" Time is inner space. Space is external time. Every body
has its time, every time its body. Space passes into time, as
body into soul."

" Bodies are thoughts precipitated into space."

" The ground of creation is in the will. Faith is the action
of the will on the intellect. The power to believe is therefore
will."

" Every Englishman is an island."

" Love is the aim of the world's history ; the Amen of the
Universe."

" When our intelligence and our world harmonize, we are
like God."

" Love is the supreme reality, the primal ground of things."

" Too early and immoderate use of religion is exceedingly
detrimental to the growth and prosperity of human kind, —
like brandy to bodily growth."

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 463

" The unknown, the mysterious, is the result and the begin-
ning of all things. We can properly know only what knows
itself."

" If we have real desire and inclination to a thing, we have
genius for it. Genius reveals itself by proclivity."

" When one sees a giant, one must notice the position of the
sun to see if it is not the shadow of a pigmy."

" Be men, and the rights of man will come of themselves."

" The thinking man will find truth from whatever point he
sets out."

" The curved line is the victory of free nature over rule."

" A point can only be conceived as in motion."

" As long as there are brave men and cowards there will be
rank."

" Only the coward is not immortal."

" Philosophy must not answer more than is asked. Its ori-
gin is feeling. The intuitions of feeling comprehend the philo-
sophical sciences."

" Pains must be endurable since we posit them ourselves,
and therefore suffer only as we act."

*' Philosophy is only one half, faith is the other."

III. — LUDWIG TTECK.

As Novalis was the fairest blossom of the Romantic
School, so Tieck may be termed its ripest fruit ; or,
without a metaphor, its most prolific and accomplished
author. There was a time when among the contempo-
rary poets of Germany he held in the estimation of
critics a position second only to Goethe. The popularity
he then enjoyed, like most popularities, was short-lived ;
but his name is still cherished, his works are read, and
a high rank accorded to him in the classic literature of
his country.

464 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

The son of a cordage manufacturer, Ludwig Tieck was
born in Berlin in 1773. Having received his preparatory
education in the gymnasium of that city, he entered the
University of Gottingen, in those days the foremost uni-
versity in Germany. There he devoted himself to the
study of modern literature, and acquired that familiarity
with Shakspeare which made him, next to August W.
Schlegel, the best German interpreter of the English
poet. He began his literary career at an early age, and
pursued it through sixty years with untiring activity.
The most important of his juvenile productions was a
novel in the form of letters, " William Lovell." It de-
picts the career of a young Englishman of talent and
fortune, who becomes corrupted, sinks into vice, into
moral ruin, and ends his life in a du-el. The work is
one of very considerable power, but tinged with the
melancholy, morbid sentiment which characterizes the
author's earlier writings.

In 1798 Tieck married Fraulein Alberti, the daughter
of a Lutheran clergyman of Hamburg, where he resided
some time after leaving the University. His transla-
tion of " Don Quixote," the best perhaps that has ever
been made of that work, belongs to this period. In
the following year he moved to Jena, and made the
acquaintance of the brothers Schlegel, of Fichte, Schel-
ling, and Novalis, and was hailed by the Romanticists
as a fellow-worker and exponent of their poetic theories.
In the same year (1799) he published his '' Life and
Death of St. Genevieve," — a tragedy in which the
spirit of the Romantic School has found, I think, its
highest expression. It is not adapted for acting, and
has never been put upon the stage, but it possesses
genuine dramatic interest and contains passages of ex-

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL, 465

ceeding beauty. I esteem it one of the gems of German
literature.

A companion piece to the " Genevieve," exhibiting the
comic side as that does the tragic side of romance, is
the " Kaiser Octavianus," in two parts, which appeared
in 1802. Prefixed to it, by way of prologue, is a dra-
matic act entitled "Romance," in which Faith, Love,
Valor, Jest, and Romance are among the dramatis per-
sonce. These all unite at the close in a song of praise
commending the old romantic time : —

" Mondbeglatizte Zaubernacht
Die deii Sinn gefangen halt
Wundervolle marchenwelt,
Steig auf in der alten Prach^! ""

"Moon-illumined magic Night I
Thought by thee is captive taken ;
World of wonder, rise, awaken !
Don thy ancient splendor bright! "

In the play itself, Romance in person appears again,
and performs the same office that the Chorus does in
Shakspeare's " Henry V." : —

'* Mir vergonnt dass ich zuweilen
Diene als erzahl'nder Chor."

After Jena, Tieck spent some years in Dresden. In
1805 we find him in Rome busying himself in the Vati-
can with the study of manuscripts of old German works,
and enlarging his acquaintance with mediaeval literature.
On his return, he took up his residence for a time in
Vienna, then in Munich, then in Prague. In 1817 he
made a journey to London. Two years he spent in
England, devoting himself to the study of the old Eng-

30

466 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

lisli drama with special reference to the antecedents of
Shakspeare, and acquired a more thorough knowledge
of the ground than any Englishman of that day could
boast. There he gathered his materials for his " Shak-
spear's Yorschule." In this he claims for Shakspeare
the authorship of the disputed drama, " Arden of Fever-
sham " a judgment in which few English-speaking critics
will agree. Another delightful little book resulting from
these studies depicts the imaginary boyhood and youth
of Shakspeare, representing his appearance at a fete in
honor of Queen Elizabeth, and his converse with con-
temporary poets in their tavern orgies, where a fortune-
teller predicts his future fame. Already, long before
his visit to England, Tieck had made acquaintance
with the plays of Ben Jonson. Among his earliest
works are translations of that poet's " Volpone " and
the " Epicoene."

Returning from England, he established himself at
Dresden, intending to make it his permanent abode. It
was, in fact, his residence for a longer period than any
other of the many cities he inhabited in the course of
his somewhat nomadic life. Here he was appointed
dramaturg ; that is, theatre critic and literary supervisor
of the Hof-theater. Here, too, he gave lectures and read-
ings, which were much celebrated, and gathered around
him the culture and the fashion of the city. As a reader
he possessed extraordinary vocal gifts, and is said to have
been much in request in other cities where he happened
to visit. In Weimar he read in Goethe's house one of
Goethe's plays, the author and host excusing himself
from attending.

In 1841 the King of Prussia invited Tieck to Berlin,
and assigned him a pension, which relieved him for the

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 467

remainder of his days of all pecuniary burdens. Here
he realized his long-cherished project of a Shakspeare
theatre, which the king had built according to his direc-
tion. For the rest, he seems not to have occupied in the
Prussian capital the distinguished position which he held
in the Saxon. His lectures, which the king had made
a condition of his bounty, did not attract the gay circles
of the court, who sought more stimulating diversion.
His last years were years of seclusion and comparative
neglect, owing in part to bodily infirmities, and in part
to the political troubles which in Prussia agitated the
close of the fifth and the beginning of the sixth decade
of our century. He died at the age of eighty, in 1853.

While in Berlin, and indeed before he left Dresden,
Tieck had occupied himself chiefly with writing what the
Germans call "Novellen" (little novels), something be-
tween a regular novel (Roman) and a tale (Erzahlung).
These constitute a large portion, but by no means the
better portion, of his works. His principal merit, apart
from the very great one of making his countrymen ac-
quainted, by translation and discussion, with the literary
riches of other nations, — notably the English and Span-
ish,— consists in his practical vindication of the marvel-
lous, the supernatural, as a legitimate element of fiction,
in opposition to the tendency and doctrine of the Auf-
kldrung period, and his rehabilitation, in a comic sense
and dramatic form, of the old popular wonder-tales, —
" Bluebeard," " Fortunatus," " Little Red Ridinghood,"
" Puss-in-Boots," and " Tom Thumb."

Here Tieck shows himself in his most pleasing aspect,
and displays what seems to me his most characteristic
talent, — that of humorist, including the genial satirist.

468 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

As a poet in the narrower sense (as singer and writer
of verses) he ranks below many whom in other re-
spects,— in depth of insight and breadth of view, in
fancy and imagination, — he far excels. His verses are
deficient in feeling and tone, in force and fire. A good
deal of skill — a skill on which the author plumed him-
self— is shown in the construction of difficult metres.
Words and rhymes come readily, — too readily to be
select, — but inspiration is wanting. If his fame de-
pended on the lyric compositions with which his dramas
and his marchen are interspersed, it would have perished
long since. They are not the kind of poems that abide
in the memory, or that any one would commit to mem-
ory for love of them. But the tales and the dramas will
live in spite of the verses.

Some of the best of these are embodied in the " Phan-
tasus," the work by whicli Tieck is best known, and
whose origin the author describes in the preface to the
first edition of his collected works : —

" In the leisure of a country residence the thought occurred
to me to enliven the collection, as many novelists have done,
by living interlocutors. This framework, which might develop
many things in the way of conversation, was to form a romance
of itself, in which love, abduction, dissension, embarrassments
of various kinds, were to end with reconciliation and the mar-
riage of some of the company."

This plan was partially fulfilled ; and so we have in
the "Phantasus" genial conversation and literary dis-
cussions, alternating with stories and plays read by
different members of a party of friends who are spend-
ing a portion of the summer at the country-seat of one
of the number. The two volumes of this collection

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 469

contain the " Blonde Eckbert " the " Faithful Eckhart,"
the " Elf en " and other tales, together with the drama-
tized " Yolksmarchen," already mentioned. And not
less interesting than these fictions are the characters
and conversations with which they are interspersed.

Among Tieck's satires is one entitled Die Denkwur-
dige Greschichtschronik der Schildhm^ger, — " Chronicles
of the Citizens of Schilda."

Schilda is a German Utopia, not like More's and other
Utopias, — the imaginary theatre of an ideal common-
wealth, — but the imaginary home of all sorts of stupidi-
ties and absurdities, such as the ancients imputed to the
people of Abdera. Tieck's work is a reproduction, with
new incidents and new meanings, of an elder satire which
he uses as a vehicle for his own.

The following is a hit at Kotzebue and the popular
drama of the day : —

"The people of Schilda were so noble-minded that they
would have their stage to be an appendage of the Lazaretto, —
a sanitary institution. They were conscious of many faults,
and they went to the playhouse to be cured of them. For
them the theatre was not merely a place for the entertainment
of the imagination, or a place where people went to be amused
with pleasant trifles. The Schildaites were so fastidious that
they could not endure pieces in which they would involuntarily
have been forced to laugh. . . . With the same correct feeling
they also rejected tragedy proper. It did not concern them that
a king should lose his kingdom and pine in misery, for they saw
very clearly that they could not sympathize with such woes,
seeing they were not kings. They could only understand cases
where a man was burdened with debts, or afflicted with a son
who preferred to squander money rather than earn it. Here
their hearts were open to tragic impressions, and creditable
tears flowed in abundance. Especially, where in the first act

470 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

the brave, industrious Hans is prevented from marrying the
tender, right-feeling, love-breathing Grete ; then the magnani-
mous spectators could not contain themselves for sympathy, and
there were instances in which some fainted away, and others
were obliged to have recourse to brandy in order to escape the
fatal effects of such strong impressions.

" It will be seen by this what a high stage of culture had
been attained by these our ancestors, whom many despise.
They could look down with contempt on those ancient Athe-
nians whose tragedies were so filled with superstitions and their
comedies with nonsensical trivialities. Whereas, in the Schilda
theatre the heart and the understanding of the citizens were
duly cared for. There they were taught by warning examples
not to make forged wills, and how wrong it is to steal, and
the like.

" Their principal poet, the one whom they most adored, was
named Augustus.^ It was he especially who introduced the
taste we have described. To him the people of Schilda were
indebted for the beautiful device of having toward the close of
the piece a noble man appear, who pays debts, and to whom
alone it it is due that the spectators could go home with light
hearts. He is also said to have been the first who cautioned
people against wit, and showed by his own example how it
could most easily be avoided. He is also said to have invented
the ' Presidenten,' and genteel villains who are made an exam-
ple of in the interest of virtue ; so that integrity, as is proper,
always comes off victorious in the end.

" But nobility of mind may sometimes go too far, and, as it
were, overleap itself. This was exemplified in the case of the
Schildaites. They carried their magnanimity so far at last
that they read poems and odes to their convicts in order to re-
claim them from the paths of vice, and in the mildest way to
convert them without the aid of the gallows. But, strange as
it may seem, poetry entirely missed its legitimate effect on these
hardened natures.

1 The baptismal name of Kotzebue.

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 471

" The people of Schilda deposed their chief magistrate and
established a democratic government, or rather a no-govern-
ment. They abolished all laws, for they argued that there
could be no true virtue where there was fear of punishment ;
the really virtuous are actuated by pure love of virtue without
legal constraint. So each one solemnly promised to be good
and great without compulsion.

'' It happened about that time that the king of the neigh-
boring country was about to start on a journey, which would
take him through the territory of Schilda. These new re-
publicans ascertained the day when he would arrive, and re-
solved to do something memorable in his eyes. They held a
meeting, and agreed that not the least honor should be shown
him, that they might give him to understand that they were
freemen. Some one proposed, moreover, that they should treat
him somewhat rudely, to show him that they were not slaves
nor the minions of tyrants. This proposition gave great satis-
faction, and they prepared themselves by reading books that
would inspire them with the disposition which becomes free-
men. One of them, who was esteemed the wittiest, was commis-
sioned to enact the part of Diogenes, and to establish himself
in a tub in the market-place. Then, when the king should
come and should permit him to ask a favor, he was to say, in
the words of the Greek sage, 'I desire nothing but that you
should stand out of the sun.' Hereby it would be made evident
to the king what a miserable creature he was compared with a
free-born Schildbiirger. The burghers were delighted with
this bright idea, and each man learned by heart some genuine
republican speech with which he intended to molest the king.
They meant to declaim a great deal about the native rights of
man, his original freedom, and the like. They could scarcely,
in their impatience, await the day of his arrival.

