CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS 
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 COLLECTED AND REPUBLLSHED 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 
 
 THE LIFE OF HEYNE.— GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS.— 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER, 
 
 1885. 
 
THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 
 
THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 
 
 Professor Heeren's 'biograpliical and general literary abilites. Stinted 
 rnb-a-dub style of thinking and writing : Rhetorical flourishes : Truth- 
 fulness and trustworthiness, (p. 5). — Some account of Heyne's early 
 years, given in his own words. Honesty, industry and almost destitu- 
 tion of his parents. Petty tyranny and rapacity : A juvenile would-be 
 Brutus. Early schooling : hardships and helps : A quick scholar. His 
 account of his boyhood rather barren and intolerant. Extraordinary 
 school proficiency. A small degree of self-confidence awakened in him : 
 General discontent: Becomes a private tutor. (7). — At Leipzig Uni- 
 versity : ill-clothed, destitute of books, with five shillings in his purse : 
 He picked up what scraps of learning he could lay hold of : Ernesti the 
 only teacher from whom he derived any benefit. Heyne's best teacher, 
 himself : Without any clear aim, he set his heart on attaining knowl- 
 edge, and no promise or threat could turn him back. Occasionally gets 
 employment in giving private lessons: Chooses the profession of law. 
 Some Latin verses attract the notice of Count Briihl. Ministerial smiles 
 and empty promises. Again helps himself by private teaching : A hard 
 bed : Boiled pease-cods not unfrequently his only meal : A poor appoint- 
 ment. (15). — His edition of Tibullus. His day of difficulty far from 
 past. Some consequences of the Seven- Years War : Literarj^ strug- 
 gles. Accepts a tutorship in the family of Herrvon Sch( nberg. Theresa 
 Weiss: Her earnest intelligence, and good heartedness : Friendship 
 ripening into passion : Mutual confidence. Bombardment of Dresden : 
 Flight, and helpless destitution. Theresa's extreme illness: She re- 
 nounces the Catholic, and publicly embraces the Frotesant Faith : Mar- 
 riage : a bold step, but aright one. Domestic difficulties and hardships : 
 Theresas prompt courage. (20). — Dawning of better days: Appointed 
 Professor of Eloquence at Gottingen. His long life henceforth quietly 
 and actively fruitful. His literary and other labours. Death of his 
 noble-hearted Wife : Grounds of consolation. His friends provide him 
 with a new Bride : She proved an excellent wife to him. State of edu- 
 cation in Germany. Heyne s srccessful labours for the Gcttingen 
 University. He lived till he had completed all his undertakings ; 
 and died softly and gently in his eiglity-third year. (27\ — His intel- 
 lectual character. Founded a new epoch in classical study. A show of 
 dulness and hardness in him, not intrinsically belonging to him : A 
 kindly old man, wliom the Germans have some reason to be proud of. 
 Another proof that man is not the product of his circumstances, but 
 that, in a far higher degree, the circumstances are the product of the 
 ♦ man. (36 . 
 
THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 
 
 [1828.] 
 
 The labours and merits of Heyne being better known, and 
 more justly appreciated in England, than those of almost any 
 other German, whether scholar, poet or philosopher, we can- 
 not but believe that some notice of his life may be acceptable 
 to most readers. Accordingly, we here mean to give a short 
 abstract of this Volume, a miniature copy of the ' biograph- 
 ical portrait ; ' but must first say a few words on the portrait 
 itself, and the limner by whom it was drawn. 
 
 Professor Heeren is a man of learning, and known far out 
 of his own Hanoverian circle, — indeed, more or less to all 
 students of history, — by his researches on Ancient Com- 
 merce, a voluminous account of which from his hand enjoys 
 considerable reputation. He is evidently a man of sense and 
 natural talent, as well as learning ; and his gifts seem to lie 
 round him in quiet arrangement, and very much at his own 
 command. Nevertheless, we cannot admire him as a writer ; 
 we do not even reckon that such endowments as he has are 
 adequately represented in his books. His style both of dic- 
 tion and thought is thin, cold, formal, without force or char- 
 acter, and painfully reminds us of college lectui-es. He can 
 work rapidl}^ but with no freedom, and, as it were, only in 
 one attitude, and at one sort of labour. Not that we particu- 
 larly blame Professor Heeren for this, but that we think ho 
 might have been something better : these ' fellows in buck- 
 
 ' Foreign Review, No. 4. — Christian Gottloh Heyiu Uogra'plmch 
 dargestellt Ton Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren. (Christian Gottlob 
 Heyne biographic ally portrayed by Arnold Hermann Ludwig Heeren.) 
 Gottingeu, 
 
6 THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 
 
 ram,' very numerous in certain walks of literature, are an 
 unfortunate ratlier than a guilty class of men ; they have 
 fallen, perhaps unwillingly, into the plan of writing by pat- 
 tern, and can now do no other ; for, in their minds, the 
 beautiful comes at last to be simjjly synonymous with the 
 neat. Every sentence bears a family-likeness to its precur- 
 sor ; most probably it has a set number of clauses {three 
 is a favourite number, as in Gibbon, for ' the Muses dehght 
 in odds ' ) ; has also a given rhythm, a known and foreseen 
 music, simple but limited enough, like that of ill-bred fingers 
 drumming on a table. And then it is strange how soon the 
 outward rhythm carries the inward along with it ; and the 
 thought moves with the same stinted, hamstrung rub-a-dub 
 as the words. In a state of perfection, this species of writing- 
 comes to resemble power-loom weaving 4 it is not the mind 
 that is at work, but some scholastic machinery which the 
 mind has of old constructed, and is from afar observing. 
 Shot follows shot from the unwearied shuttle ; and so the 
 web is woven, ultimately and j^roperly, indeed, by the wit of 
 man, yet immediately and in the meanwhile by the mere aid 
 of time and steam. 
 
 But our Professor's mode of speculation is little less in- 
 tensely academic than his mode of writing. We fear he is 
 something of what the Germans call a Kleinstddter ; mentally 
 as well as bodily, a ' dweller in a little town.' He speaks at 
 great length, and with undue fondness, of the ' Georgia Au- 
 gusta ; ' which, after all, is but the University of Gottingen, 
 an earthly and no celestial institution : it is nearly in vain 
 that he tries to contemplate Heyne as a European person- 
 age, or even as a German one ; beyond the precincts of the 
 Georgia Augusta, his view seems to grow feeble, and soon 
 dies away into vague inanity ; so we have not' Heyne, the 
 man and scholar, but Heyne the Gottingen Professor. But 
 neither is this habit of mind any strange or crying sin, or at 
 all peculiar to Gottingen ; as, indeed, most parishes in Eng- 
 land can produce more than one example to show. And 
 yet it is pitiful, when an establishment for universal science, 
 which ought to be a watchtower where a man might see all 
 
THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 7 
 
 the kingdoms of the world, converts itself into a workshop, 
 Avhence he sees nothing but his toolbox and bench, and the 
 world, in broken glimpses, through one patched and highly 
 discoloured pane ! 
 
 Sometimes, intleed, oui' w orthy friend rises into a region of 
 the moral sublime, in which it is difficult for a foreigner to 
 follow him. Thus he says, on one occasion, speaking of 
 Heyne : ' Immortal are his merits in regard to the catalogues ' 
 — of the Gottingen library. And, to cite no other instance 
 except the last and best one, we are informed, that when 
 Heyne died, 'the guardian angels of the Georgia Augusta 
 ' waited, in that higher world, to meet him with blessings.' 
 By Day and Night ! there is no such guardian angel, that 
 we know of, for the University of Gottingen ; neither does it 
 need one, being a good solid seminary of itself, with hand- 
 some stipends from Government. We had imagined too, that 
 if anybody welcomed people into heaven, it would be St. 
 Peter, or at least some angel of old standing, and not a mere 
 mushroom, as this of Gottingen must be, created since the 
 year 1739. 
 
 But we are growing very ungrateful to the good Heeren, 
 who meant no harm by these flourishes of rhetoric, and in^ 
 deed does not often indulge in them. The grand questions 
 with us here are. Did he know the truth in this matter ; and 
 and was he disposed to tell it honestly ? To both of which 
 questions we can answer without reser^^e, that all appearances 
 are in his favour. He was He3aie's pupil, colleague, son-in- 
 \aw, and so knew him intimately for thirty years : he has 
 every feature also of a just, quiet, truth-loving man ; so that 
 we see little reason to doubt the authenticity, the innocence, 
 of any statement in his Volume. What more have we to do 
 with him then, but to take thankfullv what he has heeu 
 pleased and able to give us, and, with all despatch, commu- 
 nicate it to our readers ? 
 
 Heyne's Life is not without an intrinsic, as well as an ex- 
 ternal interest ; for he had much to struggle with, and he 
 struggled with it manfully ; thus his history has a value in- 
 
8 THE LIFE OF IIETNE 
 
 dependent of his fame. Some account of his early j^ears we 
 are happily enabled to give in his own words : we translate 
 a considerable part of this passage ; autobiography being a 
 favourite sort of reading with us. 
 
 He was born at Chemnitz, in Upper Saxony, in September 
 1729 ; the eldest of a poor weaver's family, poor almost to 
 the verge of destitution. 
 
 'My good father, George Heyne,' says he, 'was a native 
 of the principality of Glogau, in Silesia, from the little village 
 of Gravenschiitz. His vouth had fallen in those times when 
 
 t.' 
 
 the Evangelist party of that province were still exposed to the 
 oppressions and persecutions of the Romish Church. His 
 kindred, enjoying the blessing of contentment in an humble 
 but independent station, felt, like others, the influence of this 
 proselytising bigotry, and lost their domestic peace by means 
 of it. Some went over to the Bomish faith. My father left 
 his native village, and endeavoured, by the labour of his 
 hands, to procure a livelihood in Saxony. " What will it pro- 
 fit a man, if he gain the w^hole world and lose his own soul ! " 
 was the thought which the scenes of his youth had stamped 
 the most deeply on his mind. But no lucky chance favoured 
 his enterprises or endeavours to better his condition, never so 
 little. On the contrary, a series of perverse incidents kept 
 him continually below the limits even of a moderate suffici- 
 ency. His old age was thus left a prey to poverty, and to her 
 companions, timidity and depression of mind. Manufactures, 
 at that time, were visibly declining in Saxony ; and the misery 
 among the working-classes, in districts concerned in the linen 
 trade, was unusually severe. Scarcely could the labour of the 
 hands suffice to support the labourer himself, still less his 
 family. The saddest aspect which the decay of civic society 
 can exhibit has always appeared to me to be this, w4ien hon- 
 "ourable, honour-loving, conscientious diligence cannot, by the 
 utmost efforts of toil, obtain the necessaries of life ; or when 
 the working man cannot even find work, but must stand with 
 folded arms, lamenting his forced idleness, through which 
 himself and his family are verging to starvation, or it may be, 
 actually suiferiug the pains of hunger. 
 
 'It was in the extremest penury that I was born and 
 brought up. The earliest companion of my childhood was 
 Want ; and my first impressions came from the tears of my 
 
77//-; LIFE 0]' UEYXE. 9 
 
 mother, who had not bread for her children. How often have 
 I seen her on Saturday-nights WTinging her hands and weep- 
 ing, when she had come back wdth what the hard toil, nay 
 often the sleepless nights, of her husband had produced, and 
 could find none to buy it ! Sometimes a fresh attempt was 
 made through me or my sister : I had to return to the pur- 
 chasers with the same piece of ware, to see whether we could 
 not possibly get rid of it. In that cjuarter there is a class of 
 so-called merchants, wdio, however, are in fact nothing more 
 than forestallers, that buy up the linen made by the poorer 
 people at the lowest price, and endeavour to sell it in other 
 districts at the highest. Often have I seen one or other of 
 these petty tyrants, with all the pride of a satrap, throw back 
 the piece of goods offered him, or imj)eriously cut off some 
 trifle from the price and wages required for it. Necessity con- 
 strained the poorer to sell the sweat of his brow at a groschen 
 or two less, and again to make good the deficit by starving. 
 It was the view of such things that awakened the first sj^arks 
 of indignation in my young heart. The show of pomp and 
 plenty among these purse-proud people, who fed themselves 
 on the extorted crumbs of so many hundreds, far from daz- 
 zling me into respect or fear, filled me with rage against them. 
 The first time I heard of tyrannicide at school, there rose viv- 
 idly before me the project to become a Brutus on all those 
 oppressors of the poor, who had so often cast ni}' father and 
 mother into straits : and here, for the first time, was an in- 
 stance of a truth wdiich I have since had frequent occasion to 
 observe, that if the unhappy man, armed with feeling of his 
 wrongs and a certain strength of soul, does not risk the ut- 
 most and become an open criminal, it is merely the beneficent 
 result of those circumstances in which Providence has placed 
 him, thereby fettering his activity, and guarding him from 
 such destructive attempts. That the oppressing part of man- 
 kind should be secured against the oj^pressed was, in the plan 
 of inscrutable Wisdom, a most important element of the pres- 
 ent system of things. 
 
 ' My good parents did what they could, and sent me to a 
 child's-school in the suburbs. I obtained the praise of learn- 
 ing very fast, and being very fond of it. My schoolmaster 
 had two sons, lately returned f^'om Leipzig ; a couple of de- 
 praved fellows, who took all pains to lead me astra}' ; and, as 
 I resisted, kept me for a long time, by threats and mistreat- 
 ment of all sorts, extremel}^ miserable. So early as my tenth 
 year, to raise the mone}' for my school wages, I had given les- 
 
10 TIIIJ LIFE OF HEYNE. 
 
 SOBS to a neighbour's child, a little girl, in reading and writing. 
 As tlie common school-course could take me no farther, the 
 point now was to get a private hour and proceed into Latin. 
 But for that purpose a (jidcr groacJien weekly was required ; 
 this my parents had not to give. Many a day I carried thij 
 grief about with me : however, I had a godfather, wdio was in 
 easy circumstances, a baker, and my mother's half-brother. 
 One Saturday I was sent to this man to fetch a loaf. With 
 wet e^'es I entered his house, and chanced to find my god- 
 father himself there. Being questioned why I was crying, I 
 tried to answer, but a whole stream of tears broke loose, and 
 scarcely- could I make the cause of my sorrow intelligible. 
 My magnanimous godfather offered to pay the weekly gi^o- 
 schcn out of his owai pocket ; and only this condition was im- 
 posed on me, that I should come to him every Sunday, and 
 repeat what jDart of the Gospel I had learned by heart. This 
 latter arrangement had one good effect for me, — it exercised 
 my memory, and I learned to recite without bashfulness. 
 
 'Drunk with joy, I started off with my loaf ; tossing it up 
 time after time into the air, and barefoot as I was, I capered 
 aloft after it. But hereupon my loaf fell into a j)iiddle. This 
 misfortune again brought me a little to reason. M3" mother 
 heartily rejoiced at the good news ; my father was less con- 
 tent. Thus passed a couple of years ; and my schoolmaster 
 intimated, what I myself had long known, that I could now 
 learn no more from him. 
 
 ' This then was the time when I must leave school, and be- 
 take me to the handicraft of my father. Were not the artisan 
 under oppressions of so many kinds, robbed of the fruits of 
 his hard toil, and of so many advantages to which the useful 
 (titizen has a natural claim ; I should still say : Had I but con- 
 tinued in the station of my parents, what thousandfold vexa- 
 tion would at this hour have been unknown to me ! My father 
 could not but be anxious to have a grown-up son for an assist- 
 ant in liis labour, and looked upon my repugnance to it 
 with great dislike. I again longed to get into the grammar- 
 school of the town ; but for this all means were wanting. 
 Where was a gulden of quarterly fees, where were books and 
 a blue cloak to be come at? How wistfully my look often 
 lumg on the walls of the school when I passed it ! 
 
 ' A clergyman of the suburbs was my second godfather ; his 
 name was Sebastian Seydel ; my schoolmaster, wlio likewise 
 belonged to his congregation, had told him of me. I was 
 sent for, and after a short examination, he promised me that 
 
THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 11 
 
 I should go to the town-school ; he himself would bear the 
 charges. Who can express my happiness, as I then felt it ! 
 I was despatched to the first teacher ; examined, and placed 
 with approbation in the second class. Weakly from the first, 
 pressed down with sorrow and want, without any cheerful en- 
 joyment of childhood or youth, I was still of very small stat- 
 ure ; my class fellows judged by externals, and had a very 
 slight opinion of me. Scarcely, by various proofs of dihgence 
 and by the praises I received, could I get so far that they tol- 
 erated my being put beside them. 
 
 ' And certainly my diligence was not a little hampered ! Of 
 his promise, the clergyman, indeed, kept so much, that he 
 paid my quarterly fees, provided me with a coarse cloak, and 
 gave me some useless volumes that were lying on his shelves ; 
 but to furnish me with school-books he could not resolve. I 
 thus found myself under the necessity of borrowing a class- 
 fellow's books, and daily copjdng a j)art of them before the 
 lesson. On the other hand, the honest man would have some 
 hand himself in m^^ instruction, and gave me from time to 
 time some hours in Latin. In his voutli he had learned to 
 make Latin verses : scarcely was Erasmus de Civilitate Jloj'uni 
 got over, when I too must take to verse-making ; all this be- 
 fore I had read any authors, or could possibly possess any 
 store of words. The man was withal passionate and rigorous ; 
 in every point repulsive ; with a moderate income he was ac- 
 cused of avarice ; he had the stiffness and self-will of an old 
 bachelor, and at the same time the vanity of aiming to be a 
 good Latinist, and, what w^as more, a Latin verse-maker, and 
 consequently a literary clergyman. These quahties of his all 
 contributed to overload my youth, and nip away in the bud 
 every enjoyment of its pleasui-es.' 
 
 In this plain but somewhat leaden style does Heyne j^ro- 
 ceed, detailing the crosses and losses of his school-years. We 
 cannot pretend that the narrative delights us much ; nay, that 
 it is not rather bald and barren for such a narrative ; but its 
 tidelit}' ma}- be relied on ; and it paints the clear, broad, strong 
 and somewhat heav}^ nature of the writer, perhaps better than 
 description could do. It is curious, for instance, to see with 
 how little of a purely humane interest he looks back to his 
 childhood ; how Heyne the man has almost grown into a sort 
 of teaching-machine, and sees in Heyne the boy little else than 
 
1:3 THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 
 
 the iDcipient Gerundgrinder, and tells iis little else but how 
 this wheel after the other was developed in him, and he came 
 at last to grind in comj^lete perfection. We could have wished 
 to get some view into the interior of that poor Chemnitz hovel, 
 with its unresting loom and cheerless heartli, its squalor and 
 devotion, its affection and repining ; and the fire of natural 
 genius struggling into flame amid such incumbrances, in an 
 atmosphere so damp and close ! But of all this we catch few 
 farther glimpses ; and hear only of Fabricius and Owen and 
 Pasor, and school-examinations, and rectors that had been 
 taught by Ernesti. Neither, in another respect, not of omis- 
 sion but of commission, can this piece of writing altogether 
 content us. We must object a little to the spirit of it, as too 
 narrow, too intolerant. Sebastian Seydel must have been a 
 very meagre men ; but is it right that Heyne, of all others, 
 should speak of him with asperity ? Without question the un- 
 fortunate Seydel meant nobly, had not thrift stood in his wa3^ 
 Did he not pay down his gulden every quarter regularly, and 
 give the boy a blue cloak, though a coarse one ? Nay, he be- 
 stowed old books on him, and instruction, according to his 
 gift, in the mystery of verse-making. And was not all this 
 something ? And if thrift and charity had a continual battle 
 to fight, was not that better than a flat surrender on the part 
 of the latter ? The other pastors of Chemnitz are all quietly 
 forgotten : why should Sebastian be remembered to his dis- 
 advantage for being only a little better than they ? 
 
 Heyne continued to be much infested with tasks from Se- 
 bastian, and sorely held down by want, and discouragement 
 of every sort. The school-course moreover, he says, was bad ; 
 nothing but the old routine ; vocables, translations, exercises ; 
 all without spirit or purpose. Nevertheless, he continued 
 to make what we must call Avonderful ^proficiency in these 
 branches ; especially as he had still to write every task before 
 he could learn it. For he prepared ' Greek versions,' he says, 
 ' also Greek verses ; and by and by could write down in Greek 
 ' prose, and at last, in Greek as well as Latin verses, the dis- 
 * courses he heard in church ! ' Some ray of hope was begin- 
 ning to spring up within his mind. A certain small degree of 
 
THE LIFE OF UEYNE. !•> 
 
 self-confidence bad first been awakened m bim, ay lie informs 
 us, by a ' pedantic adventure : ' 
 
 ' Tbere cbanced to be a scbool-examination beld, at which 
 the Superintendent, as chief school-inspector, was present. 
 This man, Dr. Theodor Kriiger, a theologian of some learn- 
 ing for his time, all at once interrupted the rector, who was 
 teaching ex cathe.dra, and put the question : AVbo among the 
 scholars could tell him what might be made per auagramma 
 from the word A ustria f This whim had arisen from the cir- 
 cumstance that tbe first Silesian war was just begun ; and 
 some such anagram, reckoned very happy, had appeared in a 
 newspaper.' No one of us knew so much as what an anagram 
 was ; even the rector looked quite perplexed. As none an- 
 swered, the latter began to give us a description of anagrams 
 in general. I set myself to work, and sprang forth with my 
 discovery : Vastari ! This was something different from the 
 newspaper one : so much the greater w^as our Superintend- 
 ent's admiration ; and the more, as the successful aspirant 
 was a little boy, on the lowest bench of the secunda. He 
 growled out his applause to me ; but at the same time set the 
 w^iole school about my ears, as he stoutly upbraided them 
 with being beaten by an iujimus. 
 
 ' Enough : this pedantic adventure gave the first impulse 
 to the development of my powers. I began to take some 
 credit to myself, and in spite of all the oppression and con- 
 tempt in w4iich I languished, to resolve on struggling for- 
 ward. This first struggle w^as in truth ineffectunl euough ; 
 was soon regarded as a piece of pride and conceitedness ; it 
 brought on me a thousand humiliations and disquietudes ; at 
 times it might degenerate on my part into defiance. Never- 
 theless, it kept me at the stretch of my diligence, ill-guided 
 as it w^as, and withdrew me from the company of my class- 
 fellows, among whom, as among children of low birth and bad 
 nurture could not fail to be tbe case, the utmost coarseness 
 and boorishness of every sort prevailed. The plan of these 
 schools does not include any general inspection, but limits 
 itself to mere intellectual instruction. 
 
 ' Yet on all hands,' continues he, 'I found myself too sadly 
 hampered. The perverse way in which the old parson treated 
 me ; at home the discontent and grudging of my parents, 
 espet3ially of my father, who could not get on with his work, 
 
 ' ' As yet Saxony was against Anstria, not, as in tlie end, allied with her.' 
 
J 4 THE LIFE OF IIEYNE. 
 
 and still thought that, had I kept by his way of Ufe, he 
 might now have had some help ; the pressure of want, the 
 feeling of being behind every other ; all this would allow no 
 cheerful thought, no sentiment of worth to spriug up within 
 me. A timorous, bashful, awkward carriage shut me out still 
 farther from all exterior attractions. Where could I learn 
 good manners^ elegance, a right way of thought ? Where 
 could I attain any culture for heart and spirit ? 
 
 'Upwards, however, I still strove. A feeling of honour, a 
 wish for something better, an effort to work myself out of 
 this abasement, incessantly attended me ; but without direc- 
 tion as it was, it led me rather to sullenness, misanthro^^y and 
 clownislmess. 
 
 ' At length a place opened for me, where some training in 
 these points lay within my reach. One of our senators took 
 his mother-in-law home to live with him ; she had still two 
 children with her, a son and a dauofhter, both about mv own 
 age. For the son private lessons were wanted ; and happily 
 I was chosen for the purpose. 
 
 ' As these private lessons brought me in a gulden monthly, 
 I now began to defend myself a little against the grumbling 
 of my parents. Hitherto I had been in the habit of doing 
 work occasionally, that I might not be told how I was eating 
 their bread for nothing ; clothes, and oil for my lamp, I had 
 earned by teaching in the house : these things I could now 
 relinquish ; and thus my condition was in some degree im- 
 proved. On the other hand, I had now opportunity of seeing 
 persons of better education. I gained the goodwill of the 
 family ; so that besides the lesson-hours, I generally lived 
 there. Such society afforded me some culture, extended my 
 concej^tions and opinions, and also polished a little the rude- 
 ness of my exterior.' 
 
 In this senatorial house he must have been somewhat more 
 at ease ; for he now very privately fell in love with his pupil's 
 sister, and made and burnt many Greek and Latin verses in 
 her praise ; and had sweet dreams of sometime rising ' so 
 high as to be worthy of her.' Even as matters stood, he 
 acquired her friendship and that of her mother. But the 
 grand concern, for the present, was how to get to college at 
 Leipzig. Old Sebastian had promised to stand good on "this 
 occasion ; and unquestionably would have done so with the 
 
THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 15 
 
 gi'eatest pleasure, had it cost him nothing : but he promised 
 and promised, without doing aught ; above all, without put- 
 ting his hand in his pocket ; and elsewhere there was no help 
 or resource. At length, wearied perhaps with the boy's im- 
 portunity, he determined to bestir himself ; and so directed 
 his assistant, who was just making a journey to Leipzig, to 
 show Heyne the road : the two arrived, in perfect safety ; 
 Heyne still longing after cash, for of his own he had onl}' two 
 gulden, about five shilhngs ; but the assistant left him in a 
 lodging-house, and went his way, saying he had no farther 
 orders ! 
 
 The miseries of a poor scholar's life were now to be 
 Heyne's portion in full measure. Hl-clothed, totally desti- 
 tute of books, with five shillings in his purse, he found him- 
 self set down in the Leipzig University, to study all learning. 
 Despondency at first overmastered the poor boy's heart, and 
 he sank into sickness, from which indeed he recovered ; but 
 only, he says, ' to fall into conditions of life where he became 
 the prey of desperation.' How he contrived to exist, much 
 more to study, is scarcely apparent from this narrative. The 
 unhappy old Sebastian did at length send him some pittance, 
 and at rare intervals rejDeated the dole ; yet ever mth his 
 own peculiar grace ; not till after unspeakable solicitations ; 
 in quantities that were consumed by inextinguishable debt, 
 and coupled with sour admonitions ; nay, on one occasion, 
 addressed externally, ' A Mr. Heyne, Etudiant n^glige,\xt.' 
 For half a year he would leave him without all help ; then 
 promise to come and see what he was doing ; come accord- 
 ingly, and return without leaving him a penny : neither could 
 the destitute youth ever obtain any public furtherance ; no 
 freitisch (free-table) or stijDendium was to be prociu'ed. Many 
 times he had no regular meal ; ' often not three halfpence for 
 a loaf at midday.' He longed to be dead, for his spirit was 
 often sunk in the ^ioom of darkness. ' One q'ood heart 
 ' alone,' says he, ' I found, and that in the servant-girl of the 
 ' house where I lodged. She laid out money for my most 
 ' pressing necessities, and risked almost all she had, seeing 
 ' me in such frightful want. Could I but find thee in the 
 
16 THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 
 
 ' world even now, thou good pious soul, that I might repay 
 ' thee what thou' then didst for me ! ' 
 
 Heyne declares it to be still a mystery to him how he stood 
 all this. 'What carried me forward,' continues he, 'was not 
 'ambition ; any youthful dream of one day taking a place, or 
 ' aiming to take one, among the learned. It is true, the bitter 
 ' feeling of debasement, of deficiency in education and exter- 
 ' nal polish, the consciousness of awkwardness in social life, ' 
 'incessantly accompanied me. But my chief strength lay in 
 ' a certain defiance of Fate. This gave me courage not to 
 ' yield ; everywhere to try to the uttermost whether I was 
 'doomed without remedy never to rise from this degradation.' 
 
 Of order in his studies there could be little expectation. 
 He did not even know what profession he was aiming after : 
 old Sebastian Avas for theology ; and Heyne, though himself 
 averse to it, affected and only affected to comply : besides he 
 had no money to pay class fees ; it was only to open lectures, 
 or at most to ill-guarded class-rooms, that he could gain ad- 
 mission. Of this ill-guarded sort was Winkler's ; into which 
 poor Heyne insinuated himself to hear philosoph3\ Alas, the 
 first problem of all philosophy, the keeping of soul and body 
 together, was wellnigh too hard for him ! Winkler's students 
 were of a riotous description ; accustomed, among other im- 
 proprieties, to scharren, scraping with the feet. One day they 
 chose to receive Heyne in this fashion ; and he could not 
 venture back. 'Nevertheless,' adds he, simply enough, 'the 
 'beadle came to me some time afterwards, demanding the fee : 
 ' I had my own shifts to take before I could raise it.' 
 
 Ernesti was the only teacher from whom he derived any 
 benefit ; the man, indeed, whose influence seems to have 
 shaped the whole subsequent course of his studies. By dint 
 of excessive endeavours he gained admittance to Ernesti's 
 lectures ; and here first learned, says Heeren, ' what inter- 
 pretation of the classics meant.' One Crist also, a strange, 
 fantastic Sir Plume of a Professor, who built much on taste, 
 elegance of manners and the like, took some notice of him, 
 and procured him a little employment as a private teacher. 
 This might be more useful than his advice to imitate Scaliger, 
 
THE LIFE OP HEYNE. 17 
 
 n.iid read the ancients so as to begin with the most ancient, 
 and proceed regularl}' to the latest. Small sei-\'ice it can do 
 a bedrid man to convince him that waltzing is preferable to 
 quadrilles ! ' Grist's Lectures,' says he, 'were a tissue of end- 
 ' less digressions, which, however, now and then contained 
 ' excellent remarks. ' 
 
 But Heyne's best teacher was himself. No pressure of dis- 
 tresses, no want of books, advisers or encouragement, not 
 hunger itself could abate his resolute perseverance. What 
 books he could come at he borrowed ; and such was his ex- 
 cess of zeal in reading, that for a whole half-year he allowed 
 himself only two nights of sleep in the week, till at last a 
 fever obliged him to be more moderate. His diligence was 
 undirected, or ill-directed, but it never rested, never paused, 
 and must at length prevail. Fortune had cast him into a 
 cavern, and he was groping darkly round ; but the prisoner 
 was a giant, and Mould at length burst forth as a giant into 
 the light of day. Heyne, without any clear aim, almost with- 
 out any hope, had set his heart on attaining knowledge ; a 
 force, as of instinct, drove him on, and no promise and no 
 threat could turn him back. It was at the very depth of his 
 destitution, when he had not 'three groschen for a loaf to 
 dine on, that he refused a tutorship, with handsome enough 
 appointments, but which was to have removed him from the 
 University. Crist had sent for him one Sunday, and made 
 him the proposal : ' There arose a violent struggle within 
 ' me,' sa^'S he, 'which drove me to and fro for several days ; 
 ' to this hour it is incomprehensible to me where I found reso- 
 ' lution to determine on renouncing the offer, and pursuing 
 ' my object in Leipzig.' A man with a half volition goes 
 backwards and forwards, and makes no wav on the smooth- 
 est road ; a man with a whole volition advances on the 
 roughest, and will reach his purpose if there be even a little 
 wdsdom in it. 
 
 With his first two years' residence in Leipzig, Heyne's per. 
 sonal narrative terminates ; not because the nodus of the his- 
 tory had been solved then, and his j)erplexities cleared up, but 
 simply because he had not found time to relate farther. A 
 
IS THE LIFE OF HETNE. 
 
 long series of straitened hopeless days were yet appointed 
 him. By Ernesti's or Crist's recommendation, he occasionally 
 got employment in giving private lessons ; at one time, he 
 worked as secretary and classical hodman to ' Crusius, the 
 philosopher,' who felt a little rusted in his Greek and Latin ; 
 everywhere he found the scantiest accommodation, and shift- 
 ing from side to side in dreary vicissitude of want, had to 
 spin out an existence, warmed by no ray of comfort, except 
 the fire that burnt or smouldered unquenchably within his 
 own bosom. However, he had now chosen a profession, that 
 of law, at which, as at many other branches of learning, he was 
 labouring with his old diligence. Of preferment in this 
 province there was, for the present, little or no hope ; but 
 this was no new thing with Heyiie. By degrees, too, his fine 
 talents and endeavours, and his perverse situation, began to 
 attract notice and sympathy ; and here and there some well- 
 wisher had his eye on him, and s!ood ready to do him a ser- 
 vice. Two-and- twenty years of j)enury and joyless struggling 
 had now passed over the man ; how many more such might 
 be added was still uncertain ; ^^et surely the longest winter is 
 followed by a spring. 
 
 Another trifling incident, little better than that old ' pe- 
 dantic adventure,' again brought about important changes in 
 Heyne's situation. Among his favourers in Leipzig had been 
 the preacher of a French chajDcl, one Lacoste, who, at this 
 time, was cut off by death. Heyne, it is said in the real sor- 
 row of his heart, composed a long Latin Epicedium on that 
 occasion : the poem had nowise been intended for the press ; 
 but certain hearers of the deceased were so pleased with it, 
 that they had it printed, and this in the finest style of typog- 
 raphy and decoration. It was this latter circumstance, not 
 the merit of the verses, which is said to have been consider- 
 able, that attracted the attention of Count Briihl, the well- 
 known prime minister and favourite of the Elector. BrCihl's 
 sons were studying in Leipzig ; he was pleased to express 
 himself contented with the poem, and to say, that he should 
 like to have the author in his service. A 2^1'inie minister's 
 words arc not as water spilt upon the ground, which cannot 
 
THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 19 
 
 be gathered ; but rather as heavenly manna, which is treas- 
 ured up and eaten, not without a rehgious sentiment. Heyne 
 was forthwith written to from all quarters, that his fortune 
 was made : he had but to show himself in Dresden, said his 
 friends with one voice, and golden showers from the minis- 
 terial cornucopia would refresh him almost to saturation. 
 For, was not the Count taken with him ; and who in all 
 Saxony, not excepting Serene Highness itself, could gainsay 
 the Count ? Over-persuaded, and against his will, Heyne at 
 length determined on the journe}^ ; for w-hich, as an indis- 
 pensable preliminary, ' fifty-one tlialei^s ' had to be borrowed ; 
 and so, following this hopeful quest, he actually arrived at 
 Dresden in April, 1752. Count Bruhl received him with the 
 most captivating smiles ; and even assured him in words, that 
 he. Count Briihl, would take care of him. But a prime min- 
 ister has so much to take care of ! Heyne danced attendance 
 all spring and summer ; happier tha.n our Johnson, inasnuich 
 as he had not to ' blow his fingers in a cold lobby,' the weather 
 being wai*m ; and obtained not only promises, but useful ex- 
 perience of their value at courts. 
 
 He was to be made a secretary, with five hundred, with four 
 hundred, or even with three hundred tlwlers, of income : only, 
 in the meanwhile, his old stock of fifty-one had quite run out, 
 iuid he had nothing to live upon. By great good luck, he 
 procured some employment in his old craft, private teaching, 
 which helped him through the winter, but as this ceased, he re- 
 mained without resources. He tried working for the book- 
 sellers, and translated a French romance, and a Greek one, 
 Chariton's Loves of Chareas and Callirhoe : however, his emol- 
 uments would scarcely f ui*nish him with salt, not to speak of 
 victuals. He sold his few books. A licentiate in divinity, one 
 Sonntag, took pity on his houselessness, and shared a garret 
 with him ; where, as there was no unoccupied bed, He^me 
 slept on the floor with a few^ folios for his pillow. So fared 
 he as to lodging : in regard to board, he gathered empty 
 pease-cods, and had them boiled ; this was not unfrequently 
 his only meal. — O ye poor naked wretches ! what would Bishop 
 Watson say to this ? — At length, by dint of incredible solicita- 
 
20 THE LIFE OF IIEYNE. 
 
 tioiis, Heyne, in the autumn of 1753, obtained, not his secre- 
 taryship, but the j)ost of under-clerk (copyist) in the Br Jii 
 Library, with one hundred thaJera of salary ; a sum barely suf- 
 ficient to keep in life, which, indeed, was now a great poin:, 
 with him. In such sort was this youni}- scholar ' taken care of.' 
 
