-/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 
 
74 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS. 
 
 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 
 
86 HOURS WITH GERMAN CLASSICS. 
 
 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. " 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, hi s 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 ; 
 
 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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