" The day came at last. The Schildbiirger were prepared ;
the philosophe lay in his tub and rehearsed his philosophic speech.
Nothing was wanting but the appearance of the king. He finally
appeared. The first who were to address him were so frightened

472 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

and confused by his presence, that they could not recall any
adequate principle, or arouse in themselves any sufficient con-
tempt of tyrants. They stood dumb and embarrassed before
him ; but some who were younger and bolder, seeing the dis-
tress of their fellow-citizens, and feeling ashamed that such a
disgrace should befall the republic, came forward and attempted
to repair the failure of their comrades. They assailed the king
with disconnected rude speeches and abuse. He was unable to
comprehend why he was thus honored. When at last he was
informed by some of the elders that it was only done to try on
their new liberty, their magnanimity and repudiation of the
slavish mind, and that therefore he must not take it amiss, he
laughed heartily. The Schildaites rejoiced to see the pleasure
he took in their republican sentiments, and continued with in-
creased zeal their patriotic declamation. As he made no mo-
tion toward the market-place, they asked him if he would not
like to see their extraordinary philosopher, who was lying there
in a tub, and might almost be called divine. The king fol-
lowed them, and gazed on the man who had been at much
pains to give himself a wild look. He laughed afresh at the
fellow's odd deportment; whereat one of the Schildaites
said : —

" ' There, you see, we told you that he would please you ; he
has a strong head, and is apt at giving short profound answers.
You need only ask him something and he will serve you out
quick, for he is one of the bright ones ; he sometimes says
things so deep that no one can understand them. He will
make short work of your royal dignity. Try him, — ask him,
for example, what favor you can do him."

"The king, who was getting tired, said, 'Well, my good
Schildbiirger, what can I do for you ? '

" Then the Schildbiirger answered, ' My gracious Mr. King,
give me a thousand dollars and you will make me and my fam-
ily happy forever.*

" ' You shall have them,' exclaimed the king. ' I see your
fellow-citizens know how to prize you ; you are certainly the
wisest citizen they have.'

THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. 473

" * Oh, you villain ! ' cried the Schildbiirger. ' Is this the
way you keep your promise ? Is this the answer you were to
make, you traitor ? Sir King, we declare to you that you were
to be asked to stand out of the sun. That was what we had
agreed upon. And it was for that, you villain, that we had
the tub made for you in which you can lie as comfortably as in
your bed. You rascal, what has become of the getting out of
the sun ? '

" * Just hear the fools ! ' Diogenes exclaimed. The sun
is n't shining ; it has clouded as if it were going to rain. It
is n't the king, it is you asses, my fellow-citizens, that stand in
my light. Therefore take yourselves away, that I may receive
my thousand dollars in peace. Do you think that because you
are so bent on being fools, there is not to be one sensible man
among you ? '

" ' We banish you from the land ! ' cried the rest.

" ' All right. Mr. King, give me my money and we will
leave the fools to themselves.'

" So ended this memorable day. Diogenes rejoiced greatly
that he had so improved upon the role assigned him. He left
the country, and the king continued his journey much amused
by the folly of the inhabitants."

474 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

CHAPTER XIX.

HOFFMANN.

OF the various interests which supply the material of
fiction, — the elements in human nature to which
the literature of fiction ministers, — there is none so
prevalent and none so persistent as the love of the
marvellous ; and notably of that form of the marvellous
which finds its topics in a world beyond the reach of
known laws, — the preternatural. The progress of sci-
entific culture has not outgrown the delight which chil-
dren find in fairy tales, or the shuddering gratification
which riper age derives from ghost-stories told in good
faith, — stories which the narrator himself believes, or
would have you believe that he believes.

A very different entertainment is offered in that treat-
ment of the preternatural which aims not to thrill with
terror, but to amuse with mild surprise ; which carries
humor into ghostdom and devildom, and forces them to
exhibit a grotesque side, where the ludicrous neutralizes
the horrible. There is a species of fiction which finds
the preternatural in ordinary every-day life, which places
you in a world where the commonest things and persons
take on a weird character, — as if the teapot on your
breakfast table should turn up its nose at you, or your
arm-chair dance a minuet in your study ; as if your horse
should ogle you with knowing human eyes, suggesting a
metamorphosed human soul ; or, vice versa, your worthy

HOFFMANN. 475

grocer, with whom you have traded these ten years,
should suddenly put off his human disguise, and stand
before you in his native character of an owl or an ass.
Many of us have read " Alice's Adventures in Wonder-
land." Suppose that wonderland treated as a reality, not
as a dream ; suppose it charged with an ironical motive,
and you have a species of composition peculiarly German,
and one in which the writer of whom I am now to speak
is a master, — Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann, a man
of extraordinary gifts, but one of a class, unhappily too
numerous, whose genius has been dimmed and damaged
by moral weakness and irregularity of life.

A master, as I have said, in his own peculiar province ;
but that province is a low one ; and Hoffmann was
formed to excel, if not in the highest, yet in one above
the level of mere amusement. There was in him the ma-
terial of a great historian, — a fine insight into hidden
cause and motive, a large view and just appreciation of
social conditions, a searching curiosity and a rare talent
of narration. There was in him the possibility of a great
philosophical essayist. In the line of music especially,
the significant remarks we find scattered through his
writings authorize the conviction that no one was better
fitted to elaborate a philosophical theory of that art, in
which he was a practical proficient as well as an original
speculator. Music and musicians are constantly recur-
ring topics in his romances. The influence of music on
a sensitive nature was a favorite study, — prompted, no
doubt, by his own experience ; and where that influ-
ence culminates in madness, as in his Rath Krespel
and his Kapellmeister Kreissler, we perceive in those
characters the reflection of a tendency of which he was
conscious in his own constitution.

476 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Hoffmann was born at Konigsberg, in Prussia, on the
24th of January, 1776. His father, a jurist of some dis-
tinction, held an office connected with one of the Prus-
sian courts. His mother was sickly and peevish, and
when Ernst, their second child, had reached his fourth
year, his parents separated, — the father leaving Konigs-
berg, and the mother seeking refuge in the house of her
mother in that city. The father died soon after at Tn-
sterburg, where he had held the office of Judge of the
criminal court of the Oberland. The mother, a help-
less invalid, outlived him by seventeen years. Ernst
was placed in the charge of an uncle especially unfitted
for that trust, and of an aunt who petted and did her
best to spoil him. He was sent to the classical school at
Konigsberg, and in due season entered the University
as a student. From the lectures of Kant, who then filled
the chair of philosophy, he derived little profit ; his tastes
inclined to quite other pursuits. He was diligent in his
preparation for the legal profession, but devoted a large
portion of his time to painting and music. In the first-
named art he never became more than a clever carica-
turist, but in music he attained high distinction both as
composer and performer.

In 1795 he was admitted to the office of auscultator in
the Court of Konigsberg. The duties of the office were
light, and the salary proportionably small. He devoted
his leisure to art, and supplemented his income by giving
lessons in music. This employment was suddenly inter-
rupted by a love-affair with one of his female pupils, who
seems to have reciprocated his attachment, but whose su-
perior social position precluded their union. The mental
conflict caused by this unhappy passion made his resi-
dence in Konigsberg intolerable, and forced him to seek

HOFFMANN. 477

refuge in Gross Glogau in Silesia, where another uncle
gave him shelter and some trifling employment in a
government office of which he was the incumbent. Here
he resided for the next two years, then went to Berlin
for his third examination, the examen rigorosum, which
he passed with great credit, and in consequence of which
he received the appointment of assessor to the Court
of Posen in South Prussia. In this Polish city, out of
reach of refined society and intellectual converse, with
none to sympathize in his artistic pursuits, he fell into
intemperate habits, which clung to him through life.
Here he found the wife who through all the changes
of his fortune proved a faithful helpmate, and to whose
tender care he owed the sole alleviation of the terrible
sufferings of his last days. Her name was Micheline
Rorer. Of her family nothing is known.

While awaiting at Posen his expected preferment to
the rank and office of councillor, he amused his leisure
with drawing caricatures, which a friend and accomplice
in the character of a pedler distributed at a masquerade,
and in which the magnates of the city were not pleased
to recognize their own distorted likenesses. A complaint
of this outrage was lodged with the authorities at Berlin,
in consequence of which Hoffmann was transferred to
the insignificant town of Plozk, where he spent two
dreary years in what he regarded, and what was de-
signed to be, a penal exile. At the end of that term,
through the influence of friends, he was restored to
favor, and received, in 1804, the appointment of Rath
at the Polish capital, Warsaw. Here he found intelli-
gent society, libraries, works of art, and the gratification
of all his tastes. In connection with his friend Hitzig
he founded a musical theatre, at whose concerts he

478 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS. '

officiated as leader with great applause. With the aid of
wealthy patrons a vacant palace was purchased for these
entertainments, and the decoration of the concert-room
committed to Hoffmann himself. In the discharge of
this function he could not, in spite of past experience,
forbear the exercise of his dangerous art. He contrived
to introduce in his decorations caricatures of the features
of well-known citizens, disguised, however, with wings
and claws as griffins and other fabulous creatures. It
does not appear that any mischief came of it. Mean-
while he was faithful to all the requirements of his
office, and discharged its duties with entire satisfaction
to all concerned.

His life in this gay capital was in every respect pros-
perous, and would in all likelihood have continued to be
so had not political troubles brought it to a sudden close.
It was the period of the Napoleonic wars, and it came to
pass one day that the French, under the lead of Murat,
took possession of the city, and putting an end to Prus-
sian rule, cut Hoffmann off from his place and its income.
He was suddenly cast adrift upon the world. A little
money remained to him from the proceeds of his office
and the distribution among the officials of the funds on
hand of the court, and he hoped with the aid of his art
to be able still to maintain himself in the city so con-
genial to his taste. But his art in those troublous times
brought no employment. His small capital was gradu-
ally melting away; a fit of sickness accelerated the
process. It was evident that he must either leave War-
saw or invent another art than those he already pos-
sessed, — the art of supporting a family without money.
In this strait he sent his wife and child to her relatives
in Posen, and went to seek his fortune in Berlin. There

HOFFMANN. 479

he could find no employment either as jurist, as painter,
or as teacher of music. The little money he had left
was stolen from him. Want stared him in the face ; but
he would not succumb, and did not despond. He adver-
tised for a situation as director of music in some thea-
tre, — for a time in vain ; but there came at last the offer
of a post in that capacity in Bamberg, in Bavaria. The
patronage was small and the compensation meagre, but
nothing better presented itself ; so he struggled on for
seven hard years, until the concern broke down for want
of support, and left him where he was before.

His next experiment was a literary one. It occurred
to him that he might turn his knowledge of music to
account by writing about it. He applied for that pur-
pose to the editor of a musical journal in Leipsic, and
sent him a humorous essay as a specimen of his ability
in that line. It was a brilliant composition, and was
fully appreciated. He became a regular correspondent.
The first essay was followed in rapid succession by oth-
ers in the same style. They brought him bread, — not
abundant, but sufficient for the present distress. These
essays, with some others, were afterward collected and
published in two neat volumes, with the title, " Fanta-
siestiicke in Callot's Manier." Callot was a French
painter in a dashing, daring style, who flourished in
the seventeenth century. Jean Paul wrote an intro-
duction to the book.

Hoffmann's next move was another engagement as
director of music of an opera house in Dresden, which
proved financially as unsuccessful as that at Bamberg.
War still raged, and the people in that part of Germany,
crippled and straitened in their resources, had little
money to spare for theatrical amusements. During his

480 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

residence in Dresden the city was bombarded by the
French on the 26th of August, 1813, and Hoffmann
noted in his diary some of the incidents witnessed and
the dangers experienced on that occasion. He writes :

" Early in the morning I was awakened by the thunder of
cannon. I immediately hastened to the garret of the neighbor-
ing house, and saw that the French had thrown up a battery at a
short distance from our intrenchments, and were hotly engaged
with the enemy's battery at the foot of the hills. . . . Tidings
came that the Emperor [Napoleon] would arrive. I therefore
hastened to Briihl's terrace by the great bridge. At eleven
o'clock he came, riding on a small sorrel horse, rapidly across
the bridge. There was a dead silence among the crowd. He
tossed his head vehemently this way and that, with an air which
I had never noticed in him before. He rode up to the Castle,
dismounted for a few seconds, then rode back again to the
bridge, where he halted, surrounded by several of his marshals.
Adjutants galloped back and forth and received their orders,
which he gave in brief words with a very loud voice. He was
constantly taking snuff and looking through a small pocket-
glass down the Elbe. ... I had to leave because the terrace
was occupied by the soldiery, and returned to my observa-
tory. Between four and five o'clock the cannonading became
most violent, — stroke upon stroke ; one could hear the balls
whistle. People would not believe it ; but soon a party-
wall, at a distance of not more than twenty-five paces, fell
struck by a ball. Then it was evident that the fire was directed
against the city. Our position was becoming unsafe, and we
hastened to leave it. I was just about to enter the door of my
house, when a grenade whistled and rattled above my head and
fell at a distance of only fifteen paces, between four wag-
ous filled with powder and just ready to start, and burst, so
that the horses reared and ran. At least thirty people were
standing near ; but not only did the powder-wagons, whose ex-
plosion would have annihilated that quarter of the city, escape,

HOFFMANN. 481

but not a man or a horse was injured. It is inconceivable
what became of the fragments, since only a small one was
found, which had struck a shutter in the lower story and fallen
into an unoccupied room."