 Nevertheless, it was under these external circumstances that 
 he first entered on his proper career, and forciloly made a 
 place for himself among' the learned men of his day. In 1754, 
 he prepared his edition of Tibullus, which was printed next 
 year at Lei23zig ; ' a work said to exhibit remarkable talent, 
 inasmuch as ' the rudiments of all those excellences, by which 
 ' Heviie afterwards became distin<2uished as a commentator on 
 ' the classics, are more or less apparent in it.' The most illus- 
 trious Henry Count von BrTdil, in spite of the dedication, paid 
 no regard to this Tibullus ; as indeed Germany at large paid 
 little : but, in another country, it fell into the hands of Rhun- 
 ken, where it was rightly estimated, and laj' waiting, as in due 
 season appeared, to be the pledge of better fortune for its 
 author. 
 
 Meanwhile the day of difficulty for Heyne was yet far from 
 past. The profits of his Tibullus served to cancel some debts ; 
 on the strengtli of the hundred ihalers, the spindle of Clotho 
 might still keep turning, though languidly'; but, ere long, new 
 troubles arose. His superior in the Library was one Host, a 
 poetaster, atheist, and gold-maker, who corrupted his religious 
 principles, and plagued him with caprices : over the former 
 evil Heyne at length triumphed, and became a rational Chris- 
 tian ; but the latter was an abiding grievance : not, indeed, 
 forever, for it was removed by a greater. In 1756, the Seven- 
 Years War broke out ; Frederick advanced towards Dresden, 
 animated with especial fury against Briihl ; whose palaces ac- 
 cordingly in a few months were reduced to ashes, as his 70,- 
 000 splendid volumes were annihilated by fire and by water," 
 
 ' Albii Tibulli quce extant Carminn^ nous curis castigatn. lUustrimino 
 Domino Henrico Comiti de Briihl inseripta. Lipsia>,, 1755. 
 
 ^ One rich cargo, on its way to Hamburg, sank in the Elbe ; another 
 htill more valuable portion had been, for safety, deposit(Ml in a vault ; 
 through which passed certain pipes of artilicial water-works; these the 
 
THE LIFE OF HETNE. 21 
 
 and all his domestics and dependants turned to the street 
 without appeal. •> 
 
 Hejne had lately been engaged in studying Epictetus, and 
 publishing, ad fidem Codd. Mn^pt., an edition of his Enchi- 
 ridion ; ' from which, quote Heeren, his great soul had ac- 
 qiiired much stoical nourishment. Such nourishment never 
 comes wrong in life ; and, surely, at this time Heyne had 
 need of it all. However, he struggled as he had been wont : 
 translated pamphlets, sometimes wrote newspaper articles ; 
 eat when he had wherewithal, and resolutely endured when 
 he had not. By and by, Eabener, to whom he was a little 
 known, offered him a tutorship in the family of a Herr von 
 Schunberg ; which Heyne, not without reluctance, accepted. 
 Tutorships were at all times his aversion : his rugged plebeian 
 proud spirit made business of that sort grievous : but Want 
 stood over him, like an armed man, and was not to be rea- 
 soned with. 
 
 In this Schunberg family, a novel and unexpected series of 
 fortunes awaited him ; but whether for weal or for woe might 
 still be hard to determine. The name of Theresa Weiss has 
 become a sort of classical word in biography ; her union with 
 Heyne forms, as it were, a green cypress-and-myrtle oasis in 
 his otherwise hard and stony history. It was here that he first 
 met with her ; that thev learned to love each other. She was 
 the orphan of a ' professor on the lute ; ' had long, amid pov- 
 erty and afHictions, been trained, like the stoics, to bear and 
 forbear : was now in her twenty-seventh vear, and the hum- 
 ble companion, as she had once been the school-mate, of the 
 Frau von SchOnbero- whose vounf? brother Heyne had come 
 to teach. Their first interview may be described in his own 
 words, which Heeren is here again happily enobled to intro- 
 duce : 
 
 ' It was on the 10th of October (her future death-day !) that 
 I first entered the Schonberg house. Towards what moiui- 
 
 cannon broke, and when tlie vault came to be opened, all was reduced 
 to pulp and mould. The bomb-shells burnt the remainder. 
 
 ' Lipsia}, 1756. The Codices, or rather the Codei\ was in Bruhl's Li- 
 brary. 
 
22 THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 
 
 tains of mischances was I now proceeding ! To what endless 
 tissues of good and evil hap was the thread here taken up ! 
 Could I fanc}" that, at this moment, Providence was deciding 
 the fortune of my life ! I was ushered into a room, where 
 sat several ladies engaged, with gay j^outhful sportiveness, in 
 friendly confidential talk. Frau von Schonberg, but lately 
 married, yet at this time distant from her husband, was pre- 
 paring for a journey to him at Prague, where his business 
 detained him. On her brow still beamed the pure innocence 
 of youth ; in her eyes you saw a glad soft vernal sky ; a smil- 
 ing loving complaisance accomj)anied her discourse. This 
 too seemed one of those souls, clear and uncontaminated as 
 they come from the hands of their Maker. By reason of her 
 brother, in her tender love of him, I must have been to her 
 no unimportant guest. 
 
 'Beside her stood a young lady, dignified in aspect, of fair, 
 slender shaj^e, not regular in feature, yet soul in every glance. 
 Her words, her looks, her every movement impressed you 
 with respect ; another sort of respect than what is paid to 
 rank and birth. Good sense, good feeling disclosed itself in 
 all she did. You forgot that more beauty, more softness, 
 might have been demanded ; you felt yourself under the in- 
 fluence of something noble, something stately and earnest, 
 something decisive that lay in her look, in her gestures ; not 
 less attnicted to her, than compelled to reverence her. 
 
 ' More than esteem the first sight of Theresa did not in- 
 spire me with. What I noticed most were the efforts she 
 made to relieve my embarrassment, the fruit of my downbent 
 pride, and to keep me, a stranger, entering among familiar ac- 
 quaintances, in easy conversation. Her good heart reminded 
 her how much the unfortunate requires encouragement ; es- 
 pecially when placed, as I was, among those to whose protec- 
 tion he must look up. Thus was my first kindness for her 
 awakened by that good heartedness, which made her among 
 thousands a beneficent angel. She was one at this moment, 
 to myself ; for I twice received letters from an unknown hand, 
 containing iiioney, which greatly alleviated my difficulties. 
 
 'In a few days, on the 14th of Octobey, I commenced my 
 task of instruction. Her I did not see again till the follow- 
 ing spring, when she returned with her friend from Prague ; 
 and then only once or twice, as she soon accompanied Frau 
 von Schonberg to the country, to illlnsdorf in Oberlausitz 
 (Upper Lusatia). They left us, after it had been settled that 
 I was to follow them in a few days with my pupil. My young 
 
THE LIFE OF HETNE. 23 
 
 heart joyed in the prospect of rural pleasures^ of which I had, 
 from of old, cherished a thousand delightful dreams. I still 
 remember the 6th of May, when we set out for ^^nsdorf. 
 
 ' The society of two cultivated females, who belonged to 
 the noblest of their sex, and the endeavour to acquire their 
 esteem, contributed to form my own character. Nature and 
 religion were the objects of my daily contemplation ; I began 
 to act and live on principles, of which, till now, I had never 
 thought : these two formed the subject of our constant dis- 
 course. Lovely Nature and solitude exalted our feelings to 
 a j)itch of pious enthusiasm. 
 
 ' Sooner than I, Theresa discovered that her friendship for 
 me was growing into a passion. Her natural melancholy 
 now seized her heart more keenly than ever : often our glad 
 hours were changed into very gloomy and sad ones. When- 
 ever our conversation chanced to turn on religion (she was 
 of the Roman Catholic faith), I ol^served that her grief be- 
 came more apparent. I noticed her redouble her devotions ; 
 and sometimes found her in solitude, weeping and praying 
 with such a fulness of heart as I had never seen.' 
 
 Theresa and her lover, or at least beloved, were soon sep- 
 arated, and for a long while kept much asunder ; partly by 
 domestic arrangements, still more by the tumults of war. 
 Heyne attended his pupil to the Wittenberg University, and 
 lived there a year ; studying for his own behoof, chiefly in 
 philosophy and German history, and with more profit, as he 
 Ljays, than of old. Theresa and he kept up a correspondence, 
 which often passed into melancholy and enthusiasm. The 
 Prussian cannon drove him out of Wittenberg : his pupil and 
 he witnessed the bombardment of the place from the neigh- 
 bourhood ; and, having waited till their University became 
 ' a heap of rubbish,' had to retire elsewhither for accommoda- 
 tion. The 3'oung man subsequently went to Ei'langen, then 
 to Gottingeu. Heyne remained again without emplo^-meut, 
 alone in Dresden. Theresa was living in his neighbourhood, 
 lovely and sad as ever ; but a new bombardment drove her 
 also to a distance. She left her little 2:)roperty with Heyne ; 
 who removed it to his lodging, and determined to abide the 
 Prussian siege, having indeed no other resource. The sack 
 of cities looks so well on paper, that w^e must find a little 
 
24 THE IIFE OF ILEYNE. 
 
 space here for Heyne's account of his experience in this busi- 
 ness ; though it is none of the brightest accounts ; and in- 
 deed contrasts but poorly with Rabener's brisk sarcastic nar- 
 rative of the same adventure ; for he too was cannonaded out 
 of Dresden at tliis time, and lost house and home, and books 
 and manuscripts, and all but good humour. 
 
 ' The Prussians advanced meanwhile, and on the 18th of 
 July (1760) the bombardment of Dresden began. Several 
 nights I passed, in company with others, in a tavern, and the 
 days in my room ; so that I could hear the balls from the 
 battery, as they flew through the streets, whizzing past my 
 windows. An indifference to danger and to life took such 
 possession of me, that on the last morning of the siege, I 
 went early to bed, and, amid the frightfullest crashing of 
 bombs and grenades, fell fast asleep of fatigue, and lay sound 
 till midday. On awakening, I huddled-on my clothes, and 
 ran down stairs, but found the whole house deserted. I had 
 returned to my room, considering what I was to do, whither, 
 at all events, I was to take my chest, when, with a tremen- 
 dous crash, a bomb came down in the court of the house ; 
 did not, indeed, set fire to it, but on all sides shattered everj^- 
 thing to pieces. The thought, that where one bomb fell, 
 more would soon follow, gave me wings ; I darted down 
 stairs, found the house-door locked, ran to and fro ; at last 
 got entrance into one of the under rooms, and sprang through 
 the window into the street. 
 
 ' Empty as the street where I lived had been, I found the 
 principal thoroughfares crowded with fugitives. Amidst the 
 whistling of balls, I ran along the Schlossgasse towards the 
 Elbe-Bridge, and so forward to the Neustadt, out of which 
 the Prussians had now been forced to retreat. Glad that I 
 liad leave to rest anywhera, I passed one part of the night on 
 the floor of an empty house ; the other, witnessing the fright- 
 ful light of flying bombs, and a burning city. 
 
 ' At break of day, a little postern was opened by the Aus- 
 trian guard, to let the fugitives get out of the w^alls. The 
 captain, in his insolence, called the people Lutheran dogs, and 
 with this nickname gave each of us a stroke as we passed 
 through the gate. 
 
 ' I was now at large ; and the thought, Whither bound ? 
 beg.an for the first time to employ me. As I had run, indeed 
 leapt from my house, in the night of terror, I had carried 
 
THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 25 
 
 with me no particle of my propert}-, and not a gro^^chen of 
 money. Only in liiiiTying along the street, I had chanced to 
 see a tavern open ; it was an Italian's, where I used to pass 
 the nights. Here esj^ying a fur cloak. I had picked it up, and 
 thrown it about me. With this I walked along, in one of the 
 sultriest days, from the Neustadt, over the sand and the moor, 
 and took the road for iEnsdorf, where Theresa with her friend 
 "was staying ; the mother-in-law of the latter being also on a 
 visit to them. In the fiercest heat of the sun, through tracts 
 of country silent and deserted, I walked four leagues to 
 Bischopfwerda, where I had to sleep in an inn among carriers. 
 Towards midnight arrived a postilion with return-horses ; I 
 asked him to let me ride one ; and with him I proceeded, till 
 mv road turned off from the highwav. All dav, I heard the 
 shots at poor Dresden re-echoing in the hills. 
 
 ' Curiosity at first made my reception at ^nsdorf very 
 warm. But as I came to appear in the character of an alto- 
 gether destitute man, the familv could see in me onlv a future 
 burden : no invitation to continue with them followed. In a 
 few days came a chance of conveyance, by a waggon for Neu- 
 stadt, to a certain Frau von Fletscher a few miles on this side 
 of it ; I was favoured with some old linen for the road. The 
 good Theresa suffered unsj^eakably under these proceedings : 
 the noble lady, her friend, had not been allowed to act ac- 
 cording to the dictates of her own heart. 
 
 ' Not till now did I feel wholly how miserable I was. Spurn- 
 ing at destiny, and hardening my heart, I entered on this 
 journey. With the Frau von Fletscher too my abode was 
 brief ; and by the first opportunity I returned to Dresden, 
 There was still a possibility that my lodging might have been 
 saved. With heavy heart I entered the city ; hastened to the 
 place where I had lived, and found — a heap of ashes.' 
 
 Heyne took up his quarters in the vacant rooms of the Briihl 
 Librarv. Some friends endeavoured to alleviate his distress ; 
 but Avar and rumours of war continued to harass him, and 
 drive him to and fro ; and his Theresa, afterwards also a fugi- 
 tive, was now as poor as himself. She heeded little the loss 
 of her property ; but inward sorrow and so many outward 
 agitations preyed hard upon her ; in the winter she fell vio- 
 lently sick at Dresden, was given up by her physicians ; re- 
 ceived extreme unction according to the rites of her church ; 
 and was for some hours believed to be dead. Nature, how- 
 
26 THE LIFE OF IIEYNE. 
 
 ever, again prevailed : a crisis had occurred in tlie mind as 
 well as in the body ; for with her first returning strength, 
 Theresa declared her determination to renounce the Catholic, 
 and publicly embrace the Protestant faith. Argument, repre- 
 sentation of worldly disgrace and loss were unavailing : she 
 could now, that all her friends were to be estranged, have 
 little hope of being wedded to Heyne on earth ; but she 
 trusted that in another scene a like creed might unite them 
 in a like destiny. He himself fell ill ; and only escaped death 
 by her nursing. Persisting the more in her purpose, she took 
 priestly instruction, and on the 30tli of May, in the Evangeli- 
 cal Schlosskirche, solemnly professed her new creed. 
 
 'Reverent admiration filled me,' says he, ' as I beheld the 
 peace and stedfastness with which she executed her deter- 
 mination ; and still more the courage with which she bore the 
 consequences of it. 8he saw herself altogether cast out from 
 her family ; forsaken by her acquaintance, by every one ; and 
 by the fire deprived of all she had. Her courage exalted me 
 to a higher duty, and admonished me to do mine. Impru- 
 dently I had, in former conversations, first awakened her relig- 
 ious scruj^les ; the passion for me, which had so much in- 
 creased her enthusiasm, increased her melancholy ; even the 
 secret thought of belonging more closely to me by sameness 
 of belief had unconsciously influenced her. In a word, I 
 formed the determination which could not- but expose me to 
 universal censure : helpless as I was, I united my destiny with 
 hers. We were wedded at .^^nsdorf, on the 4th of June 
 1761.' 
 
 This w^as a bold step, but a right one : Theresa, had now 
 no stay but him ; it behoved them to struggle, and if better 
 might not be, to sink together. Theresa, in this narrative 
 ap23ears to us a noble, interesting being ; noble not in senti- 
 ment only, but in action and suffering ; a fair flower trodden 
 down by misfortune, but yielding, like flowers, only the 
 sweeter perfume for being crushed, and which it would have 
 been a blessedness to raise up and cherish into free growth. 
 Yet, in plain prose, we must question whether the two were 
 happier than others in their union : both were quick of tem- 
 per ; she was all a heavenly light, he in good part a hard 
 
THE LIFE OF UEYNE. 27 
 
 terrestrial mass, which perhaps she could never wholl}- illu- 
 minate ; the balance of the love seems to have lain much 
 on her side. Nevertheless Heyne was a stedfast, true and 
 kindly, if no ethereal man ; he seems to have loved his wife 
 honestly ; and so, amid light and shadow, they made their 
 pilgrimage together, if not better than other mortals, not 
 Avorse, which was to have been feared. 
 
 Neither, for the present, did the pressure of distress weigh 
 heavier on either than it had done before. He worked dili- 
 gently, as he found scope, for his old Mecaenases, the Book- 
 sellers ; the v>^ar-clouds grew lighter, or at least the young 
 pair better used to them ; friends also were kind, often as- 
 sisting and hospitably entertaining them. On occasion of one 
 such visit to the family of a Herr von Loben, there occurred a 
 little trait, which for the sake of Theresa must not be omitted. 
 He^'ne and she had spent some happy weeks with their in- 
 fant, in this country-house, when the alarm of war drove the 
 Von Lobens from their residence, which with the management 
 of its concerns thev left to Hevne. He says, he o-ained some 
 notion of ' land-economy ' hereby ; and Heeren states that he 
 had ' a candle-manufactory ' to oversee. But to our incident : 
 
 *Soon after the departure of the famih', there came upon 
 us an irruption of Cossacks, — disguised Prussians, as we sub- 
 sequently learned. After drinking to intoxication in the cel- 
 lars, they set about plundering. Pursued b}' them, I ran up 
 stairs, and no door being oj^en but that of the room where 
 my wife was with her infant, I rushed into it. She arose 
 courageously, and placed herself, with the child on her arm, 
 in the door against the robbers. This courage saved me, and 
 the treasure which lay liidden in the chamber.' 
 
 " O thou lioness ! " said iVttila Schmelzle, on occasion of a 
 similar rescue, " wdiyhast thou never been in any deadly j^eril, 
 that I might show thee the lion in thy husband ? " 
 
 But better days were dawning. ' On our return to Dresden,' 
 says Heyne, ' I learned that inquiries had been made after me 
 from Hanover ; I knew not for what reason.' The reason by 
 and by came to light. Gessner, Professor of Eloquence in 
 Gottingen, was dead ; and a successor was wanted. These 
 
28 THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 
 
 things, it would appear, cause difficulties in Hanover, which 
 in many other places are little felt. But the Prime Minister 
 Mlinchhausen had as good as founded the Georgia Augusta 
 himself ; and he was wont to watch over it with singular anxi- 
 ety. The noted and notorious Klotz was already there, as as- 
 sistant to Gessner ; ' but his beautiful latinity,' says Heeren, 
 ' did not dazzle Mlinchhausen ; Klotz, with his pugnacity, 
 ' was not thought of.' Tiie ^Minister applied to Ernesti for 
 advice : Ernesti knew of no lit man in Germany ; but recom- 
 mended Rhunken of Leyden, or Saxe of Utrecht Rhunken 
 refused to leave his country, and added these words : ' But 
 ' why do you seek out of Germany, what Germany itself offers 
 ' you ? AVhy not, for Gessner's successor, take Christian Gott- 
 ' lob Heyne, that true pupil of Ernesti, and man of fine talent 
 ' (excellenti virum ingenio), who has shown how much he 
 
 * knows of Latin literature by his Tibullus ; of Greek, by his 
 'Epictetus? In my opinion, and tha,t of the greatest Hem- 
 'sterhuis {Hemsterhusii tov irdw), Heyne is the only one that 
 'can replace your Gessner. Nor let any one tell me that 
 ' Heyne's fame is not sufficiently illustrious and extended. 
 'Believe me, there is in this man such a richness of genius 
 ' and learning, that ere long all Europe will ring wdth his 
 
 * praises.' 
 
 This courageous and generous verdict of Rhunken's in favour 
 of a person as yet little known to the w^orld, and to him know^n 
 only by his writings, decided the matter. ' Mlinchhausen,' says 
 our Heeren, ' believed in the boldl}^ prophesying man.' Not 
 without difficulty Heyne was unearthed ; and after various ex- 
 cuses on account of competence on his part, — for he had lost 
 all his books and papers in the siege of Dresden, and sadly 
 forgotten his Latin and Greek in so many tumults, — and va- 
 rious prudential negotiations about dismission from the Saxon 
 service, and salary and privilege in the Hanoverian, he at 
 length formally received his appointment ; and some three 
 months after, in June 17G3, settled in Gottingen, with an of- 
 ficial income of eight hundred thalers ; which, it ajopears, was 
 by several additions, in the course of time, increased to twelve 
 hundred. 
 
THE LIFE OF IIEYNE. ^ 29 
 
 Here then had Heyne at last got to land. His long hfe 
 was henceforth as quiet, and fruitful in activity and comfort, 
 as the past period of it had been desolate and full of sorrows. 
 He never left Gottingen, though frequently invited to do so, 
 and sometimes with highly tempting offers ; ' but continued 
 in his place, busy in his vocation ; growing in influence, in 
 extent of connexion at home and abroad ; till Rhunken's pre- 
 diction might almost be reckoned fulfilled to the letter ; for 
 Heyne in his own dej^artment was without any equal in Eu- 
 rope. 
 
 However, his history from this point, even because it was 
 so happy for himself, must lose most of its interest for the 
 general reader. Heyne has now become a Professor, and a 
 regularly progressive man of learning ; has a fixed household, 
 has rents and comings in ; it is easy to fancy how that man 
 might flourish in calm sunshine of prosperity, whom in ad- 
 versity we saw growing in spite of every storm. Of his pro- 
 ceedings in Gottingen, his reform of the Royal Society of 
 Sciences, his editing of the Gelehrte Anzeigen (Gazette of 
 Learning), his exposition of the classics from Yirgil to Pin- 
 dar, his remodelling of the Library, his passive quarrels with 
 Voss, his armed neutrality Avith Michaelis ; of all this we 
 must say little. The best fruit of his endeavours lies before 
 the world, in a long series of Works, which among us, as well 
 as elsewhere, are known and justly appreciated. On looking 
 over them, the first thing that strikes us is astonishment at 
 Heyne's diligence ; which, considering the quantity and qual- 
 ity of his writings, might have appeared singular even in oue 
 who had been without other duties. Yet Heyne's office in- 
 volved him in the most laborious researches : he wrote letters 
 by the hundred to all parts of the world, and on all conceiv- 
 able subjects ; be had three classes to teach daily ; he ajv 
 
 ' He was iuvited successively to be Professor at Cassel, and at Kloster- 
 bergen ; to be Librarian at Dresden ; and, most flattering of all, to be 
 Prokcmzhr in the University of Copenhagen, and virtual Director of 
 Education over all Denmark. He had a struggle on this last occasion, 
 but the Georgia Augusta again prevailed. Some increase of salary usu- 
 ally follows such refusals ; it did not in this instance. 
 
30 THE LIFE OF EEYNE. 
 
 pointed professors, for liis recommendation was ail-powerful ; 
 superintended schools ; for a long time the inspection of the 
 Freitiache w^as laid on him, and he had cooks' bills to settle, 
 and hungry students to satisfy w^th his purveyance. Besides 
 all which, he accomplished, in the w^ay of publication, as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 In addition to his Tibullus and Epictetui<, the first of which 
 went -through three, the second through two editions, each 
 time with large extensions and improvements : 
 
 His Virgil (P. Virgilius Maeo Varietate Lectionin et i^erpetud 
 Annotatione illudratus), in various forms, from 1767 to 1803 ; 
 no fewer than six editions. 
 
 His Pliny [Ex C. Plinii Secundi Historid Naturali excerpta^ 
 (JUC8 ad Artes spectant) ; two editions, 1790, 1811. 
 
 His Apollodorus (Apollodori Atheniensis Bibliothecce Libri 
 tres, &c.) ; two editions, 1787, 1803. 
 
 ~His Pindar (Pindari Carmina, cum Leclionis Varietate, cm^a- 
 vit Ch. G. H.) ; three editions, 1774, 1797, 1798, the last with 
 the Scholia, the Fragments, a Translation, and Hermann's 
 Inq. De 3Ietris. 
 
 His Conon and Parthenius (Cononis Narraiiones, et Par- 
 THENii Narratioiies amatorke), 1798. 
 
 And lastly his Homer (Homeri Ilias, cum brevi Annota- 
 tione) ; 8 volumes, 1802 ; and a second, contracted edition, in 
 2 volumes, 1804. 
 
 Next, almost a cartload of Translations ; of which we shall 
 mention only his version, said to be with very important 
 improvements, of our Uniuersal History by Guthrie and Gray. 
 
 Then some ten or twelve thick volumes of Prolusions, Eulo- 
 gies, Essays; treating of all subjects, from the French Direc- 
 torate to the Che.Ht of Gijpselus. Of these. Six Volumes are 
 known in a separate shape, under the title of Opuscula ; and 
 contain some of Heyne's most valuable writings. 
 
 And lastly, to crown the whole with one most surj^rising 
 item, seven thousand five hundred (Heeren says from seven 
 to eight thousand) Review^s of Books, in the G/ittingen Gel- 
 ehrte A nzeigen. Shame on us degenerate Editors ! Here of 
 itself was work for a hfetime ! 
 
THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 31 
 
 To expect that elegance of composition should prevail in these 
 multifarious performances were unreasonable enough. He^-ne 
 wrote very indifferent German ; and his Latin, by much the 
 more common vehicle in his learned works, Howed from him 
 with a copiousness which could not be Ciceronian. At the 
 same time, these volumes are not the folios of a Montfaucon, 
 not mere classical ore and slag, but regularly smelted metal ; 
 for most part exhibiting the essence, and only the essence, of 
 very great research ; and enlightened by a philosoj^hy which, 
 if it does not always wisely order its results, has looked far 
 and deeply in collecting them. 
 
 To have performed so much, evinces on the part of Heyne 
 no little mastership in the great art of husbanding time. 
 Heeren gives us sufficient details on this subject; exj^lains 
 Heyne's adjustment of his hours and various occupations : 
 how he rose at five o'clock, and worked all the day, and all 
 the year, with the regularity of a steeple clock ; nevertheless, 
 how patiently he submitted to interruptions from strangers, 
 or extraneous business ; how briefly, yet smoothly, he con- 
 trived to despatch such interruptions ; how his letters were 
 indorsed when they came to hand ; and lay in a special 
 drawer till they were answered ; nay we have a 'description 
 of his whole ' localit}',' his bureau and book-shelves and port- 
 folios, his very bed and strongbox are not forgotten. To the 
 busy man, especially the busy man of letters, these details 
 are far from uninteresting ; if we judge by the result, many 
 of Heyne's arrangements might seem worthy not of notice 
 only, but of imitation. 
 
 His domestic circumstances continued, on the whole, highly 
 favourable for such activity ; though not now more than 
 formerly were they exempted from the common lot ; but 
 still had several hard changes to encounter. In 1775, he lost 
 his Theresa, after long ill-health ; an event which, stoic as he 
 was, struck heavily and dolefully on his heart. He forebore 
 »ot to shed some natural tears, though from eyes little used 
 to the melting mood. Nine days after her death, he thus 
 writes to a friend, with a solemn mournful tenderness, which 
 none of us will deny to be genuine : 
 
52 THE LIFE OF IIEYNE. 
 
 ' I have looked upon the grave fliat covers the remains of 
 my Theresa : what a thousandfold pang, beyond the pitch of 
 human feeling, j^i^rced through my soul ! How did my 
 limbs tremble as I approached this holy spot ! Here, then, 
 reposes what is left of the dearest that Heaven gave me ; 
 among the dust of her four children she sleeps. A sacred 
 liorror covered the place. I should have sunk altogether in 
 my sorrow, had it not been for my two daughters that were 
 standing on the outside of the churchyard ; I saw their faces 
 over the wall, directed to me with anxious fear. This called 
 me to myself ; I hastened in sadness from the spot where I 
 could have continued forever : where it cheered me to think 
 that one day I should rest by lier side ; rest from all the 
 carking care, from all the griefs which so often have embittered 
 to me the enjoyment of life. Alas ! among these griefs must 
 I reckon even her love, the strongest, truest, that ever insi^ired 
 the heart of woman, which made me the happiest of mortals, 
 and yet was a founfeain to me of a thousand distresses, inquie- 
 tudes and cares. To entire cheerfulness perhaps she never 
 attained ; but for what unspeakable sweetness, for what 
 exalted enrapturing joys, is not Love indebted to Sorrow? 
 Amidst gnawing anxieties, with the torture of anguish in my 
 heart, I have been made even by the love which caused me 
 this anguish, these anxieties, inexpressibly happy ! When 
 tears flowed over our cheeks, did not a nameless, seldom-felt 
 delight stream through my breast, oppressed equally by joy 
 and by sorrow ! ' 
 
 But Heyne was not a man to brood over past griefs, or 
 linger long where nothing was to be done but mourn. In a 
 short time, according to a good old plan of his, having reck- 
 oned up his grounds of sorrow, he fairly wrote down on 
 paper, over against them, his ' grounds of consolation ; ' con- 
 cluding with these pious words, ' So for all these sorrows too, 
 " these trials, do I thank thee, my God ! And now, glorified 
 ' friend, will I again turji me with undivided heart to my 
 ' duty ; thou thyself smilest approval on me ! ' Nay, it was 
 not many months before a new marriage came on the anvil ; 
 in which matter, truly, Heyne conducted himself with tli* 
 most philosophic indifference ; leaving his friends, by whom 
 the project had been started, to bring it to what issue they 
 pleased. It was a scheme concerted by Zimmermann (the 
 
THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 33 
 
 author of Solitude, a mau little known to Heyne), and one 
 Reich, a Lei2:)sic Bookseller, who had met at the Pyrmont 
 Baths. Brandes, the Hanoverian Minister, successor of 
 Miinchhausen in the management of the University concerns, 
 was there also with a daughter ; upon her the projectors cast 
 their eye. Heyne, being consulted, seems to have comported 
 himself like clay in the hands of the potter ; father and fair 
 one, in like manner, were of a compliant humour, and thus 
 was the business achieved ; and on the 9th of April, 1777, 
 Heyne could take home a bride, w^on with less difficulty than 
 most men have in choosing a j^air of boots. Nevertheless, 
 she proved an excellent wife to him ; kept his house in the 
 cheerfullest order ; managed her step-children and her own 
 like a true mother ; and loved, and faithfully assisted her hus- 
 band in whatever he undertook. Considered in his private 
 relations, such a man might well reckon himself fortunate. 
 In addition to Heyne's claims as a scholar and teacher 
 Heeren would have us regard him as an unusually expert 
 man of business and negotiator ; for which line of life he him- 
 self seems, indeed, to have thought that his talent was more 
 peculiarly fitted. In proof of this, we have long details of his 
 procedure in managing the Library, the Royal Society, the 
 University generally, and his incessant and often rather com- 
 plex correspondence with Miinchliausen, Brandes, or other 
 ministers who presided over this department. Without de- 
 tracting from Heyne's skill in such matters, what struck us 
 more in this narrative of Heeren's was the singular contrast 
 which the ' Georgia Augusta,' in its interior arrangement, as 
 well as its external relations to the Grovernment, exhibits with 
 our own Universities. The prime minister of the country 
 writes thrice weekly to the director of an institution for 
 learning! He oversees all ; knows the character, not only of 
 every professor, but of every pupil that gives any promise. 
 He is continually purchasing books, drawings, models ; treat- 
 ing for this or the other help or advantage to the establish- 
 ment. He has his eye over all Germany ; and nowhere does 
 a man of any decided talent show himself, but he strains 
 every nerve to acquire him. And seldom even can he suc- 
 3 
 
34 THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 
 
 ceed ; for the Hanoverian assiduity seems nothing singular ; 
 every state in Germany has its minister for education, as well 
 as Hanover. Tiiey correspond, they inquire, they negotiate ; 
 everywhere there seems a canvassing, less for places, than for 
 the best men to fill them. Heyne himself has his Seminar! am, 
 a private class of the nine most distinguished students in the 
 University ; these he trains with all diligence, and is in due 
 time most probably enabled, by his connexions, to place in 
 stations fit for them. A hundred and thirty-five professors 
 are said to have been sent from this Seminarium during his 
 presidenc3\ These things we state Avithout commentary : we 
 believe that the experience of all English and Scotch and 
 Iiish University-men will, of itself, furnish one. The state 
 of education in Germany, and the structure of the establish- 
 ments for conducting it, seems to us one of the most promis- 
 ing inquiries that could at this moment be entered on. 
 
 But to return to Heyne. We have said, that in his private 
 circumstances he might reckon himself fortunate. His pub- 
 lic relations, on a more splendid scale, continued, to the last, 
 to be of the same happy sort. By degrees, he had risen to be, 
 both in name and office, the chief man of his establishment ; 
 his character stood high with the learned of all countries ; and 
 the best fruit of external reputation, increased respect in his 
 own circle, was not denied to him. The burghers of Gottingen, 
 so fond of their University, could not but be proud of HejTie ; 
 na}^, as the time passed on, they found themselves laid under 
 more than one specific obligation to him. He remodelled and 
 reanimated their Gymnasium (Town-School), as he had before 
 done that of Ilfeld ; and what was still more important, in the 
 rude times of the French AVar, by his skilful application, he 
 succeeded in procuring from Napoleon, not only a protection 
 for the University, but immunity from hostile invasion for the 
 whole district it stands in. Nay, so happily were matters man- 
 aged, or so happily did they turn of their own accord, that 
 Gottingen rather gained than sufi'ered by the War : under 
 Jerome of Westphalia, not only were all benefices punctually 
 paid, but improvements even were effected ; among other 
 things, a new and very handsome extension, which had long 
 
THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 35 
 
 been desired, was built for the Library, at the charge of Gov- 
 ernment. To all these claims for public regard, add Hejne's 
 now venerable age, and we can fancy how, among his towns- 
 men and fellow-collegians, he must have been cherished, nay 
 almost worshipped. Already had the magistracy, by a special 
 act, freed him from all public assessments ; but, in 1809, 
 on his eightieth birthday, came a still more emphatic testi- 
 mony ; for Ritter Franz, and all the public Boards, and the 
 Faculties in corpore, came to him in procession with good 
 wishes ; and students reverenced him ; and young ladies sent 
 him garlands, stitched together by their own fair fingers ; in 
 short, Gottingen was a place of jubilee ; and good old He^^ne, 
 who nowise affected, yet could not dislike these things, was 
 among the happiest of men. 
 
 In another respect we must also reckon him fortunate : that 
 he hved till he had completed all his undertakings ; and then 
 departed peacefully, and without sickness, from which, indeed, 
 his whole life had been remarkably free. Three months be- 
 fore his death, in April, 1812, he saw the last Volume of his 
 Works in print ; and rejoiced, it is said, with an affecting 
 thankfulness, that so much had been granted him. Length 
 of life was not now to be hoped for ; neither did Heyne look 
 forward to the end with aiDprehension. His little German 
 verses, and Latin translations, composed in sleepless nights, 
 at this extreme period, are, to us, by far the most touching 
 part of his poetry ; so melancholy is the spirit of them, yet so 
 mild ; solemn, not without a shade of sadness, yet full of pious 
 resignation. At length came the end ; soft and gentle as his 
 mother could have wished it for him. The 11th of July was 
 a public day in the Royal Society ; Heyne did his part in it ; 
 spoke at large, and with even more clearness and vivacity than 
 usual. 
 
 ' Next day,' says Heeren, ' was Sunday : I saw him in the 
 evening for the last time. He was resting in his chair, ex- 
 hausted by the fatigue of yesterday. On Monday morning, 
 he once more entered his class-room, and held his Seminarium. 
 In the afternoon he prepared his letters, domestic as well as 
 foreign ; among the latter, one on business ; sealed them all 
 
36 THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 
 
 but one, written in Latin, to Professor Thorlacius in Copen- 
 hagen, which I found open, but finished, on his desk. At sup- 
 jDer (none but his elder daughter was with him) he talked 
 cheerfully ; and, at his usual time, retired to rest. In the 
 night, the servant girl, that slept under his apartment, heard 
 him walking up and down ; a common practice with him when 
 he could not sleep. However, he had again gone to bed. Soon 
 after five, he arose, as usual ; he joked with the girl when she 
 asked him how he had been overnight. She left him to make 
 ready his coffee, as w^as her wont ; and, returning with it in a 
 short quarter of an hour, she found him sunk down before his 
 washing-stand, close by his work table. His hands were wet ; 
 at the moment when he had been washing them, had death 
 taken him into his arms. One breath more, and he ceased to 
 live : when the hastening doctor opened a vein, no blood 
 would How.' 
 
 Heyne was interred with all public solemnities : and, in 
 epicedial language, it may be said, without much exaggera- 
 tion, that his country mourned for him. At Chemnitz, his 
 birthplace, there assembled, under constituted authority, a 
 grand meeting of the magnates, to celebrate his memory ; 
 the old school-album, in which the little ragged boy had in- 
 scribed his name, was produced ; grandiloquent speeches were 
 delivered ; and ' in the afternoon, many hundreds went to see 
 the poor cottage ' where his father had weaved, and he starved 
 and learned. How generous ! 
 
 To estimate Heyne's intellectual character, to fix accu- 
 rately his rank and merits as a critic and philologer, we can- 
 not but consider as beyond our province, and at any rate 
 superfluous here. By the general consent of the learned in 
 all countries, he seems to be acknowledged as the first among 
 recent scholars ; his immense reading, his lynx-eyed skill in 
 exposition and emendation are no longer anywhere contro- 
 verted ; among ourselves his taste in these matters has been 
 praised by Gibbon, and by Parr pronounced to be ' exquisite.' 
 In his own country, Heyne is even regarded as the founder of 
 a new epoch in classical study ; as the first who with any de- 
 cisiveness attempted to translate fairly beyond the letter of 
 the classics ; to read in the writings of the Ancients, not their 
 
THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 37 
 
 language alone, or even their detached opmious and records, 
 but their spirit and character, their way of life and thought ; 
 how the AVorld and Nature painted themselves to the mind 
 in those old ages ; how, in one word, the Greeks and the 
 Romans were men, even as we are. Such of our readers as 
 have studied any one of Heyne's works, or even looked care- 
 fully into the Lectures of the Schlegels, the most ingenious 
 and popular commentators of that school, will be at no loss to 
 understand what we mean. 
 
 By his inquiries into antiquity, especially by his laboured 
 investigation of its politics and its mythology, Heyne is believed 
 to have carried the torch of philosophy towards, if not into, 
 the mysteries of old time. What Winkelmann, his great con- 
 temporary, did, or began to do, for ancient Plastic Ai't, the 
 other, with equal success, began for ancient Literature.' A 
 high praise, surel}^ ; 3'et, as we must think, one not unfounded, 
 and which, indeed, in all parts of Europe, is becoming more 
 and more confirmed. 
 
 So much, in the province to which he devoted his activity, 
 is Heyne allowed to have accomplished. Nevertheless, we 
 must not assert that, in point of understanding and spiritual 
 endowment, he can be called a great, or even, in strict speech, 
 a complete man. Wonderful perspicuity, unwearied dihgence^ 
 are not denied him ; but to philosophic order, to classical ad- 
 
 ' It is a curious fact, that these two men, so singularly correspondent 
 in their early suaerings, subsequent distinction, line of study, and 
 rugged enthusiasm of character, were at one time, while both as yet 
 were under the horizon, brought into partial contact. ' An acquaintance 
 'of another sort,' says Heeren, 'the young Heyne was to make in the 
 ' Briihl Library ; with a person whose importance he could not then an- 
 'ticipate. One frequent visitor of this establishment was a certain al- 
 " most wholly unknown man, whose visits could not be specially desir- 
 ' able for the librarians, such endless labour did he cost them. He 
 'seemed insatiable in reading ; and called for so many books that his re- 
 * ception there grew rather of the coolest. It was Johann Winkelmann. 
 ' Meditating his journey for Italy, he was then laying-in preparation for 
 ' it. Thtts did these two men become, if not confidential, yet acquainted ; 
 ' who at that time, both still in darkness and poverty, cotild little sup. 
 ' pose, that in a few years they Mere to be the teachers of cultivated Eii- 
 'rope and the ornaments of their nation.' 
 
38 THE LIFE OF HEYNE. 
 
 justment, clearness, polish, whether in word or thought, he 
 seldom attains ; nay many times, it must be avowed, he in- 
 volves himself in tortuous longwinded verbosities, and stands 
 before us little better than one of that old school which 
 his admirers boast that he displaced. He appears, we might 
 also say, as if he had wings but could not well use them. 
 Or, indeed, it might be that, writing constantly in a dead 
 language, he came to write heavily ; working forever on 
 subjects where learned armour-at-all-points cannot be dis- 
 pensed with, he at last grew so habituated to his harness that 
 he would not walk abroad without it ; nay perhaps it had 
 rusted together, and could not be unclasped ! A sad fate for 
 a thinker ! Yet one which threatens many commentators, and 
 overtakes many. 
 
 As a man encrusted and encased, he exhibits himself, more- 
 over, to a certain degree, in his moral character. Here too, 
 as in his intellect, there is an awkwardness, a cumbrous inert- 
 ness ; nay, there is a show of clulness, of hardness, which no- 
 wise intrinsically belongs to him. He passed, we are told, 
 for less religious, less affectionate, less enthusiastic than he 
 was. His heart, one w^ould think, had no free course, or had 
 found itself a secret one ; outwardly he stands before us cold 
 and still, a very wall of rock ; yet within lay a well, from 
 which, as we have witnessed, the stroke of some Moses'- wand 
 (the death of a Theresa) could draw streams of pure feeling. 
 Callous as the man seems to us, he has a sense for all natural 
 beauty ; a merciful s^'mpathy for his fellow-men : his own 
 early distresses never left his memory ; for similar distresses 
 his pity and help were, at all times, in store. This form of 
 character may also be the fruit partly of his employments, 
 partly of his sufferings, and perhaps is not very singular 
 among commentators. 
 
 For the rest, Heeren assures us, that in practice Heyne was 
 truly a good man ; altogether just ; diligent in his own hon- 
 est business, and ever ready to forward that of others ; com- 
 passionate ; though quick-tempered, placable ; friendly, and 
 satisfied with simpl<3 pleasures. He delighted in roses, and 
 always kept a bouquet of them in water on his desk. His 
 
THE LIFE OF IlEYNE. 39 
 
 house was embowered among roses ; and in his old days he 
 used to wander through the bushes with a pair of scissors. 
 'Farther,' says Heeren, 'in spite of his short sight, he was 
 fond of the fields and skies, and could lie for hours reading 
 on the grass.' A kindly old man ! With strangers, hundreds 
 of whom visited him, he was uniformly courteous ; though 
 latterly, being a little hard of hearing, less fit to converse. 
 In society he strove much to be polite ; but had a habit 
 (which ought to be general) of yawning, when people sjDoke 
 to him and said nothing. 
 
 On the whole, the Germans have some reason to be proud 
 of Heyne : who shall deny that they have here once more pro- 
 duced a scholar of the right old stock ; a man to be ranked, 
 for honesty of study and of life, with the Scaligers, the Bent- 
 leys, and old illustrious men, who, though covered with aca- 
 demic dust and harsh with polyglot vocables, were true men 
 of endeavour, and fought like giants, with such weapons as 
 they had, for the good cause ? To ourselves, we confess, 
 Heyne, highly interesting for wdiat he did, is not less but 
 more so for what he was. This is another of the proofs, 
 which minds like his are from time to time sent hither to 
 give, that the man is not the product of his circumstances, 
 but that, in a far higher degree, the circumstances are the 
 product of the man. While beneficed clerks and other sleek 
 philosophers, reclining on their cushions of velvet, are dem- 
 onstrating that to make a scholar and man of taste, there 
 must be cooperation of the upper classes, society of gentle- 
 men-commoners, and an income of four hundred a-year ; — 
 arises the son of a Chemnitz weaver, and with the very wind 
 of his stroke sweeps them from the scene. Let no man 
 doubt the omnipotence of Nature, doubt the majesty of man's 
 soul ; let no lonely unfriended son of genius despair ! Let 
 him not despair ; if he have the will, the right will, then the 
 power also has not been denied him. It is but the artichoke 
 that will not grow except in gardens. The acorn is cast care- 
 lessly abroad into the wilderness, yet it rises to be an oak ; 
 on the wild soil it nourishes itself, it defies the tempest, and 
 lives for a thousand years. 
 
GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 Comparative estimation of the playwright, millwright and cartwright. 
 England not so successful in the first species of carpentry as in the other 
 two The Playwrights of Germany a strong triumphaut body : Interest 
 in the Drama taking the place of. interest in Politics. The world of 
 pasteboard, and the world of fact The study of German literature, like 
 all other earthly undertakings, has its negative as well as its positive 
 side. The German Parnassus Ill-fated Kotzebue, lifted up by the hol- 
 low balloon of popular applause. Melancholy end of all windbags, (p. 
 43). — Grillparzer, Klingemann and Miillner, may stand as representa- 
 tives of the Playwrights of Germany. Grillparzer, not without reluctance, 
 named under the head of Playwrights : Might have done good service in 
 some prose or small-poem department Tricks of the trade : The public 
 a dim-eyed animal, gullible to almost all lengths. Of Grillparzer's pe- 
 culiar knacks, not very much to be said: His worst Play, theAhnfrau ; 
 a deep tragedy of the Castle -S^pectre sort. Konig Ottokars Glilck und 
 Elide, a much more innocent piece, full of action, though without any 
 discernible coherence. Agglomeration is not creation, and avails little 
 in Literature King Ottokar's soliloquy in the last of his fields. A 
 charitable hope for better things. (48). — Dr. Klingemann one of the* 
 most indisputable Playwrights now extant. His materials chiefly rosin, 
 oil-paper, vizards, scarlet drapery and gunpowder. The compound 
 nowise unpleasant : If any man wish to amuse himself rationally, here 
 is ware for his money. AJuisuer, the Wandering Jew. F^ausf, and his 
 melodramatic contract with the Devil : A few scenes, showing how Faust 
 was carried off in thunder, lightning and blue fire. Dr. Klingemann, a 
 bold perpendicular Playwright, entirely contented with himself and his 
 handicraft. (56). — Dr. Miillner suj)reme overall Playwrights: Might 
 have made a very pretty Lawyer, but to set up for a Poet a different 
 enterprise. Ever tempting us with some hope that here is a touch of 
 Poetry ; and ever disappointing us with an expanse of pure Prose. (67). 
 Mullner's one recipe for play-making borrowed from Zacharias Werner: 
 A pettifogging sherifE's-ofiicer principle of Fate, the raw material of 
 his whole tragedy-goods. The Greek idea of Fate, a lofty ami consistent 
 hypothesis. Dr. Milliner's Fate-tenet totally incredible even to him- 
 self : a mere craftsman's trick. His abilities and jierformances as a 
 journalist: German editorial squabbles. The duty of Foreign Review- 
 ers twofold : What to be welcomed ; and what to be rejected. Let every 
 one be active for himself. (72;. 
 
GERMAN^ PLAYWRIGHTS.^ 
 
 [1829.] 
 
 In this stage of society the playwright is as essential and 
 acknowledged a character as the millwright, or cartwright, or 
 any other w^right whatever ; neither can w^e see w^hy, in gen- 
 eral estimation, he should rank lower than these his brother 
 artisans, except perhaps for this one reason : that the former 
 Avorking in timber and iron, for the wants of the body, pro- 
 duce a completely suitable niachiiie ; while the latter, work- 
 ing in thought and feeling, for the wants of the soul, pro- 
 duces a machine which is i/i completely suitable. In other 
 respects, we confess we cannot perceive that the balance lies 
 against him : for no candid man, as it seems to us, will doubt 
 but the talent which constructed a Virginius or a Bertram, 
 might have sufficed, had it been properly directed, to make 
 not only wheelbarrows and waggons, but even mills of con- 
 
 ' Foreign Review, No. 6. — 1. Dis Ahvfrau (The Ancestress), A 
 Tragedy, in five Acts. By F. C4rilliiarzer. Fourth Edition. Vienna, 
 1823. 
 
 Konuj Ottokars Gliick und Ende (King Ottocar's Fortune and End). 
 A Tragedy, in five Acts. By F. Grillparzer. Vienna, 1825. 
 
 Sappho. A Tragedy, in five Acts. By F. Grillparzer. Third Edi- 
 tion. Vienna, 1822. 
 
 2. Fmist. A Traged}', in five Acts. By August Klingem.mn. Leip- 
 sig and Altenburg, 1815. 
 
 Ahasuer. A Tragedy, in five Acts. By August Klingemann. Bruns- 
 wick, 1827. 
 
 3. Miilners Dramatische WerJce. Erste rechtmdssige, rollstdndige und 
 1)0171 Verfasser rerbesserte Gesammt-Ausgabe. (Milliner's Dramatic 
 Works. First legal collective Edition, complete and revised by the Au* 
 thor). 7 vols. Brunswick, 1828. 
 
44 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 siderable comj^licacy. However, if the public is niggardly to 
 the playwright in one point, it must be j^roportionably liberal 
 in another ; according to Adam Smith's observation, that 
 trades which are reckoned less reputable have higher money 
 wages. Thus, one thing compensating the other, the play- 
 wright may still realise an existence ; as, in fact, we find that 
 he does : for playwrights were, are and probably will always 
 be ; unless, indeed, in process of years, the whole dramatic 
 concern be finally abandoned by mankind ; or, as in the case 
 of our Punch and Mathews, every player becoming his own 
 playwright, this trade may merge in the other and older 
 one. 
 
 The British nation has its own playwrights, several of them 
 cunning men in their craft : yet here, it would seem, this sort 
 of carpentry does not flourish ; at least, not with that pre- 
 eminent vigour which distinguishes most other branches of 
 our national industry. In hardware and cotton goods, in all 
 sorts of chemical, mechanical, or other material processes, 
 England outstrips the world ; nay, in many departments of 
 literary manufacture also, as, for instance, in the fabrication 
 of Novels, she may safely boast herself peerless : but in the 
 matter of the Drama, to whatever cause it be owing, she can 
 claim no such superiority. In theatrical produce she yields 
 considerably to France ; and is, out of sight, inferior to Ger- 
 many. Nay, do not we English hear daily, for the last 
 twenty years, that the Drama is dead, or in a state of sus- 
 pended animation ; and are not medical men sitting on the 
 case, and propounding their remedial appliances, weekly, 
 monthly, quarterly, to no manner of purpose ? Whilst in 
 Germany the Drama is not only, to all appearance, alive, but 
 in the very flush and heyday of superabundant strength ; in- 
 deed, as it were, still only sowing its first wild oats ! For 
 if the British Playwrights seem verging to ruin, and our 
 Knowleses, Maturins, Shiels and Shees stand few and com- 
 paratively forlorn, like firs on an Irish bog, the Playwrights of 
 Germany are a strong, triumphant body ; so numerous that 
 it has T)een calculated, in case of war, a regiment of foot 
 might be raised, in which, from (he colonel down to the 
 
GERMAN PL AT WRIGHTS. 45 
 
 drummer, every officer [ind private sentinel might show his 
 drama or dramas. 
 
 To investigate the origin of so marked a superiority would 
 lead us beyond our purpose. Doubtless the proximate cause 
 must lie in a superior demand for the article of dramas ; 
 which superior demand again may arise either from the ch- 
 mate of Germany, as Montesquieu might believe ; or j^erhaps 
 more naturally and immediately from the political condition 
 of that country ; for man is not only a working but a talking 
 animal, and where no Catholic Questions, and Parliamentary 
 Reforms, and Select Vestries are given him to discuss in his 
 leisure hours, he is glad to fall upon plays or players, or what- 
 ever comes to hand, whereby to fence himself a little against 
 the inroads of Ennui. Of the fact, at least, that such a su- 
 perior demand for dramas exists in Germany, we have only 
 to open a newspaper to find proof. Is not every Litteratur- 
 blatt and KiDidblatt stuffed to bursting with theatricals ? Nay, 
 has not the ' able Editor ' established correspondents in every 
 capital city of the civilised world, who report to him on this 
 one matter and on no other ? For, be our curiosity what it may, 
 let us have profession of 'intelligence from Munich,' 'intel- 
 ligence from Vienna,' 'intelligence from Berlin,' is it intelh- 
 gence of anything but of greenroom controversies and nego- 
 tiations, of tragedies and operas and farces acted and to be 
 acted ? Not of men, and their doings, by hearth and hall, in 
 the firm earth ; but of mere effigies and shells of men, and 
 their doings in the world of pasteboard, do these unhappy 
 corresjDondents write. Unhappy we call them ; for, with all 
 our tolerance of playwrights, we cannot but think that there 
 are limits, and very strait ones, within which their activity 
 should be restricted. Here in England, our ' theatrical re- 
 ports ' are nuisance enough ; and many persons who love their 
 life, and therefore ' take care of their time, which is the stuif 
 life is made of,' regularly lose several columns of their weekly 
 newspaper in that wa^- : but our case is pure luxury, compared 
 with that of the Germans, who instead of a measurable and 
 sufferable spicing of theatric matter, are obliged, metaj^hori- 
 cally speaking, to brcuktast and dine on it ; have in fact noth- 
 
46 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 ing else to live on but that liiglily unnutritive victual. We 
 ourselves are occasional readers of German newspapers ; and 
 liave often, in the spirit of Christian humanity, meditated 
 presenting to the whole body of German editors a project^ — 
 which, however, must certainly have ere now occurred to 
 themselves, and for some reason been found inapplicable : it 
 was, to address these correspondents of theirs, all and sundry, 
 in plain language, and put the question. Whether, on studi- 
 ously^ surveying the Universe from their several stations, there 
 was nothing in the heavens above, or the earth beneath, or 
 the waters under the earth, nothing visible but this one busi- 
 ness, or rather shadow of business, that had an interest for 
 the minds of men ? If the correspondents still answered that 
 nothing was visible, then of course they must be left to con- 
 tinue in this strange state ; prayers, at the sanie time, being 
 put up for them in all churches. 
 
 However, leaving every able Editor to fight his own battle, 
 we address ourselves to the task in hand : meaning here to 
 inquire a very little into the actual state of the dramatic trade 
 in Germany, and exhibit some detached features of it to the 
 consideration of our readers. For, seriously speaking, low as 
 the province may be, it is a real, active and ever-enduring 
 province of the literary republic ; nor can the pursuit of many 
 men, even though it be a profitless and foolish pursuit, ever 
 be without claim to some attention from us, either in the way 
 of furtherance or of censure and correction. Our avowed ob- 
 ject is to promote the sound study of Foreign Literature ; 
 which study, like all other earthly undertakings, has its nega- 
 tive as well as its positive side. We have already, as occasion 
 served, borne testimony to the merits of various German 
 poets ; and must now say a word on certain German poet- 
 asters ; hoping that it may be chiefly a regard to the for- 
 mer which has made us take even this slight notice of the 
 latter : for the bad is in itself of no value, and only worth de- 
 scribing lest it be mistaken for the good. At the same time, 
 let no reader tremble, as if we meant to overwhelm him, on 
 this occasion, with a whole mountain of dramatic lumber, 
 poured forth in torrents, like shot rubbish, from the play- 
 
GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 47 
 
 house garrets, where it is mouldering and evaporating into 
 nothing, silently, and without harm to any one. Far be this 
 from us ! Nay, our own knowledge of this subject is in the 
 highest degree limited ; and, indeed, to exhaust it, or attempt 
 discussing it with scientific precision, would be an impossible 
 enterprise. What man is there that could assort the whole 
 furniture of Milton's Limbo of Vanity ; or wliere is the Hallam 
 that would undertake to write us the Constitutional History of 
 a Eookery ? Let the courteous reader take heart, then ; for 
 he is in hands that w411 not, nay what is more, that cannot, do 
 him much harm. One brief shy glance into this huge bivouac 
 of Plaj^wrights, all sawing and planing with such tumult ; and 
 we leave it, probably for many years. 
 
 The German Parnassus, as one of its own denizens remarks, 
 has a rather broad summit ; yet only two Dramatists are 
 reckoned, within the last centurv, to have mounted thither : 
 Schiller and Goethe ; if we are not, on the strength of his Minna 
 von Barnhehn and Emilie Galotti, to account Lessing also of 
 the number. On the slope of the Mountain may be found a 
 few stragglers of the same brotherhood ; among these, Tieck 
 and Maler Midler, firmly enough stationed at considerable 
 elevations ; while far below appear various honest persons 
 climbing vehemently, but against precipices of loose sand, to 
 w^hom we wish all speed. But the reader will understand 
 that the bivouac we speak of, and are about to enter, lies not 
 on the declivity of the Hill at all ; but on the level ground 
 close to the foot of it ; the essence of a Plavwrio-ht bein"* that 
 he works not in Poetry, but in Prose which more or less 
 cunningly resembles it. And here, pausing for a moment, 
 the reader observes that he is in a civilised country ; for see, 
 on the very boundary-line of Parnassus, rises a gallows with 
 the figure of a man hung in chains ! It is the figure of 
 August von Kotzebue ; and has swung there for many years, 
 as a warning to all too-audacious Playwrights ; who neverthe- 
 less, as we see, pay little heed to it Ill-fated Kotzebue, once 
 the darling of theatrical Europe ! This was the prince of all 
 Playwrights, and could manufacture Plaj's with a speed and 
 fehcity surpassing even Edinburgh Novels. For his muse, 
 
48 GERMAN PLAY WRI GETS. 
 
 like other doves, hatched twins in the month ; and the world 
 gazed on them with an admiration too deep for mere words. 
 What is all ]3ast or present popularity to this ? Were not 
 these Plays translated into almost every language of articulate- 
 speaking men ; acted, at least, we may literally say, in every 
 theatre from Kamtschatka to Cadiz ? Nay, did they not melt 
 the most obdurate hearts in all countries ; and, like the music 
 of Orpheus, draw tears down iron cheeks? We ourselves 
 have known the flintiest men, who professed to have wept 
 over them, for the first time in their lives. So was it twenty 
 years ago ; how stands it to-day ? Kotzebue, lifted up on the 
 hollow balloon of popular aj^plause, thought wings had been 
 given him that he might ascend to the Immortals : gay he 
 rose, soaring, sailing, as with supreme dominion ; but in the 
 rarer azure deep, his windbag burst asunder, or the arrows of 
 keen archers pierced it ; and so at last we find him a com- 
 pound-pendulum, vibrating in the character of scarecrow, to 
 guard from forbidden fruit ! O ye Playwrights, and literary 
 quacks of every feather, weep over Kotzebue, and over your- 
 selves ! Know that the loudest roar of the million is not 
 fame ; that the windbag, are ye mad enough to mount it, will 
 burst, or be shot tlu-ough with arrows, and your bones too 
 shall act as scarecrows. 
 
 But, quitting this idle allegorical vein, let us at length pro- 
 ceed in plain English, and as beseems mere prose Reviewers 
 to the work laid out for us. Among the hundreds of Ger- 
 man Dramatists, as they are called, three individuals, already 
 known to some British readers, and prominent from all the 
 rest in Germany, may fitly enough stand here as representa- 
 tives of the whole Playwright class ; whose various craft and 
 i:>roduce the procedui'e of these three may in some small 
 degree serve to illustrate. Of Grillparzer, therefore, and 
 Klingemann, and Mflllner, in their order. 
 
 Franz Grillparzer seems to be an Austrian ; which country 
 is reckoned nowise fertile in poets ; a circumstance that may 
 j)erhaps have contributed a little to his own rather rapid celeb- 
 rity. Our more special acquaintance with Grillparzer is of 
 
GERMAN PLAYWniGUTS. 49 
 
 very recent date ; though his name and samj^les of his ware 
 have for some time been hung out, in many British and 
 foreign Magazines, often with testimonials which might have 
 beguiled less timeworn customers. Neither, after all, have we 
 found these testimonials falser than others such are, but 
 rather not so false ; for, indeed, Grillparzer is a most inoffen- 
 sive man, nay positively rather meritorious ; nor is it without 
 reluctance that we name him under this head of Playwrights, 
 and not under that of Dramatists, which he aspires to. Had 
 the law with regard to mediocre poets relaxed itself since 
 Horace's time, all had been well with Grillparzer ; for un- 
 doubtedly there u a small vein of tenderness and grace run- 
 ning through him ; a seeming modesty also, and real love of 
 his art, which gives promise of better things. But gods and 
 men and columns are still equally rigid in that unhappy par- 
 ticular of mediocrity, even pleasing mediocrity ; and no scene 
 or line is yet known to us of Grillparzer's which exhibits 
 anything more. Non concessere, therefore, is his sentence for 
 the present ; and the louder his well-meaning admirers extol 
 him, the more emphatically should it be pronounced and re- 
 peated. Nevertheless Grillparzer's claim to the title of Play- 
 wright is perhaps more his misfortune than his crime. Li\^ 
 ing in a countrv where the Drama euQ-rosses so much atten- 
 tion, he has been led into attempting it, without any decisive 
 qualification for such an enterprise ; and so his allotment of 
 talent, which might have done good service in some prose de- 
 partment, or even in the sonnet, elegy, song or other outlying 
 province of Poetry, is driven, as it were, in spite of fate, to 
 write Plays ; w^iich, though regularly di\ided into scenes and 
 sej)arate speeches, are essentially monological ; and though 
 swarming with characters, too often express only one charac- 
 ter, and that no very extraordinary one, — the character of 
 Pranz Grillparzer himself. What is an increase of misfort- 
 luie too, he has met with applause in this career ; which 
 therefore he is likely to follow farther and farther, let nature 
 and his stars say to it what they will. 
 
 The characteristic of a Playwright is, that he writes in 
 Prose ; which Prose he palms, probably first on himself and 
 4 
 
50 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 then on the simpler part of the pubhc, for Poetry : and the 
 manner m which he effects this legerdemain constitutes his 
 specific distinction, fixes the species to which he belongs in 
 the genus Playwright. But it is a universal feature of him 
 that he attempts, by prosaic, and as it were mechanical means 
 to accomplish an end which, except by poetical genius, is ab- 
 solutely not to be accomplished. For the most part, he has 
 some knack, or trick of the trade, which by close inspection 
 can be detected, and so the heart of his mystery be seen into. 
 He may have one trick, or many ; and the more cunningly he 
 can disguise these, the more j^erfect is he as a craftsman ; for 
 were the public once to penetrate into this his sleight-of-hand, 
 it were all over with him, — Othello's occupation were gone. 
 No conjurer, when we once understand his method of fire- 
 eating, can any longer pass for a true thaumaturgist, or even 
 entertain us in his proper character of quack, though he 
 should eat Mount Vesuvius itself. But happily for Play- 
 wrights and others, the public is a dim-eyed animal ; gullible 
 to almost all lengths, — nay, which often seems to prefer being 
 gulled. 
 
 Of Grillparzer's peculiar knack and recipe for j)lay-making, 
 there is not very much to be said. He seems to have tried 
 various kinds of recipes, in his time ; and, to his credit be it 
 spoken, seems little contented with any of them. By much 
 the worst j^lay of his, that we have seen, is the Ahnfrau (An- 
 cestress) ; a deep tragedy of the Castle-Spectre sort ; the 
 whole mechanism of which was discernible and condemnable 
 at a single glance. It is nothing but the old story of Fate ; 
 an invisible Nemesis visiting the sins of the fathers upon the 
 children to the third and fourth generation ; a method almost 
 as common and sovereign in German Art, at this day, as the 
 method of steam is in British mechanics ; and of which 
 W8 shall anon have more occasion to speak. In his Preface, 
 Grillparzer endeavours to palliate or deny the fact of his be- 
 ing a Schicksal-Dlchter (Fate-Tragedian) ; but to no purpose ; 
 for it is a fact grounded on the testimony of the seven senses : 
 however, we are glad to observe that, with this one trial, he 
 seems to have abandoned the Fate-line, and taken into better, 
 
GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 51 
 
 at least into different ones. With regard to the Ahnfrau it- 
 self, we may remark that few things strnck us so much as this 
 little observation of Count Borotin's, occurring in the middle 
 of the dismallest night-thoughts, so unexpectedly, as follows : 
 
 BEIITHA. 
 
 5|* 1* ^p ^* ^* 
 
 Und der Himinel^ sternelos, 
 Starrt mm lecren AurjenlwJilen 
 Li das ungeheALve Grab 
 Schicarz herah ! 
 
 GRAF. 
 
 Wie sich dock die Stunden dehnen! 
 Was ist wohl die Glocke, Bertha ? 
 
 BERTHA {is just cojidoUng with him, in these wm'ds) : — 
 
 4: ^ 4: ^ 4c 
 
 And the welkin, starless, 
 
 Glares from empty eye-holes, 
 
 Black, down on that boundless grave ! 
 
 COUNT. 
 
 How the hours do linger ! 
 
 What o^dock isH, prithee Bertha ? 
 
 A more delicate turn, we venture to say, is rarely to be met 
 with in tragic dialogue. As to the story of the Ahnfmu, it 
 is, naturally enough, of the most heart-rending description. 
 This Ancestress is a lady, or rather the ghost of a lady, for 
 she has been defunct some centuries, who in life had commit- 
 ted what we call an 'indiscretion;' which indiscretion the 
 unpolite husband punished, one would have thought suffi- 
 ciently, by running her through the body. However, the 
 Schicksal of Grillparzer does not think it sufficient ; but far- 
 ther dooms the fair penitent to walk as goblin, till the last 
 branch of her family be extinct. According^ she is heard, 
 from time to time, slamming doors and the like, and now and 
 then seen with dreadful goggle-eyes and other ghost-appur- 
 tenances, to the terror not only of servant people, but of old 
 
,52 GERMAN FLAY WHIG HTS. 
 
 Count Borotin, her now sole male descendant, whose after- 
 noon nap she, on one occasion, cruelly disturbs. This Count 
 Borotin is really a worthy prosing old gentleman ; only he 
 had a son long ago drowned in a fishpond (body not found) ; 
 and has still a highly accomplished daughter, whom there is 
 none offering to wed, except one Jaromir, a person of un- 
 known extraction, and to all appearance of the lightest purse ; 
 nay, as it turns out afterwards, actually the head of a Ban- 
 ditti establishment, which had long infested the neighbouring 
 forests. However, a Captain of foot arrives at this juncture, 
 utterly to root out these Bobbers ; and now the strangest 
 things come to light. For who should this Jaromir prove to 
 be but poor old Borotin' s drowned son ; not drowned, but 
 stolen and bred up by these Outlaws ; the brother, therefore, 
 of his intended ; a most truculent fellow, who fighting for his 
 life unwittingly kills his own father, and drives his bride to 
 poison herself ; in which wise, as w^as also Giles Scroggins' 
 case, he ' cannot get married.' The reader sees, all this is 
 not to be accomplished without some jarring and tumult. In 
 fact, there is a frightful uproar everywhere throughout that 
 night ; robbers dying, musketry discharging, women shriek- 
 ing, men swearing, and the Ahnfrau herself emerging at in- 
 tervals, as the genius of the whole discord. But time and 
 hours bring relief, as they always do. Jaromir in the long- 
 run likewise succeeds in dying ; whereupon the whole Boro- 
 tin lineage having gone to the Devil, the Ancestress also 
 retires thither, — at least makes the upper world rid of her 
 presence ; and the piece ends in deep stillness. Of this poor 
 Ancestress we shall only say farther : Wherever she be, re- 
 quiescat! requiescat f 
 
 As we mentioned above, the Fate-method of manufactur- 
 ing tragic emotion seems to have yielded Grillparzer himself 
 little contentment ; for after this Ahnfrau, we hear no' more 
 of it. His Kdnig Ottokars GliXck unci Ende (King Ottokar's 
 Fortune and End) is a much more innocent piece, and pro- 
 ceeds in quite a different strain ; aiming to subdue us not 
 by old-women's fables of Destiny, but by the accumulated 
 splendour of thrones and principalities, the cruel or magnani- 
 
GERMAN PLAT WRIGHTS. 53 
 
 mous pride of Austrian Emj^erors and Bohemian conquerors, 
 the wit of chivah'ous courtiers, and beautiful but shrewish 
 queens ; the whole set-off by a proper intermixture of coro- 
 nation-ceremonies, Hungarian dresses, whiskered halberdiers, 
 alarms of battle, and the j^omp and circumstance of glorious 
 war. There is even some attempt at delineating character 
 in this Play : certain of the dramatis 2')ersorice are evidently 
 meant to differ from certain others, not in dress and name 
 only, but in nature and mode of being ; so much indeed they 
 repeatedly assert, or hint, and do their best to make good, — 
 uijfortunatety, however, with very indifferent success. In 
 fact, these dramatis personce are rubrics and titles rather than 
 persons ; for most part, mere theatrical automata, with only 
 a mechanical existence. The truth of the matter is, Grillpar- 
 zer cannot communicate a poetic life to any character or ob- 
 ject ; and in this, were it in no other way, he evinces the in- 
 trinsically prosaic nature of his talent. These personages of 
 his have, in some instances, a certain degree of metaphysical 
 truth ; that is to say, one portion of their structure, psycholog- 
 ically viewed, corresj)onds with the other ; — so far all is well 
 enough : but to unite these merely scientific and inanimate 
 qualities into a liviug 7nan is work not for a Playwright, but 
 for a Dramatist. Nevertheless, Konig Ottokar is comparatively 
 a harmless tragedy. It is full of action, striking enough, 
 though without any discernible coherence ; and with so much 
 both of flirting and fighting, with so many weddings, funerals, 
 processions, encampments, it must be, we should think, if the 
 tailor and decorationist do their dutv, a verv comfortable 
 piece to see acted ; especially on the Vienna boards, where it 
 has a national interest, Eodolph of Hapsburg being a main 
 personage in it. 
 
 The model of this Ottokar we imagine to have been Schil- 
 ler's Piccolomini ; a poem of similar materials and object; 
 but differing' from it as a living* rose from a mass of dead 
 rose-leaves, or even of broken Italian gumflowers. It seeujs 
 as though Grillparzer had hoped to subdue us by a sufficient 
 multitude of wonderful scenes and circumstances, without in- 
 quiring, with any painful solicitude, whether the soul and 
 
64: GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 meaning of tliem were presented to us or not. Herein truly, 
 we believe, lies the peculiar knack or playwrigbt-mysteiy of 
 Ottokar : that its effect is calculated to depend chiefly on its 
 quantity ; on the mere number of astonishments, and joyful 
 or deplorable adventures there brought to light ; abundance 
 in superficial contents compensating the absence of callida 
 junctura. Which second method of tragic manufacture we 
 hold to be better than the first, but still far from good. At 
 the same time, it is a very common method, both in Tragedy 
 and elsewhere ; nay, we hear persons whose trade it is to 
 write metre, or be otherwise 'imaginative,' professing it 
 openly as the best they know. Do not these men go about 
 collecting ' features ; ' ferreting out strange incidents, mur- 
 ders, duels, ghost-apparitions, over the habitable globe? Of 
 which features and incidents when they have gathered a sufl&- 
 cient stock, what more is needed than that they he ample 
 enough, high-coloured enough, though huddled into any case 
 (Novel, Tragedy or Metrical Romance) that will hold them 
 all ? Nevertheless this is agglomeration, not creation ; and 
 avails little in Literature. Quantity, it is a certain fact, will 
 7iot make up for defect of quality ; nor are the gayest hues of 
 any service, unless there be a likeness painted from them. 
 Better were it for Konig Ottokar had the story been twice as 
 short and twice as expressive. For it is still true, as in Cer- 
 vantes' time, nunca lo bueno fue mucho. What avails the 
 dram of brandy, while it swims chemically united with its 
 barrel of wort ? Let the distiller pass it and repass it though 
 his limbecs ; for it is the drops of pare alcohol that we want, 
 not the gallons of water, which may be had in every ditch. 
 
 On the whole, however, we remember Konig Ottokar with- 
 out animosity ; and to prove that Grillparzer, if he could not 
 make it poetical, might have made it less prosaic, and has in 
 fact something better in him than is here manifested, we shall 
 quote one passage, which strikes us as really rather sweet and 
 natural. King Ottokar is in the last of his fields, no pros- 
 pect before him but death or captivity ; and soliloquising on 
 his past misdeeds : 
 
GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 55 
 
 I have not borne me wisely in thy World, 
 
 Thou great, all- judging God ! Like storm and tempest, 
 
 I traversed thy fair garden, wasting it : 
 
 ' Tis thine to waste, for thou alone canst heal. 
 