He proceeds to relate how the shells fell thicker and
thicker : —

" I crept through a back street to the house of the actor
Keller, who lived on the Neumarkt. We were looking very
comfortably out of the window, each a glass in his hand, when a
shell fell and burst in the midst of the market-place. A West-
phalian soldier, who was pumping water, fell dead with shat-
tered head, and at some distance from him a decently dressed
citizen, who attempted to rise, but his bowels were torn away,
and he fell down dead. Three more were wounded by the same
grenade. Keller let his glass fall, but I drank mine, saying,
* What is life ? Human nature is too weak to endure a bit of
hot iron ! ' "

On the 29th he writes : " To-day, for the first time in
my life, I saw a battle-field," and proceeds to describe in
vivid language the ghastly sights which met his gaze, —
horrors which I gladly pass by. On the 30th he once
more encountered the Emperor, " who had a terrible
tyrannical look, and with the voice of a lion roared to
an accompanying adjutant, ' Voyons ! ' " On the 22d
of October, — " The Emperor is beaten, and retreats in
the direction of Erfurt. So I have a well-grounded hope
of the best and pleasantest life, — a life devoted to art ;
and all my trouble will be ended."

His hope of better days was realized, though not in
the way he had expected. The year from the close of
1813 to 1815 had been on the whole the most trying of
his struggling and eventful life. But the fall of Napo-
leon, which brought deliverance to Prussia, opened to

31

482 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

him a new career of professional employment. He had
not intended to resume the practice of law ; but in 1815,
through the influence of friends, he received the condi-
tional offer, and in 1816 the appointment, of Councillor
in the Kammergericht (Court of Exchequer) in Berlin.
This post, which secured him a competence, was too
tempting to be refused. His wanderings were ended,
and Berlin became thenceforth his pei^manent abode.
In the same year his opera " Undine " was brought upon
the stage with great splendor and corresponding suc-
cess, and secured to him not only immense popularity
but solid fame as a musical composer.

His " Fantasiestiicke " and other productions had al-
ready established his reputation as a writer. He was a
man of mark — of foremost mark — in Berlin at that
time. Now at length, after so many hardships and re-
verses, his fortunes were established on a firm founda-
tion. His salary was ample, his music was popular, his
literary efforts successful, his pen in universal demand.
Nothing was wanting to his happiness but certain moral
qualities, on which at last all happiness depends. Ad-
versity had been his salvation, — prosperity proved his
ruin. To one of his sensitive organization excitement
of one kind or another was a prime necessity, — social
excitement, free scope for his social gifts and conversa-
tional powers. Some natures would have found it in
the literary and aesthetic tea-parties with which Berlin
then abounded, — entertainments given by persons who
made pretension to culture, and invited to their salons
the lions of the day, partly for gratification of an idle
curiosity, and partly for the lustre reflected on the host
by the celebrity of the guest. To have it to say that
last evening Mr. this or Mr. that was with us, or to be

HOFFMANN, 483

able to quote, as if proceeding from familiar acquaint-
ance, any saying one had heard from the lion of the day,
was full compensation for any outlay of tea and cake
rnd wax-lights. Hoffmann as a first-class lion was much
in request for such uses. But Hoffmann was not at
all the man to be lionized. His biographer says : —

"Two things were wanting to him for enjoyment, or even
endurance, of these tea-parties, — petty vanity and good-nature.
His vanity, if such it might be called, was of more colossal pro-
portions. The intelligent tribute of his peers might gratify
him, but the commonplace conventional flatteries of the incom-
petent he detested, and was not good-natured enough to dissem-
ble his contempt. The talk of these half-cultivated, would-be
connoisseurs was a weariness to his soul, and he treated it ac-
cordingly. He was rude, he was brutal, — a bear in the sheep-
fold, an eagle in a dove-cote. If one ventured an opinion on
some literary topic and expected his acquiescence, he would either
stare at the speaker and make no reply, or address his answer
— a contemptuous one — not to the speaker himself, but to an-
other standing by. The gushing enthusiast who looked to him
for sympathy in matters of art was met by a remark about the
weather. They prated to him of music, of which they knew
nothing while he knew everything, and he yawned in their
faces. Worst of all, when young ladies were solicited to play
and sing for his entertainment, and he was expected to express
his delight, he was obstinately dumb; and when the enter-
tainment was protracted, he testified with hideous grimaces his
impatience of the scene. It followed, of course, that the lion-
hunters soon gave up the pursuit in despair of such impracti-
cable game. The invitations ceased, and Hoffmann sought
more congenial entertainment in a circle of roystering com-
panions, where the wit flowed freely, and more freely still the
wine."

Then began a period of swift decline. Nights spent in
carousal, while they wasted the vital forces, undermined

484 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

the moral constitution no less. Yet Hoffmann, his biog-
rapher tells us, was no vulgar toper, not one of those
who drink for sensual gratification, and drink till they
are drunk. He drank only to get himself " mounted," as
he termed it ; that is, to put himself in condition to take
the lead in the converse of wit. He drank for inspiration ;
and when it came, when fairly mounted, he charmed his
hearers hour after hour with the flow and sparkle of his
discourse. But the quantity needed for this at the out-
set soon ceased to suffice. Ever more liberal potations
were required to produce the desired effect. Nor could
these nodes ambro stance replace, they rather increased,
the loss of brain power caused by the intellectual labors
of the day. Only sleep could restore that loss, and sleep
with him was reduced to two or three hours. The candle,
as we say, was lighted at both ends ; he lived on the gal-
lop, and of such a life the term is short.

Remarkable it is that his legal duties were not in-
fringed, nor his legal performances impaired, by this wild
living. He was always in his place in court, and his
written decisions remain to this day models of conscien-
tious investigation, clear judgment, forcible argument,
and luminous statement. Meanwhile his literary activ-
ity continued. He gave forth in rapid succession his
" Nachtstiicke," his Dialogue between two Theater-man-
agers, his " Master Flea," his " Tomcat Murr's Views of
Life," his " Princess Brambilla," his " Kleine Zaches,"
and, one after another, the four volumes of his " Sera-
pionsbriider." The last-named work owed its origin to
the kind endeavor of his friend Hitzig to wean him in
some measure from his boon companions of the tavern,
by providing intellectual entertainment accompanied with
less ruinous conditions. Two other friends, Korieff and

HOFFMANN. 485

Contessa, men of high culture and genial spirit, met by
Hitzig's suggestion, as if accidentally, at Hoffmann's lodg-
ings one evening, where, after a conversation which made
him forget his customary orgies, the proposition was
made, as pre-arranged by the visitors, that they should
come together in the same way one evening every week,
for conversation, and the reading and criticising of some
composition which one of the four was to furnish for the
common" entertainment. It was an enterprise part lit-
erary, part social, after the fashion of the " Decameron "
or the newer example of Tieck's " Phantasus." It took
its name, '' Serapion Brothers," from the day on which
the friends met, which happened, according to Madam
Hoffmann's Polish calendar, to be the day assigned to
Saint Serapion. Our author makes out another reason
for the name, which the reader will find in the introduc-
tory narrative.

In the spring of 1820 Hoffmann, whose deepest passion
was music, was enraptured by a letter from the great
composer Beethoven, to whom he had never written,
whom he knew only through his works. The modesty
of this little missive is very pleasing, and the sending of
it by one who wrote so little and was so reserved is a
proof of the high estimation in which Hoffmann was held
by the musical world.

Vienna, March 23, 1820.
I seize the opportunity afforded by Herr N. of approaching a
man of such a genius as yours. Concerning my littleness also
you have written, and our Herr N. showed me in his album some
lines from you concerning me. You therefore, I must suppose,
take some interest in me. Allow me to say that this from one like
you, a man of such distinguished endowments, is very gratifying.
I wish you all that is beautiful and good, and I am, with high
esteem, your Wellborn's most devoted Beethoven.

486 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

In the same year appeared the first volume of " Kater
Murr's Lebensansichten." The hero of this work is an
imaginary character, a musician, by name Kreissler, in
whom the author has depicted his own aspirations and
feelings, his humor and his experiences. It is in short
a reflection of himself, and was therefore the work on
which of all his productions he set the highest value.
Two volumes only were finished. The third was to have
shown the unfortunate musician driven to insanity by the
shattered illusions and disappointments of life, and was
to have closed by way of supplement with " Lucid Inter-
vals of a Mad Musician."

The title " Tomcat Murr " was suggested by a pet cat
of the author, a beautiful creature that occupied a drawer
of his writing-table, which it opened with its paws, and
where it lay on the top of his papers. He was never
tired of relating instances of the exceptional intelligence
of this wonderful animal ; and when Murr died, his
master sent his friend Hitzig a bulletin card with these
words : —

In the night of the 29th of November my beloved pupil,
the Kater Murr, after brief but severe suffering, passed on to
a better life, in the fourth year of his hopeful age. I hasten
humbly to communicate the intelligence to sympathizing patrons
and friends. All who knew the youth, now in eternity, will
justify my profound grief, and honor it with silence.

Hoffmann.

No one, says Hitzig, will be surprised at this jest who
knows how closely connected were jest and grief in Hoff-
mann's nature. In fact the loss was a real affliction, and
he described to his friend with tears the creature's death,
how piteously he moaned, and how beseechingly he looked

HOFFMANN. 487

into his master's eyes for sympathy and aid. " Now there
is a void in the house for my wife and me."

Hoffmann's last birthday, January 24, 1822, was glad-
dened by a visit from an old schoolmate, Hippel, whom he
had not seen since their school-boy days. On this occa-
sion he entertained a party of several friends with his
usual hospitality.

But already the grasp of disease was on him. He no
longer circulated as formerly among his guests, filling
their glasses with his own hand, but kept his seat, and
while serving them with costly wines, drank only water.
In the course of the conversation something was said
about death, and one of the guests incidentally remarked
that life is not the greatest good, whereupon Hoffmann
broke in with great vehemence, " No, no ! Life, life ! —
let me but live under whatever conditions ! " Hitzig says,
" There was something terrible in the way in which he
ejaculated these words, and fearfully his wish was ful-
filled." He continued to live for five months longer, but
under what conditions ! Day by day one after another
of his bodily organs refused its service. The disease
known as tabes dorsalis, consumption of the spinal mar-
row, developed itself ; the life departed from his hands
and feet and other portions of his system. He suffered
frightfully, but his brain was still active ; he clung to life,
and inferred from the soundness of the principal organ
the recovery of all the rest. In this condition he dic-
tated some of his best compositions, several characteristic
essays afterward published, and — what is more remark-
able — in the last weeks of his life a legal decision of a
very difficult and important case of contested copyright,
evincing a professional judgment as clear and sound as
in his best days. On the 21st of June the symptoms of

488 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

approaching death began to show themselves in his in-
ability to take nourishment. He had previously under-
gone the painful operation of cautery. On the 24th j the
disease having done its work, he ceased to suffer pain.
This he hailed as a promise of recovery, and said to his
physician, " It will soon be over now, will it not ? " In
a very different sense the physician answered, " Yes, it
will soon be over." On the evening of the 25th he
wished to resume the dictation of his unfinished story,
entitled " Der Feind," and asked to have the sentence
read to him at which he had left off. His wife dissuaded
him ; then he had himself turned with his face to the
wall. The death-rattle was in his throat ; and when
Hitzig was sent for, his friend was gone.

We perceive, in this life of forty-six years, an example
of the influence of hereditary taint, — a nature pre-doomed
by the consequences, direct and indirect, of parental
misfortune and parental guilt. A sickly and querulous
mother entails a morbid temperament on a son of whose
childhood she is physically and morally disqualified to
undertake the charge. Abandoned by a selfish and
unscrupulous father, he is delivered over to a formal
pedantic uncle, utterly unable to comprehend the nature
and needs of the boy, and an over-indulgent aunt.

Unfortified by wholesome discipline, as a student left
to his own devices, he is saved from moral ruin partly
through absence of external temptation, and partly by
intellectual appetites and a passion for music which
furnished occupation for his leisure hours. Notwith-
standing the disadvantages of an inauspicious youth, he
brings into manhood a force of resolution sufficient to
accomplish by arduous study his preparation for profes-

HOFFMANN, 489

sional life. He acquits himself with honor when exam-
ined for his degree. He afterward breaks through the
entanglement of a hopeless passion by resolutely quit-
ting his native city. When calamity befalls and want
threatens, he proves himself equal to every exigency ;
fights battle after battle with adversity, and comes off
victorious. But when at last his hard struggles and
patient waiting are crowned with full prosperity and
all his wishes are gratified, the latent evil in his nature
breaks forth, debases his life, and drags him through
frightful suffering to premature death.