 Was evil not my aim, yet how did I, 
 
 Poor worm, presume to ape the Lord of Worlds, 
 
 And through tlie Bad seek out a way to the Good I 
 
 My fellow man, sent thither for his joy, 
 
 An End, a^Self, within thy World a World, — 
 
 For thou hast fashioned him a marvellous work, 
 
 With lofty brow, erect in look, strange sense, 
 
 And clothed him in the garment of thy Beauty, 
 
 And wondrou&ly encircled him with wonders ; 
 
 He hears, and sees, and feels, has pain and pleasure: 
 
 He takes him food, and cunning powers come forth, 
 
 And work and work, within their secret chambers, 
 
 And build him up his House : no royal Palace 
 
 Is comparable to the frame of Man ! 
 
 And I have cast them forth from me by thousands, 
 
 For whims, as men throw rubbish from their door. 
 
 And none of all these slain but had a Mother 
 
 Who, as she bore him in sore travail, 
 
 Had clasped him fondly to her fostering breast ; 
 
 A Father who had blessed him as his pride. 
 
 And nurturing, watched over him long years : 
 
 If he but hurt the skin upon his finger. 
 
 There would they run, with anxious look, to bind it, 
 
 And tend it, cheering him, until it healed ; 
 
 And it was but a finger the skin o' the finger ! 
 
 And I have trod men down in heaps and squadrons, 
 
 For the stern iron opened out a way 
 
 To their warm living hearts. — O God ! 
 
 Wilt thou go into judgment with me, spare 
 
 My suffering people. ^ 
 
 Passages of this sort, scattered here and there over Grill- 
 parzer's Plays, and e\T[ncing at least an amiable tenderness of 
 natural disposition, make us regret the more to condemn him. 
 In fact, we have hopes that he is not born to be forever a 
 Playwright. A true though feeble vein of poetic talent he 
 really seems to possess ; and such purity of heart as may yet, 
 
 ^ K6ni(j Ottokar, 180-1 
 
56 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 with assiduous gtudy, lead him into his proper field. For we 
 do reckon him a conscientious man, and honest lover of Art ; 
 nay this incessant fluctuation in his dramatic schemes is itself 
 a good omen. Besides this Ahnfrau and Ottokai\ he has writ- 
 ten two dramas, Sappho and Der Goldene Vliess (The Golden 
 Fleece), on quite another piinciple ; aiming apparently at 
 some Classic model, or at least at some French reflex of such 
 a model. Scqypho, which we are sorry to learn is not his last 
 piece, but his second, appears to us very considerably the 
 most faultless production of his we are yet acquainted with. 
 There is a degree of grace and simplicity in it, a softness, 
 polish and general good taste, little to be expected from the 
 author of the Ahnfrau : if he cannot bring out the full tragic 
 meaning of Sappho's situation, he contrives, with laudable 
 dexterity, to avoid the ridicule that lies within a single step 
 of it ; his Drama is weak and thin, but innocent, lovable ; nay 
 the last scene strikes us as even poetically meritorious. His 
 Goldene Vliess we suspect to be of similar character, but have 
 not ^'•et found time and patience to study it. We repeat our 
 hope of one day meeting Grillparzer in a more honourable 
 calling than this of Playwright, or even fourth-rate Dramatist ; 
 which titles, as was said above, we have not given him with- 
 out regret ; and shall be truly glad to cancel for whatever 
 better one he may yet chance to merit. 
 
 But if we felt a certain reluctance in classing Grillparzer 
 among the Playwrights, no such feeling can have place with 
 regard to the second name on our list, that of Doctor August 
 Klingemann. Dr. Klingemann is one of the most indisput- 
 able Playwrights now extant ; nay so superlative is his vigour 
 'in this depnrtment, we might even designate him the Play- 
 wright. His manner of proceeding is quite different from 
 Grillparzer's ; not a wavering ever-changed method, or com- 
 bination of methods, as the other's was ; but a fixed principle 
 of action, which he follows with unflinching courage ; his own 
 mind being to all appearance highly satisfied with it. If Grill- 
 parzer attempted to overpower us, now by the method of Fate, 
 now by that of pompous action, and grandiloquent or lachry- 
 
GERM AX PLA YWJUGJTTS. r>T 
 
 mose sentiment, heaped on ns in too rich abundance, Khnge- 
 mann, without neglecting any of these resources, seems to 
 place his chief dependence on a surer and readier stay, — on 
 his magazines of rosin, oil-paper, vizards, scarlet-drapery and 
 gunpowder. What thunder and lightning, magic-lantern 
 transparencies, death's-heads, fire-showers and j^lush-cloaks 
 can do, is here done. Abundance of churchyard and chapel 
 scenes, in the most tempestuous weather ; to say nothing of 
 battle-fields, gleams of scoured arms here and there in the 
 wood, and even occasional shots heard in the distance. Then 
 there are such scowls and malignant side-glances, ashy pale- 
 nesses, stampings and hysterics, as might, one would thmk, 
 wring the toughest bosom into di'ops of pity. For not only 
 are the looks and gestures of these people of the most heart- 
 rending description, but their w^ords and feelings also (for 
 Klingemann is no half-artist) are of a j)iece with them : gor- 
 geous inflations, the purest innocence, highest magnanimity ; 
 godlike sentiment of all sorts ; everywhere the finest tragic 
 humour. The moral too is genuine ; there is the most anxi- 
 ous regard to virtue ; indeed a distinct patronage both of 
 Providence and the Devil. In this manner does Dr. Klinge- 
 mann compound his dramatic electuaries, no less cunningh- 
 than Dr. Kitchiner did his ' peptic j)ersuaders ; ' and truly of 
 the former we must sa}', that their operation is nowise un- 
 pleasant ; nay to our shame be it spoken, we have even read 
 these Plays with a certain degree of satisfaction ; and shall 
 declare that if any man wish to amuse himself irrationally, 
 here is the ware for his money. 
 
 Klingemann's latest dramatic undertaking is Ahasuer : a 
 purely original invention, on which he seems to pique himself 
 somewhat ; confessing his opinion that, now when the ' birth- 
 pains ' are over, the character of Ahaauer may possibly do good 
 service in many a future drama. AYe are not prophets, or sons 
 of prophets ; so shall leave this prediction resting on its own 
 basis. Ahasuer, the reader wnll be interested to learn, is no 
 other than the Wandering Jew or Shoemaker of Jerusalem : 
 concerning whom there are two things to be remarked. The 
 first is, tlie strange nam.e of the Slioemaker : why do Klinge- 
 
58 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 mann and all the Germans call the man Ahasuer, when his 
 authentic Christian name is John ; Joannes a Temjjoribus 
 Christi, or, for brevity's sake, simply Joannes a Tewpoinbus? 
 This should be looked into. Our second remark is of the 
 circumstance that no Historian or Narrator, neither Schiller, 
 Strada, Thuanus, Monro, nor Dugald Dalgetty, makes any 
 mention of Ahasuer 's having been present at the Battle of 
 Liitzen. Possibly they thought the fact too notorious to need 
 mention. Here at all events, he was ; nay as we infer, he 
 must have been at Waterloo also ; and probably at Trafalgar, 
 though in which Fleet is not so clear ; for he takes a hand 
 in all great battles and national emergencies, at least is wit- 
 ness of them, being bound to it by his destiny. Such is 
 the peculiar occupation of the Wandering Jew, as brought 
 to light in this Tragedy : his other specialities, — that he 
 cannot lodge above three nights in one place ; that he is 
 of a melancholic temperament ; above all, that he cannot 
 die, not by hemp or steel, or Prussic-acid itself, but must 
 travel on till the general consummation, — are familiar to all 
 historical readers. Ahasuer's task at this Battle of Latzen 
 seems to have been a very easy one : simply to see the Lion 
 of the North brought down ; not by a cannon-shot, as is gen- 
 erally believed, but by the traitorous pistol-bullet of one 
 Heinyn von Warth, a bigoted Catholic, who had pretended to 
 desert from the Imperialists, that he might find some such 
 opportunit}'. Unfortunately, Heinyn, directly after this feat, 
 falls into a sleepless, half-rabid state ; comes home to Castle 
 AVarth, frightens his poor Wife and worthy old noodle of a 
 Father ; then skulks about, for some time, now praying, 
 oftener cursing and swearing ; till at length the Swedes lay 
 hold of him and kill him. Ahasuer, as usual, is in at the 
 death : in the interim, however, he has saved Lady Heinyn 
 from drowning, though as good as poisoned her with the look 
 of his strange stony eyes ; and now his business to all appear- 
 ance being over, he signifies in strong language that he must 
 begone : thereupon he ' steps solemnly into the wood ; Wasa- 
 * burg looks after him surprised : the rest kneel round the 
 ' corpse ; the liequiem faintly continues ; ' and what is still 
 
GERMAN PLAYWIUGH7S. 59 
 
 more surprising, 'the curtain falls.' Such is the simple ac- 
 tion and stern catastrophe of this Tragedy ; concerning which 
 it were superfluous for us to speak farther in the way of 
 criticism. We shall only add, that there is a dreadful litho- 
 graphic print in it, representing ' Ludwig Devrient as Ahas- 
 uer ; ' in that very act of ' stepping solemnly into the wood ; ' 
 and uttering these final words: " AVi aber uwidle iceiter — 
 ivelter — iveiter ! " We have heard of HeiT Devrient as of the 
 best actor in Germany ; and can now bear testimony, if there 
 be truth in this plate, that he is one of the ablest-bodied men. 
 A most truculent, rawboned figure, ' with bare legs and red 
 leather shoes ; ' huge black beard ; ej^es turned inside out ; 
 and uttering these extraordinary words : " But /go on — on 
 —on ! " 
 
 Now, however, we must give a glance at Klingemann's 
 other chief performance in this line, the Tragedy of Faust. 
 Dr. Klingemann admits that the subject has been often 
 treated ; that Goethe's Faust in particular has ' dramatic 
 points {dramatische momente) : ' but the business is to give it 
 an entire dramatic superficies, to make it an dcht dramatische, 
 a ' genuinely dramatic ' tragedy. Setting out with this laud- 
 able intention, Dr. Klingemann has produced a Faust, which 
 differs from that of Goethe in more than one particular. 
 The hero of this jDiece is not the old Faust, doctor in philos- 
 ophy ; driven desperate by the uncertainty of human knowl- 
 edge : but plain John Faust, the printer, and even the in- 
 ventor of gunpowder ; driven desperate by his ambitious 
 temper, and a total deficiency of cash. He has an excellent 
 wife, an excellent blind father, both of whom would fain have 
 him be peaceable, and work at his trade ; but being an adept 
 in the black-art, he determines rather to relieve himself in 
 that way. Accordingly, he proceeds to make a contract with 
 the Devil, on what we should consider pretty advantageous 
 terms ; the Devil being bound to serve him in the most ef- 
 fectual manner, and Faust at liberty to commit four mortal 
 sins before anv hair of his head can be harmed. However, 
 as will be seen, the De\dl proves Yorkshire ; and Faust, natu- 
 rally enough, finds himself quite jockeyed in the long-run. 
 
60 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 Another characteristic distinction of KHngemann is his 
 manner of embodying this same Evil Principle, when at last 
 he resolves on introducing him to sight ; for all these con- 
 tracts and preliminary matters are very properly managed 
 behind the scenes ; only the main points of the transaction 
 being indicated to the spectator by some thunder clajD, or 
 the like. Here is no cold mocking Mephistopheles ; but a 
 swaggering, jovial, West India-looking ' Stranger,' with a ru- 
 bicund, indeed quite brick-coloured face, which Faust at first 
 mistakes for the effect of hard-drinking. However, it is a re- 
 markable feature of this Stranger, that alwa^'S on the intro- 
 duction of any religious topic, or the mention of any sacred 
 name, he strikes his glass down on the table, and generally 
 breaks it. 
 
 For some time, after his grand bargain, Faust's affairs go 
 on triumphantly, on the great scale, and he seems to feel 
 pretty comfortable. But the Stranger shows him 'his wife,' 
 Helena, the most enchanting creature in the world ; and the 
 most cruel-hearted, — for, notwithstanding the easy temper of 
 her husband, she will not grant Faust the smallest encourage- 
 ment, till he have killed Kathe, his owrn living helpmate, 
 against whom he entertains no manner of grudge. Neverthe- 
 less, reflecting that he has a stock of four mortal sins to draw 
 upon, and may well venture one for such a prize, he deter- 
 mines on killing Kathe. But here matters take a bad turn : 
 for having poisoned poor Kathe, he discovers, most unex- 
 pectedly, that she is in the family-way ; and therefore that he 
 has committed not one sin but two ! Nay, before the inter- 
 ment can take place, he is farther reduced, in a sort of acci- 
 dental self-defence, to kill his father ; thus accomplishing his 
 third mortal sin ; with which third, as we shall presently dis- 
 cover, his whole allotment is exhausted ; a fourth, that he 
 knew not of, being already on the score against him ! From 
 this point, it cannot surprise us that bad grows worse : catch- 
 poles are out in pursuit of him, ' black masks ' dance round 
 him in a most suspicious manner, the brickfaced Stranger 
 seems to laugh at him, and Helena will nowhere make her 
 appearance. That the sympathising reader may see with his 
 
GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 61 
 
 own eyes bow poor Faust is beset at this juncture, we shall 
 quote a scene or two. The first may, properly enough, be 
 that of those ' black masks.' 
 
 SCENE SEVENTH. 
 
 A lighted Hall. 
 
 {Ill the distance is heard quick dancing music. Masks pass from time to 
 time over the Stage, but all dressed in blacky and idth tizards perfectly 
 close. After a pause, faust plunges icildly iiu iciih a full goblet in his 
 hand.) 
 
 FAUST {rushing stornifidly into the foreground). 
 
 Ha ! Poison, 'stead of wine, that I intoxicate me ! 
 Your wine makes sober, — burning fire bring us! 
 Off with your drink ! — and blood is in it too ! 
 
 [Shuddering, he d((shes the goblet from his hand. 
 My father's blood,— I've drunk my fill of that ! [ With increasing tumult. 
 Yet curses on him ! curses, that he begot me ! 
 Curse on my mother's bosom, that it bore me ! 
 Curse on the gossip crone that stood by her. 
 And did not strangle me at my first scream ! 
 How could I help this being that was given me ? 
 Accursed art thou, Nature, that hast mock'd me ! 
 Accursed I, that let myself be mock'd ! — 
 And thou, strong Being, that, to make the sport, 
 Enclosedst the fire-soul in this dungeon. 
 That so despairing it might strive for freedom — 
 Accur. . . [He shrinks terrorstruck. 
 
 No, not the/(9^^7'/^. . . . the blackest sin ! 
 Nol No! {In the excess of his outbreaking anguish, he hides his 
 
 face in his hands. 
 O, I am altogether wretched ! 
 {Three black Masks come toioards him.) 
 
 Hey ! merry friend ! 
 
 FIRST MASK. 
 SECOND MASK. 
 
 Hey ! merry brother ! 
 
 THIRD MASK {reiterating icith a cutting tone). 
 
 Merry ! 
 
 FAUST {breaking out in icild humour, and looking round 
 
 among tliem). 
 Hey ! Merry, then ! 
 
62 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 FIRST MASK. 
 
 Will any one catch tiies ? 
 
 SECOND MASK. 
 A long life yet ; to midnight all the way ! 
 
 THIRD MASK. 
 
 And after that, such pleasure without end ! 
 
 [The 7nusic suddenly ceases, and a clock striJces ff trice. 
 
 FAUST {astonished). 
 What is it ? 
 
 FIRST MASK. 
 
 Wants a quarter, Sir, of twelve I 
 
 SECOND MASK. 
 
 Then we have time ! 
 
 THIRD MASK. 
 
 Ay, time enough for jigging I 
 
 FIRST MASK. 
 And not till midnight comes the shot to pay ! 
 
 FAUST {shuddering). 
 What want ye y 
 
 FIRST MASK {clasps Ms hand abruptly). 
 
 Hey ! To dance a step with thee ! 
 
 FAUST {plucks his hands hack). 
 Off !— Fire ! ! 
 
 FIRST MASK. 
 
 Tush ! A spark or so of brimstone ! 
 
 SECOND MASK. 
 
 Art dreaming, brother ? 
 
 THIRD MASK. 
 
 Holla ! Music, there ! 
 [ The music begins again in the distance. 
 
 FIRST MASK {sccretly laughing). 
 The spleen is biting him ! 
 
 SECOND MASK. 
 
 Hark ! at the gallows, 
 What jovial footing of it ! 
 
GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. G3 
 
 THIRD MASK. 
 
 Thither must I ! {Exit 
 
 FIRST MASK. 
 
 Below, too ! down in Purgatory ! Hear ye ? 
 
 SECOND MASK. 
 
 A stirring there ? 'Tis time, then ! Hui, your servant ! 
 
 FIRST MASK {tO FAUST). 
 
 Till midnight ! {^Exeunt both Masks hastily. 
 
 FAUST {dcisping his hroio). 
 
 Ha ! What begirds me here ? 
 
 [Repping vehemently forward. 
 Down with your masks ! [ Violent knocking without. 
 
 What horrid uproar next ! 
 Is madness coming on me ? — 
 
 VOICE {violently, from icithout). 
 
 Open, in the king's name ! 
 
 [^The music ceases. Thunderclap. 
 
 FAUST {staggers back). 
 I have a heavy dream ! — Sure ^tis not doomsday ? 
 
 VOICE {as before). 
 Here is the murderer ! Open ! Open, then ! 
 
 FAUST {wipes his brow). 
 Has agony unmanned me ? — 
 
 SCENE EIGHTH. 
 
 BAILIFFS. 
 
 Where is he ? where ? — 
 
 From these merely terrestrial constables, the jovial Stranger 
 easily delivers Faust : but now comes the long-looked-for tete- 
 d-tcte with Helena. 
 
 SCENE TWELFTH. 
 
 (faust leads Helena on the stage. She also is dose-masked. The 
 
 other Masks idthdraic. ) 
 
 faust {irarm and glowing). 
 No longer strive, proud beauty ! 
 
64 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 HELENA. 
 
 Ha, wild storuier ! 
 
 FAUST. 
 
 My bosom burns—! 
 
 HELENA. 
 
 The time is not yet come. — 
 
 — And so forth, through four pages of flame and ice, till at^ 
 
 last, 
 
 FAUST {imuting). 
 
 Off with the mask, then ! 
 
 HELENA {stUl wilder). 
 
 Hey ! the marriage-hour ! — 
 
 . FAUST. 
 Off with the mask I ! 
 
 HELENA. 
 
 'Tis striking ! ! 
 
 FAUST. 
 
 One kiss I 
 
 HELENA. 
 
 Take it I ! 
 
 [The mask and head-dress fall from her ; and she grins at him from 
 a death'' s-head : loud thunder ; and the music ends, as icith a shriek, 
 in dissonances. 
 
 FAUST {staggers hack). 
 
 O liorror ! — Woe ! 
 
 HELENA. 
 
 The couch is ready, there ! 
 Come, Bridegroom, to thy fire-nuptials ! 
 
 [She sinks, loith a crashing thunderpealy into tlie ground, out of 
 uMch issue flames. 
 
 All this is bad enough ; but mere child's play to the ' Thir- 
 teenth Scene,' the last of this strange eventful history : with 
 some parts of which we propose to send our readers weeping 
 to their beds. 
 
GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 65 
 
 SCENE THIRTEENTH. 
 
 ( The STRANGER kuHs FAUST, ipJivse face is deadly jJale, back to the 
 
 stage^ by the hair. ) 
 
 FAUST. 
 
 Ha, let rae fly ! — Come ! Come ! 
 
 STRANGER {with icHd thundering tone). 
 
 'Tis over now ! 
 
 FAUST. 
 
 That horrid visage ! — 
 
 [Throicijig himself, in a tremor, on, the stranger's breast. 
 Thou art my Friend ! 
 Protect me ! ! 
 
 stranger {laughing (doud). 
 Ha! ha! ha! 
 
 if * * * 
 
 FAUST. 
 
 O save me ! ! 
 
 STRANGER (cliitches Mm icith irresistible force ; ichirls him round, so 
 that FAUST's/«ce is'toicards the spectators, whilst his own is turned 
 away ; and thus Jie looks at him, and bawls with thundering voic^) : 
 
 'Tis I ! ! — 
 
 [a clap of thunder. FAUST, witli gestures of deepest horror, rushes 
 to the ground, uttering an inarticulate cry. The other, after a jJause 
 continues, icith cutting coolness : 
 
 Is that the mighty Hell-subduer, 
 
 That threatened uie .^ — Ha, me ! ! , [ Vt'ith highest contempt 
 
 Worm of the dust ! 
 I had reserved thy torment for — myself.^ ! — 
 Descend to other hands, be sport for slaves — 
 Thou art too small for me ! ! 
 
 FAUST {rises erect, and seems to recover his strength). 
 
 Am I not Faust ? 
 
 STRANGER. 
 
 Thou, no ! 
 
 FAUST {rising in his whole vehemence). 
 Accursed ! Ha, I am I I am I 
 Down at my feet I — I am thy master ! 
 5 
 
66 QERMAN PLATWRI0HT8. 
 
 STRANGER. 
 
 No more I ! 
 
 FAUST {wildly). 
 More ? Ha ! My Bargain ! ! 
 
 STRANGER. 
 
 Is concluded ! ! 
 
 FAUST. 
 
 Three mortal sins. — 
 
 STRANGER. 
 
 The Fourth too is committed. 
 
 PAUST. 
 
 My Wife, my Child, and my old Father's blood — ! 
 
 STRANGER {holcls Up a Parchment to him). 
 ■ And here thy oicn ! — 
 
 FAUST. 
 
 That is my covenant ! 
 
 STRANGER. 
 
 ■ This signature — was thy most damning sin. 
 
 FAUST {raging). 
 
 Ha, spirit of lies ! ! &c., &c. 
 
 ****** 
 
 STRANGER (m Mghest fury). 
 Down, thou accursed ! 
 
 yile drags him by the hair towards the background ; at this moment, 
 amid violent thunder and lightning., the scene changes into a horrid, 
 wilderness ; in the background of which., a yaicning Chasm : into this 
 the Devil hurls Faust; on all sides Fire rains down, so that the whole 
 interior of the Cavern seems burning : a black veil descends over boih^ 
 so soon as Faust is got under. 
 
 FAUST {huzzaing in wild defiance). 
 Ha, down ! Down ! 
 
 [Thunder., lightning and fire. Both sink. The curtain falls. 
 
 On considering all which supernatural transactions, the 
 bewildered reader has no theor}' for it, except that Faust 
 must, in Dr. Cabanis's phrase, have laboured under 'obstruc- 
 tions in the epigastric region,' and all this of the Devil, and 
 
GERMAN PLAT WRIGHTS. 67 
 
 Helena, and so much murder and carousing, have been noth- 
 ing but a waking dream, or other atrabihous phantasm ; and 
 regrets that the poor Printer had not rather applied to some 
 Aberneth}^, on the subject, or even, by one sufficient dose 
 of Epsom-salt, on his own prescription, put an end to the 
 whole matter, and restored himself to the bosom of his af- 
 flicted famil}'. 
 
 Such, then, for Dr.' Klingemann's part, is his method of 
 constructing Tragedies ; to which method it may perhaps be 
 objected that there is a want of originality in it ; for do not 
 our own British Playwrights follow precisely the same plan ? 
 We might answer that, if not his plan, at least his infinitely 
 superior execution of it must distinguish Klingemann : but 
 we rather think his claim to originality rests on a different 
 ground ; on the gx'ound, namely, of his entire contentment 
 with himself and with this his di*amaturgy ; and the cool 
 heroism with which, on all occasions, he avows that content- 
 ment. Here is no poor cowering underfoot Playwright, beg- 
 ging the public for God's sake not to give him the whipping 
 which he deserves ; but a bold perpendicular Playwright, 
 avowing himself as such ; nay mounted on the toj^ of his 
 joinery, and therefrom exercising a sharp critical superin- 
 tendence over the German Drama generally. Klingemann, 
 we understand, has lately executed a theatrical Tour, as Don 
 Quixote did various Sallies ; and thrown stones into most 
 German Playhouses, and at various German Playwriters ; of 
 which we have seen only his assault on Tieck ; a feat com- 
 parable perhaps to that ' never-imagined adventure of the 
 Windmills." Fortune, it is said, favoui's the brave ; and the 
 prayer of Burns's Kilmarnock weaver is not always unheard 
 of Heaven. In conclusion, we congratulate Dr. Klingemann 
 on his Manager-dignity in the Brunswick Theatre ; a post he 
 seems made for, almost as Bardolph was for the Eastcheap 
 waitership. 
 
 But now, Hke his own Ahasuer, Dr. Klingemann must ' go 
 on — on — on : ' for another and gTeater Doctor has been kept 
 too long ' waiting, whose Seven beautiful Volumes of Drama- 
 
()S gebma:n plat weights. 
 
 fische IVrrke might well secure him a better fate. Dr. Milli- 
 ner, of all these Playwrights, is the best known in England ; 
 some of his works have even, Ave believe, been translated into 
 our language. In his own countr}^ his fame, or at least 
 notoriety, is also supreme over all : no Playwright of this 
 age makes such a noise as Milliner ; nay, many there are 
 -who affirm that he is somethin<>' far better than a Plavwriiiiit. 
 Critics of the sixth and lower magnitudes, in every corner 
 of Germany, have put the question a thousand times : Whether 
 Milliner is not a Poet and Dramatist ? To which question, as 
 the higher authorities maintain an obstinate silence, or, if 
 much pressed, reply only in groans, these sixth-magnitude men 
 have been obliged to make answer themselves ; and they 
 have done it vv'ith an emphasis and vociferation calculated to 
 dispel all remaining doubts in the minds of men. In MUll- 
 ner's mind, at least, they have left little ; a conviction the 
 more excusable, as the playgoing vulgar seem to be almost 
 unanimous in sharing it ; and thunders of applause, nightly 
 through so many theatres return him loud acclaim. Such re- 
 nown is pleasant food for the hungry appetite of a man, and 
 naturallv he rolls it as a sweet morsel under his ton^i'ue : but, 
 after all, it can profit him but little ; na}^, many times, what 
 is sugar to the taste may be sugar-of-lead when it is swal- 
 lowed. Better were it for Milliner, we think, had fainter 
 thunders of apjDlause, and from fewer theatres, greeted him. 
 For what good is in it, even were there no evil ? Though a 
 thousand caps leap into the air at his name, his own staturo 
 is no hairsbreadth higher ; neither even can the final estimate 
 of its height be thereby in the smallest degree enlarged. 
 From gainsa3'ers these greetings i)rovoke only a stricter scru- 
 tiny ; the matter comes to be accurately known at last ; and 
 he who has been treated with foolish liberality at one j)eriod, 
 must make up for it by the want of bare necessaries at 
 another. No one will deny that Miillner is a person of some 
 considerable talent : we understand he is, or was once, a 
 Lawyer ; and can believe that he may have acted, and talked, 
 and Avritten, very prettily in that capacity : but to set up 
 for a Poet was quite a different enterprise, in which we reckon 
 
GERM AX PLAYWRIGHTS. 69 
 
 that he has altogether mistaken his road, and that these mob- 
 cheers have led him farther and farther astray. 
 
 Several years ago, on the faith of very earnest recommen- 
 dition, it was our lot to read one of Dr. M:illner's Tragedies, 
 the Albandserinn ; with w^hich, such was its effect on us, we 
 could willingly enough have terminated oiu' acquaintance 
 wibh Dr. Milliner. A palpable imitation of Schiller's Bra at 
 von Mest^ina ; without any philosophy or feeling that was not 
 either perfectly commonplace or perfectly false, often both 
 the one and the other ; inflated, indeed, into a certain hollow 
 bulk, but altogether without greatness ; being built through- 
 out on mere rant and clangor, and other elements of the 
 most indubitable Prose : such a work could not but be satis- 
 factory to us respecting Dr. Milliner's genius as a Poet ; and 
 time being precious, and the world wide enough, we had 
 privately determined that we and Dr. Milliner were each 
 henceforth to pursue his own course. Nevertheless, so con- 
 siderable has been the progTess of our worthy friend since 
 then, both at home and abroad, that his labours are again 
 forced on our notice: for we reckon the existence of a ti*ue 
 Post in any country to be so important a fact, that even the 
 slight probability of such is worthy of investigation. Ac- 
 cordingly we have again perused the Alban.'iserinn, and along 
 with it, faithfully examined the wdiole Dramatic Works of 
 Milliner, published in Seven Volumes, on beautiful paper, in 
 small shape and everyway very fit for handling. The whole 
 tragic works, we should rather sav : for three or four of his 
 comic performances sufficiently contented us ; and some two 
 volumes of farces, we confess, are still unread. We have also 
 carefullv "-one throuj^h, and with much less difficultv, the 
 Prefaces, Appendices, and other prose sheets, wherein the 
 Author exhibits the \fata libelli ; ' defends himself from unjust 
 criticisms, reports just ones, or himself makes such. The 
 toils of this task we shall not magnify, well knowing that 
 man's life is a fight throughout : only having now gathered 
 what light is to be had on this matter, we proceed to sjDeak 
 forth our verdict thereon ; fondly hoping that we shall then 
 have done with it, for an indefinite period of time. 
 
70 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 Dr. Miillner, then, we must take liberty to believe, iu spite 
 of all that has been said or sung upon the subject, is no 
 Dramatist ; has never written a Tragedy, and in all human 
 probability will never write one. Grounds for this harsh, 
 negative opinion, did the burden of proof lie chiefly on our 
 side, we might state in extreme abundance. There is one 
 ground, however, which, if our observation be correct, would 
 virtually include all the rest. Dr. Milliner's whole soul and 
 character, to the deepest root we can trace of it seems prosaic, 
 not poetical ; his Dramas, therefore, like whatever else he 
 produces, must be manufactured, not created ; nay, we think 
 that his principle of manufacture is itself rather a poor and 
 secondhand one. Vain were it for any reader to search in 
 these Seven Volumes for an opinion any deeper or clearer, a 
 sentiment any finer or higher, than may conveniently belong 
 to the commonest practising advocate : except stilting heroics, 
 which the man himself half knows to be false, and every other 
 man easily waives aside, there is nothing here to disturb tho 
 (quiescence either of heart or head. This man is a Doctor 
 utriusque Juris, most probably of good juristic talent ; and 
 nothing more whatever. His language too, all accurately 
 measured into feet, and good current German, so far as a 
 foreigner may judge, bears similar testimony. Except the 
 rh^^me and metre, it exhil^its no j)oetical symj)tom : without 
 being verbose, it is essentially meagre and watery ; no 
 idiomatic expressiveness, no melody, no virtue of any kind ; 
 the commonest vehicle for the commonest meaning. Not 
 that our Doctor is destitute of metaphors and other rhetorical 
 furtherances ; but that these also are of the most trivial char- 
 acter : old threadbare material, scoured up into a state of 
 shabb^'-gentility ; mostly turning on ' light ' and ' darkness ; ' 
 ' Hashes through clouds,' 'fire of heart,' ' tempest of soul,' and 
 ilie like, which can profit no man or woman. In short, we 
 nuist repeat it, Dr. Milliner has yet to show that there is any 
 particle of poetic metal in him ; that his genius is other than 
 a sober clay-pit, from which good bricks may be made ; but 
 where to look for gold or diamonds were sheer waste of 
 labour. 
 
GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 71 
 
 When we think of our own Maturin and Sheridan Knowles. 
 and the gala-day of popularity which they also once enjoyed 
 with us, we can be at no loss for the genus under which Dr. 
 Miillner is to be included in critical jDhj'siology. Neverthe- 
 less, in marking him as a distinct Playwright, we are bound 
 to mention that in general intellectual talent he shows him- 
 self very considerably superior to his two German brethren. 
 He has a much better taste than Ivlingemann ; rejecting the 
 aid of plush and gunpow^ler, we may say altogether ; is even 
 at the pains to rhyme great part of his Tragedies ; and on 
 the Avhole, WTites with a certain care and decorous comj^os- 
 ure, to which the Brunswick Manager seems totally indiffer- 
 ent. Moreover, he appears to surpass Grillparzer, as well as 
 Klingemann, in a certain force both of judgment and passion ; 
 Avhicli indeed is no very mighty affair ; Grillparzer being 
 naturally but a treble-pipe in these matters ; and Klinge- 
 mann, blowing through such an enormous coach-horn, that 
 the natural note goes for nothing, becomes a mere vibration 
 in that all-subduing volume of sound. At the same time, it 
 is singular enough that neither Grillparzer nor KJingemann 
 should be nearly so tough reading as Miillner ; which, how- 
 ever, we declare to be the fact. As to Klingemann, he is 
 even an amusing artist ; there is such a briskness and heart 
 in him ; so rich is he, nay so exuberant in riches, so full of 
 explosions, fire-flashes, execrations and all manner of catas- 
 trojDhes ; and then, good soul, he asks no attention from us, 
 knows his trade better than to dream of asking auv. Grill- 
 parzer, again, is a sadder and perhaps a wiser companion ; 
 longwinded a little, but peaceable and soft-hearted : his mel- 
 ancholy, even when he pules, is in the highest degTee inoffen- 
 sive, and we can often weep a tear or two /or him, if not with 
 him. But of all Tragedians, may the indulgent Heavens 
 deliver us from anv farther trafiic with Dr. Miilluer ! This 
 is the lukewarm, which we could wish to be either cold or 
 hot. Miillner will not keep us aw-ake, while we read him ; 
 yet neither will he, like Klingemann, let us fairly get asleep. 
 Ever and anon, it is as if we came into some smooth quies- 
 cent countrv ; and the soul flatters herself that here at last 
 
72 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 she may be allowed to fall back on her cushions, the e3-es 
 meanwhile, like two safe postilions, comfortably conducting 
 lier through that fiat region, in which are nothing but flax- 
 crops and mile-stones ; and ever and anon some jolt or unex- 
 ]iected noise fatally disturbs her ; and looking out, it is no 
 waterfall or mountain chasm, but only the villanous highwa}', 
 and squalls of October wind. To speak without figure, Dr. 
 ]\[u liner does seein to us a singularly oppressive writer ; 
 and perhaps for this reason : that he hovers too near the 
 verge of good writing ; ever tempting us with some hope that 
 here is a touch of Poetry ; and ever disappointing us with a 
 touch of pure Prose. A stately sentiment comes tramping 
 forth with a clank that sounds poetic and heroic ; we start 
 in breathless expectation, waiting to reverence the heavenly 
 gaest ; and, alas, he proves to be but an old stager dressed in 
 new buckram, a stager well known to us, nay often a stager 
 that has already been di-ummed out of most well-regulated 
 communities. So is it ever with Dr. Miillner : no feeling can 
 be traced much deeper in him than the tongue ; or perhaj)s 
 when we search more strictly, instead of an ideal of beauty, 
 we shall find some vague aim after strength, or in defect of 
 this, after mere size. And yet how cunningly he manages 
 the counterfeit ! A most plausible, fair-spoken, close-shaven 
 man : a man whom you must not, for decency s-sake, throw 
 out of the window ; and yet you feel that being pal23ably a 
 Turk in grain, his intents are wicked and not charitable ! 
 
 But the grand question with regard to Miillner, as with 
 regard to those other Playwrights, is : Where lies his pecul- 
 iar sleight-of-hand in this craft ? Let us endeavour, then, to 
 tuid out his secret, — his recipe for play-making ; and commu- 
 nicate the same for behoof of the British nation. Miillner's 
 recipe is no mysterious one ; floats, indeed, on the very sur- 
 face ; might even be taught, one would suppose, on a few 
 trials, to the humblest capacity. Our readers may perhaps 
 recollect Zacharias Werner, and some short allusion, in our 
 First Number, to a highly terrific piece of his, entitled Tlie 
 Twenty-foarth of February. A more detailed account of the 
 matter may be foinid in Madame de StaOl's Allemagne ; in the 
 
• GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 73 
 
 Chapter which treats of that infatuated Zacharius generally. 
 It is a story of a Swiss peasant adid l^ankruj^t, called Kurt 
 Kuruli, if we mistake not ; and of his wife, and a rich travel- 
 ling stranger lodged with them ; which Litter is, in the night 
 of the Twenty-fourth of February, wilfulh' and feloniously 
 murdered by the two former ; and proves himself, in the act 
 of dying, to be their only son, who had returned home to 
 make them all comfortable, could thev onlv have had a little 
 more patience. But the foul deed is already accomplished, 
 with a rusty knife or scythe ; and nothing of course remains 
 but for the whole batch to go to perdition. For it was writ- 
 ten, as the Arabs say, ' on the iron leaf : ' these Kuruhs are 
 doomed men ; old Kuruli, the grandfather, had committed 
 some sin or other ; for wdiich, like the sons of Atreus, his de- 
 scendants are ' prosecuted with the utmost rigour : ' nay, so 
 punctilious is Destiny, that this very Twenty-fourth of Febru- 
 ary, the day when that old sin was enacted, is still a fatal day 
 with the family ; and this very knife or scythe, the criminal 
 tool on that former occasion, is ever the instrument of new 
 crime and punishment ; the Kuruhs, during all that ijalf cent- 
 ury, never having carried it to the smithy to make hobnails ; 
 but kept it hanging on a j)eg, most injudiciously w^e think, 
 almost as a sort of bait and bonus to Satan, a ready-made ful- 
 crum for whatever machinery he might bring to bear against 
 them. This is the tragic lesson taught in Werner s Twenty- 
 fourth of February ; and, as the whole dramatis -personce are 
 either stuck through with old iron, or hanged in hemp, it is 
 surely taught with some considerable emphasis. 
 