That Hoffmann in early life was not wanting in self-
control, appears from the constancy with which he kept
his vow to abstain from gambling after his first and only
attempt in that line, — an attempt which was crowned
with extraordinary success. During his self-imposed
exile at Glogau he accompanied a friend to a watering-
place, and while there, at his friend's request, staked a
sum of money which he handed him at a gaming-table.
Having been successful in his friend's service, it occurred
to Hoffmann the next evening to experiment on his own
account. He shall tell the story himself : —

" If yesterday fortune favored me, to-day it seemed as if some
mighty spirit whom chance obeyed was in league with me. I
might turn the cards as I pleased, not a card missed. . . . My
senses reeled; often, while fresh gold poured in upon me, it
seemed as if I were in a dream, and would immediately awake
when I thought to pocket my gains. At the stroke of two the
play, as is customary, stopped. At the moment when I was
about to leave the hall, an old officer seized me by the shoul-
der, and fixing a grave, severe look upon me, said : * Young
man, if you had understood the game, you might have broken
the bank ; but when you come to understand it, the Devil will
get you as he has done all the rest.' Therewith he left me,

490 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

without waiting to hear what I might say in reply. The morn-
ing had already dawned when I reached my chamber, and from
all my pockets I poured out the gold on the table. Imagine
the sensation of a youth, who in utter dependence, having been
restricted to a meagre allowance of pocket-money, finds him-
self suddenly, as if by a stroke of magic, in possession of a sum
so large as for the moment to be regarded as a fortune. But
while I gazed at the gold-heap, my mind was suddenly seized
with an anxiety, a distress which covered me with a cold death-
sweat. The words of the old ofiicer now revealed to me the
most terrible significance. It seemed to me as if the gold that
glittered on the table were the earnest-money wherewith the
Dark Power had purchased my soul, which now could not
escape perdition. The blossom of m}^ life seemed to be gnawed
by a venomous worm, and I sank into deadly despair. Then
flamed the morning higher from behind the mountains. I
crouched before the window ; I gazed with fervent longing to-
ward the sun, before whose coming the dark spirits of the night
must flee. And when field and wood gleamed in the golden
rays, it was also day once more in my soul. There came to
me the blessed feeling of strength to resist every temptation,
and to guard my life from that demonic course in which, sooner
or later, it must irrevocably perish. I vowed to myself, by all
that is holiest, never to touch another card, and I have strictly
kept my vow."

Hoffmann's biographer testifies that he never played
again.

I place Hoffmann very high, so far as native gifts are
concerned, among the writers of Germany. In wealth
of imagination, in force of conception, and the faculty of
presentation he has few equals. In caustic humor he also
excels. But the morbid spirit, the fantastic character, the
hizarrerie of so much of his writing has tended to dimin-
ish the estimation which would otherwise be accorded to
him. It would be, however, a mistake to suppose that

HOFFMANN. 491

all his productions are infected with this vicious element.
Some of them are wholly free from it ; they owe nothing
of their interest to the preternatural. They rest on solid
human ground, — on the physically possible, sometimes,
as in the case of " The Fraulein Scuderi," — on historic
fact, and are models of sprightly and engaging narrative.
Nevertheless, it must be conceded that the characteristic
things of Hoffmann are those wild fictions of impossible
beings and impossible transactions, those tales of dia-
blerie, with which his name, ever since the publication
of the " Fantasiestiicke," has been identified, — the
" Golden Pot," the '• Sandman," "• Master Flea," the
" Little Zaccheus," and others.

Of the " Fantasiestlicke," one of the most character-
istic in its mixture of sorcery and irony, is the story of
the " Lost Looking-glass Image," the idea of which was
suggested by Chamisso's " Peter Schlemihl," but is
worked up in Hoffmann's own peculiar way. An honest
German, Erasmus Spikher, who has always been dream-
ing of Italy, has saved money enough to realize his
dream and starts for Florence, leaving a wife and their
little 'Rasmus at home. The dear pious housewife shed
a thousand tears at parting; she lifted little 'Rasmus,
after carefully wiping his nose and mouth, into the car-
riage to receive the father's last kiss. "Farewell, my
dear Erasmus Spikher ! " said the sobbing wife. *' I will
take good care of the house ; think of me often, remain
faithful, and don't lose your handsome travelling-cap out
of the window when you nod in your sleep, as you are
apt to do." Spikher promised.

In Florence he falls into bad company, and, forgetful
of his domestic obligations, becomes desperately enam-
oured of one Giulietta, who encourages his passion, but

492 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

who, it seems, is leagued with a certain mysterious per-
sonage. Dr. Dappertutto, who turns out to be a Mephisto-
pheles, and lies in wait to capture souls. At an evening
entertainment it has been contrived that Spikher shall
be insulted by a young Italian, who mocks at his Ger-
man ways. An altercation ensues ; they come to blows,
and the German unintentionally kills his adversary.
He is obliged to flee, but before leaving the country
seeks a final interview with Giulietta. " Ah, Erasmus,
too soon you will forget me ! " she murmurs. " Oh,
could I be wholly and forever yours ! " he replies. They
were standing before a beautiful broad mirror, let into
the wall of the cabinet, and brilliantly lighted with ta-
pers on each side. Giulietta, with her arm around her
lover, whispers, " Leave me your looking-glass image,
my beloved ; it shall be mine, and remain with me for-
ever." He is taken a-back by this somewhat unusual
request, and hesitates. " What, you grudge me even this
dream of your Ich ? — you who wanted to be mine with
your body and life ! Not even your unstable image is to
remain with me and accompany me through my hence-
forth desolate life." Spikher cannot resist the appeal,
Jie gives his consent. She stretched her arms longingly
toward the looking-glass. Erasmus saw his image
come forth independent of his movements ; he saw it
glide into Giulietta's arms, who disappeared with it,
leaving a peculiar odor behind. He heard all manner of
hateful voices sniggering and laughing in devilish mock-
ery. Seized with the death-cramp of the deepest horror,
he sank senseless to the ground ; but a fearful anxiety
aroused him from this torpor. In thick darkness he
reeled out of the door and down the stairs into the
street. There he encountered Dappertutto, who, pretend-

HOFFMANN. 493

ing ignorance, affects to condole with him and to show
him how he may escape the officers of justice and con-
tinue to enjoy Giulietta's society. He proposes a means
by which the lover can present at any moment a differ-
ent appearance, and so baffle his pursuers.

" As soon as it is day, you will have the goodness to look
long and attentively in some looking-glass. I will then perform
certain operations with your looking-glass image, which will not
injure it, and you are safe.'

" * Terrible, terrible ! ' cried Erasmus.

" ' What is terrible, most worthy sir ? ' he asked mockingly.

" * Alas ! I have — I have — ' his victim stuttered.

" * You have left your image with Giulietta. Bravissimo,
dearest ! Now you can run through fields and woods, through
cities and villages, till you have found your wife with little
'Rasmus, and be once more the father of a family, although
without a looking-glass image. Your wife will not care much
for that when she has you bodily, and Giulietta only your shin-
ing dream = I.'

" ' Cease, terrible man ! ' cried Erasmus.

He tears himself away, and succeeds in making his es-
cape from Italy. On his way home he has many adven-
tures, the most remarkable of which is one by which he
is first made painfully aware of what he has sacrificed.
He has stopped to rest in a large city, and anticipating
no evil takes his place with other guests at the table
cThote of his hotel, not perceiving that there is a large
mirror opposite him. A waiter who stood behind his
chair became aware that the chair reflected in the mir-
ror across the table had no occupant. He communi-
cated his discovery to Erasmus's neighbor, and he to his.
It ran round the table ; there was a murmuring and a
whispering ; they looked at Erasmus and then into the

494 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

mirror. As yet he had not perceived that he was the
object of these communications, when a man of grave
demeanor rose from the table, led him to the mirror,
looked in, and then turning to the company, exclaimed,
" It is actually true, — he has no looking-glass image."
" He has no looking-glass image ! " they all cried out.
'' A mauvais sujet ! a homo nefas ! Out of the room with
him ! " Filled with rage and shame, Erasmus fled to
his chamber ; but scarcely was he there when a notice
came from the police, to the effect that within the space
of an hour he must present himself before the magis-
tracy with a complete and perfectly resembling looking-
glass image, or, failing that, must leave the city.

Erasmus hurried off, pursued by the idle mob and the
street boys, crying, " There he rides, — the man who has
sold his image to the devil ! There he rides ! " At last
he found himself in the open country, and now wherever
he went he gave orders to have all the looking-glasses
covered, on the pretext of a natural abhorrence of all
reflections. For which reason he was nicknamed Gen-
eral Suwarrow, who did the same thing.

He reached his native city, came to his home, and was
joyfully received by his wife and little 'Rasmus. He
thought that in the peace and quiet of domestic life he
would soon recover from the grief of his loss. It hap-
pened one day that Spikher, who had banished the beau-
tiful Giulietta entirely from his thoughts, was playing
with little 'Rasmus. The child had blacked his little
hands with soot from the stove, and smirched his fath-
er's face with it. " Oh, papa, papa ! I have made you
all black. Just look ! " He ran and fetched n looking-
glass before Spikher could prevent it, held it before his
father, and looked into it himself. But immediately he

HOFFMANN. 495

let it fall, burst into crying, and ran out of the room.
Soon after, the wife entered with amazement and horror
in her face. " What is it that 'Rasmus tells me ? " she
exclaimed. Spikher interrupted her with a forced smile,
" That I have no looking-glass image, is it, my love ? "
And he tried to convince her of the absurdity of suppos-
ing that one could lose his image ; but even if he could,
the loss was of no importance. Every such reflection is,
after all, an illusion. Self-contemplation leads to vanity ;
and besides, such an image creates a schism in our ego,
dividing it into reality and dream. While he was speak-
ing, the wife had hurried quickly to remove the cloth
from a covered looking-glass in their sitting-room.

She looked in, and as if struck by lightning fell to the
ground. Spikher raised her up, but as soon as she came
to herself she repelled him with horror. " Leave me ! "
she cried, " leave me, you horrible man ! You are not
my husband ! No ; you are a spirit from hell, who wants
to rob me of my salvation. Away ! leave me ! thou hast
no power over me, accursed ! " Her yells penetrated the
house. The terrified inmates rushed in, and Spikher
rushed out of the house full of rage and despair. As if
driven by wild frenzy, he ran along the deserted walks
of the city park. Giulietta's image presented itself to
his mind with angelic beauty. " Is it thus," he exclaimed,
" that you avenge yourself for my leaving you and giving
you only my image instead of myself ? Ah, Giulietta !
I will be thine with body and soul. She for whom I sac-
rificed you has rejected me. Giulietta ! Giulietta ! I will
be yours ! "

'' That is perfectly feasible," said a voice. It was that
of Signer Dappertutto, who suddenly stood close by his
side in a scarlet coat with glittering steel buttons. These

496 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

were words of consolation for the unfortunate Erasmus,
and he did not notice Dappertutto's malicious, hateful ex-
pression. He stood still and asked, with piteous tone, —

" How shall I find her again ? She is probably lost to me
forever."

" Not at all," said Dappertutto ; " she is not far from here,
and yearns astonishingly for your worthy self, because, as you
know, honored sir, a looking-glass image is but a base illusion.
For the rest, as soon as she has your worthy person, — body,
life, and soul, — she will give you back your agreeable looking-
glass image, smooth and uninjured, with many thanks."

" Bring me to her ! bring me to her ! " cried Erasmus.
" Where is she ? "

" There is a little trifle in the way," said Dappertutto, " be-
fore you can see Giulietta and give her yourself in exchange
for your looking-glass image. Your Honor is not competent to
dispose so entirely of your worthy person ; you are fettered by
certain ties which will have to be loosed first, — namely, your
Honor's beloved wife, together with your promising little son."

" What are you driving at ? " said Erasmus.

"Unconditional severance of these bonds," continued Dap-
pertutto, " may be effected in a very easy, humane way. You
know, from your acquaintance with me in Florence, that I am
skilled in the preparation of the most wonderful medicaments,
and I have here a little domestic remedy in my hand. Those
who are in your way and dear Giulietta's need only drink
a few drops of this, and they will sink away without a sound
or sign of pain. It is true, people call that dying, and death is
said to be bitter ; but is n't the taste of bitter almonds very
pleasant ? And that is all the bitterness there is in the death
which this little flask encloses. As soon as the happy sinking-
away takes place, your estimable family will diffuse a pleasant
odor of bitter almonds. Take it, honored sir." He handed to
Erasmus a little phial.

" Horrible man ! " exclaimed the latter, " would you have me
poison my wife and child ? "

HOFFMANN, 497

'* Who talks of poison ? " the red man rejoined. " The phial
contains nothing but a pleasant family medicine. I have at my
command other means of setting you at liberty, but I would
like to operate through yourself in such a natural and humane
way. That is just my weakness. Take it without scruple, my
dearest."

Erasmus — he could not tell how — had the phial in
his hand. Without stopping to think, he ran home to
his chamber. His wife had spent the night amid a
thousand anxieties and torments. She persisted in de-
claring that the returned was not her husband, but an
infernal spirit who had assumed his shape. As soon as
Spikher entered the house, all the inmates fled from him
in fright. Only little 'Rasmus ventured to come near
and ask, in a childish way, why he had not brought back
his looking-glass image ; that his mother would worry
herself to death about it. Erasmus stared wildly at the
boy. He had Dappertutto's phial still in his hand. The
little one had his pet dove on his arm; the bird ap-
proached the phial with its bill, pecked the cork, and
immediately dropped its head and fell down dead. Eras-
mus sprang up in terror. " Traitor ! " he cried, " you
shall not tempt me to commit the hellish deed." He
hurled the phial through the open window ; it broke in
pieces on the stone pavement of the courtyard. A de-
lightful odor of almonds went up and spread through
the room. Little 'Rasmus had run away in a fright.
Spikher spent the day in torments until midnight. Giu-
lietta's image grew ever more vivid in his thought. A
little scarlet berry that had dropped from a necklace
which once encircled her throat, was still in his posses-
sion. He drew it forth, and gazing upon it fixed his
mind on his lost love. It seemed to him as if a magic

32

498 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

fragrance exhaled from the pearl, — the same that
had breathed upon him in Giulietta's presence. ''Ah,
Giulietta ! " he cried, " if I could but see you once more,
I would be content to perish in ruin and shame."