 Werner's Play was brought out at Weimar, in 1809 ; under 
 the direction or permission, as he brags, of the great Goethe 
 liimseK ; and seems to have produced no faint impression 
 on a discerning public. It is, in fact, a piece nowise des- 
 titute of substance and a certain coarse vigour ; and if any 
 one has so obstinate a heart that he must absolutely stand in 
 a slaughter-house, or within wind of the gallows before tears 
 will come, it may have a very comfortable effect on him. One 
 symptom of merit it must be admitted to exhibit, — an adap- 
 tation to the general taste ; foi; the small iibre of originality, 
 
74: GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS 
 
 which exists here, has ah^eady shot forth into a whole wood 
 of imitations. We understand that the Fate-Hne is now quite 
 a]i estabhshed branch of di-amatic business in Germany ; they 
 have their Fate-dramatists, just as we have our gingham-Avea- 
 vers and inkle-weavers. Of this Fate-manufacture we have 
 already seen one sample in Grillparzer's Ahn/rau: but by far 
 the most extensive Fate-manufacturer, the head and prince 
 of all Fate-dramatists, is the Doctor Mullner at present under 
 consideration. Milliner deals in Fate, and Fate only ; it is 
 the basis and staple of his whole tragedy-goods ; cut off this 
 one principle, you annihilate his raw material, and he can 
 manufacture no more. 
 
 Mullner acknowledges his obligations to Werner ; but, we 
 think, not half warmlv enough. Werner was in fact the mak- 
 ing of him ; great as he has now become, our Doctor is noth- 
 ing but a mere mistletoe growing from that poor oak, itself 
 already half dead ; had there been no Tioenfy -fourth of Feh- 
 raary, there were then no Twenty-ninth of Februay^y, no Schuld, 
 no Albandserinn, most probably no Kdnig Yngurd. For the 
 reader is«to understand that Dr. Mullner, already a middle- 
 aged, and as yet a perfectly undramatic man, began business 
 with a direct copy of this Twenty-fourth ; a thing proceeding 
 by Destiny, and ending in murder, by a knife or scythe, as in 
 the Kuruh case ; with one improvement, indeed, that there 
 was a grinding-stone introduced into the scene, and the sj^ec- 
 tator had the satisfaction of seeing the knife previously whetted. 
 The Author too was honest enough publicly to admit his imi- 
 tation ; for he named this Play the Twenty-ninth of February ; 
 and, in his Preface, gave thanks, though somewhat reluctantly, 
 to Werner, as to his master and originator. For some in- 
 scrutable reason, this Twenty-ninth was not sent to the green- 
 grocer, but became popular : there was even the weakest of 
 parodies written on it, entitled Eumenidea Duster (Eumenides 
 Gloomy), which Mlillner has reprinted ; there was likewise ' a 
 wish expressed ' that the termination might be made joyous, 
 not grievous ; with which wish also the indefatigable wright 
 has complied ; and so, for the benefit of weak nerves, we have 
 the Wahn (Delusion), which still ends in tears, but glad ones. 
 
GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 75 
 
 In short, our Doctor has a pecuhar merit with this Twenly- 
 ninth of his ; for who but he could have cut a second and a 
 third face on the same cherrystone, said cherrystone having 
 first to be borrowed, or indeed half-stolen ? 
 
 At this point, however. Dr. Milliner apparently began to set 
 up for himself ; and ever henceforth he endeavours to persuade 
 his own mind and ours that his debt to AYerner terminates 
 here. Nevertheless clear it is that fresh debt was exevy day 
 contracting. For had not this one Wernerean idea taken com- 
 plete liold of the Doctor's mind ; so tliat he was cj^uite pos- 
 sessed with it, had, we might say, no other tragic idea what- 
 ever ? That a man, on a certain day of the month, shall fall 
 into crime ; for which an invisible Fate shall silently pursue 
 him ; punishing the transgression, most probably on the same 
 day of the month, annually (unless, as in the Twenty-ninth, it be 
 leap-year, and Fate in this maybe, to a certain extent, bilked) ; 
 and never resting till the poor wight himself, and perhajDs his 
 last descendant, shall be swept away with the besom of de- 
 struction : such, more or less disguised, frequently without 
 am^ disguise, is the tragic essence, the vital principle, natural 
 or galvanic we are not deciding, of all Dr. Milliner's Dramas. 
 Thus, in that everlasting Twenty-ninth of February, we have 
 the principle in its naked state : some old Woodcutter or 
 Forester has fallen into deadly sin with his wife's sister, long 
 ago, on that intercalary day ; and so his whole progeny must, 
 wittingty or unwittingly, proceed in incest and murder ; the 
 da}' of the catastrophe regularly occurring, every four 3'ears, 
 on the same Twenty-ninth ; till happily the whole are mur- 
 dered, and there is an end. So likewise in the Schuld (Guilt), 
 a much more ambitious performance, we have exactly the 
 same doctrine of an anniversary ; and the interest once more 
 turns on that delicate business of murder and incest. In the 
 Albandse7^inn(FsLii' AlhsLnese), again, which may have the credit, 
 such as it is, of being Milliner's best Play, we find the Fate- 
 theory a Uttle coloured ; as if the di-ug had begun to disgust, 
 and the Doctor would hide it in a spoonful of syrup : it is a 
 (lying man's curse that operates on the criminal ; which curse, 
 being strengthened by a sin of very old standing in the family 
 
76 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 of the cursee, takes singular effect ; the parties only weather- 
 ing parricide, fratricide, and the old story of incest, by two 
 self-banishments, and two very decisive self-murders. Na}^, it 
 seems as if our Doctor positively could not act at all without 
 this Fate-panacea : in Konig F^iy fin/, we might almost think 
 that he had made such an attempt, and found that it would 
 not do. This Konig Yngurd, an imaginary Peasant-King of 
 Norway, is meant, as Ave are kindly informed, to present us 
 with some adumbration of Napoleon Bonaj^arte ; and truly, 
 for the two or three first Acts, he goes along' with no small gal- 
 lantry, in what drill-sergeants call a dashing or swashing st^de ; 
 a very virtuous kind of man, and as bold as Ruy Diaz or the 
 Warwick Mastitf: when suddenlv in the middle of a battle, 
 far on in the Play, he is seized with some caprice, or whimsi- 
 cal qualm ; retires to a solitary place, among rocks, and there 
 in a most gratuitous manner, delivers himself over, viva voce, 
 to the Devil ; who indeed does not appear personally to take 
 seisin of him, but yet, as afterwards comes to light, has with 
 great readiness accepted the gifi. For now Yngurd grows 
 dreadfullv sulkv and wicked, does little henceforth but bullv 
 men and kill them ; til] at length, the measure of his iniquities 
 being full, he himself is bullied and killed ; and the Author, 
 carried throuo^h bv this his sovereign tragic elixir, contrarv to 
 expectation, terminates his piece with reasonable comfort. 
 
 This, then, is Dr. Milliner's dramatic mystery ; this is the 
 one patent hook by which he would hang his clay tragedies 
 on the upper spiritual world ; and so establish for himself a 
 free communication, almost as if by block-and-tackle, between 
 the visible Prose Earth and the invisible Poetic Heaven. The 
 greater or less merit of this his invention, or rather improve- 
 ment, for Werner is the real patentee, has given rise, we un- 
 derstand, to extensive argument. The small deer of criticism 
 seem to be much divided in opinion on this point ; and the 
 higher orders, as we have stated, declining to throw any light 
 whatever on it, the subject is still mooting with great anima- 
 tion. For our own share, we confess that we incline to rank 
 it, as a recipe for dramatic tears, a shade higher than the 
 Page's split onion in the Tanwig of the Shrew. Craftily hi 1 
 
GERM AX PLAYWIUaUTS. 77 
 
 in the liandkercliief, this onion was sufficient for the decep- 
 tion of Christopher Sly ; in that way attaining its object ; 
 which also the Fate-invention seems to have done, with the 
 Christopher Slys of Germany, and these not one but many, 
 and therefore somewhat harder to deceive. To this onion- 
 superiority we think Dr. M. is fairly entitled ; and with this 
 it were, perhaps, good for him that he remained content. 
 
 Dr. Milliner's Fate-scheme has been attacked by certain of 
 his traducers on the score of its hostility to the Christian re- 
 ligion. Lano-uishinf]: indeed should w^e reckon the condition 
 of the Christian religion to be, could Dr. Milliner's pla^'-join- 
 ery joroduce an}^ perceptihle effect on it. Nevertheless, we 
 may remark, since the matter is in hand, that this business of 
 Fate does seem to us nowise a Christian doctrine ; not even 
 a Mahometan or Heathen one. The Fate of the Greeks, though 
 a false, was a lofty hypothesis, and harmonised sufficiently 
 with the whole sensual and material structure of their the- 
 ology : a ground of deepest black, on which that gorgeous 
 phantasmagoria was fitly enough painted. Besides, with 
 them the avenging Power dwelt, at least in its visible mani- 
 festations, among the high places of the earth, visiting only 
 kiiigty houses, and world criminals, from whom it might be 
 supposed the world, but for such miraculous interferences, 
 could have exacted no vengeance, or found no protection and 
 purification. Never, that we recollect of, did the Erinnyes 
 become mere sheriff's-officers, and Fate a justice of the peace, 
 haling poor drudges to the tread-mill for robbery of hen- 
 roosts, or scattering the earth with steel-traps to keep down 
 poaching. And what has all this to do with the revealed 
 Providence of these days ; that Power whose path is emphati- 
 cally through the great deep ; his doings and plans manifested, 
 in completeness, not b}' the year or by the century, on indi- 
 viduals or on nations, but stretchiiii:** throuf]^h Eternitv, and 
 over the infinitude which he rules and sustains? 
 
 But there needs no recourse to theological arguments for 
 judging this Fate-tenet of Dr. Milliner's. Its value, as a 
 dramatic principle, may be estimated, it seems to us, by this 
 one consideration : that in these days no person of either 
 
78 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 sex in the slightest degree believes it ; that Dr. Milliner him- 
 self does not believe it. We are not contending that fiction 
 should become fact, or that no dramatic incident is genuine, 
 unless it could be sworn to before a jury ; but simply that 
 iiction should not be falsehood and delirium. How shall anv 
 one, in the drama, or in poetry of any sort, present a consist- 
 ent philosophy of life, which is the soul and ultimate essence 
 of all poetry, if he and every mortal know that the w^iole 
 moral basis of his ideal world is a lie ? And is it other than 
 a lie that man's life is, was or could be, grounded on this pet- 
 tifogging principle of a Fate that pursues woodcutters and 
 cowherds with miraculous visitations, on stated days of the 
 month ? Can we, mth any profit, hold the mirror up to Nat- 
 ure in this wise ? When our mirror is no mirror, but only 
 as it were a nursery saucepan, and that long since grown 
 rusty ? 
 
 We might add, were it of any moment in this case, that 
 we reckon Dr. Milliner's tragic knack altogether insufiicient 
 for a still more comprehensive reason ; simply for the reason 
 that it IS a knack, a recij)e, or secret of the craft, which, 
 could it be never so excellent, mv.st by repeated use degen- 
 erate into a mannerism, and therefore into a nuisance. But 
 herein lies the difference between creation and manufacture : 
 the latter has its manipulations, its secret processes, which 
 can l3e learned by ajDpr entice ship, the former has not. For 
 ill poetry we have heard of no secret possessing the smallest 
 eftectual virtue, except this one general secret : that the poet 
 ])e a man of a purer, higher, richer nature than other men ; 
 which higher nature shall itself, after earnest inquiry, have 
 taught him the proper form for embodying its inspirations, 
 as indeed the imperishable beauty of these will shine, with 
 more or less distinctness, through any form whatever. 
 
 Had Dr. Milliner any visible pretension to this last great 
 secret, it might be a duty to dwell longer and more gravely 
 on his minor ones, however false and poor. As he has no 
 such pretension, it appears to us that for the present we may 
 take our leave. To give any farther analysis of liis individ- 
 ual dramas would be an easy task, but a stupid and thankless 
 
GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 79 
 
 one. A Harrison's watch, though this too is but an earthly 
 machine, may be taken asunder with some prospect of scien- 
 tific advantage ; but who would spend time in screwing and 
 unscrewing the mechanism of ten pepper-mills? Neither 
 shall we offer any extract, as a specimen of the diction and 
 sentiment that reigns in these dramas. We have said already 
 that it is fair, well-ordered stage sentiment this of his ; that 
 the diction too is good, well-scanned, grammatical diction ; 
 no fault to be found with either, except that they pretend to 
 be poetry, and are throughout the" most unadulterated prose. 
 To exhibit this fact in extracts would be a vain undertaking. 
 Not the few sprigs of heath, but the thousand acres of it, 
 characterise the wilderness. Let any one who covets a trim 
 heath-nosegay, clutch at random into Mlilhier s Seven Vol- 
 umes : for ourselves, we would not deal farther in that ar- 
 ticle. 
 
 Besides his dramatic labours, Dr. Milliner is known to the 
 public as a journalist. For some considerable time, he has 
 edited a Literary Newspaper of his own originating, the 
 Jllitternadit-Blait (Midnight Paper) ; stray leaves of which we 
 occasionally look into. In this last capacity, we are happy 
 to observe, he shows to much more advantage : indeed, the 
 journalistic office seems quite natural to him ; and would he 
 take anv advice from us, which he will not, here were the 
 arena in which, and not in the Fate-drama, he would exclu- 
 sively continue to fence, for his bread or glory. He is not 
 without a vein of small wit ; a certain degree of drollery 
 there is, of grinning half-risible, half-impudent ; he has a 
 fair hand at the feebler sort of lampoon ; the German Joe 
 Millers also seem familiar to him, and his skill in the riddle 
 is respectable : so that altogether, as we said, he makes a 
 superior figure in this line, which indeed is but despicably 
 managed in Germany ; and his Mittermcht-lUatt is, by se^'- 
 eral degrees, the most readable paper of its kind we meet 
 with in that country. Not that we, in the abstract, much 
 admire Dr. Milliner's newspajDer procedure ; his style is 
 merely the common tavern-stvle, familiar enouj^fh in our own 
 periodical literature ; riotous, blustering, with some tincture 
 
80 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 of blackguardism ; a half -dishonest style, and smells consid- 
 erably of tobacco and spirituous liquor. Neither do we find 
 that there is the smallest fraction of valuable knowledge or 
 opinion communicated in the Midnight Paper ; indeed, ex- 
 cept it be the knowledge and opinion that Dr. Milliner is a 
 great dramatist, and that all who presume to think otherwise 
 are insufficient members of society, we cannot charge our 
 memory with having gathered any knowledge from it what- 
 ever. It may be too, that Dr. Milliner is not perfectly origi- 
 nal in his journalistic manner : we have sometimes felt as if 
 his Hght were, to a certain extent, a borrowed one ; a rush- 
 light kindled at the great pitch link of our own Blackwood's 
 Akigazine. But on this point we cannot take upon us to 
 decide. 
 
 • One of Mulluer's regular journalistic articles is the Kriegs- 
 zeiiung, or AVar-intelligence, of all the paper-battles, feuds, 
 defiances and private assassinations, chiefly dramatic, which 
 occur in the more distracted portion of the German Literary 
 Republic. This Kriegszeitung Dr. Milliner evidenth^ writes 
 with great gusto, in a lively braggadocio manner, especially 
 when touching on his own exploits ; yet to us it is far the 
 most melancholy part of the Mitiernacht-BlalL Alas, this is 
 not what Ave search for in a German newspaper ; how ' Herr 
 Sapphir,' or Herr Carbuncle, or so many other Herren 
 Dousterswivel, are all busily molesting one another ! We 
 ourselves are pacific men ; make a point ' to shun discrepant 
 circles rather than seek them : ' and how sad is it to hear of 
 so many illustrious-obscure persons living in foreign parts, 
 and hear only, what was well known without hearing, that 
 lliey also are instinct with the spirit of Satan ! For what is 
 'the bone that these Journalists, in Berlin and elsewhere, are 
 ■svorrying over ; what is the ultimate purpose of all this bark- 
 ing and snarling ? Sheer love of fight, you would say ; 
 simply to make one another's life a little bitterer ; as if Fate 
 had not been cross enough to the happiest of them. Were 
 there any perceptible subject of dispute, any doctrine to 
 advocate, even a false one, it would be something ; but so 
 far as we can discover, whether from Sapphire and Com- 
 
G ERMAN PL A Y WRIGHTS. 8 1 
 
 pany, or the ' Nabob of Weissenfels ' (our own worthy Doc- 
 tor), there is none. And is this their appointed function ? 
 Are Editors scattered over the country, and suj^phed with 
 victuals and fuel, purely to bite one another? Certainly not. 
 But these Journalists, we think, are like the Academician's 
 colony of spiders. This French virtuoso had found that 
 cobwebs were worth somethmg, that they could even be 
 Avoven into silk stockings ; whereupon he exhibits a very 
 handsome pair of cobweb hose to the Academy, is encouraged 
 to proceed with the manufacture ; and so collects some half- 
 bushel of spiders, and puts them down in a spacious loft, with 
 every convenience for making silk. But will the vicious 
 creatures spin a thread ? In place of it, they take to lighting 
 with their whole vigoui', in contempt of tlie poor Academician's 
 utmost exertions to part them ; and end not, till there is 
 simply one spider left living, and not a shred of cobweb 
 woven, or henceforth to be expected ! Could the weavers of 
 paragraphs, like these of the cobweb, faii'ly exterminate and 
 silence one another, it would perhaps be a Httle more sup- 
 j^ortable. But an Editor is made of sterner stuff. In general 
 cases, indeed, when the brains are out, the man will die : but 
 it is a well-known fact in Journalistics, that a man may not 
 only live, but support wife and children by his labours, in 
 this line, years after the brain (if there ever was any) has 
 been completely abstracted, or reduced by time and hard 
 usage into a state of dr}" powder. "What then is to be done ? 
 Is there no end to this brawling ; and will the unprofitable 
 noise endure forever ? By way of palliative, we have some- 
 times imapfined that a Con^'ress of all German Editors mi^lit 
 be appointed, by proclamation, in some central sjDot, say the 
 Niirnberg Market-place, if it w^ould hold them all : here we 
 would humbly suggest that the w^hole JournaliMik might as- 
 semble on a given da}', and under the eye of proper marshals, 
 sufficiently and satisfactorily horsewhip one another, simulta- 
 neously, each his neighbour, till the very toughest had enough 
 both of whipping and of being whipped. In this way, it seems 
 probable, httle or no injustice would be done ; and each 
 JournaHst, cleared of gall for several months, might return 
 6 
 
82 GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 
 
 home in a more composed frame of mind, and betake himself 
 with new alacrity to the real duties of his office. 
 
 But, enough ! enough ! The humour of these men may be 
 infectious : it is not good for us to be here. Wandering over 
 the Elysian Fields of German Literature, not watching the 
 gloomy discords of its Tartarus, is what we wish to be em- 
 ployed in. Let the iron gate again close, and shut-in the 
 pallid kingdoms from view : we gladly revisit the upper air. 
 Not in despite towards the German nation, which we love 
 honestly,^ have we spoken thus of these its Playwrights and 
 Journalists. Alas, when we look around us at home, we feel 
 too well that tlie Germans might say to us : Neighbour, 
 sweep thy own floor ! Neither is it with any hope of better- 
 ing the existence of these three individual Poetasters, still less 
 with the smallest shadow of wish to make it more miserable, 
 that we have spoken. After all, there must be Playwrights, 
 as we have said ; and these are among the best of the class. 
 So long as it pleases them to manufacture in this line, and 
 any body of German Thebans to pay them in groschen or 
 plaudits for their ware, let both parties persist in so doing, 
 and fair befall them ! But the duty of Foreign Reviewers is 
 of a twofold sort. For not only are we stationed on the coast 
 of the country, as watchers and spials, to report whatsoever 
 remarkable thing becomes visible in the distance ; but we 
 stand there also as a sort of Tide-waiters and Preventive-ser- 
 vice-men, to contend with our utmost vigoiu", that no improp- 
 er article be landed. These offices, it would seem, as in the 
 material world, so also in the literary and spiritual, usually 
 fall to the lot of aged, invalided, impoverished, or otherwise 
 decayed persons ; but that is little to the matter. As true 
 British subjects, with ready will, though it may be with our 
 last strength, we are here to discharge that double duty. 
 Movements, we observe, are making along the beach, and 
 signals out seawards, as if these Klingemanns and Milliners 
 were to be landed on our soil : but through the strength of 
 heaven this shall not be done, till the ' most thinking people' 
 know '^hat it i^ that is landing. For the rest, if any one wishes 
 to import that sort of produce, and tinds it nourishing for his 
 
GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS. 83 
 
 inward man, let liim do so and welcome. Only let him un- 
 derstand that it is not German Literature he is swallowing, 
 but the froth and scum of German Literature ; which scum, 
 if he will only wait, we can farther j^romise liim that he may, 
 ere long, enjoy in the new, and perhaps cheaper, form of 
 sediment. And so let every one be active for himself : 
 
 Noch ist es Tag, da riihre sich der Mann ; 
 Die Nacht tritt em, wo niemand wirken kann. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
SUMMARY OF APPENDIX. 
 
 PREFACE AND INTRODUCTIONS TO GERMAN ROMANCE. 
 
 Uncounted number and variety of German Novelwriters : Difficulty 
 of making an adequate selection : Chief modes of German Novelwrit- 
 ing. National peculiarities and cosmopolitan vacuity. The light of a 
 small taper may be useful in total darkness. Difficulties of German 
 little more than a bugbear : Its general diffusion among us not far dis- 
 tant, (p. 91). 
 
 MUS.<EUS. 
 
 Born at Jena. A boy of quick talents and kind lively temper: 
 Adopted and liberally educated by his uncle. Removes to Eisenach. 
 Intended for the Church : Not acceptable as a pastor. His residence at 
 Eisenach not unprofitable : In his twenty-fifth 3^ear he became an au- 
 thor ; provoked thereto by the unbounded acceptance of our English 
 Richardson : Success of his German Gnoidisoii, published anonymously. 
 He longed much less for a literary existence, than for a civic one : Be- 
 came Tutor in the Court of Weimar ; married ; increased his income by 
 giving private lessons ; and grew and waxed strong in contented obscu- 
 rity. After an interval of nineteen years his iconoclastic faculty was again 
 called forth : His Pliysiofpwmical IVarels : The applause it gained instant 
 and general : The ground was now broken, and he was not long in dig- 
 ging deeper. The rude traditionary fragments of Germany he worked 
 anew into shape and polish : He spared no pains in collecting his ma- 
 terials ; and despised no source of intelligence, however mean. His 
 Volksmdhrchen ; its comic humour, levity and kind sceptical derision : 
 Lovers of unadulterated primeval poetry may censure Musi us ; but they 
 join with the public at large in reading him. His subsequent works ; 
 and death, (p. 89). — Without much effort he stood aloof from every 
 species of cant : He looked upon the world as little else than a bound- 
 less Chase, where the wise were to recreate themselves with the hunt- 
 ing of Follies : He could not reverence men ; but with all their faults 
 he loved them. He kept himself unspotted from the errors of his time ; 
 a merit which posterity is too apt to underrate. Peculiarities of his 
 style : A man of fine and varied talent, but scarcely of any genius. 
 (99). 
 
SUMMARY OF APPENDIX. 87 
 
 Friedricii De la Motte Fouque. 
 
 Fouque's family of French extraction : His grandfather in high fa- 
 vour with Frederick the Great. Little known of Fouqu's early history. 
 Tlie misfortunes of his country drove him into retirement : Introduced 
 by Schlegel to the study of Spanish poetry : An ideal of Christian 
 knighthood continually hovered round his fancy. His literary perform- 
 ances all of a chivalry cast. (p. 102). — His wile a virtuous and gifted 
 woman of kindred genius. In the contest of Prussia with Napoleon he 
 evinced in actual battle the devout and fervid gallantry which he had 
 so often previously delineated in his writings. A pure sensitive heart 
 deeply reverent of Truth and Beauty and Heroic Virtue ; and a deli- 
 cate hand in picturing forth some few forms of these high qualities : 
 To wed that old sentiment to modern thoughts, was a task he could not 
 attempt. In mental structure, Fouque seems the converse of Musaus. 
 Lightness and simi:)licitv the chief characteristics of his style: The 
 little Tale of AsliLiigtCs Knight some tolerable emblem of his peculiar 
 qualities. (104). 
 
 LUDWIG TiECK. 
 
 Born at Berlin: His private liTe little known. His literary life he 
 began in his twentv-second vear : Immature products of a strong and 
 fervid genius : Active and positive Goodness soon displaced mere barren 
 and tormenting negatives. His VolksnidJivchcn of the most varied char- 
 acter, teeming with wondrous shapes full of meaning ; true modern 
 denizens of the old Fairyland. By this work he was first introduced to 
 the notice of his countrymen : His l)er gcsticfdte Katcr, a grotesque and 
 hearty satire on the existing aspect of literature. Numerous parodies 
 and lighter pieces : iMtcrs on Bhakspeare. Marriage. Becomes ac- 
 quainted with the two Schlegels, Xovalis and Wackenroder : Literary 
 cooperation: New School of Poetry, (p. 107). — Tieck s frequent change 
 of residence : Journey into Italy : Visit to London. His poetic worth : 
 A gay Southern fancy lives in union with a Northern heart : Chaste sim- 
 plicity, both in conception and style : His Blaubart^ a group of earnest 
 figures, painted on a laughing ground. In the province of the MdJir- 
 che)i, or popular Traditionary Tale, he reigns without a rival. (111). 
 
 E. T. W. Hoffmann. 
 
 A life full of error and perplexed vicissitude. Born at Konigsberg : 
 His parents' ill-assorted union, and separation : Remains with his 
 mother. An uncle takes strenuous charge of his education ; but can- 
 not take stock of his character. Unwise indulgence more hurtful than 
 leaden constraint. Days of bedlam jubilee : Successful cunning : Farly 
 friendship. Schooling : Music and painting more to his taste than 
 classical studies Stead}' preparation for the legal profession. His leis- 
 ure occupied with music, painting and unsuccessful literary efforts. 
 Entanglements of a love-affair. Quits Kcnigsberg, and proceeds to 
 Great Glogau in Silesia. Tedium and other spiritual maladies: Leaves 
 Silesia for Berlin : Appointed Assessor of the Court of Posen : Removes 
 to Poland. He was now director of his own actions ; and unhappily 
 did not direct them well : Habits of irregularity : A practical joke, and 
 consequent banishment to Plozk. Marriage : Domestic peace and otfi- 
 
S8 SUMMARY OF APPENDIX. 
 
 cial assiduity : Promoted from Plozk to Warsaw. Tlie I'olisli capital a 
 vast perpetual masquerade to liim. Intimacy with Hitzig. Project of 
 erecting a Musical Institution : Hoffmann among the paint-pots. (p. 114). 
 —The project prospered beyond expectation, till abruptly terminated 
 by tlie f rench armies A sad enough outlook: Visits Berlin in quest 
 ol: employment. Death of his little daughter ; his wife dangerously 
 ill : At last obtains an engagement with the managers of the Bamberg 
 stage. Contradiction and disappointment. Commences writing for the 
 Masicalische Zeitiing. Engagement at Dresden : His life chequered by 
 harder vicissitudes than ever. The revolution of Burope restored to 
 him his former rights of office at Berlin. His situation, alter all his* 
 buffetings, was now a happy one ; and, had he been wise, might have 
 continued so. His sharp temper, transcendent vanity and reckless sat- 
 ire, disqualified him for society; yet he could not do. without it : The 
 enjoyment he sought was only to be found at the tavern, among gay 
 laughter-loving topers. His official duties were to the last punctually 
 and irreproachably performed : and he wrote more abundantly than 
 ever. Meanwhile his health at length gave way ; and he died a 
 mournful and lingering death ; writing, or dictating to an amanuensis 
 to the last. (119 . —Hoffmann's was a mind for which proper culture 
 might have done great things. He loved Art with a deep, but scarcely 
 with a pure love ; not as the fountain of Beauty, but as the fountain of 
 refined Enjoyment. His head was forever swarming with beautiful or 
 horrible chimeras. A good or a wise man we must not call him ; but, 
 among the ordinary population of this world, to note him with the mark 
 ol' reprobatiou were ungrateful and unjust. His genius formed the 
 most important element ol his character, and participated in its faults. 
 As a child of his time and his country, he is not to be overlooked in 
 any survey of German Literature. (123). 
 
 Jean Paul Friedrich Richtek. 
 
 I 
 
 Ricliter called from his earthly sojourn since the commencement of 
 his Translator's little task. The materials for his Biography as yet in- 
 accessible. Birth and parentage : Destined for the clerical profession ; 
 but preferred literature. Finally settled in Bayreuth : Domestic peace 
 and happiness. His intellectual labours gained him the esteem and 
 love of all ranks of his countrymen. He wrote and thought in a track 
 entirely his own. Not to be understood by a mere cursory perusal. 
 Singularity not always affectation. His works hard to understand ■. but 
 always have a meaning, and often a true and deep one. (p 126) —An 
 impetuous, colossal spirit : Among liis gifts, Imagination and Humour 
 the most striking. His Humour as the balm which a generous spirit 
 pours over the wounds oP life. His favourite characters have always a 
 dash of the ridiculous in their circumstances or their compositions In 
 the treatment of heroes proper he is seldom completely happy. Richter 
 a Western Oriental. Few have known the world better, or taken at 
 once a clearer and a kindlier view of its concerns. Nature in all her 
 scenes and manifestations he loved with a deep, almost passionate love. 
 His belief of man's Immortality the sanctuary and solace of his spirit. 
 (129) TTis multifarious and seemingly incongruous Works. To many 
 En£rli^h readers, a spiiit like llichter's cannot but be warmly welcome. 
 (13J). 
 
SUMMARY OF APPENDIX. 89 
 
 Goethe. 
 
 Goethe's Autobiography. Born at Frankfort on the Mayn, 28th Au- 
 gust 1 741). Favourable circumstance.s of his family : Healthy, genuine 
 charucters Oi his parents. Destined for tlie profession of law, could but 
 the ambition of wealth and official celebrity have adequately inspired 
 him Brightest and blackest forecastings struggling within. His true 
 destination a life of literature: Gotz ton BerLtchinyeit, and iSorroics of 
 Werter. Cioethe's unlooked-for popularity far from affording him the 
 satisfaction he craved : Anxiety, doubt of any sort, can only be removed 
 by Action, (p. 180 . — His connexion with the Court of Weimar. Di- 
 versity of his studies and acquisitions : Literary labours A universal 
 development of our spiritual nature, more precious than tlie solace of 
 our vanity. Cerman Philistines. Goethe's mental faculties ripened 
 and beautified by the advance of age. (loO^— A King of himself and of 
 his world. He has inquired fearlessly ; and, while fearlessly denying the 
 false, has not forgotten to search out and admit the true : His assiduous 
 culture proportionate to the bountifulness of his giiis : Composure and 
 cheeriul seriousness seem to breathe over all his character. This also 
 is the spirit of our Sliakspeare. (144). — Goethe not a German Voltaire : 
 His province high and peculiar. The angels and demons that can lay 
 prostrate our hearts in the nineteenth century, must be of another fash- 
 ion than those which subdued us in the ninth. In Goethe a new 
 world, of Earnestness and Sport, begins to open before us. Inconsis- 
 tencies and shortcomings (146). — Wilhelm Meuters M'aiiderjahre has 
 less relation to Fielding's Tom Jones than to Spenser's Faery Qtieev. 
 Goethe's reception by English readers. Our own literature peopled with 
 kingly intellects and hearts. A new Poet, and Preacher of Truth to all 
 men. (149). 
 
 II. 
 
 FRACTIONS. 
 
 Tragedy of the Night-Moth. 
 
 Waking sympathies between Moths and Bookworms. The fount of 
 Life, and abyss of Danger : A tiny tragedy. Mystic resemblances. 
 What gained we, little moth ? (p. 151). 
 
 Cui Bono. 
 What is Hope ? What is Life ? What is Man ? (p. 152). 
 
 Four Fables. 
 
 1. A Radical Reform successfully accomplished. 2. March of Intel- 
 lect, and general scientific achievements of the utilitarian Squirt. 3. 
 Before we try to force Providence to ' an alternative,' it were wise to 
 consider ichai the alternative might be. 4. The richer a nature, the 
 hiirder and slower its development, (p. 15'J^. 
 
90 SUMMARY OF APPENDIX. 
 
 The Sower's Song. 
 Earth's bouuteous cooperation with the labours of her children, (p. 154). 
 
 Adieu. 
 
 The past may be forever present ; and the saddest tears must fall 
 away. (p. 155). 
 
 The Beetle. 
 
 A new claimant for Public Sympathy, and the benefits of the Poor- 
 Laws. The ' chief of wonders ' common to the lowliest Beetle and the 
 loftiest Peer. (156). 
 
 To-day. 
 
 Each New Day a new glimpse into Eternity ; and a new offer of eter- 
 nal possibilities, (p. 157). 
 
 FORTUNA. 
 
 The weariest heart may find something to be thankful for ; and only 
 a dastard can really come to evil. The journey of life. (p. 157). 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 PREFACE, AND INTRODUCTIONS, TO THE BOOK CALLED 
 
 "GERMAN ROMANCE." 
 
 This was a Book of Translations, not of my suggesting or desiring, 
 but of my executing as honest journey work in defect of better ; pro- 
 duced at Edinburgh in 1827. The nature of which, and the Titles of 
 the Pieces selected, will sufficiently appear as we go on. The Pieces 
 selected were the suitablest discoverable on such terms : not quite of 
 less than no worth (I considered', any Piece of them ; nor, alas, of a 
 very high worth any, except one only. Four of these lots, or quotas to 
 the adventure, Musiius's, Tieck's, Richter's, Goethe's, will be given in 
 the final stage of this Series : the rest we willingly leave, afloat or 
 stranded, as waste driftwood, to those whom they may farther concern. 
 {Noteofl^blA 
 
 PREFACE TO GERMAN ROMANCE.' 
 
 [1827.] 
 
 It were unhappy for me if the reader should expect in this Work any 
 full view of so complex a subject as German Novel writing, or of so mot- 
 ley a body as the German Novelwriters. The dead wall, which divides 
 us from this as from all other provinces of German Literature, I must 
 not dream that I have anywhere overturned : at the most, I may have 
 perforated it with a few loopholes, of narrow aperture truly, and scanty 
 range; through which, however, a studious eye may,per]iaps discern 
 some limited, but, as I hope, genuine and distinctive features of the 
 singular country, which, on the other side, has long flourished in such 
 abundant variety of intellectual scenery and product, and been unknown 
 to us, though at our very hand. For this wall, what is the worst prop 
 erty in such walls, is to most of us an invisible one ; and our eye rests 
 contentedly on Vacancy, or distorted Fatamorganas, where a great and 
 
 ' German Romance : Specimens of Us chief Authors ; loith Biographical and Critical 
 Notices. In Four Volumes. (Edinburgh, 1827.) 
 
92 APPENDIX. 
 
 trufci-minded people have been living and labouring, in the light of 
 Science and Art, for many ages. 
 