Scarcely had he uttered these words when it began to
rustle in the hall before the door. He heard footsteps ;
there was a knocking at the door of the chamber. His
breath stopped in bodeful anxiety and hope. He opened
the door ; Giulietta entered in all her lofty beauty and
grace.

Mad with love and longing, he locked her in his arms.
" Here I am," she said, gently ; " but see how carefully I
have kept your looking-glass image." She uncovered the
looking-glass, and Erasmus saw with delight his image
clinging to Giulietta ; but, independent of himself, it re-
flected none of his movements. Erasmus shuddered.

*' Giulietta, I shall go distracted with love for you. Give
me the image, and take myself, body and life and soul."

" There is still something between us, you know ; has not
Dappertutto told you ? " said Giulietta.

Erasmus interrupted her, — " Heavens, if there is no other
way to become yours I will rather die ! "

*' Nor shall Dappertutto," continued Giulietta, " by any
means tempt you to such an act. It is bad, to be sure, that a
vow and the word of a priest can have such power ; but you
must loose the band which binds you, otherwise you can never
be wholly mine ; and there is a better method for that than the
one which Dappertutto proposed."

" What is it ? " asked Erasmus eagerly.

Giulietta threw her arm around his neck, and leaning her
head on his breast, whispered softly, — " You sign your name,
' Erasmus Spikher,' to a paper, with these few words : ' I give
to my good friend Dappertutto power over my wife and child,
to do with them as he pleases, and to sever the tie which binds

HOFFMANN. 499

me, forasmuch as I mean to belong henceforth with my body
and my immortal soul to Giulietta, whom I have chosen for
my wife, and to whom, by a special vow, I shall bind myself
forever.' "

Erasmus felt a thrill through all his nerves ; fiery
kisses were burning on his lips ; he had the paper which
Giulietta gave him in his hand. Suddenly, Dappertutto
rose gigantic behind Giulietta and handed him a me-
tallic pen. At the same moment a small bloodvessel
burst in his left hand, and the blood spurted out. " Dip
your pen in it ! " croaked the scarlet man. " Write !
write ! my ever, my only beloved ! " lisped Giulietta.
Already he had the pen in his hand and seated himself
to write, when the door opened, a figure in white en-
tered, and staring with spectral eyes at Erasmus called,
with a muffled voice of pain, — " Erasmus, what are you
doing ? For the Saviour's sake, desist from the awful
deed ! " Erasmus recognized his wife in the warning fig-
ure, and threw the pen and paper far from him. Light-
ning flashed from Giulietta's eyes, her face was horribly
distorted, her body glowed like fire. " Let me go, hell-
brood ! You shall have no part in my soul. In the
Saviour's name, get you gone, Serpent ! hell glows out of
you ! " cried Erasmus, and with a strong hand pushed
Giulietta, who still clung to him, away. Then there
was a yelling and howling in piercing discord, and a
flitting, as with black raven wings, through the room.
Giulietta and Dappertutto vanished in thick smoke and
stench, which seemed to ooze from the walls and extin-
guished the lights. Finally, the beams of morning broke
through the windows.

Erasmus betook himself at once to his wife. He found
her quite mild and gentle. Little 'Rasmus was sitting

500 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

up in the bed, already wide awake. She gave her hand
to her exhausted husband, saying, —

" Now I know all the bad that happened to you in Italy,
and pity you with all my heart ! The power of the enemy is
very great ; he is given to all possible vices, — and among oth-
ers he steals, and could not resist the temptation maliciously to
purloin your beautiful, perfectly-resembling, looking-glass image.
Just look into that glass there, my dear good man ! "

Spikher did so, trembling all over, and with a very
piteous expression. The mirror remained bright and
clear ; no Erasmus Spikher looked from it.

" This time," continued his wife, '*it is well that the looking-
glass does not reflect your image, for you look very silly, dear
Erasmus. But you must be aware yourself that without a
looking-glass image you are an object of contempt, and can
never be a regular, complete father of a family, — one to in-
spire respect in wife and child. Little 'Rasmus already laughs
at you, and means by and by to paint you a mustache with
coal, because you never will know it. Therefore, go abroad
again for awhile ; go about in the world, and try to find a
chance of getting back your looking-glass image from the
Devil ! When you have it, you shall be heartily welcome.
Kiss me ! "

Spikher did so. " And now, good luck to you ! Send
'Rasmus now and then a pair of new trousers, for he creeps
on his knees a good deal and wears them out fast. And if you
happen to come to Nuremberg, you may add a gay leaden
hussar and a gingerbread cake, like a loving father. Good-by,
dear Erasmus ! "

And she turned herself in bed and went to sleep.
Spikher lifted little 'Rasmus and pressed him to his
heart ; but the child cried so that he set him down again,
and went forth into the wide world. He once fell in

HOFFMANN. 601

with a certain Peter Schlemihl, who had sold his shadow.
The two thought of going into partnership ; Spikher was
to cast the necessary shadow, and Schlemihl to reflect
the proper image. But nothing came of it.^

^ For a criticism of HofEmann from an English point of view,
see " Foreign Quarterly Review " for 1827.

502 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

CHAPTER XX.

HEINRICH HEINE.

/^ERMAN LITERATURE, confessedly poor in the
^^ attribute of wit as compared with the literatures
of other nations, has yet one writer unsurpassed in that
kind, — one whom, if Pere Bouhours had foreseen, he
would certainly have been forced to admit that "un
Allemand pent avoir de I'esprit." But Heinrich Heine,
of whom I speak, was more French than German in his
mental habitudes and style of discourse : of Germans,
surely the most un-German. Among writers of all na-
tions, he stands pre-eminent in the union of dissimilar
and antagonistic traits, — sarcasm and genuine poetic
feeling, Mephistophelism and lyric grace, the bitterest
and the sweetest in mental life.

He was richly, variously gifted, but his one pre-eminent
talent was wit, — wit of the French, more precisely of
the Voltairian, type ; wit born of cynicism, inspired by
contempt ; not innocently playful like that of Hood or
Charles Lamb, not sportive for sport's sake, but wit
which like the lightning smites where it shines.

For some reason, perhaps because he delighted in
abusing them, Heine has been a special favorite with the
English. No German writer, according to the measure
of his ability, has found such kindly recognition with
precisely the people whom, of all European nations, he
most detested. Matthew Arnold goes so far as to say
that " on Heine, of all German authors who survived

HEINRICH HEINE. t)03

Goethe, incomparably the largest portion of Goethe's
mantle fell." And again : " He is the most important
successor and continuator of Goethe in Goethe's most
important line of activity," — that is, as Mr. Arnold
explains it, in " the liberation of humanity." This, it
seems to me, is absurdly false. To say that a mocker,
a persifleur, one whose favorite use of the pen was to
bespatter some respectability ; from whom it is so hard
to get a serious word on any subject; who seemed to
look upon the universe and life as a colossal farce, — to
say that such a one has, of German authors next to
Goethe, contributed most to the liberation of humanity,
is to grievously mistake the forces and influences by
which human nature is made free. Liberation comes,
not by snarling at oppressors or grimacing at society,
but by elevating the mind and enlarging the intellectual
horizon. This, Goethe with earnest effort, promoting
the culture which alone makes free, spent his life in
doing. Only on an earnest, patient, reverent soul could
his mantle fall. Heine was not of that sort ; when he
called himself a soldier in the war of liberation of hu-
manity, he mistook the quarrel with existing institutions
for real enlargement and soul-emancipation.

But let us take him for what he was, and prize him
accordingly. If he contributed notliing essential to the
liberation of human kind, and very little to their instruc-
tion, he has contributed immensely to their entertain-
ment, and that after a fashion in which among Germans
he has no rival.

Heine presents the second example of a born Jew at-
taining high eminence in German literature. Mendels-
sohn, as we have seen, was his predecessor in this
distinction. But what a contrast, intellectual and moral,

504 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

between the two! Honest Moses gained his position
by strenuous labor seconding native gifts and pre-
eminent moral worth. Heine conquered it, in spite
of moral defects, bj audacious satire and the exquisite
charm of his verse. Mendelssohn maintained through
life, and adorned and enriched, his ancestral faith.
Heine treated the confession of his fathers as a joke,
and exchanged it as a matter of policy for the Christian ;
caring at heart as little for the Gospel as he had cared
for the Law. To the monotheism of the Jews his satire
ascribes the financial prosperity of his people. He
says : —

" Israel is indebted for his wealth to his sublime belief in an
invisible God. The heathen worshipped idols of silver and
gold. Had they changed all that silver and gold into money
and put it to interest, they too might have been rich like the
Jews, who were shrewd enough to invest in Babylonian state
loans, in Nebuchadnezzarian bonds, Egyptian canal-shares, in
five per cent Sidonians, and other securities which the Lord
has blessed."

Heinrich, son of Samson Heine, was born on the 12th
of December, 1799, in Diisseldorf, a town on the Rhine,
since famous for its school of art. In 1805 the duchy
was ceded to the French, and Diisseldorf came under
the dominion of Joachim Murat. The French occupa-
tion lasted until 1813. By this means, Heine's boyhood,
from his sixth to his thirteenth year, came under French
influence, — a circumstance which fully explains the
French leaning, so conspicuous in his character and
writing. French became to him a second mother-
tongue. In fact, to the people of that locality French
rule was a great relief from the grinding oppression of
their German masters. On the Jews especially, who in

HEINRICH HEINE. 505

these days were treated as outcasts, it conferred a social
emancipation elsewhere denied, and Heine never ceased
to remember with gratitude the regime to which his peo-
ple owed this precious boon.

The boy received his early education in one of the
schools established by the French, styled "lyceums,"
under the direction of head-master Schallmeyer, a priest
of the Romish Church. Schallmeyer endeavored in vain
to persuade Heinrich's mother to devote her son to the
service of his Church, promising him swift promotion
through his influence at Rome. Heine thinks his
mother would have relented had she duly considered
how becoming to him would have been an abbe's mantle
or a cardinal's red hat. He has given in the " Ideen,"
published in 1826, a humorous account of the kind of
teaching he received at this seminary, the trouble it cost
him, and the use he made of it : —

" The kings of Rome, dates, nouns in im, the irregular verbs,
Greek, Hebrew, geography, German, head-reckoning [mental
arithmetic], — Gott! my head still swims with it! Everything
had to be learned by heart. A good deal of it in after years
stood me in stead ; for had I not known the kings of Rome
by heart, it would later in life have been a matter of perfect in-
difference to me whether Niebuhr has proved, or has not proved,
that they never existed ; and had I not known dates, how
could I have ever found my way about big Berlin, where one
house resembles another like two drops of water or two grena-
diers, and where one can never find his acquaintance if he has
not the numbers of the houses where they live, in his head ?
I connected with every man of my acquaintance some historical
event, the date of which corresponded with the number of his
house, so that I could easily recall the latter by thinking of the
former. The consequence was that an historical event came
into my mind whenever I beheld one of my acquaintance. For
example, if I met my tailor, I immediately thought of the battle

506 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

of Marathon ; when I met the well-dressed banker, Christian
Gumpel, I thought of the destruction of Jerusalem ; my Portu-
guese friend, who was very much in debt, made me think of the
flight of Mahomet. ... As I said, knowledge of dates is abso-
lutely necessary. I know people who have nothing in their
heads but some dates, with which they knew how to find out
the right houses in Berlin, and are now already full professors.
But at school I had a terrible time with all those numbers.
With arithmetic proper it was still worse. What I understood
best was subtraction. In that there is a very practical chief
rule: four from three I can't; I must borrow one. In such
cases it is always best to borrow a iQW groschen more, for one
can never know —

" As to Latin, Madam, you have no idea how complicated it
is ! The Romans would never have had time to conquer the
world if they had had to learn their Latin. Those fortunate
people knew in their cradles what nouns formed the accusative
in im. I, on the contrary, had to learn them by heart in the
sweat of ray face. But still it is well that I know them ; for
when on the 20th of July, 1825, I had to carry on a disputation
in Latin in the aula at Gottingen (Madam, you ought to have
heard me), if I had said sinapem instead of sinapim, the Fresh-
men, who might have happened to be present, would have
heard me, and that would have been an everlasting disgrace.
Vis, huris^ sitts, tussis, cucumis, amussis, canabis, sinapis, —
these words, which have made such a figure in the world, owe
their consequence to their having combined to form a class by
themselves, although they were exceptions. On that account I
honor them. And to have them in my mind, in case I should
suddenly need them, has been a solace and a comfort to me in
many a dark hour of life. But, Madam, the irregular verbs,
which are distinguished from the regular by being accompanied
with more blows, — they are awfully hard. Often I prayed
that if it were any way possible, I might be enabled to remem-
ber the irregular verbs.^

^ Condensed from the original.

HEINRICH HEINE. 507

" Of Greek I will not even speak, — it makes me too angry.
The monks of the Middle Age were not altogether wrong when
they maintained that Greek was an invention of the Devil.
God knows the sufferings it has caused me. With Hebrew it
was a little better, for I had always a great partiality for the
Jews, although to this hour they crucify my good name. But
after all I could not make as much progress in Hebrew as my
watch, which has had much familiar intercourse with pawn-
brokers, and thereby contracted many Jewish customs, — as for
example, it would n't go of a Saturday."

One never knows how much precisely this jester means
in what he tells us of his early life ; but if we may credit
his account of himself, he owed an important part of his
education to a French drummer, Le Grand, who was
quartered upon his parents when Murat took possession
of the city : —

" Monsieur le Grand knew but a little broken German, —
only the most important terms, Brot^ Kuss, Ehre, — but he
could make himself very intelligible on his drum. For example,
if I did n't know the meaning of the word liberie, he drummed
the ' Marsellaise,' and I understood him. If I was ignorant of
the meaning of the word egalite, he drummed ' ga ira, ga irn —
les aristocrates a la lanterned To teach me the meaning of the
word hetise, he drummed the ' Dessau March,' which, as Goethe
reports, we Germans drummed in the champagne, and I under-
stood him. He wanted once to explain the word VAllemagne,
and he drummed that all too simple elementary melody which
one often at fairs hears played to dancing dogs, ' Dum, dum, dura.*
I was angry, but I understood hira. In the same way he taught
me modern history. It is true, I did n't understand the words he
used, but as he drummed while he spoke, I knew what he meant
to say. At bottom, that is the best way to teach. The history
of the storming of the Bastille, of the Tuileries, etc., is best un-
derstood when we know how they drummed on those occasions.

508 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

lu our school epitomes we simply read : ' Their Excellencies the
barons and counts and their ladies were beheaded ; their High-
nesses the dukes and princes, and their respective duchesses and
princesses, were beheaded ; his Majesty the king and her Majesty
the queen were beheaded.' But when one hears the ' Red
Guillotine March' drummed, one comes really to understand it,
and learns the why and the how. Madam, that is a wonderful
march ; it went through the marrow of my bones when I first
heard it, and I was glad to forget it. One forgets that sort of
thing as one grows older. A young man nowadays has so
much other knowledge to remember, — whist, boston, genealog-
ical tables, acts of diets, dramaturgy, liturgy, carving of meats,
— that really, rub my forehead as I would, I could n't recall
that tremendous air. But just fancy, Madam, not long ago I
was sitting at table with a whole menagerie of counts, princes,
princesses, lord chamberlains, court marshalesses, court govern-
esses, keepers of the court plate, and whatever else those high
domestics may be called ; and their sub-domestics were running
behind their chairs and shoving the well-filled plates under their
mouths : but I who was passed by and overlooked was sitting
idle without the least exercise of my jaws, and I kneaded bread
pellets, and from mere ennui drummed with my fingers, and all
at once to my horror I found myself drumming the long-forgot-
ten * Red Guillotine March.' What happened ? Madam, these
people went on undisturbed with their eating, and were not
aware that other people, when they have nothing to eat, sud-
denly fall to drumming, and drum very curious marches, sup-
posed to have been long since forgotten."

It is a noteworthy fact that the first book which Heine
read with interest, the first which actually " found " him
and mastered him was, " Don Quixote." The influence
of this master-work on a nature so susceptible must
needs have been, and evidently was, profound, indelible.
It predetermined, perhaps, the direction of his genius,
and inspired the comic-tragic tone which characterizes

HEINRICH HEINE. 509

all his writings. " Don Quixote " is the most tragic of
comedies. It presents the universal tragedy of life on a
comic ground. The child appreciates the tragic more
keenly than the comic ; the former appeals to the feel-
ings, the latter to the understanding. The boy Heine,
with the simple faith of childhood, accepted the narra-
tive as historical, took everything seriously, and wept at
the knight's mishaps as the undeserved misfortunes and
cruel failures of a great and noble nature. The comic
side dawned upon him later in life. In the " Reise-
bilder " he compares himself to Don Quixote : —

" It is true, my madness and the fixed ideas I had imbibed
from those books were of tlie opposite kind to the madness and
the fixed ideas of the ' La Manchan.' He wanted to restore
the perishing age of chivalry ; I, on the contrary, would finally
annihilate all that has survived of that time. And so we labored
with very different views. My colleague took windmills for
giants ; I, on the contrary, can see in the giants of to-day only
boastful windmills. He looked upon leathern wine-sacks as
mighty magicians ; but I see in our modern magicians only the
leathern wine-sacks."

When the boy had reached the age of sixteen, his
father, who wished to make a merchant of him, sent
him to Frankfort and had him placed as a clerk in a
bank. But the situation did not suit him, and Frank-
fort was intolerable on account of the hard conditions
to which Jews were subjected in that city, compelled to
live by themselves in a narrow, close street, — a G-hetto^
of which the gates were closed, preventing their egress
on Sundays.

The experiment was renewed with more promising
auspices at Hamburg, where Heine's uncle, Solomon
Heine, a wealthy banker, gave him a position which but

510 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

for his invincible aversion to mercantile pursuits, would
have opened to him a sure and easy road to wealth. For
three years he struggled in vain against the bent of his
genius, until his uncle, despairing at last of his success
in that line, but willing still to befriend him, generously
offered to defray the expenses of a university education,
on condition that his nephew should study law, obtain a
degree, and settle as a lawyer in Hamburg. For this it
would be necessary that he should be baptized and pro-
fess the Christian religion, — a measure to which neither
party saw any objection, and which the nephew subse-
quently adopted.

A year and a half, extending from the spring of 1819
to the autumn of 1820, was spent at Bonn, where he
matriculated as a student of law, but devoted himself
mainly to literature under the guidance of August W.
Schlegel, the all-cultured scholar, who commanded his
admiration and exercised an immense influence on the
youth's intellectual development. From Bonn he re-
moved to Gottingen, then holding the first rank among
German universities. There he applied himself with
more concentrated diligence to his legal studies, until,
on account of a duel, he received what was called the
consilium abeundi, — that is, in the language of our uni-
versities, he was suspended. We next find him a student
at Berlin, where he gained the entrSe to the most intel-
lectual circle of the city, — the circle of which Yarn-
hagen von Ense and Rahel were the leading spirits. In
Berlin he heard Hegel, associated with the Hegelians,
and imbibed the demoralizing influence of that philoso-
phy, which in professing to explain all neutralizes all, and
leaves a residuum of intellectual self-sufficiency combined
with moral indifference.

HEINRICH HEINE. 511

To this evil was added a disappointment in love. A
cousin, who first encouraged and then jilted him, ended
with marrying one whom Heine characterizes as the
stupidest of all fools. This experience, acting on such
a nature, became a root of bitterness which poisoned all
his life and aggravated the cynical tendency so conspic-
uous in his character and writings. It furnished the
motive and material of his first volume of poems, —
" Junge Leiden," — which seems to have received but
little notice at the time.

In 1824 he returned to Gottingen, and there completed
his professional studies, and took the degree of Doctor
of Laws in 1825. About the same time he received
Christian baptism, and became a member of the Luth-
eran Church. So far as we can judge, this step was an act
of policy, — conformity without conversion, confession
without conviction ; in short, a lie, and if so, through the
injury to self-respect which must have attended it, a
fresh step in moral degradation.

From that time until the year 1831 he resided chiefly
in Hamburg. How far he succeeded, or whether he se-
riously applied himself to the practice of the profession
which his uncle had so much at heart, I am unable to
say. We know that the place was exceedingly distaste-
ful to him, and he satirizes it without mercy as a city of
Philistines. He says : —

" There are no villains, no Macbeths there, but the spirit of
Banco [Banquo] rules. The manners are English and the table
is angelic [englisch']. The people of Hamburg are great eaters.
In the matter of politics, of science and religion, they entertain
conflicting opinions, or no opinions at all ; but in the matter of
eating there is an edifying unanimity. Of the Jews who reside
there, one party insists that grace should be said in Hebrew, the

512 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

other allows that it may be said in German ; but both parties
eat, they eat heartily, — they are of one opinion in that. . . .
Hamburg is the native city of smoked beef, and the people are
as proud of it as^ Mainz is of John Faust, or Eisleben of Luther.
And indeed who would think of comparing the value of the art
of printing, or the value of the Reformation, with that of
smoked beef? The Jesuits dispute the two foi-mer, but even the
most zealous Jesuits are agreed that smoked beef is an institu-
tion of great benefit to human kind. [The women of Hamburg,
he thinks, are not particularly subject to the passion of love.]
Cupid sometimes draws his bow at them, but either from awk-
wardness or love of mischief he aims too low, and so the dart
hits the stomach instead of the heart."

In 1826 appeared the first volume of the Meisehilder
(" Pictures of Travel "), containing the " Harzreise," the
" Nordernei," and the book " Le Grand ; " in 1827 the
second part, and soon after the third, containing the
"Italy," the "Baths of Lucca," the "City of Lucca,"
and the " English Fragments." The volumes are inter-
spersed with some of the author's most delicious poems.
The " Nordernei," — letters from an island of that name,
a favorite seaside resort, — is prefaced by a series of
poems on the North Sea. Julian Schmidt says of the
first volume : —

" Seldom has a book in Germany elicited such loud and uni-
versal interest. The differences of age and rank vanished before
the mighty impression. Forward-striving youth were inspired
by its drunken dithyrambics, and gray Diplomacy sipped with
secret delight the sweet poison whose deleterious eiFects it did
not for a moment forget. The ' Reisebilder ' was the first free
breath which succeeded a heavy sultry atmosphere. For the
first time one heard in the midst of the night -phantoms, which
the charnel-fancy of the Restoration-poets had presented us,
loud, arrogant, soul-born laughter. A bold harlequin had leaped

HEINRICH HEINE. 513

into the midst of their raree-show, brandishing right and left his
wooden sword, and by means of his antics exciting in the public
that merriment which alone could dispel the gloom from their
eyes. . . . The young relative of a wealthy house, who more
perhaps through report than by personal experience has come
to the conviction that all beauty is venal, changes his role every
moment with the kindly student given to dreaming and lacry-
mose love. . . The impression which this singular work made on
all sides is partly due to the state of the time to which the form
of the ' Keisebilder ' was a new and surprising apparition. A pet-
rified dogmatism, from which the substantial meaning had died
out, had gradually become a burden to everybody ; the empty
phraseology of Romanticism had lost its interest ; men longed
for deliverance from the fetters of an authority which one could
no longer respect."

Of Heine's prose works the " Reisebilder," as it is the
earliest, so in a literary view it is the best. Written
before he had. made literature a profession, and was
forced to write for bread, it is the freshest, the freest,
the most thoroughly impregnated with the author's
genius, if also stamped with his peculiar faults, — flash-
ing with wit, rollicking with humor, here and there
eloquent, often pathetic, occasionally coarse, bitter in
its satire, unjust in its criticisms, full of prejudice, full
of egotism, always piquant, never prosy.

The title imperfectly indicates the contents of the
work. Pictures of travel, properly speaking, descrip-
tions of places, people, and things, adventures by the
way, constitute a comparatively small part of the vol-
umes. The rest is occupied with alien matter, — criti-
cisms, personalities, biographical reminiscences, satires.
There is no coherence between the parts, and often no
apparent motive in the transitions. In form the book
might pass for, and perhaps was, an imitation of Sterne's

33

514 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

'• Sentimental Journey ; " but in substance it has nothing
in common with the English original.

The opening chapter of the second part, entitled "Jour-
ney from Munich to Genoa," furnishes an example of
the abruptness common to both authors and at the same
time of the humor peculiar to the German : —

" I am the most polite man in the world. I take credit to
myself for having never been rude on this eartli, where there
are so many insufferable bores who will sit down by you and
recount their troubles, or, what is worse, declaim their verses.
With genuine Christian patience I have quietly listened to these
inflictions without betraying by a look how my soul was wearied
by them. Like a Brahmin doing penance, who gives his body
a prey to vermin that these creatures of God may also have
their satisfaction, I have held still and listened to the most hate-
ful of human vermin, and my inward sighs were heard only by
Him who rewards virtue.

" But even policy counsels us to be polite, and not to sulk in
silence or to answer petulantly when some spongy councillor of
commerce or dry cheesemonger seats himself by us and begins
a general European conversation with the words, ' Fine weather
to-day, sir.' You can never know under what circumstances
you may meet one of these Philistines again, and he may then
take bitter revenge on you for not answering civilly, * Yes, very
fine.' It may even happen, dear reader, that at Cassel, at the
table d'hote, you shall be sitting next hiin on his left, and he has
the dish of browned carp before him, and it falls to him to help.
Now, if he has a pique against you, he will pass all the plates
to the right, so that when it comes your turn there shall not be
even the smallest bit of tail left for you. . . . And to get no carp
is a great misfortune, — next to the loss of the national cockade,
perhaps the greatest. The Philistine who subjects you to this
evil mocks you into the bargain ; he offers you the sprigs of laurel
which are left in the brown gravy. Alas ! of what avail are
laurels when you have no carp ? And the Philistine blinks with

HEINRICH HEINE. 616

his little eyes, and giggles and lisps, ' Fine weather to-day, sir/
Ah, dear soul! it may even happen 'that you shall come to lie
in some churchyard by the side of this Philistine ; and then,
when at the last day you hear the sound of the trumpet, and say
to your neighbor, ' Good friend, will you have the kindness to
lend me a hand and help me to rise ; my left foot has fallen
asleep, lying here so long,' you will suddenly perceive the well-
known Philistine smile, and will hear the mocking voice, 'Fine
weather to-day, sir.' "

The particular Philistine who provoked these jests was
a native of Berlin, whom Heine met at Munich, and who
was very indignant that Munich rather than Berlin should
be styled the " Modern Athens." Sitting by the poet's
side at table, he expatiated on the want of irony in the
people of Munich. There the Berliner had the advantage
of them, — irony being in his view a test of intellectual
refinement, a synonym for Attic salt. " No ! " he ex-
claimed, " they have good white beer here, but no irony."
Nannerl, the neat barmaid, who happened to be pass-
ing at that moment and to catch the word " irony," of
whose meaning she was entirely ignorant, confirmed the
Berliner's assertion. " We have no irony, but we have
every other kind of beer." Whereupon Heine caught
her by the apron and explained : " My dear Nannerl,
irony is not beer at all ; it is a kind of thing invented
by the people of Berlin."