 In such an undertaking as the present, fragmentary in its very nat- 
 iire, it is not absolute, but only relative completeness, that can be 
 looked for. German Novelwriters are easily come at ; but tJie German 
 Novel writers are a class of persons whom no prudent editor will hope to 
 exhibit, and no reader will engage to examine, even in the briefest 
 mode of specimen. To say nothing of what has been accumulated in 
 past generations, the number of Novelists at present alive and active is 
 to be reckoned not in units, but in thousands. No Leipzig Fair is un- 
 attended by its mob of gentlemen that write with ease ; each duly offer- 
 ing his new novel, among the other fancy-goods and fustians of that 
 great emporium. Lafontaine, for example, has already passed his hun- 
 dredth volume. The inspirations of the Artist are rare and transient,- 
 but the hunger of the Manufacturer is universal and incessant. The 
 novel, too, is among the simplest forms of composition ; a free arena for 
 all sorts and degrees of talent, and may be worked in equally by a Henry 
 Fielding and a Doctor Polydore. In Germany, accordingly, as in other 
 countries, the Novelists are a mixed, innumerable, and most productive 
 race. Interspersed with a few Poets, we behold whole legions and hosts 
 of Poetasters, in all stages of worthlessness ; here languishing in the 
 transports of Sentimentality, there dancing the St. Vitus' dance of hard- 
 studied Wit and Humour ; some soaring on bold pinion into the thundery 
 regions of Atala, on les Amours de deux Sawoages ; some diving, on as 
 bold fin, into the gory profundities of Frankenstein and TJie Vampyre ; 
 and very many travelling, contented in spirit, the ancient beaten high- 
 way of Commonplace. 
 
 To discover the grain of truth among this mass of falsehood, especially 
 where Time had not yet exercised its separating influence, was no plain 
 problem ; nor can I flatter myself either that I have exhausted the 
 search, or in no case been deceived in my selection. The strength of 
 (lerman Literature does not lie in its Novelwriters ; few of its greatest 
 minds have put forth their full power in this departmeut ; many of 
 them, of course, have not attempted it at all. In the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, and prior, there was nothing whatever to be gleaned ; though 
 Anton Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick Wolfenbuttel, had laid aside his scep- 
 tre, to write a novel,' in six thousand eight hundred and twenty-two 
 pages. Klopstock, Herder, Lessing, in the eighteenth century, wrote 
 no novels : the same might almost be said of Schiller ; for his fragment 
 
 1 Die DurchUmchtigste Syrerin Aramena (Her Most Serene Majesty Aramena of 
 Syria), 16G9. On the whole, it is simple enough of our Magazines to inform us that the 
 literature, nay sometimes it is also the language, of Germany, began to be cultivated in 
 the lime of Frederick II. If the names of Hutten, Opitz, Lohenstein, &c. &c. are natu- 
 rally unknown to us. we ought really to have heard of Luthor. Nay. was not Jacob 
 No/une rendered into huge folios, with incomparable diagrams, in the time uf James I. ? 
 And is not Hans Sachs known (by name at least) to all barbers '! 
 
GERMAN ROMANCE. 93 
 
 of the Geiderseher (Ghost-seer), and his Magazine-story of the Verbrecher 
 fim Verloreaer Ehre (Criminal from Loss of Honour), youthful attempts, 
 and both I believe already in English, scarcely form an exception. The 
 elder Jacobi's Woldem'ar and Alhcill I was forced, not without conscious- 
 ness of their merits, to pass over as too abstruse and didactic ; for a like 
 reason of didacticness, though in a far different sense, Wieland could 
 afford me nothing which seemed worthy of himself and our present 
 idea of him ; and Klinger's Fanat, the product evidently of a rugged, 
 vehement, substantial mind, seemed much too harsh, infernal, and un- 
 poetical for English readers. Of Novalis and his wondrous fragments, 
 I could not hope that their depth and wizard beauty would be seen 
 across their mysticism. Other meritorious names I may have omitted, 
 from ignorance. Maler Mailer's I was obliged to omit, because none 
 of his fictions were, properly speaking, novels ; and unwillingly obliged, 
 for his plays and idyls bespeak a true artist ; and the English reader 
 would do well, by the earliest opportunity, to substitute the warm and 
 vigorous Aduni's Awakeniiuj of Miiller. for Gessner's rather faint and 
 washy Death of Abel, in forming a judgment of the German Idyl. 
 
 A graver objection than that of omissions, is that, in my selections, 1 
 have not always fixed upon the best performance of my author ; and to 
 this I have unhappily no (contradiction to give, nor any answer to make, 
 except that it lay not in tlie nature of my task to avoid it ; and that 
 often not the excellence of a work, but the humble considerations of its 
 size, its subject, and its being untranslated, had to determine my choice. 
 In justice to our strangers, the reader will be pleased to bear this fact in 
 mind : with regard to two of them, to Fouqu('; and Richter, it is espe- 
 cially necessary. 
 
 By a secondary arrangement, in surveying what seemed the chief 
 names among the German Novelwriters we have also obtained a view 
 of the chief modes of German Xovelwriting. The Mdhrclien (Popular 
 Tale), a favourite, almost tritical topic among the Germans, is here twice 
 handled ; in what may be called the prosaic manner (by Musaus\ and 
 in the poetical (by Tieck). Of the Ritterroman (Chivalry Romance) 
 there is also a specimen (by Fouque) ; a short one, yet I fear, in many 
 judgments, too long. Hoffmann's (t6»W€W Po^ belongs to a strange sort 
 (the Fantasy-piece), of which he himself was the originator, and which 
 its sedulous cultivation, by minds more willing than able, bids fair, in 
 no great length of time, to explode. Richter's two works correspond 
 k) our common English notion of the Novel ; and Goethe's is a Kund- 
 romaii (Art-novel), a species highly prized by the Germans, and of 
 which Wilhelm Meistei'^s Apprenticeship, the first in date, is also in their 
 mind greatly the first in excellence. 
 
 If the reader will impress himself with a clear view of these six kinds ; 
 and then conceive some hundreds of persons incessantly occupied in 
 imitating, compounding, separating, distorting, exaggerating, diluting 
 
94 APPENDIX. 
 
 tliem, he may have formed as correct an idea of the actual state of Ger- 
 man Novel writing, as it seemed easy with such means to aEEord him. 
 On the general merits and characteristics of these works, it is for the 
 reader and not me to pass judgment. One thing it will behove him 
 not to lose sight of: They are German Novelists, not English ones; 
 and their Germanhood I have all along regarded as a quality, not as 
 a fault. To expect, therefore, that the style of them shall accord in all 
 points with our English taste, were to expect that it should be a false 
 and hollow style. Every nat'on has its ovvn form of character and life ; 
 and the mind which gathers no nourishment from the everyday circum- 
 stances of its existence, will in general be but scantily nourished. Of 
 writers that hover on the confines of faultless vacuity, that write not by 
 vision but by hearsay, and so belong to all nations, or, more properly 
 speaking, to none, there is no want in Germany more than in any other 
 country. It would be easy to fill, not four, but four hundred volumes 
 with German Novelists of this unblamable description ; thereby to re- 
 fresh the reader with long processions of spotless romances, bright and 
 stately, like so many frontispieces in La Belle Assemblee, with cheeks of 
 the fairest carnation, lips of the gentlest curvature, and most perfect 
 Grecian noses, and no shade of character or meaning to mar their pure 
 idealness. But so long as our Minerva Press and its many branch- 
 establishments do their duty, to import ware of that sort into these 
 Islands seems unnecessary. 
 
 On the whole, as the light of a very small taper may be useful in total 
 darkness, I have sometimes hoped that this little enterprise might assist, 
 in its degree, to forward an acquaintance with the Germans and their 
 literature ; a literature and a people both well worthy of our study. 
 Translations, in this point of view, can be of little avail, except in so 
 far as they excite us to a much more general study of the language 
 The difiiculties of German are little more than a bugbear: they can 
 only be compared to those of Greek b^y'^persons claiming praise or pud- 
 ding for having mastered them. Three months of moderate diligence 
 will carry any man, almost without assistance of a master, over its prime 
 obstacles ; and the rest is play rather than labour. 
 
 To judge from the signs of the times, this general diffusion of Ger- 
 man among us seems a consummation not far distant. As an individ- 
 ual, I cannot but anticipate from it some little evil and much good ; 
 and look forward with pleasure to the time when a people who have 
 listened with the most friendly placidity to criticisms ' of the slenderest 
 nature from us, may be more fitly judged of ; and thirty millions of 
 
 1 Voltaire'.s patronising letter to Ramler in which he cofidescend.s to grant the Oermans 
 some privileges of literary citizenship, on the strength of "Monsieur Gottched " (Gott- 
 sched long ago acknowledged as the true German Antichrist of Wit), is still held in re- 
 membrance ; so likewise is the Pere Boucours' extremely satirical inquiry, iSi les AII&- 
 mandH peuvent iivoir de I'esprit, * 
 
MUSJEUS. 95 
 
 men, speaking in the same old iSaxon tongue, and thinking in the same 
 old Saxon spirit with ourselves, may be admitted to the rights of broth- 
 erhood which they have long deserved, and which it is we chiefly that 
 suffer by withholding. 
 
 MUS'^US. 
 
 JoHANN August Mus^us was born in the year 1735, at Jena, where 
 liis father then held the office of Judge. Tlie quick talents, and kind 
 lively temper of the boy, recommended him to the affection of his 
 uncle, Herr Weissenborn, Superintendent at Allstadt, who took him to 
 liis house, and treated him in all respects like a son. Johann was then 
 in his ninth year : a few months afterwards, his uncle was promoted to 
 the post of General Superintendent at Eisenach ; a change which did 
 not alter the domestic condition of the nephew, though it replaced 
 him in the neighbourhood of his parents ; for his father had also been 
 transferred to Eisenach, in the capacity of Councillor and Police Magis- 
 trate. With this hospitable relative he continued till his nineteenth 
 vear. 
 
 Old Weissenborn had no children of his own, and he determined 
 that his foster-child should have a liberal education. In due time he 
 placed him at the University of Jena, as a student of theology. It is 
 not likely that the inclinations of the youth himself had been particu- 
 larly consulted in this arrangement ; nevertheless he appears to have 
 studied with sufficient diligence ; for in the usual period of three yeara 
 and a half, he obtained his degree of Master, and what was then a 
 proof of more than ordinary merit, was elected a member of the Ger- 
 man Society. With these titles, and the groundwork of a solid culture, 
 he returned to Eisenach, to wait for an appointment in the Church, of 
 which he was now licentiate. 
 
 For several years, though he preached with ability, and not without 
 approval, no appointment presented itself ; and when at last a country- 
 living in the neighbourhood of Eisenach was offered him, the people 
 stoutly resisted the admission of their new pastor, on the ground, says 
 his Biographer, that " he had once been seen dancing." It may be, how- 
 ever, that the sentence of the peasants was not altogether so infirm as 
 this its alleged very narrow basis would betoken ; judging from external 
 circumstances, it by no means appears that devotion was at any time the 
 chief distinction of the new candidate ; and to a simple rustic flock, his 
 shining talents, unsupported by zeal, would be empty and unprofitable, 
 as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. At all events, this hindrance 
 closed his theological career : it came in good season to withdraw him 
 from a calling, in which, whether willingly or unwillingly adopted, his 
 history must have been dishonest and contemptible, and his gifts could 
 never have availed him. 
 
96 APPENDIX. 
 
 Muslus had now lost his profession ; but his resources were not lim- 
 ited to one department of activity, and he was still young enough 
 to choose another. His temper was gay and kindly ; his faculties of 
 mind were brilliant, and had now been improved by years of steady in- 
 dustry. His residence at Eisenach had not been spent in scrutinising 
 the phases of church prel'erment, or dancing attendance on patrons and 
 dignitaries: he had stored his mind with useful and ornamental 
 knowledge ; and from his remote watchtower, his keen eye had dis- 
 cerned the movements of the world, and firm judgments of its wis- 
 ilom and its folly were gathering form in his thoughts. In his twenty- 
 iifth year lie became an author ; a satirist, and what is rarer, a just one. 
 Germany, by the report of its enemies and lukewarm friends, is seldom 
 long without some Idol ; some author of superhuman endowments, 
 some system that promises to renovate the earth, some science des- 
 tined to conduct, by a north-west passage, to universal knowledge. 
 ki this period, the Brazen Image of the day was our English Richard- 
 son ; his novels had been translated into German with unbounded ac- 
 ceptance ; ' and Grandisoii was figuring in many weak heads as the 
 sole model of a true Christian gentleman. Mus jus published his Gd- 
 man Gmndiso/i in 1760 ; a work of good omen as a first attempt, and 
 received with greater favour than the popularity of its victim seemed 
 to promise. It cooperated with Time in removing this spiiitual epi- 
 demic ; and appears to have survived its object, for it was reprinted 
 in 1781. 
 
 The success of his anonymous parody, however gratifying to the 
 youthful author, did not tempt him to disclose his name, and still less 
 to think of literature as a profession. With his cool, sceptical temper, 
 he was little liable to over-estimate his talents, or the prizes set up for 
 them ; and he longed much less for a literary existence than for a civic 
 one. In 1703, his wish, to a certain extent, was granted : he became 
 Tutor of the Pages in the court of Weimar ; which office, after seven 
 punctual and laborious years, he exchanged for a professorship in the 
 Gymnasium, or public school of the same town. He had now married ; 
 and amid the cares and pleasures of providing for a family, and keep- 
 ing house like an honest burgher, the dreams of fame had faded still 
 farther from his mind. The emoluments of his post were small ; but 
 his heart was light, and his mind humble: to increase his income, he 
 gave private lessons in history and the like, "to young ladies and gen- 
 tlemen of (quality ; " and for several years took charge of a few board- 
 ers The names of Wieland and Goethe had now risen on the world, 
 while his own was still under the horizon : bat this obscurity, enjoying 
 as he did the kind esteem of all his many personal acquaintances, he 
 felt to be a very light evil ; and participated without envy in whatever 
 entertainment or instruction his famed contemporaries could afford him. 
 
 ' See thf LcLttrs ( f Mna, Klopstock.''B lady, in Hicfiard-^on'-s Life and Coi respond' net . 
 
MUS^US. ' 97 
 
 With literature he still occupied his leisure ; he had read and reflected 
 much ; but for any public display of his acquirements, he was making 
 no preparation, and feeling no anxiety. 
 
 After an interval of nineteen years, the appearance of a new idol 
 again called forth liis iconoclastic faculty. Lavater had left his parson- 
 age araSng the Alps, and set out on a cruise over Europe, in search ol; 
 proselytes and striking physiognomies. His theories, supported by liis 
 personal influence, and the honest rude ardour of his character, becam(; 
 the rage in Germany ; and men, women, and children were immersed 
 in promoting philanthropy, and studying the human mind. Where- 
 upon Musaus grasped his satirical hammer ; and with lusty strokes de- 
 faced and unshrined the false divinity. His Physiognoinical Travels^ 
 which appeared in 1779, is still ranked by the German critics among 
 the happiest productions of its kind in their literature ; and still read 
 for its wit and acuteness, and genial, overflowing humour, though the 
 ob'.ect it attacked has long ago become a reminiscence. At the time of 
 its publication, when everything conspired to give its qualities their full 
 effect, the applause it gained was instant and general. The author had, 
 as in the former case, concealed his name : but the public curiosity 
 soon penetrated the secret, which he had now no interest in keeping ; 
 and Musaus was forthwith enrolled among the lights of his day and 
 generation ; and courteous readers crowded to him from far and near, 
 to see his face, and pay him the tribute of their admiration. This un- 
 looked for celebrity he valued at its just price ; continuing to live as if 
 it were not ; gratified chiefly in his character of father, at having found 
 an honest mean of improving his domestic circumstances, and enlarg- 
 ing the comforts of his family. The ground was now broken, and he 
 was not long in digging deeper. 
 
 The popular traditions of Germany, so numerous and often so im- 
 pressive, had attracted his attention ; and their rugged Gothic vigour, 
 saddened into sternness or venerable grace by the flight of ages, became 
 dearer to his taste, as he looked abroad upon the mawkish deluge of 
 Sentimentality, with which TJie Sorrows of Werter had been the inno- 
 cent signal for a legion of imitators to drown the land. The spirit of 
 German imagination seemed but ill represented by these tearful per- 
 sons, who, if their hearts were full, minded little though their heads 
 were empty : their spasmodic tenderness made no imposing figure be- 
 side the gloomy strength, which might still in fragments be discerned 
 in their distant predecessors. Of what has been preserved from age to 
 age by living memory alone, the chance is that it possesses some intrin- 
 sic merit : its very existence declares it to be adapted to some form of 
 our common nature, and therefore calculated more or less to interest 
 all its forms. It struck Musaus that these rude traditionary fragments 
 might be worked anew into shape and polish, and transferred from the 
 hearths of the common people to the parlours of the intellectual and 
 
98 APPENDIX, 
 
 refined. He determined on forming a series of Volksnulhrchei) , or 
 Popular Traditionary Tales ; a task of more originality and smaller 
 l^romise in those days than it would be now. In the collection of ma- 
 terials, he spared no pains ; and despised no source of intelligence, how- 
 ever mean. He would call children from the street ; become a child 
 along with them, listen to their nursery tales, and reward his tiny nar- 
 rators with a dreyer apiece. Sometimes he assembled a knot of old 
 women, with their spinning-wheels, about him ; and amid the hum of 
 their industrious implements, gathered stories of the ancient time from 
 the lips of the garrulous sisterhood. Once his wife had been out pay- 
 ing visits : on opening the parlour-door, at her return, she was met by 
 a villanous cloud of tobacco-smoke ; and, venturing forward through 
 the haze, she found her husband seated by the stove, in company with 
 an old soldier, who was smoking vehemently on his black stump of a 
 pipe, and charming his landlord, between whiffs, with legendary lore. 
 
 The Volks/ndhrchen, in five little volumes, appeared in 1782. They 
 soon rose into favour with a large class of readers ; and while many 
 generations of novels have since that time been ushered into being and 
 conducted out of it, they still survive, increasing in popularity rather 
 than declining. This pre-eminence is owing less to the ancient mate- 
 rials, than to the author's way of treating them. The primitive tradi- 
 tion often serves him only as a vehicle for interesting description, 
 shrewd, sarcastic speculation, and gay fanciful pleasantry, extending 
 its allusions over all things past and present, now rising into comic hu- 
 mour, now sinking into drollery, often tasteless, strained, or tawdry, 
 but never dull. The traces of poetry and earliest imagination, here 
 and there discernible in the original fiction, he treats with levity and 
 kind sceptical derision : nothing is required of the reader but what all 
 readers are prepared to give. Since the publication of this work, the 
 subject of popular tradition has been handled to triteness ; Volks- 
 mdlirclien have been written and collected without stint or limit ; and 
 critics, in admitting that Musiius was the first to open this mine of en- 
 tertainment, have lamented the incongruitj' between his subject and 
 his style. But the faculty of laughing has been given to all men, and 
 the feeling of imaginative beauty has been given only to a few : the 
 lovers of primeval poetry, in its unadulterated stale, may censure Mu- 
 saus ; but they join with the public at large in reading him. 
 
 This book of Volksmdhrclieii established the character of its author 
 for wit and general talent, and forms the chief support of his reputa- 
 tion with posterity. A few years after, he again appeared before the 
 public with a humorous performance, entitled Friend Ileiifs Appari- 
 tions, in the style of Holberg, printed in 1785. Friend Hein is a name 
 under which Musiius, for what reason his commentator Wieland seems 
 unable to inform us, usually personifies Death : the essay itself, which 
 I have never seen, may be less irreverent and offensive to pious feeling 
 
MUS^US. 99 
 
 than its title indicates, and it is said to abound with ' ' wit, humour and 
 knowledge of life," as much as any of his former works He had also 
 begun a second series of Tales, under the title of t^transsfedern (Ostrich- 
 feathers) : but only the first volume had appeared,, when death put a 
 period to his labours. He had long been in weakly health ; often af- 
 flicted with violent headaches : his disorder was a polypus of the heart, 
 which cut him off on the 28th of October, 1787, in the fifty-second year 
 of his age. The Straiissfedej-n was completed by another hand ; and a 
 small volume of Remains, edited by Kotzebue in 1791, concludes the 
 list of his writings. A simple but tasteful memorial, we are told, was 
 erected over his grave by some unknown friend. 
 
 Musaus was a practical believer in the Horatian maxim, Nil admi- 
 rari : of a jovial heart, and a penetrating, well-cultivated understand- 
 ing, he saw things as they were, and had little disposition or aptitude 
 to invest them with any colours but their own. Without much effort, 
 therefore, he stood aloof from every species of cant ; and was the man 
 he thought himself, and wished others to think him. Had his temper 
 been unsocial and melancholic, such a creed might have rendered him 
 spiteful, narrow and selfish : but nature had been kinder to him than 
 education ; he did not quarrel with the world, though he saw its bar- 
 renness, and knew not how to make it solemn any more than lovely ; 
 for his heart was gay and kind ; and an imperturbable good-humour, 
 more potent than a panoply of brass, defended him from the stings and 
 arrows of outrageous Fortune to the end of his pilgrimage. Few 
 laughers have walked so circumspectly, and acquired or merited so 
 much affection. By profession a Momus, he looked upon the world as 
 little else than a boundless Chase, where the wise were to recreate 
 themselves with the hunting of Follies ; and perhaps he is the only satir- 
 ist on record of whom it can be said, that his jesting never cost him a 
 friend. His humour is, indeed, untinctured with bitterness ; sportful, 
 ebullient and guileless as- the frolics of a child. He could not reverence 
 men ; but with all their faults he loved them ; for they were his brethren, 
 and their faults were not clearer to him than his own. He inculcated 
 or entertained no lofty principles of generosity ; yet though never rich 
 in purse, he was always ready to divide his pittance Avith a needier fel- 
 lowman. Of vanity, he showed little or none : in obscurity he was 
 contented ; and when his honours came, he wore them meekly, and 
 was the last to see that they were merited. In society he was courteous 
 and yielding ; a universal favourite ; in his chosen cii'cle, the most 
 fascinating of companions. From the slenderest trifle he could spin a 
 boundless web of drollery ; and his brilliant mirth enlivened without 
 wounding. With the foibles of others, he abstained from meddling ; 
 but among his friends, we are informed, he could for hours keep the 
 table in a roar, when, with his dry inimitable vein, he started some 
 banter on himself or his wife ; and, in trustful abandonment, laid the 
 
100 APPENDIX. 
 
 reins on the neck of his fancy to pursue it. Without enthusiasm o" 
 character, or any pretension to high or even earnest qualities, he was a 
 well-conditioned, laughter-loving, kindly man ; led a gay, jestful life ; 
 conquering by contentment and mirth of heart the long series of dif- 
 ficulties and distresses with which it assailed him ; and died regretted 
 by his nation, as a forwarder of harmless pleasure ; and, by those that 
 knew him better, as a truthful, unassuming, affectionate, and, on the 
 whole, very estimable person. 
 
 His intellectual character corresponds with his moral and social one ; 
 not high or glorious, but genuine so far as it goes. He does not ap- 
 proach the first rank of writers ; he attempts not to deal with the deeper 
 feelings of the heart ; and for instructing the judgment he ranks rather 
 as a sound, well-informed, common-sense thinker than as a man of high 
 wisdom or originality. He advanced few new truths, but he dressed 
 many old ones in sprightly apparel ; and it ought to be remembered, 
 that he kept himself iTuspotted from the errors of his time ; a merit 
 which posterity is apt to underrate ; for nothing seems more stolid than 
 a past delusion ; and we forget that delusions, destined also to be past, 
 are now present with oui'selves, about us and within ns, which, were 
 the task so easy, it is pity that we do not forthwith convict and cast 
 away. Muslus had a quick, vigorous intellect, a keen eye for the com- 
 mon forms of the beautiful, a fancy ever prompt with allusions, and an 
 overflowing store of sprightly and benignant humour. These natural 
 gifts he had not neglected to cultivate by study both of books and 
 things ; his reading distinguishes him even in Germany ; nor does he 
 bear it about him like an ostentatious burden, but in the shape of spirit- 
 ual strength and plenty derived from it. As an author, his beauties 
 and defects are numerous and easily discerned. His style sparkles with 
 metaphors, sometimes just and beautiful, often new and surprising ; 
 but it is laborious, unnatural, and diffuse. Of his humour, his distin- 
 guishing gift, it may be remarked, that it seems copious rather than 
 fine, and originates rather in the understanding than in the character: 
 his heart is not delicate, or his affections tender ; but he loves the ludi- 
 crous with true passion ; and seeing keenly, if he feels obtusely, he can 
 choose with sufficient skill the point of view from which his object shall 
 appear distorted, as he requires it This is the humour of a Swift or a 
 Voltaire, but not of a Cervantes, or even of a Sterne in his best passages ; 
 it may produce a ZacUg or a Battle of the Books ; but not a Don Quixote or 
 a Goi'poriil Trim. Musiius is, in fact, no poet ; he can see, and describe 
 with rich graces what he sees ; but he is nothing, or very little of a 
 Maker His imagination is not powerless : it is like a bird of feeble 
 wing, which can fly from tree to tree ; but never soars for a moment 
 into the aBther of Poetry, to bathe in its serene splendour, with the region 
 of the Actual lying far below, and brightened into beauty by radiance not 
 itr5 own. He is a man of fine and varied talent, but scarcely of any genius. 
 
FRIED RICH BE LA MOTTE FOUQUE. 101 
 
 These characteristics are apparent enough in his Popular Tales ; they 
 may be traced even in the few specimens of that work, by which he is 
 now introduced to the English reader. As has been already stated, his 
 Volksmdhrchen exhibit himself much better than his subject. He is not 
 admitted by his critics to hav^e seized the finest spirit of this species of 
 fiction, or turned it to the account of which it is capable in other hands. 
 Whatever was austere or earnest, still more, whatever bordered upon 
 awe or horror, liis riant fancy rejected with aversion : the rigorous 
 moral sometimes hid in these traditions, the grim lines of primeval 
 feeling and imagination to be traced in them had no charms for him. 
 These ruins of the remote time he has not attempted to complete into a 
 perfect edifice, according to the first simple plan ; he has rather par- 
 getted them anew, and decorated them with the most modern ornaments 
 and furniture ; and he introduces his guests, with a roguish smile at the 
 strange, antic contrast they are to perceive between the movables and 
 the apartment. Sometimes he rises into a flight of simple eloquence, 
 and for a sentence or two, seems really beautiful and affecting ; but the 
 knave is always laughing in his sleeve at our credulity, and returns 
 with double relish to riot at will in his favourite domain. 
 
 Of the three Tales here offered to the reader, ' nothing need be said 
 in explanation : for their whole significance, with all their beauties and 
 blemishes, lies very near the surface. , I have selected them, as speci- 
 mens at once of his manner and his materials ; in the hope, that, con- 
 veying some impression of a gifted and favourite writer, they may 
 furnish a little entertainment both to the lovers of intellectual novelty, 
 and of innocent amusement. To neither can I promise very much : 
 Musaus is a man of sterling powers, but no literary monster ; and his 
 Tales, though smooth and glittering, are cold ; they have beauty, yet it 
 is the beauty not of living forms, but of well-proportioned statues. 
 Meanwhile, I have given him as I found him, endeavouring to copy 
 faithfully ; changing nothing, whether I might think it good or bad, 
 that my skill enabled me to keep unchanged. With all drawbacks, I 
 anticipate some favour for him : but his case admits no pleading ; being 
 clear by its own light, it must stand or fall by a first judgment, and 
 without the help of advocates. 
 
 FRIEDRICH DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE. 
 
 The Baron Friedrich de la Motte Fouque is of French extraction, but 
 distinguished for the true Germanism of his character, both as a writer 
 and a man ; and ranks, for the last twenty years, among tlie most popu- 
 lar and productive authors of his country. 
 
 » 1. Dumb Love ; 2. Libusaa ; 3. Melechsala. 
 
102 APPENDIX. 
 
 His family, expelled from France by the Revocation of the Edict of 
 Nantz, appears to have settled at the Hague ; from which this branch 
 of it was transferred to Prussia by the fortunes of our Author's grand- 
 father, whose name and title the present Baron has inherited. This 
 first Friedrich, born in the early part of last century, had been sent in 
 boyhood to the Court of Anhalt Dessau, in the character of Page ; lie 
 soon quitted this station ; entered the Prussian army as a private volun- 
 teer ; by merit, or recommendation, was gradually advanced ; and be- 
 came acquainted with the Prince Royal, then a forlorn, oppressed a»d 
 discontented youth, but destined afterwards to astonish and convulse 
 the world, under the name of Frederick the Great. Young La Motte 
 stood in high favour with Frederick ; and seems likewise to have shown 
 some prudence in humouring the jealous temper of the old King ; for 
 during the Prince's arrest, which had followed his projected elopement 
 from paternal tuition, the royal Shylock, instead of beheading La Motte, 
 as he had treated poor De Catt, permitted him to visit the disconsolate 
 prisoner, and without molestation to do him kind offices. On his acces- 
 sion to the throne, Frederick the King did not fail, in this instance, to 
 remember the debts of Frederick the Prisoner : the friend of his youth 
 continued to be the friend of his manhood and age ; La Motte rose rap- 
 idly from post to post in the army, till, having gained the rank of Gen- 
 eral, he had opportunity, by various gallant services in the Seven-Years' 
 War, to secure the prosperity of his household, and earn for himself a 
 place in the military history of his new countr3\ With his Sovereign 
 he continued in a kindly and honest relation throughout his whole life. 
 His Letters, preserved in Frederick's Works, are a proof that he was not 
 only favoured but esteemed : the imperious King is said to have re- 
 spected his upright and truthful nature ; and, though himself a sceptic 
 and a scoffer, never to have interfered in word or deed with the piety 
 and strict religious persuasions of his servant. The General became the 
 founder of that Prussian family, which has since acquired a new and 
 fairer distinction in the person of his grandson. 
 
 The present Friedrich, our Author, was born on the 11th of Feb- 
 ruary, 1777. Of his early history or habits we have no account, ex- 
 cept that he was educated by Hiilse ; and soon sent to the army as 
 an officer in the Royal Guards. In this capacity he served, during his 
 nineteenth year, in the disastrous campaign of the Rhine. One of his 
 brother- officers and intimates here was Heinrich von Kleist, a noble- 
 minded and ill-fated man of genius, whom the mismanagement of a 
 too impetuous and feeling heart has since driven to suicide, before 
 the world had sufficiently reaped the bright promise of his early 
 years. 
 
 The misfortunes of his country drove Fouque back into retirement : 
 while Prussia languished in hopeless degradation under the iron sway 
 of France, he kept himself apart from military life ; settled in the 
 
FRIEDRICH DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE. 10 
 
 Q 
 
 country, and hanging up his ineffectual sword, devoted himself to do- 
 mestic cares and joys, and in the Kingdoms of Imagination sought 
 refuge fi'om tlie aspect of actual oppression and distress. Of a temper 
 susceptible lively and devout, his faculties had been quickened by 
 communion with kindred minds ; and still more by collision with the 
 vast events which had filled the world with astonishment, and his por- 
 tion of it with darkness and obstruction. At this juncture, while con- 
 templating a literary life, it was doubtless a circumstance of no small 
 influence on his future efforts that he became acquainted with August 
 Wilhelm Schlegel. By Fchlegel he was introduced to the study of 
 Spanish Poetry ; a fact from which a skilful theoriser might plausibly 
 enough deduce the whole psychological history of Fouque ; for it seems 
 as if the beautiful and wondrous spirit of this literature, so fervent yet 
 so joyful, so solemn yet so full of blandishment, with its warlike piety, 
 and gay chivalrous pomp, had taken entire possession of his mind, and 
 moulded his unsettled powers into the form which they have ever since 
 retained. One thing, at all events, is clear without help of theory : 
 An ideal of Christian Knighthood, whencesoever borrowed or derived, 
 lias all along, with more or less distinctness, hovered round his fancy; 
 and this it has been the constant task not only of his pen to represent 
 in poetical delineations, but also of his life to realise in external con- 
 duct. As to its origin, whether in the poetry of Spain, or in the per- 
 plexities of a suiiering and religious life, or in the French Revolution 
 and its reaction on a temper abhorrent of its material principles, or in 
 any or all of these causes, it were unprofitable to inquire ; for the prob- 
 lem is of no vital importance, and we have not data for even an approx- 
 imate solution. 
 
 Fouque published his first works under the pseudonym of Pelegrin : 
 he translated the Kuiudncia of Cervantes ; he wrote Sigurd, Alwin, 
 Tiie History of Ritter Galmy : a small volume of Dramatic Tales was 
 published for him by his friend Schlegel. These performances are all 
 of a chivalry cast ; attempts to body forth the sentiment with which 
 our Author's mind was already almost exclusively pervaded. Tlieir 
 success was incomplete ; sufficient to indicate their object, but not to at- 
 tain it. The models which he had in view seem still to have awed and 
 overshadowed his poetic faculty ; his productions have a southern ex- 
 otic aspect ; and in the opinion of his critics, it is only in glimpses that 
 a genuine inspiration can be discerned in them. Der Hdd des JVm'dens 
 (The Hero of the North\ a dramatic work in three parts, grounded on 
 the story of the Niebelungeii Lied, was the first performance sent fortli 
 in his own name ; and also the first which showed his genius in its 
 own form, or produced any deep impression on the public. This woik 
 was acknowledged to be of true northern growth : it found applauding 
 readers, and had the honour to be criticised in the Heidelberger Jahr- 
 biicJier, by no meaner a person than Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, who 
 
104 APPENDIX. 
 
 bestowed on the poet the surname of Der Tnpfere, or The Valiant, in 
 allusion to the quality which seemed to be the soul of his own charac- 
 ter, and of the characters which he portrayed. 
 
 The ground thus gained, La Motte Fouque has not been negligent to 
 make good and extend. Since the date of his first appearance, year 
 after year has duly added its tribute of volumes to the list of his works ; 
 he has written in verse and prose, in narrative and representation ; his 
 productions varying in form through all the extremes of varietj^, but 
 animated by the same old spirit, that of Knighthood and Religion. On 
 the whole, he seems to have continued growing in esteem, both with 
 the lower and the upper classes of the literary world. His Zauberriiuj 
 (Magic Ring) has lately been translated into English : we have also ver- 
 sions of his Sintram and his Undine. The last little work, published 
 in 1811, has become a literary pet in its own country ; being dandled 
 and patted not only by the soft hands of poetical maidens, but even by 
 the horny paws of Hecensents, a class of beings to the full as dire and 
 doughty as our own Reviewers. Undine and Sintram are parts of a 
 series or circuit of " Romantic fictions," entitled the Jahreszeiten (Sea- 
 sons), which were published successively at four different periods: it is 
 from the same work, the Autumn Number of it, that Aslauga''s Knight, 
 the Tale which follows this Introduction, has been extracted. 
 
 The poet had now wedded : and we figure him as happy in his own 
 Arcadian seclusion ; for his lady is a woman of kindred genius, and has 
 added new celebrity to his name by vario^is writings, partly of her own, 
 partly in concert with her husband. In 1813, his poetic leisure was in- 
 terrupted by the clang of battle-trumpets. Napoleon's star had begun 
 to decline ; and Prussia rose, as one man, to break asunder the fetters 
 with which he had so long chained Europe to the dust. The knightly 
 Baron was the first to rouse himself at the voice of his country ; he 
 again girded on his harness, and took the field at the head of a small 
 troop of volunteers. His little band would seem to have been joined 
 with the Jager (or, as we call it, Chasseur) Regiment of Brandenburg 
 Cuirassiers ; in which squadron he served, first as Lieutenant, then as 
 Rittmeister, with the devout and fervid gallantry, which he had so often 
 previously delineated in his writings. Like the lamented Korner, he 
 stood by the cause both with " the Lyre and the Sword," His arm was 
 ever in the hottest of the battle ; and his songs uplifted the triumph of 
 victory, or breathed fresh ardour into the hearts of his comrades in de- 
 feat. These lyrical effusions have since been collected and published : 
 for the future historian they will form an interesting memorial. At 
 Culm, the poetical soldier was wounded ; but the incompleteness of his 
 cure did not prevent him from appearing in his place on the great day 
 of Leipzig ; and thenceforward following the scattered enemy to the 
 banks of the Rhine. Here ill health, arising from excessive exertion, 
 forced him to return ; he had toiled faithfully till the struggle was de- 
 
FRIEDRICII DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE. 105 
 
 cided ; and could now, with a quiet mind, leave others to complete the 
 task. By the King he was raised to the rank of Major, and decorated 
 Avith the cross of the Order of St. John. He retired to his former resi- 
 dence at Rennhausen, near Rathenau ; betook himself again to writing, 
 with unabated diligence ; and has since produced, among various other 
 chivalry performances of greater or smaller extent, an " epic poem," en- 
 titled Coro)u(, celebrating the events in which he himself was present, 
 and formed part. Here, so far as I have understood, lie still chiefly re- 
 sides ; enjoying an enviable lot ; the domestic society of a virtuous and 
 gifted wife ; the exercise of a jDoetic genius, which his brethren repay 
 with praise ; and still dearer honours as a man and a citizen, which his 
 own conscience may declare that he has merited. 
 
 Fouque's genius is not of a kind to provoke or solicit much criticism ; 
 for its faults are negative rather than positive, and its beauties are not 
 difficult to discern. The structure of his mind is simple ; his intellect 
 is in harmony with his feelings ; and his taste seems to include few 
 modes of excellence, which he has not in some considerable degree the 
 power to realise. He is thus in unison with himself ; his works are free 
 from internal inconsistency, and appear to be produced with lightness 
 and freedom. A pure sensitive heart, deeply reverent of Truth, and 
 Beauty, and Heroic Virtue ; a quick percej^tion of certain forms em- 
 bodying these high qualities ; and a delicate and dainty hand in pictur- 
 ing them forth, are gifts which few readers of his works will contest 
 him. At the Scime time, it must be granted, he has no preeminence in 
 strength, either of head or heart ; and his circle of activity, though full 
 of animation, is far from comprehensive. He is, as it were, possessed 
 by one idea. A few notes, some of them, in truth, of rich melody, yet 
 still a very few, include the whole music of his being. The Chapel and 
 the Tilt-yard stand in the background or the foreground, in all the 
 scenes of his universe. He gives us knights, soft-hearted and strong- 
 arm-ed ; full of Christian self-denial, patience, meekness and gay easy 
 daring ; they stand before us in their mild frankness, with suitable 
 equipment, and accompaniment of squire and dame ; and frequently 
 the whole has a true, though seldom a vigorous, poetic life. If this can 
 content us, it is well ; if not, there is no help; for change of scene and 
 person brings little change of subject ; even when no chivalry is men- 
 tioned, we feel too clearly the influence of its unseen presence. Xor 
 can it be said, that in this solitary department his success is of the very 
 highest sort. To body forth the spirit of Christian Knighthood in ex- 
 isting poetic forms ; to wed that old sentiment to modern tltougJitSy was a 
 task which he could not attempt. He has turned rather to the fictions 
 and machinery of former days ; and transplanted his heroes into distant 
 ages, and scenes divided by their nature from our common world. 
 Their manner of existence comes imaged back to us faint and ineffect- 
 ual, like the crescent of the setting moon. 
 
106 APPENDIX. 
 
 These things, however, are not faults, bnt the want of merits. Where 
 something is effected, it were ungracious to reckon up too narrowly how 
 much is left untried. In all his writings, Fouque shows himself as a 
 man deeply imbued with feelings of religion, honour and brotherly 
 love ; he sings of Faith and Affection with a full heart ; and a spirit of 
 tenderness, and vestal purity, and meek heroism, sheds salutary influ- 
 ences from his presence. He is no primate or bishop in the Church 
 Poetical ; but a simple chaplain, who merits the honours of a small but 
 well-discharged function, and claims no other. 
 
 In mental structure, Fouque seems the converse of Mus ".us, whom he 
 follows in the present volume. If Musiius was a man of talent, with 
 little genius, Fouquo is a man of genius, with little more than an ordi- 
 nary share of talent. His intellect is not richer or more powerful than 
 that of common minds, nor his insight into the world and man's heart 
 more keen ; but his feelings are liner, and the touch of an aerial fancy 
 gives life and loveliness to the products of his other powers. Among 
 English authors, we might liken him to Southey ; though their prov- 
 inces of writing are widely diverse ; and, in regard to general culture 
 and acquirement, the latter must be reckoned greatly his superior. 
 Like Southey, he finds more readily than he invents ; and his inven- 
 tion when he does trust to it, is apt to be daring rather than successful. 
 Yet his extravagant fictions are pervaded by a true sentiment ; a soft 
 vivifying soul looks through them ; a religious submission, a cheerful 
 and unwearied patience in affliction ; mild, earnest hope and love, and 
 peaceful, subdued enthxisiasm. 
 
 To these internal endowments, he adds the merit of a style by no 
 means ill adapted for displaying them. Lightness and simplicity are 
 its chief characteristics: his periods move along in lively rhythm; stu- 
 diously excluding all pomp of phraseology ; expressing his strongest 
 thoughts in the humblest words, and veiling dark sufferings or resolute 
 purposes in a placid smile. A faint superficial gaiety seems to rest over 
 all his images : it is not merriment or humour ; but the self-possession 
 of a man too earnestly serious to be heedful of solemn looks ; and it 
 plays like sunshine on tlie surface of a dark pool, deepening by contrast 
 the impressiveness of the gloom which it does not penetrate. 
 
 If this little Tale of AslaugcCs Knight ' afford any tolerable emblem of 
 those qualities, the reader will not grudge perusing it. I pretend not 
 to offer it as the best of Fouquf's writings, but only as the best I know 
 of for my present purpose. Sint7'cun and Undine are already in our 
 language : this tale is weaker in result, but also shorter in compass. 
 That its chivalry is of a still wilder sort than that which we supposed 
 Cervantes had abolished two centuries ago ; that its form is thin and 
 unsubstantial, and its effect unsatisfactory, I need not attempt to deny. 
 An extravagant fiction for the basis ; delicate, airy and beautiful deline- 
 
 1 Onr uiily Translation from Fouqn6. 
 
LUDWIG TIECK. 107 
 
 ations in the detail ; and tho everlasting principles of Faith, and Integ- 
 rity, and Love, pervading the wiiole : snch is frequently the character 
 of Fouque's writings ; and such, on a smaller scale, appears to he that 
 t»f AslaV{jn-s Knight, which is now, with all its imperfections on its head, 
 to be submitted to the courtesy of English judges. 
 
 LUDWIG TIECK. 
 
 LuDWiG TiECK, born at Berlin on the 31st of May 1773, is known to 
 the world only as a Man of Letters, liaving never held any public station, 
 or followed any profession, except that of authorsliip. Of his private 
 history the critics and news-hunters of his own country complain that 
 they have little information ; a deficiency which may arise in part from 
 the circumstance, that till of late 3'ears, tliough from the first admired 
 by the Patricians of his native literature, lie lias stood in no high favour, 
 and of course awakened no great curiosity, among the reading Plebs ; 
 and may indicate, at the same time, that in his walk and conversation, 
 there is little wonderful to be discovered. 
 
 His literary life he began at Berlin, in his twenty-second year, by the 
 publication of three Novels, following each other in quick succession : 
 Abchdlnh, Willinm Lovell and Peter LeberrecTd. These works found small 
 patronage at their first appearance, and are still regarded as immature 
 products of his genius ; the opening of a cloudy as well as fervid dawn ; 
 betokening a day of strong heat, and perhaps at last of serene brightness. 
 A gloomy tragic spirit is said foreign throughout all of them ; the image 
 of a high passionate mind, scorning the base and the false, rather than 
 accomplishing the good and the true ; in rapt earnestness " interrogating 
 Fate,' and receiving no answer but the echo of its own questions re- 
 verberated from the dead walls of its vast and lone imprisonment. 
 
 In this stage of spiritual progress, where so many not otherwise un- 
 gifted minds at length painfully content themselves to take up their 
 permanent abode, where our own noble and hapless Byron perished 
 from among us at the instant when his deliverance seemed at hand, it 
 was not Tieck's ill fortune to continue too long. His Pojmlar 7'((lfs, 
 published in 1797 as an appendage to his last Novel, under tlie title of 
 Petej' Leberrechts VolksmdhrcJien, already indicate that he had worked 
 his way through these baleful shades into a calmer and sunnier eleva- 
 tion ; from which, and happily without looking at the world through a 
 painted glass of any sort, he had begun to see that there were things to 
 be believed, as well as things to be denied ; things to be loved and 
 forwarded, as well as things to be hated and trodden under foot. The 
 active and positive of Goodness was displacing the barren and torment- 
 ing negative ; and worthy feelings were now to be translated into their 
 only proper language, worthy actions. In Tieck's mind, all Goodness, 
 
108 APPENDIX. 
 
 all that was noble or excellent in Nature, seems to have combined itself 
 under the image of Poetic Beauty ; to the service and deTence of which 
 he has ever since unweariedly devoted his gifts and his days. 
 
 These Volksmalirchen are of the most varied nature : sombre' pathet- 
 ic, fantastic, satirical ; but all pervaded by a warm, genial soul, which 
 accommodates itself with equal aptitude to the gravest or the gayest 
 form. A soft abundance, a simple and kindly but olten solemn maj- 
 esty is in them ; wondrous shapes, full of meaning, move over the 
 scene, true modern denizens of the old Fairyland ; low tones of plaintive- 
 ness or awe flit round us ; or a starry splendour twinkles down from 
 the immeasurable depths of Night. 
 
 It is by this work, as revised and perfected long afterwards, that we 
 now purpose introducing Tieck to the notice of the English reader : it 
 was by this also that he was introduced to the notice of his countrymen . 
 Peter Leherreclits Yolksmalirclien was reviewed by August Wilhelm 
 Schlegel, in the Jena Litteraturzeitung ; and its author, for the first 
 time, brought under the eye of the world as a man of rich endow- 
 ments, and in the fair way for turning them to proper account. To ,the 
 body of the world, however, this piece of news was surprising rather 
 than delightful ; for Tieck's merits were not of a kind to split the ears 
 of the groundlings, and his manner of producing them was ill calculated 
 to conciliate a kind hearing. Schiller and Goethe were at this time 
 silent, or occupied with History and Philosophy : Tieck belonged not 
 to the existing poetic guild ; and, far from soliciting admission, he liad 
 not scrupled, in the most pleasant fashion, to inform the craftsmen that 
 their great Diana was a dumb idol, and their silver shrines an unprofit- 
 able thing. Among these Vollxsmdhrclwn , one of the most prominent 
 is Der gestiefelte Kater, a dramatised version of Puss in Boots ; under 
 the grotesque mask of which, he had laughed with his whole heart, in 
 a true Aristophanic vein, at the actual aspect of literature ; and without 
 mingling his satire with personalities, or any other false ingredient, 
 had rained it like a quiet shower of volcanic ashes on the cant of Illu- 
 mination, the cant of Sensibility, the cant of Criticism, and the inany 
 other cants of that shallow time, till the gumflower products of the 
 poetic garden hung draggled and black under their unkindly coating. 
 In another country, at another day, the drama of Puss in Boots may 
 justly be supposed to appear with enfeebled influences ; yet even to a 
 stranger there is not wanting a feast of broad joyous humour in this 
 strange phantasmagoria, where pit and stage, and man and animal, and 
 earth and air, are jumbled in confusion worse confounded, and the co- 
 pious, kind, ruddy light of true mirth overshines and warms the 
 whole. 
 
 This What-d'ye-call-it of Puss in Boots was, as it were, tlie key-note 
 which for several years determined the tone of Tieck's literary enter- 
 prises. The same spirit lives in his Verkehrte Welt (World turned Topsy- 
 
LUDWIG TIECK. 1U9 
 
 turvj), a drama of similar structure, which accompanied the former ; 
 in his tale of Zn'hino, or tlie Tour in search of IViste, which soon followed 
 it ; and in numerous parodies and lighter pieces which he gave to the 
 world in his Poetic Journal ; the second and last volume of which peri- 
 odical contains his Letters on Shakspeare, inculcating the same doctrines, 
 in a graver shape. Ahout this time, after a short residence in Ham- 
 burg, where he had married, he removed his abode to Jena ; a change 
 which confirmed him in his literary tendencies, and facilitated the at- 
 tainment of their objects. It was here that he became acquainted with 
 the two Schlegels ; and, at the same time, witli their friend >7ovalis, a 
 young man of a pure, warm and benignant genius, whose fine spirit 
 died in its first blossoming, and whose posthumous works it was, ere 
 long, the melancholy task of Tieck and the younger Schlegel to publish 
 under their superintendence. With Wackenroder of Berlin, a person 
 of kindred mind with Novalis, and kindred fortune also, having died 
 very early, Tieck was already acquainted and united ; for he had co- 
 operated in the Ilerzensergiessungen eines einsainen Klosterhruders, an 
 elegant and impressive work on i.ictorial art, and Wackenroder's chief 
 performance. 
 
 These young men sympathised completely in their critical ideas with 
 Tieck ; and each was labouring in his own sphere to disseminate them, 
 and reduce them to practice. Their endeavours, it would seem, have 
 prospered ; for in colloquial literary history, this gifted cinquefoil, 
 often it is only the trefoil of Tieck and the two Schlegels, hav^e the 
 credit, which was long the blame, of founding a New School of Poetry, 
 by which the Old School, first fired upon in the Gestiefelte Kater, and 
 ever afterwards assailed, without intermission, by eloquence and ridi- 
 cule, argument and entreaty, was at length displaced and hunted out 
 of being ; or, like Partridge the Astrologer, reduced to a life w^hich 
 could be proved to be no life. 
 
 Of this New School, which has been the subject of much unwise 
 talk, and of much not very wise writing, we cannot here attempt to 
 cfer any suitable description, far less any just estimate. One thing 
 may be remarked, that the epithet School seems to describe the case 
 with little propriety. That since the beginning of the present century, 
 u great change has taken place in German literature, is plain enough, 
 without comment itors ; but that it was effected by three young men, 
 living in the little town of Jena, is not by any means so plain. The 
 critical principles of Tieck and the Schlegels had already been set forth, 
 in the form both of precept and prohibition, and with all the aids of 
 philosophic depth and epigrammatic emphasis, by the united minds of 
 (Joethe and Schiller, in the Iloren and Xenien. The development and 
 practical application of the doctrine is all that pertains to these reputed 
 founders of the sect. But neither can the change be said to have origi; 
 nated with Schiller and Goethe ; for it is a change originating not in 
 
110 APPENDIX. 
 
 individuals, but in universal circumstances, and belongs not to Ger- 
 many, but to Europe. Among ourselves, for instance, within the last 
 thirty years, who has not lifted up his voice with double vigour in 
 praise O- Shakspeare and Nature, and vituperation of French taste and 
 French philosophy ? Who has not heard of the glories of old English 
 literature ; the wealth of Queen Elizabeth's age ; the penury of Queen 
 Anne's ; and the inquiry whether Pope was a poet ? A similiar temper 
 is breaking out in France itself, hermetically sealed as that country 
 seemed to be against all foreign influences ; and doubts are beginning 
 to be entertained, and even expressed, about Corneille and the Three 
 Unities. It seems to be substantially the same thing which has occurred 
 in German}', and been attributed to Tieck and his associates : only that 
 the revolution, which is here proceeding, and in France commencing, 
 appears in Germany to be completed. Its results have there been em 
 bodied in elaborate laws, and profound systems have been promulgated 
 and accepted : whereas with iis, in past years, there has been as it" were 
 a Literary Anarchy ; for the Pandects of Blair and Bossu are obsolete 
 or abrog'ated, but no new code supplies their jilace ; and, author and 
 critic, each sings or says that which is right in his own eyes. For the 
 principles of German Poetics, we can only refer the reader to the trea- 
 tises of Kant, Schiller, Richter, the Schlegels, and their many copyists 
 and expositors ; with the promise that his labour will be hard, but not 
 unrewarded by a plenteous harvest of results, which, whether they be 
 doubted, denied or believed, he will find no trivial or unprofitable sub- 
 ject for his contemplation. 
 
 These doctrines of taste, which Tieck embraced every opportunity of 
 enforcing as a critic, he did not fail diligently to exemplify in practice ; 
 as a long and rapid series of poetical performances lies before the world 
 to attest. Of these, his Genove:a, a Play grounded on the legend of 
 that Saint, appears to be regarded as his masterpiece by the best judges ; 
 though Franz SternebakJs Wanderungen, the fictitious History of a Stu- 
 dent of Painting, was more relished by others ; and, as a critic tells us, 
 'here and there a low voice might be even heard voting that this novel 
 ' equalled Wdhdm Meist^r ; the peaceful clearness of which it however 
 'nowise attained, but only, with visible effort, strove to imitate.' In 
 this last work he was assisted by Wackenroder. At an earlier period, he 
 had come forth, as a translator, with a new version of Don Quixote : he 
 now appeared also as a commentator, with a work entitled Minneliecfer 
 aus dem Schionhisclieii Zeitalter (Minstrelsy of the Swabian Era), pub- 
 lished at Berlin in 1803 ; with an able Preface, explaining the relation 
 of these poets to Petrarca and the Troubadours. In 1804, he sent out 
 his K(mer Odttnnnii.i, a Story which, like the other works mentioned 
 in this paragraph, I have never seen, but which I find praised by his 
 countrymen in no very intelligible terms, as 'a fair revival of the old 
 ' 3Idhrchc)i (Traditionary Tale) ; in which, however, the poet moves 
 
LUDWIG TIECK. Ill 
 
 'freely, and has completed the cycle of the romance.' Die Gemalde 
 (The Pictures , another of his fictions, has lately been translated into 
 English. 
 
 Tieck's frequent change of place bespeaks less settledness in his do- 
 mestic, than happily existed in his intellectual circumstances. From 
 Jena he seems to have again removed to Berlin ; then to a country resi- 
 dence near Frankfort on the Oder ; which, in its turn, lie quitted for a 
 journey into Italy. In this classic country he found new facilities for 
 two of his favourite pursuits : he employed himself, it is said, to good 
 purpose, in the study of ancient and modern Art ; to which, while in 
 Rome, he added the examining of many old German manuscripts pre- 
 served in the Vatican Library. From his labours in this latter depart- 
 ment, and elsewhere, his countrymen have not long ago obtained, in a.di- 
 A\i\on io i\\Q Minstrelsy ^ an AUdeutsches TJieater (Old German Theatre), 
 in two volumes, with the hope of more. A collection of Old-German 
 Poetry is still expected. 
 
 In 1806, he returned to Germany ; first to Munich, then to his former 
 retreat near Frankfort ; but, for the next seven years, he was little heard 
 of as an active member of the literary world ; and the regret of his ad- 
 mirers was increased by intelligence that ill health was the cause of his 
 inactivity. That this inactivity was more apparent than real, he has 
 proved by his reappearance in new vigour at a time when he finds a 
 readier welcome and more willing audience. He has since published 
 abundantly in various forms ; as a translator, an editor, and a writer 
 both of poetry and prose. In 1812, appeared his early VolksmahrcJien^ 
 retouched and improved, and combined into a whole, by conversations, 
 critical, disquisitionary and descrijitive, in two volumes, entitled Phan- 
 Uisus ; from which our present specimens of him are taken. His AU- 
 deutsches Theater was followed by an Altenglisclies, including the disputed 
 plays of Shakspeare ; a work gladly received by his countrymen, no less 
 devoted admirers of Shakspeare than ourselves. Since that time, he 
 has paid us a personal visit. In 1818, he was in London, and is said to 
 have been well satisfied with his reception ; which we cannot but hope 
 was as respectful and kind as a guest so accomplished, and so friendly 
 to England, deserved at our hands. The fruit of liis residence among 
 US, it seems, has already appeared in his writings. He has very lately 
 given to the world a Novel on Shakspeare and his Times ; in which he 
 has not trembled to introduce, as acting characters, the great dramatist 
 himself, Avith Marlowe, and various other poets of that age. Such is 
 the report ; which adds, that his work is admired in Germany ; but that 
 any copy of it has crossed the Channel, I have not heard. Of Tieck's 
 present residence, or special pursuits, or economical circumstances, I 
 am sorry to confess my entire ignorance. One little fact may perhaps 
 be worth adding ; that Sophie Bernhardi, an esteemed authoress, is his 
 sister. 
 
112 APPENDIX. 
 
 A very sliglit power ol observation will suffice to convince us that 
 Tieck is no ordinary man ; but a true Poet, a Poet horn as well as made. 
 Of a nature at once susceptible and strong, he has looked over the cirCix^ 
 of human interests with a far-sighted and piercing eye, and partaken 
 deeply of its joy and woe ; and these impressions on his heart or his 
 mind have been like seed sown on fertile ground, ripening under the 
 skyey influences into rich and varied luxuriance. He is no more ob- 
 server and compiler ; rendering back to us, with additions or subtrac- 
 tions, the Beauty which existing things have of themselves presented to • 
 him ; but a true Maker, to whom the actual and external is but the ex- 
 citement for ideal creations, representing and ennobling its effects. His 
 feeling or knowledge, his love or scorn, his gay humour or solemn ear- 
 nestness, all the riches of his inward world, are pervaded and mastered 
 by the living energy of the soul which possesses them ; and their finer 
 essence is wafted to us in his poetry, like Arabian odours on the wings 
 of the wind. 
 
 But this may be said of all true poets ; and each is distinguished from 
 all by his individual characteristics. Among Tieck's, one of the most 
 remarkable is his combination of so many gifts in such full and simple 
 liarmony. His ridicule does not obstruct his adoration ; his gay South- 
 ern fancy lives in union with a Northern heart. With the moods of a 
 longing and impassioned spirit he seems deeply conversant ; and a still 
 imagination, in the highest sense of that word, reigns over all his poetic 
 world. Perhaps, on the whole, this is his distinguishing faculty ; an 
 imagination, not of the intellect, but of the character, not so much 
 vague and gigantic as altogether void and boundless. A feeling as of 
 desert vastness steals over us in what appeared to be a common scene ; 
 or in high passages, a fire as of a furnace glows in one small spot, under 
 the infinitude of darkness : Immensity and Eternity seem to rest over 
 the bounded and quickly-fading. 
 
 His mind we should call well cultivated ; for no part of it seems 
 stunted in its growth, and it acts in soft unimpeded union. His heart 
 seems chastened in the school of experience ; fervid, yet meek and 
 humble, heedful of good in mean forms, and looking for its satisl'action 
 not in passive, but in active enjoyments. His poetical taste seems no 
 less polished and pure: with all his mental riches and excursiveness, 
 he merits in the highest degree the praise of chaste simplicity, both in 
 conception and style. No man ever rejected more carefully the aid oi' 
 exaggeration in word and thought, or produced more result by humbler 
 means. Who could have supj)osed that a tragedy, no mock-heroic, but 
 a real tragedy, calculated to affect and excite us, could have been erected 
 on the groundwork of a nursery tale ? Yet let any one read Blauhart in 
 the P/mntasns, and say whether this is not accomplished. Nor is Tieck's 
 history of our old friend Blirebefird any Fairyland George Barmrell ; but 
 a genuine p'ay, with comic as well as tragic li^e in it ; ' a group of ear- 
 
LUDWIO TIECK. 11 
 
 Q 
 
 nest figures, painted on a laughing ground,' and surprising us with poet- 
 ical delight, wliere we looked for anything sooner. 
 
 In his literary life, Tieck has essayed many provinces, both of the 
 imaginative and the intellectual world ; but his own peculiar province 
 seems to be that of the Mdhvclien ; a word which, for want of a proper 
 synonym, we are forced to translate by the imperfect periphrase of 
 Popular Traditionary Tale. Here, by the consent of all his critics, in- 
 cluding even the collectors of real Mdhrchen , he reigns without any 
 rival. The true tone of that ancient time, when man was in his child- 
 hood, when the universe within was divided by no wall of adamant 
 from the universe without, and the forms of the Spirit mingled and 
 dwelt in trustful sisterhood with the forms of the Sense, was not easy 
 to seize and adapt with any fitness of application to the feelings of mod- 
 ern minds. It was to penetrate into the inmost shrines of Imagination, 
 where human passion and action are reflected in dim and fitful, but 
 deeply significant resemblances, and to copy these with the guileless 
 humble graces which alone can become them. Such tales ought to be 
 poetical, because they spring from the very fountains of natural feel- 
 ing ; they ought to be moral, not as exemplifying some current apoph- 
 thegm, but as imaging forth in shadowy emblerns the universal tenden- 
 cies and destinies of man. That Tieck has succeeded thus far in his 
 Tales is not asserted by his warmest admirers ; but only that he now 
 and then approaches such success, and throughout approaches it more 
 closely than any of his rivals. 
 
 How far this judgment of Tieck's admirers is correct, our readers are 
 now to try for themselves.' Respecting the reception of these Tales, I 
 cannot boast of having any very certain, still less any very flattering 
 presentiment. Their merits, such as they have, are not of a kind to 
 force themselves on the reader ; and to search for merits few readers 
 are inclined. The ordinary lovers of witch and fairy matter will re- 
 in, uk a deficiency of spectres and enchantments here, and complain 
 tliat the whole is rather dull. Cultivated freethinkers again, well 
 knowing that no ghosts or elves exist in this country, will smile at the 
 crackbrained dreamer, with his spelling book prose and doggrel verse, 
 and dismiss him good-naturedly as a German Lake-poet. Alas ! alas ! 
 Ludwig Tieck could also fantasy, 'like a drunk Irishman,' with great 
 conveniency, if it seemed good to him ; he can laugh too, and disbe- 
 lieve, and set springes to catch woodcocks in manifold M'ise : but his 
 present business was not this: nor, I fear, is the lover of witch matter, 
 or the cultivated freethinker, likely soon to discover what it was. 
 
 Other readers there are, however, who will come to him in a truer 
 and meeker spirit, and, if I mistake not, be rewarded with some 
 
 1 The Tales translated from Tieck are: 1. Tiie Fairhaired Eckhert ; i. The Truaty 
 Eakart ; .3. T/ie liuneuberg ; 4. The Elves ; 5. The Gublet. 
 
11 -i APPENDIX. 
 
 touches of genuine poetry. For the credit of the stranger, I ought to 
 remind them that he appears under many disadvantages. In the pro- 
 cess of translation he has necessarily lost, and perhaps in more than 
 the usual proportion ; the childlike character of his style was apt to 
 diverge into the childish ; the nakedness of his rhymes, perhaps at first 
 only wavering between simplicity and silliness, must in my hands 
 too frequently have shifted nearer the latter. Above all, such works 
 as his come on us unprepared ; unprovided with any modeP by. which 
 to estimate them, or any category under which to arrange them. 
 Nevertheless, the present specimens of Tieck do exhibit some features 
 0£ his mind ; a few, but those, as it seems to me, its rarest and highest 
 features: to such readers, and with such allowances, the Banenherg, 
 the Trusty Eckart and their associates may be commended with some 
 confidence. 
 
 E. T. W. HOFFMANN. 
 
 Hoffmann's Life and Bemains have been published, shortly after 
 liis decease, and with an amplitude of detail corresponding rather to 
 the popularity, than to the intrinsic merit, of the sub'ect ; for Hoffmann 
 belongs to that too numerous class of vivid and gifted literary men, whose 
 genius, never cultured or elaborated into purity, finds loud and sud- 
 den, rather than judicious or permanent admiration ; and whose his- 
 tory, fiill of error and perplexed vicissitude, excites sympathising re- 
 gret in a few, and unwise wonder in many. From this Work, which 
 is honestly and modestly enough written, and has, to all appearance, 
 been extensively read and approved of, I borrow most of the following 
 particulars. 
 
 Ernst Theodor Wilhelm Hoffmann was born at Konigsberg, in Prus- 
 sia, on the 24th of January 1776. His father occupied a post of some 
 dignity in the administration of Justice ; the mother's relatives were 
 also engaged in the profession of Law ; most of them respectably, some 
 of them with considerable influence and reputation. The elder HoU- 
 mann is said to have been a man of talent ; but his temper and habi- 
 tudes were irregular ; his wife was sickly, sensitive and perhaps queru- 
 lous and uncompliant : in our Ernst their second child's third year, the 
 parents discovered that they could not live together ; and, apparently 
 by mutual consent, dissolved their ill-assorted union. The father with- 
 drew from Konigsberg, to prosecute his legal and judicial engagements 
 elsewhere ; and seems to have troubled himself no farther about his 
 offspring or old connexions : he died, several years after, at Insterbiirg, 
 
 1 I have not forgotten Allan Cunningham's Traditional Tales of the Eiiglisk and Scot- 
 tish Peasantry ; a work full of kind fancy and soft glowing exuberance, and with traces 
 of a genius which might rise into a far loftier and purer element than it has ever yet moved 
 and lived in. 
 
E. T. W. HOFFMANN. 115 
 
 where he had been stationed as a Judge in the Criminal Court of the 
 Oberland. The other parent retired with young Ernst to lier mother's 
 house, also in Konigsberg ; and there, in painful inaction, wore out 
 seventeen sick and pitiable years, before death put a period to her suf- 
 ferings. Prior to the separation, the elder child, also a boy, had gone 
 astray into wicked courses, and at last set fortli as an infant prodigal 
 into the wide world. The two brothers never met, though the elder is 
 said to be still in life- 
 Cut off from his natural guardians and directors, young Hoffmann 
 seems to have received no adequate compensation for the want of them, 
 and his early culture was but ill conducted. The grandmother, like 
 her daughter, was perpetually sick, neither of the two almost ever stir- 
 ring from their rooms. An uncle, retired with the barren title of 
 Justizrath from an abortive practice of Law, took charge of the boy's 
 education : but little Otto had no insight into the endowments or per- 
 versities of his nephew, and spent much fruitless effort in endeavouring 
 to train the frolicsome urchin to a clock-work life like his own ; for 
 Otto lived by square and rule ; his history was a rigid, strenuous, me- 
 thodical procedure ; of which, indeed, except the process of digestion, 
 faithfully enough performed, the result, in Otto's case, was nothing. 
 An unmarried aunt, the only other member of the family, the only 
 member of it gifted with any share of sense, appears to have had a 
 truer view of young Hoffmann •, l)ut she loved the little rogue too well; 
 and her tenderness, though repaid by equal and continued tender- 
 ness on his part, perhaps hurt him more than the leaden constraint of 
 his uncle. For the rest, the boy did not let the yoke lie too heavy o:i 
 his shoulders : Otto, it is true, was his teacher, his chamber-mate and 
 bed-mate ; but every Thursday the little Justizrath went out to pay 
 visits, and the pupil could then celebrate a day of bedlam jubilee : in 
 a little while too, by superiority of natural cunning, he had sounded 
 the Justizrath ; and from his twelfth year, we are told, he scarcely ever 
 spoke a word with him, e.xcept for purposes of mystification. In this prim 
 circle, he grew up in almost complete isolation ; for, by reason of its fan- 
 tastic strictness, the household was visited by few ; and except one boy, a 
 nephew of the Author Hippel's, with whom he accidentally became 
 acquainted, Hoffmann had no companion but his foolish uncle and his 
 too fond aunt. With young Hippel his intimacy more and more in- 
 creased ; and it is pleasant to record of both, that this early connexion 
 continued unbroken, often warm and helpful, through many changes of 
 fortune ; Hoffmann's school-friend stood by his death-bed, and took his 
 farewell of him with true heartfelt tears. 
 
 For classical instruction, he was early sent to the public school of 
 .Konigsberg ; but till his thirteenth or fourteenth year, he acquired no 
 taste for these pursuits ; and remained unnoticed by his teacher, and 
 by all his schoolfellows, except Hippel, rather disrespected and disliked. 
 
116 APPENDIX. 
 
 Music and painting, in which also he had masters, were more to his 
 taste : in a short while, he could fantasy to admiration on the harpsi- 
 chord ; and tliere was no comic visage in Konigsberg which he had not 
 sketched in caricature. His tiny stature (for in youth, as in manhood, 
 he was little, and ' incredibly brisk') giving him an almost infantile ap- 
 pearance, added new wonder to these attainments ; and so young Ernst 
 became a musical and pictorial prodigy ; to the no small comfort of Jus- 
 tizrath Otto, who delighted to observe that the little imp who had played 
 him so many sorry tricks, and so often overset the steady machinery of 
 his household economy, was turning out not a blackguard, but a genius. 
 
 With more prudence and regularity than could have been expected, 
 Hoffmann betook himself, in due time, to preparing for the legal pro- 
 fession ; to which, as if by hereditary destiny, he was appointed. In 
 the Konigsberg University, indeed, he confessed that Kant's prelections 
 were a dead letter to him, though it was at that time the fashion both 
 for the wise and simple to be metaj)hysically transcendental : but he 
 abstained from the riotous practice's of his i^Wow-hursclien^ and pur- 
 sued with strict fidelity the tasks by which he hoped ere long to gain au 
 independent livelihood, and be delivered from the thraldom of his 
 grandmother and Justizrath Otto. In this hope he laboured ; allowing 
 himself no recreation, except once a-week an evening of literary talk 
 with his fellow-student Hippel, and an occasional glance into Winkel- 
 manUj or other works on Art, to which, as formerly, the better part of 
 his nature was passionately devoted. 
 
 In 1795, he passed his first professional trial, and was admitted Aus- 
 cultator of the Court of Konigsberg : an establishment administrative as 
 well as judicial ; in which, however, owing to the pressure of appli- 
 cants, it was impossible to give him full employment. This leisure, 
 which, with so hot and impatient a sj^irit, hung heavy enough on his 
 hands, he endeavoured to fill up with subsidiary pursuits : he gave pri- 
 vate lessons in music ; he painted wild landscapes, or grotesque figures, 
 to which ' a bold alternation of colour and shade ' gave a specific charac- 
 ter ; he talked of men and things, with the most sportful fancy, or the 
 most biting sarcasm: in fine, he wrote two IS'ovels. One of these, at 
 least, he had hoped to see in print ; for a bookseller had received it 
 with some expressions of encouragement : but after half a year, his fair 
 manuscript was returned to him all soiled and creased, with an answer, 
 that 'the anonymity of the work was likely to hurt its sale.' In the 
 mean time, his situation had become still more perplexed by a private 
 incident in the style of the Noumlle Ileloisc. One of his fair music- 
 pupils was too lovely and too soft-hearted : no marriage could be thought 
 of between the parties, for she was far above him in rank ; and the 
 contradictions and entanglements of this affair so pained and oppressed 
 him, that he longed with double vehemence to be out of Ktmigsberg. 
 At last, a''tur much wavering and consulting, he snatched himself away. 
 
E. T. W. IIOFBWIANN. 117 
 
 with a resolute, indeed almost heroic effort, from the iinpropitious 
 ?cene ; and proceeded, in the summer of 1790, to Great Glogau in Sile- 
 sia, where another uncle, a brother of Otto's, occupied a post in the Ad- 
 ministration, and had promised to procure him employment. 
 
 In Great Glogau he did not find the composure which he was in search 
 of ; liis uncle and his cousins treated him with great affection, and his 
 labour was not irksome or unprofitable ; hut, in his letters, he complains 
 incessantly of tedium, and other spiritual maladies; and, in 1798, he 
 joyfully took leave of Silesia, following his uncle, who was now pro- 
 moted to a higher legal post in Berlin. Here too the young jurist con- 
 tinued only for a short time. Having passed his third and last trial, 
 the eixinieii rigorosam, and this with no common applause, he was soon 
 arterwards appointed Assessor of the Court at Posen, in South Prussia 
 (Poland) ; Mhither he proceeded in March 1800. 
 