On entering Italy he writes : —

"I find it convenient to refer my readers, once for all, to
Goethe's Italian journey, — the rather that, as far as Verona,
he went over the same ground through the Tyrol. . . . Goethe
holds the mirror to Nature ; or, better said, he is himself the
mirror of Nature. Nature wanted to know how she looks, and
she created Goethe. Even the thoughts, the intentions of

516 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Nature he can mirror to us ; and a fervent Goethean, especially
in dog-days, is not to be' blamed if he is so surprised at the
identity of the objects with their reflections that he even credits
the mirror with creative power, with power to create like objects.
A certain Herr Eckermann once wrote a book about Goethe, in
which he quite seriously asserts that if the dear God, in creating
the world, had said to Goethe : ' I have now finished. I have
created everything but birds and trees. You would oblige me
if you would create these trifles in my place,' — Goethe would
have created these animals and plants quite in the spirit of the
rest of creation ; the birds with feathers, and the trees green,'
There is some truth in these words ; and I am even of the opin-
ion that Goethe would have done better than the dear God
himself, — and that, for example, he would more correctly have
created Herr Eckermann also with feathers and green. It is
really a mistake of creation that Herr Eckermann has no green
feathers growing on his head ; and Goethe has endeavored to
remedy this defect by procuring for him a doctor's hat from
Jena, and putting it on him with his own hands."

Previous to his Italian journey, curiosity had led Heine
to England. His observations on that country were
published in 1830, with the title " Englische Frag-
mente." The hatred he always felt toward the English
does not seem to have been either augmented or abated by
what he saw on English soil. Certainly not abated, for
long after it declares itself with comic ferocity in the
introduction to his " Maids and Women of Shakspeare."
After citing the anecdote of a good Hamburg Christian,
who could never reconcile himself to the fact that Jesus
Christ was a Jew, when he thought of the Jewish ped-
lers of Hamburg, with their long unwiped noses, he
proceeds to say that he felt just so about Shakspeare :

" It makes me faint at heart when I consider that after all
he was an Englishman, and belonged to the most repulsive

HEINRICH HEINE. 517

people that evei- God in his wrath created. What a disagree-
able people ! what a comfortless country ! How starched, home-
baked, self-seeking ! How eng [narrow] ! how Englisch. A
country which the ocean would long since have swallowed but
for fear of the nausea it would cause ! "

Heine's visit to England coincided with the brief min-
istry of George Canning, — a time favorable for his study
of English politics and English institutions. His obser-
vations on men and things are often sagacious and his
criticisms just, where they are not biassed by his impla-
cable prejudices.

When he comes to speak of Wellington, he seems
fairly to gnash his teeth at the man who conquered his
soul's idol, Napoleon : —

" The man has the misfortune of having always been fortu-
nate where the greatest men of the world were unfortunate.
That is revolting, and makes him hateful. We see in him only
the conquest gained by stupidity over genius. Arthur Welling-
ton triumphs where Napoleon Bonaparte fails. Never was a
man more ironically favored by Fortune. It seems as if she
meant to expose his barren littleness by lifting him up on the
shield of victory."

On one occasion, however, Heine tells us that he was
driven to praise Wellington. It was when his barber,
a Mr. White, was shaving him. This barber was a great
radical, and complained bitterly of the oppression of the
poor by the aristocracy. Against Wellington especially
he raved like a madman, saying, — " Oh, if I only had
him under my razor I would save him the trouble of
cutting his own throat, as his countryman Londonderry
did ! " Heine says : —

"I was afraid that he might suddenly mistake me for the
Duke of Wellington, and cut my throat. I sought to tone down

518 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

his violence and to pacify him. I appealed to his national pride.
I represented to him that Wellington had advanced the glory of
England ; that he was only an innocent tool in other hands ;
that he too was fond of beefsteak ; that he — Heaven knows
what more I praised in Wellington while the knife was about
my throat."

The first and second volumes of the " Reisebilder "
were soon followed by the Buck der Lieder, — the " Book
of Songs," — containing, besides the previously pub-
lished " Junge Leiden " and the metrical portions of the
* ^Reisebilder," the Romances, the Sonnets, " Die Heim-
kehr," " Lyrisches Intermezzo," and other miscellaneous
pieces. A second volume, published many years after,
contains the collection entitled " Romancero,^' and the
" Letzte Gedichte." " Atta Troll ; a Summer-night's
Dream," and " Germany ; a Winter's Tale," were pub-
lished separately.

As a lyric poet Heine must always rank high, not only
among German, but among all modern European, singers.
His songs have that subtile, indescribable, inexplicable
charm which we find in Goethe, in Uhland, in Beranger,
and in Burns ; but, above all, in some of Shakspeare's
songs. There is in them a spontaneity which is lacking
in many poets who far excel him in other qualities, — in
fire and force, — as Schiller and Bj^ron. There is a
touch-and-go character, a fugitive grace, like the mo-
mentary flutter of a humming-bird about a honeysuckle.
Their substance is of the lightest, airiest (1 am speaking
of the songs), — a fleeting thought arrested and crystal-
ized in verse ; the mood of the moment breathed in
numbers, words coming unsought to embody a senti-
ment,— falling, as it were, accidentally into metrical
cadence and just happening to rhyme : no appearance

HEINRICH HEINE. 519

of elaboration, no suggestion of conscious effort, —
sometimes a vexatious looseness of versification. The
test of merit in poems of this sort — very different from
that of more artistic compositions — is popularity ; and
never were songs more popular than Heine's. They
have been to Germany what those of Beranger are to
France. Many of them have been set to music. " All
the composers of the Holy Roman Empire," says Schmidt,
" have worked at them."

The following is a specimen, not of the grace, which is
untransferable, but of the easy levity of these songs : —

" I 'm tossed and driven to and fro ;
A few hours more and I shall meet her, —
The maid, than whom earth knows no sweeter:
Heart, my heart, why throbb'st thou so ?

*' But the hours, they are a lazy folk;
Leisurely their slow steps dragging,
Yawning, creeping, lingering, lagging, —
Come, hurry up, you lazy folk !

** With hurry and worry I 'm driven and chased;
But the hours were never in love I judge,
And so they conspire to wreak their grudge
In secretly mocking at lovers' haste."

Characteristic is the blending of sadness and jest in
one weird little piece, which I will not attempt to trans-
late in verse. The poet bids his mistress place her hand
on his heart : " Do you hear the knocking and hammer-
ing in that little cell ? There 's a carpenter at work
there making my coffin ; his hammering keeps me
awake. Make haste. Master Carpenter ! finish the coffin ;
then I shall sleep."

All Heine's poems — the longer pieces as well as the
songs — have been translated into English by Alfred

520 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

Edgar Bowring. My space will permit me to select
but two : —

THE MOUNTAIN ECHO.

At a sad slow pace across the vale

There rode a horseman brave :
" Am I riding now to my mistress's arras,
Or but to the darksome grave? "
The echo answer gave —
" The darksome grave."

And farther rode the horseman on,

With sighs his thoughts expressed;
*' If I thus early must go to my grave,
Yet in the grave is rest."

The answering voice confessed —
" The grave is rest."

Adown the rider's furrowed cheek

A tear fell on his breast :
*' If rest I can only find in the grave,
For me the grave is best."

The hollow voice confessed —
" The grave is best."

THE PILGRIMAGE TO KEVLAR.

The mother of God at Kevlar
Her best dress wears to-day;

Full much hath she to accomplish.
So great the sick folks' array.

The sick folk with them are bringing,
As offerings fitting and meet,

Strange limbs, of wax all fashioned, —
Yea, waxen hands and feet.

And he who a wax hand offers
Finds cured in his hand the wound;

And he who a wax foot proffers
Straight finds his foot grow sound.

HEINRICH HEINE. 521

To Kevlar went many on crutches

Who now on the tight-rope skip,
And many a palsied finger

O'er the viol doth merrily trip.

The mother, she took a wax-light,

And out of it fashioned a heart;
*' My son, take that to God's mother,

And she will cure thy smart. "

The son took, sighing, the wax heart,
Went with sighs to the shrine so blest ;

The tears burst forth from his eyelids,
The words burst from his breast:

*' Thou highly favored, blest one!

Thou pure and god- like maid !
Thou mighty queen of heaven !

To thee be my grief displayed.

*• I, with my mother, was dwelling

In yonder town of Cologne, —
The town that many a hundred

Fair churches and chapels doth own.

** And near us there dwelt my Gretchen,
Who, alas ! is dead to-day ;

0 Mary, I bring thee a wax heart!
My heart's wound cure, I pray.

** My sick heart cure, oh, cure thou!
And early and late my vow

1 '11 pay and sing with devotion, —

O Mary, blessed be thou! '*

The poor sick son and his mother

In their little chamber slept;
The mother of God to their chamber

All lightly, lightly crept:

522 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS,

She bent herself over the sick one ;

Her hand with action light
Upon his heart placed softly,

Smiled sweetly, and vanished from sight.

The mother saw all in her vision, —

Saw this, and saw much more;
From out her slumber woke she, —

The hounds were baying full sore.

Her son was lying before her,

And dead her son he lay,
While over his pale cheeks gently

The light of morning did play.

Her hands the mother folded,

She felt she knew not how ;
With meekness sighed she softly,

'* O Mary, blessed be thou! "

The French Revolution of 1830, — the revolution of
the trois jours, — which dethroned Charles X., awakened
in Heine, as in all German Liberals, a fever of enthu-
siasm, and brought to sudden maturity a project long
entertained of emigrating to France, and there main-
taining himself by his pen. It is surmised that this de-
termination was confirmed by hints from the civil
authorities, that in consequence of too great freedom
of speech on political topics his residence was no longer
safe at home. The prospect of confinement in the for-
tress of Spandau — the prison of political offenders —
was not a pleasant thing to contemplate. He had been
assured, he says in his quaint fashion, by one who
knew from experience of the place, that there were flies
in the soup, and that the keeper forgot to warm the
prisoners' chains in the winter. Accordingly, in 1831

HEINRICH HEINE, 523

he removed to France ; and there, with the exception
of a visit to Germany, he remained, residing chiefly
in Paris during the rest of his life.

But though he chose to expatriate himself, and though
he delighted to abuse Germany and all that belonged to
it, he could never bring himself to sever the tie which
bound him to his native country ; and when in great pe-
cuniary distress, he refused tempting offers of lucrative
posts in the civil service of France, from an unwilling-
ness to break entirely with Germany by suffering him-
self to be naturalized as a French citizen. It is beautiful
to see, beneath all his cynicism and vituperation, this la-
tent love of the fatherland. It attests a redeeming trait
in his character, — this, and his yearning, unconquerable
affection for his mother in Hamburg. In the eight
years' agony of his sick-bed he would never distress her
with a knowledge of his condition, and explained the
different manuscript of his letters by pretending a tem-
porary weakness of the eyes, which obliged him to
employ an amanuensis.

*' How swiftly speeds each rolling year
Since I have seen my mother dear !
Dear, dear old woman ! with what fervor
I think of her! may God preserve her!
The dear old thing in me delights ;
And in the letters which she writes
I see how much her hand is shaking.
Her mother 's heart how nearly breaking.
My mother 's ever in my mind ;
Twelve long, long years are left behind, —
Twelve years have followed on each other
Since to my heart I clasped my mother.
For ages Germany will stand ;
Sound to the core is that dear land.
For Germany I less should care

524 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

If my dear mother were not there.

My fatherland will never perish,

But she may die whom I most cherish." i

But the mother survived him.

In France Heine took to himself a wife. In 1836 we
find him associated with a French grisette, whom he after-
ward married, — Mathilde Crescence Mirat, — and writ-
ing to his friend Lewald : " Mathilde cheers my life by
the unvarying variableness of her humors. Very seldom
do I now think of poisoning or asphyxiating myself. We
shall probably put an end to ourselves some other way,
by reading some book till we die of ennuV The union
was a happy one ; it supplied to the poet precisely what
he most needed, — home comfort, relief from wearing
mental toil, a refuge from the bitter conflicts of life, and
a faithful minister in the weary years of sickness that
ended only with death.

His wife was illiterate ; she knew nothing except by
hearsay of his writings, and nai'vely asked his friends
" if it was true that her Henri was a great poet." In-
tellectual sympathy was out of the question, but the little
woman gave him what was far more important, — cheer-
ful companionship, in which he could relax from his
labor, a comfortable menage^ and tender nursing.

" My wife," he wrote to his brother, " is a good, natural,
cheerful child. . . . She does not allow me to sink into that
dreamy melancholy for which I have so much talent. For eight
years now, I have loved her with a tenderness and passion which
border on the fabulous."

A detailed account and critical analysis of Heine's
writings on French soil, — some of them first written in

1 From Bowring's translation.

HEINRICH HEINE, 525

French and afterward translated into German, — would
be foreign to the purpose, and would far exceed the
limits of this essay. The volume of essays entitled the
" Salon " contains some very valuable criticisms of
French painters, a propos to the Paris art exhibition of
1831, and a series of less important strictures on the
French stage in letters to the author's friend Lewald.
It contains the " Florentine Nights " and the " Elemen-
tar-Geister" (an entertaining account of certain German
superstitions), the "Rabbi Bacherach" (an interesting
sketch of Jewish life drawn partly from personal obser-
vation), and the satirical fragment, " Schnabelewopski."
And it contains what is more important than any of
these, — one of the most significant of all Heine's works,
— an essay on the history of religion and philosophy in
Germany. It was first written in French, and was de-
signed to give French readers some notion of that phi-
losophy of which they had heard so much, and which
was so inaccessible to them in the works of Kant and
Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. This purpose was answered
for sucli as required only general and superficial acquaint-
ance with the subject ; the serious student in pursuit
of thorough knowledge must seek elsewhere. The book
is superficial, as are all Heine's writings ; he was no
metaphysician, no first-hand studious investigator of any
subject. Like Voltaire, he had luminous intuitions but
no depth. Yet it is beautifully intelligible, and readable
as no other book on German philosophy is. It abounds
in Heine's peculiar wit, and in characteristic merit ranks,
in my judgment, next to the " Reisebilder."

I cannot speak with the same commendation of the au-
thor's other work on Germany, — his dissertation on the
Romantic School, which has been lauded by non-German

526 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

readers, ignorant of the writers treated, as the most
valuable of all his productions. It was designed in part
as a kind of antiphony to Madame de Stael's " L'Al-
lemagne," as that was designed to set off Germany
against the France of Napoleon's regime. It was written
to suit French taste, and partly to vindicate French
classicism. It deals in a flippant manner with great
and honored names, is often grossly unjust, especially
to A. W. Schlegel, to whom the author was indebted for
much kindness while at Bonn, and whose merits he then
exalted with extravagant praise. The book is entertain-
ing, as a treatise of Heine on such a subject could hardly
fail to be, but insincere. Let no one rely on it for any
trustworthy knowledge of the German Romantic School.

The remaining works of Heine, apart from the grace
of his style, have only a temporary and local interest,
with the exception of the " Maids and Women of Shak-
speare," which is certainly not one of his best, and
which throws but little critical light on the works of
the great dramatist.

In the essay on Ludwig Borne, a former friend of the
author, — that essay so universally condemned, and after-
ward repudiated by Heine himself, — the second book is
an episode consisting of letters to friends, in which there
is an estimate of the Bible especially interesting as
coming from such a source : —

" Yesterday being Sunday, and leaden tedium brooding over
the whole island [Heligoland] and almost crushing in my head,
in my despair I had recourse to the Bible. And I confess to
you, that in spite of my being secretly a Hellene I was well
entertained and thoroughly edified. What a book ! great and
wide as the world ; having its root in the abysses of creation
and reaching up into the blue mysteries of heaven ! Sunrise

HEINRICH HEINE. 527

and sunset, promise and fulfilment, birth and death, the whole
drama of humanity, — it is all in this book. It is the book of
books. . . . Longinus speaks of its sublimity. Modern writers
on aesthetics talk of naivete. Ah ! as I have said, here all stand-
ards of measurement fail. . . . The Bible is the word of God."

In 1848 Heine, already stricken with paralysis, was
attacked with a disease of the spine, which laid him
prostrate ; and from that time until his death, in 1856,
for eight long years, he was confined to his bed, suffer-
ing frightful pains the while, but retaining his mental
vigor and vivacity to the end. One day a German
scholar called to see him, and wearied him with his
learned dulness. When he had taken his leave, Theo-
phile Gautier called. " You will find me stupid to-day,"
Heine said ; " I have been exchanging ideas with Herr

." When near his end, his physician asked :

" Pouvez-vous siffler [" siffler " means both "• whistle "
and " hiss "] ? " " H^las ! non," was the reply ; " pas
meme une com^die de M. Scribe."

Lord Houghton, who has written more sensibly about
Heine than any Englishman whom I have read, embodies
in his monograph a very pathetic account, which at his
request an anonymous lady friend, whom the poet had
met and petted as a child, gave of her visit to the invalid
in what he called his '•' mattress-grave."

" He lay on a pile of mattresses, his body wasted so that it
seemed no bigger than a child under the sheet wiiich covered
him. He raised his powerless eyelids with his thin white fingers
and exclaimed : * Gott ! die kleine Lucie ist gross geworden,
und hat einen Mann : das ist eigen ! ' On a second visit, some
time after, he said : ' I have now made my peace with all the
world, and at last also with the dear God, who now sends you to
me as a beautiful death angel. I shall certainly die soon.* On

528 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS.

the whole, I never saw a man bear such terrible pain and misery
in so perfectly unaffected a manner. He complained of his
sufferings, and was pleased to see tears in my eyes ; and then he
at once set to work to make me laugh heartily, which pleased
him just as much. ... He begged me not to tell him when I
was going, for he could not bear to say ' Lebewohl auf ewig," or
to hear it. He repeated that I had come to him as a beautiful,
kind death-angel, to bring him greetings from youth and from
Germany, and to dispel the bad French thoughts."

Thus Heine seems at last to have abjured his French
predilections, reverting with a prodigal's penitent yearn-
ing to the German Heimath, the home of his early culture
and his first affections.

What shall we say in conclusion of this extraordinary
genius ? A great poet ? The third in rank of the poets
of Germany ? No ! To constitute a great poet there
needs something more than a writer of songs, be they
never so charming. There needs, as the name imports,
the maker; and that Heine surely was not. For his
tragedies, " Ratcliff " and " Almansor," his warmest ad-
mirers have claimed no special merit ; as dramatic com-
positions they are failures. His longer poems — with the
exception of the " Jehuda Ben Halevi " (which is a frag-
ment), his " Deutschland," and "Atta Troll" — would
hardly be read but for the fame achieved by his songs.
Not a great poet, but a marvellous songster, and beyond
comparison Germany's wittiest writer, — the foremost
satirist of his time.

INDEX.

" Abderites, The " (Wieland's),

quoted, 222-227.
" Aufkliirung, Die," an important

epoch of history in Germany and

elsewhere, 191-194.

Baumgarten, Sigismund Jakob,

quoted, 74.
Baur, Ferdinand Christian, quoted, 74.
Bodmer, John Jacob, 109.

Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 5.
Coleridge, S. T., quoted, 126-128, 353.

"Don Carlos" (Schiller's), quoted,
357-359.

" Easter Song, The," translation of,

342, 343.
"Emilia Galotti " (Lessing's), quoted,

159-165.

" Faust " (Goethe's), analysis of,

with extracts, 296-322.
"Fisher, The " (Goethe's), quoted, 277.

"Ganymede" (Goethe's), quoted,275.

Gellert, Christian Fiirchtegott, brief
sketch of his life and work, 113-120.

Gerhard, Paul, 102.

German Literature, its modern growth,
1-3 ; its distinguishing qualities and
principal defects, 3-10 ; its classifi-
cations and subdivisions, 10 ; its
oldest monuments, 11-24 ; mediaeval
poems, 59, 60; Martin Luther as a
feature in its development, 65-82;
its progress during the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, 100-120;
Lessing's influence upon, 144; the

" Universal German Library " as
an important element in, 190-194;
Herder's influence upon, 228,229;
the Romantic School as a feature in
its development, 429-473.

Gervinus, quoted, 74, 211.

Gessner, Salomon, 110.

Goethe, Wolfgang Johann, 113, 125,
234; his rank as a poet of modern
times, 254-257, 274, 276 ; his parent-
age and early associations, 257, 258 ;
his mental characteristics as a young
man, 259-261 ; events of interest
during and immediately after his
student life, 261-263; becomes at-
tached to the service of Karl August
at Weimar, 263-266 ; his visit to
Italy and its marked effect upon
him, 266-268 ; the charm of his per-
sonal presence, 208, 269 ; his mental
and physical industry, 269, 270 ;
consideration of his pei'sonal charac-
ter and peculiarities, 270-273 ; ex-
amination of, with extracts from,
some of his poems, 275-288; as a
dramatist, 288, 289 ; " Wilhelm
Meister" examined, as an evidence
of his prose-writing abilities, 200-
294 ; his skill in delineating female
characters, 294, 295; the origin of
"Faust" and history of its compo-
sition, 296-300 ; consideration of
the play in detail, with extracts,
300-322; analysis of "The Tale,"
showing its allegorical character,
322-340; compared with Schiller,
344-346, 373.

Gottsched, Christopher, 111-113.

Grimm, Jacob, quoted, 12, 74.
" Gudrun," brief sketch of, 56-59.

34

530

INDEX.

Hamann, John George, his influence
upon Herder, 233-235.

Hardenberg, Friedrich von (Novalis),
a rare genius of the Romantic
School, 447-449 ; brief sketch of his
life as a man and an author, 449-
454; extracts, 455-463.

"Harz-Journe}' iuWinter" (Goethe's),
quoted, 279-281.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,
quoted, 150.

Heine, Heinrich, quoted, 186 ; as a sat-
irist and wit, 502, 503 ; brief sketch
of his early life, 504-511 ; his prin-
cipal prose works with extracts,
512-518 ; as a lyric poet, with trans-
lations, 518-522; his later life and
writings, 522-528.

Herder, Johann Gottfried, his influ-
ence on German literature, 228, 229 ;
brief sketch of his life and work,
with extracts from his letters and
writings, 228-253.

Herzog, 102.

Hettner, Hermann Julius Theodor,
quoted, 196, 204-206.

" Hildebrand and Hadubrand," 20-22.

Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm,
a writer of the preternatural and
imaginative, 474, 475; brief sketch
of his life and work, 476-490 ; story
of the " Fantasiestiicke," with ex-
tracts, 491-501.

"Iliad," The, compared with the

"Nibelungenlied," 48-55.
"Iphigenia" (Goethe's) quoted, 286-

288.

Kant, Emanuel, quoted, 185.

Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, brief
sketch of his life and works, with
extracts from translations, 121-142 ,
comparison with Milton, 139, 140.

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, his life
and works, 144-170; his influence in
the development of German litera-
ture, 144 ; classification of his writ-
ings,with extracts from translations,
153-157; his dramatic works, with

extracts, 159-169; his incomplete

plan of "Faust," 340-342.
Lettsom, his translation of the "Ni-

belungenlied " quoted, 33-47.
Luther, Martin, as reformer and writer,

65-82.

"Mahomet's Song" (Goethe's) quot-
ed, 282, 283.

" Maid of Orleans, The " (Schiller's),
373-379.

Master-singers, The, a popular institu-
tion of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, 85-87.

Mendelssohn, Moses, quoted, 152; brief
sketch of his life and literary work,
171-186 ; extracts from translations,
186-189.

" Mountain Echo, The " (Heine's),
quoted, 520.

" Nathan the Wise " (Lessing's)
quoted, 165-169.

Nibelungenlied," The, consideration
of its origin, with brief sketch of
the story, 25-47 ; compared with
the "Iliad," 48-55.

Nicolai, Christoph Friedrich, a cham-
pion of " Die Aufklarung," —
brief sketch of his life and works,
with extracts, 194r-204.

"Oberon" (Wieland's) quoted, 218-

222.
Opitz von Boberfeld, Martin, 104-

107.

" Parzival," consideration of, with
brief sketch of the story, 60-64.

Paul, Jean. See Richier.

" Philosophen, Die " (Schiller's) quot-
ed, 368-370.

" Pilgrimage to Kevlar, The "
(Heine's), quoted, 520-522.

Richter, Jean Paul Friedrich (Jean
Paul), 249; sketch of his early
life and character, 396-408 ; his
first literary success, 408-412; his
married life and later year*, 412-
437; as a man and writer, 418-420;

INDEX.

531

consideration of his writings, with
extracts, 420-428.

"Kitter Toggenburg, The," transla-
tion, 390-392.

" Robbers, The " (Schiller's), extracts
from, 349-353.

Rodigast, 102.

Roseuroth, 102.

Sachs, Hans, brief sketch of his life
and works, 83-96.

Scheffler, Johann (Angelas Silesius),
102, 103.

Schiller, John Christoph Friedrich
von, 266; compared with Goethe,
344-346, 373; his early youth and
literary labors, 346-349; publishes
" The Robbers," extracts from the
play, 349-353; literarj' injunction
imposed upon him and his conse-
quent self-exile, 354; his later plays,
with extracts from "Don Carlos,"
355-359 ; his growing popularity
and success, 360, 361 ; professor of
history at Jena, 362, 363; receives
assistance from Denmark, 363-366;
his interest in philosophy, 367, 368 ;
"Die Philosophen " quoted, 368-
370 ; his friendship with Goethe,
370-373; "The Maid of Orleans"
considered, 373-379 ; analyses of
" Wallenstein " and "The Picco-
lomini," with extracts, 379-387 ;
later dramas, 387-389; as a lyric
poet, with translation of "The Rit-
ter Toggenburg," 389-392; his last
years, 392-395.

Schlegel. August Wilhelm, his influ-
ence in the development of modem

German literature, 429-431 ; as
critic and writer, with extracts,
432-437.

Schlegel, Friedrich, 75; his influence
in the development of modern Ger-
man literature, 429-431; brief sketch
of his life as poet and critic, with
extracts, 437-446.

Scott, Sir Walter, quoted, 270.

Siegfried, 28-32.

Stahr, Adolf Wilhelm Theodor, quot-
ed, 169.

Strauss, David Friedrich, quoted, 75.

"Tale, The" (Goethe's), its allegori-
cal character explained, 322-340.

Taylor, Bayard, his translation of
"Gudrun," quoted, 58, 59.

Tennyson, Lord Alfred, quoted, 61.

Tieck, Ludwig, his life and works,
with extracts, 463-473.

Ulfilas, or Wulfilas, 12-20.

" Van der Kabel's Will " (Rich-

ter's), 423-428.
Von Eschenbach, Wolfram, 60.
Von Haller, Albrecht, 107-109.
Von Hutton, Ulrich, 97-99.

"Wallenstein" and "The Picco-
lomini," 379-387.

Wieland, Christoph Martin, brief
sketch of his life and works under
the two phases of his intellectual
development, 207 - 218 ; extracts
from translations of his " Oberon "
and " The Abderites," 218-227.

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