 With Hoffmann's removal to Poland, begins a new era of his life : he 
 was now director of his own actions, and unhai:)pily he did not direct 
 them well. At Berlin, and even at Great Glogau, he had been accus- 
 tomed to enliven the routine of legal duty by the study of Art ; for 
 which the public collections of pictures, and the numerous professors of 
 music, had in both cities aiorded considerable opportunity. In Posen, 
 thes3 resources were abridged ; there was little music, little painting ; 
 his official associates were dry weekday men, who worked hard at their 
 desks, and lived hard when enfranchised from them ; without taste for 
 literature, or art of any kind, except it were the art of cookery and 
 brewing. The Poles also were a lively, jolly people, andTmuch addicted 
 to 'strong Hungary wine.' Hoffmann yielded too far to the custom of 
 the land ; and here, it would seem, contracted habits of irregularity, 
 from which he could never a^ter get delivered. Another refuge against 
 tedium, derived from his own peculiar resources, was even less to be 
 excused. In private hours, he had condescended to become the scandal- 
 ous chronicle of Posen, and to sketcli a series of caricatires, exhibiting, 
 under the most ludicrous yet recognisable aspects, a great number of 
 individuals and transactions ; sparing no rank or relation, where he 
 fancied himself to have been provoked, or thought his satire might be 
 expected to tell. On occasion of a masquerade, a gay companion, his 
 future brother-in-law, eij^uipped himself like an Italian hawker ; and 
 proceeding to the bal with his pestilent ware in his basket, distributed 
 the pictures, each picture to some ill-wisher of the person whom it repre- 
 sented ; and then vanished from the room. For the first half hour, 
 there was a general triumph ; which, on comparing notes, passed into a 
 general wail. The author was speedily detected : his talent, the only 
 thing admirable in the transaction, betrayed him, and the punishment 
 followed close on the offence. Intelligence was sent to Berlin : and 
 the patent, lying ready for signature, which should have made him Rath 
 (Councillor) at Posen, was changed for a similar appointment at Plozk ; 
 
118 APPI'LNDIX. 
 
 a change whicli, in all points, he regarded as an exile, but which his 
 best friends could not help admitting that he had richly merited. 
 
 From Plozk he failed not to emit his Tristia ; soliciting, with press- 
 ing earnestness, deliverance from his Polish Tomos. What was more 
 to the purpose, he seems to have amended liis conduct : he had mar- 
 ried while in Fosen ; his wiTe, a fair Poless, was possessed o: many 
 graces, and of contentment and submissiveness without limit ; and the 
 husband was beginning to substitute the duties and en^'oyments of do- 
 mestic and studious life, for the revelry and riot in which of late he 
 had much too deeply mingled. In his official capacity, his assiduity 
 and perseverance so far gained on his superiors, that at length, by the 
 influence of Hippel and other friends, he was transferred from Plozk to 
 Warsaw ; after having spent two regretful, but diligent and not unprofit- 
 able years, in this provincial seclusion. In the summer oc 1804, he 
 hastened to his new destination, which his fancy had decked for him 
 in all the colours of hoije. 
 
 To Ho.Tmann, the Polish capital was like a vast perpetual masquer- 
 ade ; and for a time he enjoyed its exotic, many-coloured aspect, the 
 more from its contrast with his late way of life. His public duty was 
 not difficult, and he performed it punctually ; his salary sufficed him ; 
 there were theatres and music on every hand ; and the streets were 
 peopled with a motley tumult of the sti-angest forins : * gay silken 
 ' Polesses, talking and promenading over broad stately squares ; the 
 * ancient venerable Polish noble, with moustaches, caftan, sash, and 
 'red or yellow boots ; the new race equipped as Parisian Inrroyablen ; 
 ' with foreigners of every nation ; ' not excluding long-bearded Jews, 
 puppetshow-men, monks, and dancing-bears. In a little while, HoT- 
 mann had formed some acquaintances among the human part of the 
 throng ; with one liitzig, his colleague in office, he established a lasting 
 intimacy. It began oddly enough : one day the two were walking 
 home together from the Court, and engaged in laborious, stinted and 
 formal conversation, when HoTmann, asking the character of some in- 
 dividual, the other answered, in the words of Falstaff, that he was ' a 
 fellow in buckram ; ' a phrase which enlightened the caustic visage of 
 HoSmann, at all times shy to strangers, and at once raised him into 
 one of his brilliant communicative moods. This Ilitzig, himself a man 
 of talent and energy, was of great service in assisting Hoffmann's intel- 
 lectual culture while at Warsaw, and stood by him afterwards in many 
 difficult emergencies. 
 
 An enthusiast dilettante prepared a new source of interest to Hoff- 
 mann, by a scheme which he proposed of erecting a Musical Institution. 
 By dint of great effort, the dilettante succeeded in procuring subscrib- 
 ers ; first one deserted palace, then a larger one, was purchased for a 
 hall of meeting : and Hoffmann, seeing that the scheme was really to 
 take effect, now entered into it with heart and hand. He planned the 
 
E. T. W. HOFFMANN. 110 
 
 arrangement of the rooms in the Xew Uesf«mree : for their decorations, 
 he sketched cartoons, part of wliich were painted by other artists, part 
 lie liimself painted ; not forgetting to introduce caricature portraits of 
 many honest subscribers, whom, by wings and tails, lie disguised as 
 sphinxes, gryphons, and other mythological cattle. His time was 
 henceforth divided between his Court and this Musical Ressource : 
 here, perched on his scaffold, among his paint pots, with the brush in 
 his hand, and a bottle of Hungary by his side, he might, in free hours, 
 be seen diligently working, and talking in the mean while to his friends 
 assembled below. If called to any juridical function by any extraordi- 
 nary mandate from the President, he would doff his painter's-jacket, 
 clamber down from his scaffold, wash his hands, and, to the surprise of 
 parties, transact their business as rapidly and correctly, as if he had 
 known no other employment. 
 
 The Musical Ressource prospered beyond expectation : brilliant con- 
 certs were given ; all that was fairest and gracef uUest in Warsaw attend- 
 ing, or even assisting : Hoffmann officiated as leader in their perform- 
 ance ; and, especially in Mozart's pieces, was allowed to have done his 
 part with consummate skill. Ere long, however, these melodious fes- 
 tivities were abruptly closed. News came of the battle of Jena ; Russian 
 foreposts entered the city ; Tartars, Cossacks, Bashkirs increased the 
 chaos of its population. In due time, arrived French envoys to treat of 
 a surrender ; the Prussians mounted guard with their knapsacks on ; 
 and one morning tidings spread over the city, that the Praga bridge of 
 boats was on fire, that the Russians and Prussians were retii'ing on the 
 one side, and Murat's advanced-guard entering by the other. The rest 
 is easy to conceive : the Prussian government was at an end in Warsaw ; 
 Hoffmann's Collegium honestly divided the contents of their strongbox, 
 then closed the partnership, and dispersed, each whither he listed, to 
 seek safety and new employment. 
 
 To most of them this was a grievous stroke : not to Hoffmann. For 
 him, Warsaw was still a fine variegated spectacle ; he had money enough 
 for present wants ; of the future he took little heed, or thought loosely 
 that he could live by Art, and that Art was far better than Law. Leav- 
 ing his large house, where his purse seemed hardly safe from military 
 violence, he took refuge in the garret of the Musical Ressource : here 
 was his pianoforte and a library, here his wife and only child ; with- 
 out, were Napoleon and his generals, reviews, reHidurateurs, theatres, 
 churches with musical monks ; and abundance of fellow-loungers to at- 
 tend him in these amusements. It was not till after a severe attack of 
 fever and the most visible contraction of his purse, that he seriously 
 bethought him what he was to do. A sad enough outlook ! For Art, 
 which had seemed so benignant at a distance, was shy and inaccessible 
 when actually applied to for bread. Hitzig had hastened off to Berlin, 
 and there opened a bookshop, in hope of better times; but his accounts 
 
120 APPENDIX. 
 
 of musical profiti5 in that city were discouraging ; and for the journey 
 to Vienna, wliich he advised and gave letters to forward, Hoffmann had 
 now no funds. His uncle in Berlin was dead ; from little Otto nothing 
 could be drawn : the perplexity was thickening, and the means of un- 
 ravelling it were daily diminishing. For the present, he resolved to 
 leave his wife and daughter .at Posen, with then- relations, and to visit 
 Berlin himself in quest of some employment. 
 
 In Berlin lie could find no employment whatever, either as a portrait- 
 painter, a teacher or a composer of music ; meanwhile the last remnant 
 of liis cash, his poor six Friedrichs-d'or, were one night filched from his 
 trunk ; and news came from Posen, that his little Cecilia was dead, and 
 liis wife dangerously ill. In this extremity, his heart for a while had 
 nigh failed him ; but he again gathered courage, and made a fresh at- 
 tempt. He published in the newspapers an advertisement, offering him- 
 self as Music-director, on the most moderate terms, in any theatre ; and 
 was happy enough, soon afterwards, to make an engagement of tlie kind 
 lie wished, with the managers of the Bamberg stage, at that time under 
 the patronage of the Count von Soden. 
 
 To an ordinary temper, this very humble preferment would have of- 
 fered but a mortifying contrast with former affluence and official respec- 
 tability : Hoffmann, however, saw in it the means of realising his long- 
 cherished wish, a life devoted to Art ; and hastened to his Bamberg 
 musical appointment with gayer hopes than he had ever fixed on any 
 other prospect. Had money or economical comfort been his chief ob- 
 ject, he must have felt himself cruelly disappointed: mischance on mis- 
 chance befell the Bamberg theatre ; contradiction on the back of contra- 
 dictio 1 awaited the new Music-director, whose life, for the next seven 
 years, differs in no outward respect from that of the most unprosperous 
 strolling player. Nevertheless, he made no complaint ; perhaps he really 
 lelt little sorrow. 'This must do,' writes he in his Diary, ' and it will 
 ' do ; for now I shall never more have a Relatio ex Actis to write while I 
 * live, and so the Fountain of all Evil is dried up ' In a wealthier sta- 
 tion, he might have composed more operas, and painted more carica- 
 tures ; but it is possible enough the world might never have heard of him 
 as a writer. The fate of his first two Novels had perhaps disgusted him 
 with authorship : his studies at least had long pointed to other objects ; 
 nor was it choice, but necessity, which now led him back to literature. 
 After many stagnations, the Bamberg theatrical cash-box had at length 
 become entirely insolvent ; portrait-painting, and music-teaching, were 
 inadequate to the support of even a frugal household : Hoffmann, who, 
 in all his straits, appears to have dis-dained pecuniary assistance, now 
 wrote to Rochlitz.of Leipzig, Editor of the Musicalische Zeitung (Musi- 
 cal Chronicle), soliciting employment in this Work, and, by way of tes- 
 timonial, transmitting some of his recent performances The letter it- 
 self, written with the most fantastic drollery, was testimonial enough : 
 
E. T. W. HOFFMANN. 121 
 
 HoITmann was instantly and gladly accepted ; and in ten days, two es- 
 says were prepared and despatched ; the first of a long series, afterwards 
 collected, enlarged, and given to the world under the title of FanUmeH- 
 tucke., in CalloVs J/^«i2WM Fantasy pieces, in the style or Callot'), with a 
 preface by Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, to whom Ho!Tmann had paid a 
 visit while at Bamberg. 
 
 The incipent author was delighted with his new task ; and Rochlitz 
 and his readers no less so with its execution. These Faiitasiestilr] o 
 turning chietly on Music, exclusively on Art, were afterwards to make 
 him known to the world as a brilliant and peculiar writer ; and they 
 served for the present to augment his scanty funds, to bring liim int.) 
 favour and employment as a musical composer, and at last to deliver 
 him from Bamberg. In 1818, by the management of Rochlitz, he 
 formed an engagement at Dresden, again as Music director, in the 
 theatre oc one Seconda This appointment he hailed as a most pro- 
 pitious change ; but his theatrical career was not destined anywhere to 
 be smooth. Misfortunes, almost destruction, overtook him even on his 
 journey : Seconda he soon found to be a driveller ; the opera shifted 
 from Dresden to Leipzig, and from Leipzig to Dresden ; the country was 
 full of Cossacks and Ge7idarmes,- a,nd Hoffmann's operatic melodies were 
 drowned in the loud clang of Napoleon's battles. Till the end of 1814, 
 he led a liTe more chequered by hard vicissitudes than ever : now 
 quarrelling with Seconda, now sketching caricatures of the French ; 
 now writing Fantasies^ now looking at Battles ; sometimes sick, often 
 in danger, generally light of heart, and always short of money. The 
 Golden Pot, one of the Fcmtasiestiicke, which follows this Introduction, 
 was begun in Dresden, shortly before the Battle of Leipzig, while the 
 cannon of the Allies was bombarding the city ; with grenadoes bursting 
 at the writer's very hand, nay at last driving him from his garret into 
 some safer shelter. 
 
 The revolution of Europe, which restored so many sovereigns to their 
 thrones, restored Hoffmann to his chair of office. He arrived at Berlin 
 in September 1814 ; was provided with employment ; reinstated in his 
 former rights of seniority ; and two years afterwards promoted, in conse- 
 quence, to be Rath in the KdnimergericJit, or Exchequer Court of the 
 capital. 
 
 Ho^mann's situation, after all his buffetings, might now be considered 
 enviable : the income of his post was amply sufficient, and its labour 
 not excessive ; his best friends were in his neighbourhood, Hitzig was 
 working with him at the same table; his public conduct was irrepre- 
 hensible, and his literary fame was rapidly spreading. The Fantasies- 
 tdcke were already universally popular ; the EUxiere dcs Teufels (DeviVs 
 
 ' Some of my readers may require to be informed that Jacques Callot was a Lirraiao 
 }>ainter of the seventeenth century ; a wild genius, whose Temptation of St, Antomj is 
 said to e.vceed, in chaotic incohcroncc, that of Teniei's himself. 
 
122 APPENDIX. 
 
 Elixir, a Novel in two volumes, since translated into English) had just 
 been given to the circulating libraries ; and his Opera of Undine, which 
 Fouquj had versified for Hoffmann's music, was brought out on the 
 Berlin stage with loud plaudits, and reviewed with praises by Weber 
 liimself. Hoffmann was happy ; and had he been wise, might still have 
 continued happy : but he was not wise, and in this cup of joy there 
 lurked lor him a deadly poison. 
 
 Eerlin, like most other cities, prides itself in being somewhat of a 
 modern Athens ; and Hoffmann, the wonder of the day, was invited 
 with the warmest blandishments to participate in its musical and liter- 
 ary tea. But in these polished circles Hoffmann prospered ill : he was 
 sharp-tempered ; vain, indeed, but transcendently vain ; he required 
 the wittiest talk or the most entire audience ; and had a heart-hatred 
 to inanity, however gentle and refined. When his company grew tire- 
 some, he ' madtt the most terrific faces ; ' would answer the languishing 
 raptures of some perfumed critic by an observation on the weather ; 
 would transfix half a dozen harmless dilettanti through the vitals, each 
 on his seveial bolt ; nay, in the end, give vent to his spleen by talking 
 like a sheer maniac ; in short, never cease till, one way or other, the 
 hapless circle was reduced to utter desolation. To this intellectual bev- 
 erage he was seldom twice invited ; and, ere long, the musical and lit- 
 erary Tea urn was for him a closed fountain. 
 
 Yet Hoffmann could not do without society, without excitement, and 
 now not well without exclusive admiration. His old friends he had 
 not forsaken, for he seldom, and with difficulty, got intimate with a 
 stranger ; but their quiet life could not content him : it was clear that 
 the enjoyment he sought was only to be found among gay laughter-lov- 
 ing topers, as a guest at their table, or still better, as their sovereign in 
 the wine-house. 'The order of his life, from 181G, downwards,' says 
 his Biographer, ' was this : On Mondays and Thursdays he passed his 
 ' forenoons at his post in the Kammergericht ; on other days at home, 
 ' in working ; the afternoons he regularly spent in sleep, to which, in 
 ' summer, perhaps he added walking : the evenings and nights were de- 
 * voted to the tavern. Even when out in company, while the other 
 ' guests went home, he retired to the tavern to await the morning, 
 'before which time it was next to impossible to bring him home.' 
 Strangers who came to Berlin went to see him in the tavern ; the tavern 
 was his study, and his pulpit, and his throne : here his wit flashed and 
 flamed like an Au7V7'a Borealis, and the table was forever in a roar ; 
 and thus, amid tobacco-smoke, and over coarse earthly liquor, was 
 Hoffmann wasting faculties which might have seasoned the nectar of 
 the gods. 
 
 Poor Hoffmann was on the highway to ruin ; and the only wonder is, 
 that with such fatal speed, he did not reach the goal even more bale- 
 fully and sooner. His official duties wei*e, to the last, punctually and 
 
E. T. W. HOFFMANN. 123 
 
 irreproachably performed. He wrote more abunrlantly than ever ; no 
 Magazine Editor w&s contented without his contributions ; the Nacht- 
 stuclx (Night-pieces) were published in 1817 ; two years afterwards Klein 
 ZacJies, regarded (it would seem falsely) as a local satire ; and at last, 
 between 1819 and 1821, appeared in four successive volumes, the Sern- 
 jnonsbriider, containing most of his smaller Tales, collected from various 
 fugitive publications, and combined together by dialogues of the Sn^< - 
 pion-brethre)) , a little club of friends, which for some time met weekly 
 in Hoffmann's house. The Prinzessin Brambilla (1821) is properly an- 
 other Fantasy-jnece. The Lel)ens((iissicliten (^es Kater Murr iTom-cat 
 Murr's Philosophy of Life) published in 1820 and 1821, was meant by 
 the author as his master work ; but the third volume is wanting ; and 
 the wild anarchy, musical and moral, said to reign in the first two, may 
 forever remain unreconciled. 
 
 Meanwhile, Hoffmann's tavern-orgies^ continued unabated, and his 
 lujalth at last sunk under them In 1819, he had suffered a renewed 
 attack of gout ; from which, however, he had recovered by a journey 
 to the Silesian baths. On his forty-fifth birthday, the 24th of January 
 1822, he saw his best and oldest friends, including Hitzig and Hippel, 
 assembled round his table ; but he himself was sick ; no longer hurry- 
 ing to and fro in hospitable assiduity, as was his custom, but confined 
 to his chair, and drinking bath-water, while his guests were enjoying 
 wine. It was his death that lay upon him, and a mournful lingering 
 death. The disease was a tabes dorsalis ; limb by limb, from his feet 
 upwards, for five months, his body stiffened and died. Hoffmann bore 
 his sufferings with inconceivable gaiety ; so long as his hands had power, 
 he kept writing ; afterwards he dictated to an amanuensis ; and four of 
 his Tales, the last, Der Feind (The Enemy), discontinued only some few 
 days before his death, were composed in this melancholy season. He 
 would not believe that he was dying, and he longed for life with inex- 
 pressible desire. On the evening of the 24th of June, his whole body 
 to the neck had become stiff and powerless ; no longer feeling j^'i-in, he 
 said to his Doctor : "I shall soon be through it now." — "Yes," said the 
 Doctor, "you will soon be through it." Next morning he was evidently 
 dying: yet about eleven o'clock he awoke from his stupor; cried that 
 he was well, and would go on with dictating the Feind that night ; at 
 the same time calling on his wife to read him the passage where he had 
 stopt. She spoke to liim in kind dissuasion : lie was silent ; he mo- 
 tioned to be turned towards the wall ; and scarcely had this been done, 
 when the fatal sound was heard in his throat, and in a few minutes 
 Hoifmann was no more. 
 
 Hoffmann's was a mind for which proper culture miglit have done 
 great things ; there lay in it the elements of much moral worth, and 
 talents of almost the highest order Nor was it weakness of "Will that so 
 far frustrated these fine endowments ; for in many ti-ying emergencies, 
 
124 APPENDIX. 
 
 he proved that decision and perseverance of resolve were by no means 
 denied him. Unhappily, however, he had found no sure principle of 
 action ; no Truth adequate to the guidance of such a mind. What in 
 common minds is called Prudence, was not wanting, cotild this have 
 sufficed ; for it is to be observed, that so long as he was poor, so long as 
 the fetters of everyday duty lay round him, Hermann was diligent, un- 
 blamable and even praiseworthy : but these wants once supplied, these 
 fetters once cast off, his wayward spirit was without fit direction or re- 
 straint, and its fine faculties rioted in wild disorder. In the practical 
 concerns of life he felt no interest : in religion he seems not to have be- 
 lieved, or even disbelieved ; he never talked of it, or would hear it 
 talked of : to politics he was equally hostile, and equally a stranger. 
 Yet the wages of daily labour, the solace of his five senses, and the inter- 
 course oc social or gregarious life, were far from completing his ideal of 
 enjoyment ; his better soul languished in these barren scenes, and longed 
 for some worthier home. This home, unhappily, he was not destined 
 10 find. He sought for it in the Poetry of Art ; and the aim of his writ- 
 ings, so far as they have any aim, as they are not mere interjections, ex- 
 pressing the casual moods of his mind, was constantly the celebration 
 and unfolding of this the best and truest doctrine which he had to 
 preach. But here too his common failing seems to have beset him : ho 
 loved Art with a deep but scarcely with a pure love ; not as the foun- 
 tain of Beauty, but as the fountain of refined Enjoyment ; he demanded 
 from it not heavenly peace, but earthly excitement ; as indeed through 
 liis whole life, he had never learned the truth that for human souls a. 
 continuance of passive pleasure is inconceivable, has not only been de- 
 nied us by Nature, but cannot, and could not be granted. 
 
 From all this there grew up in Hoffmann's character something player- 
 like, something false, brawling and tawdry, which we trace both in his 
 writings and his conduct. His philosophy degenerates into levity, his 
 magnanimity into bombast : the light of his fine mind is not sunshine, 
 but the glitter of an artificial firework. As in Art, so in Life he had 
 failed to discover that ' agreeable sensations ' are not the highest good. 
 His pursuit of these led him into many devious courses, and the close 
 of his mistaken pilgrimage was — the tavern. 
 
 Yet if, in judging Ho Tmann, we are forced to condemn him, let it 
 be with mildness, with justice. Let us not forget, that for a mind like 
 liis. the path of propriety was difficult to find, still more difficult to keep. 
 Moody, sensitive, and fantastic, he wandered through the world like a 
 foreign presence, subject to influences of which common natures have 
 happily no glimpse. A whole scale of the most wayward and unearthly 
 humours stands recorded in his Diary: his head was forever swarming 
 with beautiful or horrible chimeras ; a common incident could throw 
 his whole being into tumult, a distorted face or figure would abide with 
 him for days, and rule over him like a spell. It was not things, but 
 
E. T. W. HOFFMANN. 1 25 
 
 'the shows of things,' that he saw ; and the world and its business, in 
 which he had to live and move, often hovered before liim like a per- 
 plexed and spectral vision. Withal it should be remembered, that, 
 though never delivered from Self, he was not cruel or unjust, nor inca- 
 pable of generous actions and the deepest attachment. His harshness 
 was often misinterpreted ; for heat of temper deformed the movements 
 of kindness ; mockery also was the dialect in which he spoke and even 
 thought, and often, under a calm or bitter smile, he could veil the 
 wounds of a bleeding heart. A good or a wise man we must not call 
 him: but to others his presence was beneficent, his injuries were to 
 himself ; and among the ordinary population of this world, to note, him 
 with the mark of reprobation were ungrateful and unjust. 
 
 His genius formed the most important element of his character, and 
 of course participated in its faults. There are the materials of a glorious 
 poet, but no poet has been fashioned out of them. His mind was not 
 cultivated or brought under his own dominion ; we admire the rich in- 
 gredients of it, and regret that they were never purified, and fused into 
 a whole. His life was disjointed : he had to labour for his bread, and 
 he followed three different arts ; what wonder that in none of them he 
 should attain perfection ? Accordingly, except perhaps as a musician, 
 the critics of his country deny him the name of an Artist : as a poet, he 
 aimed but at popularity, and has attained little more. His intellect is 
 seldom strong, and that only in glimpses ; his abundant humour is too 
 often false and local ; his rich and gorgeous fancy is continually dis- 
 torted into crotche+s and caprices. In fact, he elaborated nothing ; 
 above all, not himself. His knowledge, except in the sphere of Art, is 
 not extensive ; for an author, he had read but little ; criticisms, even 
 of his own works, he never looked into ; and except Richter, whom he 
 saw only once, he seems never to have met with any individual whose 
 conversation could instruct or direct liim. Human nature he had 
 studied only as a caricature-painter : men, it is said, in fact interested 
 him chiefly as mimetic objects ; their common doings and destiny were 
 without beauty for him, and he observed and copied them only in their 
 extravagances and ludicrous distortions His works were written with 
 incredible speed, and they bear many marks of haste : it is seldom that 
 any piece is perfected, that its brilliant and often genuine elements are 
 blended in harmonious union. On the largest of his completed Novels, 
 the Elixiere dea Teufels, he himself set no value ; and the Kater Muri\ 
 which he meant for a higher ob'ect, he did not live to finish, nor is it 
 thought he could have finished it. His smaller pieces were mostly 
 written for transitory publications, and too often with only a transitory 
 excellence. We do not read them without interest, without high amuse- 
 ment ; but the second reading pleases worse than the first : for there is 
 too little meaning in that bright extravagance ; it is but the hurried 
 copy of the phantasms which forever masqueraded through the author's 
 
126 APPENDIX. 
 
 mind ; it less resembles the creation of a poet, than the dream of an 
 opium.- eater. 
 
 With these faults a rigorous criticism may charge Hoffmann ; and 
 this the more strictly, the greater his talent, the more undoubted his 
 capability and obligation to avoid them. At the same time, to reject 
 liis claim, as has been done, to what the poets call their immortality, 
 seems hard measure. If Callot and Teniers, his models, still figure in 
 picture-galleries ; if Rabelais continues, after centuries, to be read, and 
 even the Caliph Vathek, after decades, still finds admirers, the products 
 of a mind so brilliant, wild and singular as that of Hoffmann may long 
 hover in the remembrance of the world ; as objects of curiosity, of cen- 
 sure, and, on the whole, compared with absolute Nonentity, of enter- 
 tainment, and partial approval. For the present, at least, as a child of 
 his time and his coiintry, he is not to be overlooked in any survey of 
 German Literature, and least of all by the foreign student of it. 
 
 Among Hoffmann's shorter performances, I find Meister Martin noted 
 by his critics as the most perfect : it is a story of ancient Niirnberg, and 
 worked up in a style which even reminds ns of the Author of Waver- 
 ley. Nevertheless, I have selected this Goldne Topf^ ^ as likelier to in- 
 terest the English reader : it has more of the faults, but also more of 
 the excellences peculiar to its author, and exhibits a much truer pict- 
 ure of his individuality. To recommend it, criticisms would be un- 
 availing : there is no deep art involved in its composition ; to minds 
 alive to the graces of Fancy, and disposed to pardon even its aberra- 
 tions when splendid and kindly, this Mdhrclien will speak its whole 
 meaning for itself ; and to others it has little or nothing to say. The 
 most tolerant will see in it much to pardon, but even under its |)resent 
 disadvantages they may perhaps recognise in it the erratic footsteps of 
 a poet, and lament with me that his coiirse has ended so far short of 
 the goal. 
 
 JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHTER. 
 
 Jean Paul Frtedrtch Richtek, one of the chosen men of Ger- 
 many and of the World, whom I hoped, in my vanity, perhaps to 
 gratify by this introduction of him to a people whom he knew and 
 valued, has been called from his earthly sojourn since tlie commence- 
 ment of my little task, and no voice, either of love or censure, shall 
 any more reach his ear. 
 
 The circle of his existence is thus complete : his works and him- 
 self have assumed their final shape and combination, and lie ready 
 for a judgment, which, when it is just, must now be unalterable. 
 To satisfy a natural and rational curiosity respecting such a character, 
 
 1 Golden Pot, our only Translation from Hoffmann. 
 
JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICH RICHrER. 127 
 
 materials are not wanting ; but to us in the mean time thej are inacces- 
 sible. I have inquired in his own country, but witliout ellect ; having 
 learned only that two Biographies of Richter are in tlie press, but 
 that nothing on the subject has hitherto been published. For the 
 present, therefore, I must content myself with such meagre and transi- 
 tory hints as were in circulation in his lifetime, and compress into a few 
 sentences a history which might be written in volumes. 
 
 Eichter was born at Wunsiedel in Bayreuth, on the 21st of March 
 1763. His father was clergyman of the place, and afterwards of 
 Schwarzbach on the Saale. The young man also was destined for the 
 clerical profession ; with a view to which, having finished his school- 
 studies in the Hof G3-mnasium, he in 1780 proceeded to the University 
 of Leij^zig, with the highest testimonials from his former masters. 
 Theology as a progression, however, he could not relish ; poetry, philoso- 
 phy and general literature, were his chief pursuits while at Leipzig ; 
 from which, apparently after no long stay, he returned to Schwarzbach 
 to his parents, uncertain what he should betake him to. In a little 
 while, he attempted authorship; publishing various .short miscellaneous 
 pieces, distinguished by intellectual vigour, copious fancy, the wildest 
 yet truest humour, the whole concocted in a style entirely his own, 
 which, if it betrayed the writer's inexperience, could not hide the ex- 
 istence in him of a highly-gifted, strong and extraordinary mind. The 
 reception of his first performances, or the inward felicity of writing, en- 
 couraged him to proceed : in the midst of an unsettled and changeful 
 life, his pen was never idle, its productions never otherwise than new, 
 fantastic and powerful: he lived successively in.Hof, in Weimar, Ber- 
 lin, Meiningen, Coburg, ' raying forth, wherever he might be stationed, 
 the wild light of his genius over all Germany.' At last he settled in 
 Bayreuth, having here, in testimony of his literary merit, been hon- 
 oured with the title of Legations-Rath, and presented with a pension 
 from his native Prince. In Bavreuth his chief works were written ; he 
 had married, and been blessed with two children ; his intellectual la- 
 bours had gained him esteem and love from all ranks of his country- 
 men, and chiefly from those whose suffrage was of most value ; a frank 
 and original, yet modest, good and kind deportment, seems to have 
 transferred these sentiments to his private circle : with a heart at 
 once of the most earnest and most sportful cast ; affectionate, and 
 encompassed with the objects of his affection ; diligent in the highest 
 of all earthly tasks, the acquisition and the diffusion of Truth ; and 
 witnessing from his sequestered home the working of his own mind on 
 thousands of fellow-minds, Richter seemed happy and at peace ; and 
 his distant reader loved to fancy him as in his calm privacy enjoying 
 the fruit of past toils, or amid the highest and mildest meditations, 
 looking forward to long honourable years of future toil. For his 
 thoughts were manifold ; thoughts of a moralist and a sage, no less than 
 
128 APPENDIX. 
 
 of a poet and a wit. The last work of liis I saw advertised, was a little 
 volume entitled, On the Ever-green of our Feelings ; and in November 
 (1825), news came that Richter was dead ; and a heart, Avhich we had 
 figured as one of the truest, deepest and gentlest that ever lived in this 
 world, was to beat no more. 
 
 Of Richter's private character I have learned little ; but that little 
 was all favourable, and accordant with the indications in his works 
 Of his public and intellectual character much might be said and 
 thought ; for the secret of it is bj no means floating on the surface, and 
 it will reward some study. The most cursory inspection, even an ex- 
 ternal one, will satisfy us that he neither was, nor wished to be con- 
 sidered as, a man who wrote or thought in the track of other men, to 
 whom common practice is a law, and whose excellences and defects 
 the common formulas of criticism will easily represent. The very 
 titles of his works are startling. One of his earliest performances is 
 named Selection from tlie Papers of the Devil ; another is Biographical 
 Ii£creations under the Cranium of a Giantess. His novels are almost uni- 
 formly introduced by some fantastic narrative accounting for his publi- 
 cation and obtainment of the story. Hesperus, his chief novel, bears 
 the secondary title of a Dog post-days, and the chapters are named 
 Dog-posts, as having been conveyed to him in a letter-bag, round the 
 neck of a little nimble Shock from some unknown Island in the South 
 sea. 
 
 The first aspect of these peculiarities cannot prepossess us in his 
 favour ; we are too forcibly reminded of theatrical clap-traps and liter- 
 ary quackery ; nor on opening one of the works themselves is the case 
 much mended. Piercing gleams of thought do not escape us ; singular 
 truths conveyed in a form as singular ; grotesque and often trul}- ludi- 
 crous delineations ; pathetic, magnificent, far-sounding passages ; effu- 
 sions full of wit, knowledge and imagination, but difiicult to bring under 
 any rubric whatever ; all the elements, in short, of a glorious intellect, 
 but dashed together in such wild arrangement, that their order seems 
 the very ideal of confusion. The style and structure of the book appear 
 alike incomprehensible. The narrative is every now and then siispended 
 to make way for some " Extra-leaf," some wild digression upon any 
 ^subject but the one in hand ; the language groans with indescribable 
 metaphors and allusions to all things human and divine ; flowing onward, 
 not like a river, but like an inudation ; circling in complex eddies, 
 chafing and gurgling now this way, now that, till the proper current 
 sinks out of view amid the boundless uproar. We close the work with 
 a mingled feeling of astonishment, oppression and perplexity ; and 
 Richter stands before us in brilliant cloudy vagueness, a giant mass of 
 intellect, but without form, beauty or intelligible purpose. 
 
 To readers who believe that intrinsic is inseparable from superficial 
 excellence, and that nothing can be good or beautiful which is not to be 
 
JEAN PAUL FRTEDIUCII RICIITER 129 
 
 seen through in a moment, Richter can occasion little difficulty. They 
 admit him to be a man of vast natural endowments, but he is utterly 
 uncultivated, and without command of them ; full of monstrous affecta- 
 tion, the very High Priest of bad taste : knows not the art of writing, 
 scarcely that there is such an art ; an insane visionary floating forever 
 among baseless dreams, which hide the firm Earth from his view ; an 
 intellectual Polyphemus ; in short, a monstrum horrendum^ informe, in- 
 f/ens (carefully adding) cui lumen axlemptum ; and they close their ver- 
 dict reflectively, with his own praiseworthy maxim : '• Providence has 
 given to the English the empire of the sea, to the French that of the 
 land, to the Germans that of — the air." 
 
 In this way the. matter is adjusted ; briefly, comfortably and wrong. 
 The casket was difficult to open ; did we know by its very shape that 
 there was nothing in it, that so we should cast it into the sea ? Affecta- 
 tion is often singularity, but singularity is not always affectation. If the 
 nature and condition of a man be really and truly, not conceitedly and 
 untruly, singular, so also will his manner be, so also ought it to be. 
 Affectation is the product of Falsehood, a heavy sin, and the parent of 
 numerous heavy sins ; let it be severely punished, but not too lightly 
 imputed. Scarcely any mortal is absolutely free from it, neither most 
 probably is Richter ; but it is in minds of another substance than his 
 that it grows to be the ruling product. Moreover, he is actually not a 
 visionary •, but, with all his visions, will be found to see the firm Earth 
 in its whole figures and relations much more clearly than thousands of 
 such critics, who too probably can see nothing else. Far from being 
 untrained or uncultivated, it will surprise these persons to discover that 
 few men have studied the art of writing, and many other arts besides, 
 more carefully than he ; that his Yomcliule der ^Wietik{\x\.i\o^\XQ,\\Q\\ to 
 Esthetics) abounds with deep and sound maxims of criticism ; in the 
 course of which, many complex works, his own among others, are rigidly 
 and justly tried, and even the graces and minutest qualities of style are 
 by no means overlooked or unwisely handled. 
 
 Withal, there is something in Richter that incites us to a second, to a 
 third perusal. His works are hard to understand, but the}' always have 
 a meaning, and often a true and deep one. In our closer, more compre- 
 hensive glance, their truth steps forth with new distinctness, their error 
 dissipates and recedes, passes into venality, often even into beauty ; and 
 at last the thick haze which encircled the form of the writer melts away, 
 and he stands revealed to us in his own stedfast features, a colossal 
 spirit, a lofty and original thinker, a genuine poet, a high-minded, true 
 and most amiable man. 
 
 I have called him a colossal spirit, for this impression continues with 
 us: to the last we figure him as something gigantic ; for all the elements 
 of his structure are vast, and combined together in living and life-giv- 
 ing, rather than in beautiful or symmetrical order. His Intellect is 
 9 
 
130 APPENDIX. 
 
 keen, impetuons, far-grasping, fit to rend in pieces the stubbornest ma* 
 terials, and extort from tliem their most hidden and refractory truth. 
 In his Humour he sports with the highest and the lowest, he can play 
 at bowls with the sun and moon. His Imagination opens for us the 
 Land of Dreams ; we sail with him through the boundless abyss, and the 
 secrets of Space, and Time, and Life, and Annihilation, hover round us 
 in dim cloudy forms, and darkness, and immensity, and dread, encom- 
 pass and overshadow us. Nay, in handling the smallest matter, he 
 works it with the tools of a giant. A common truth is wrenched from 
 its old combinations, and presented us in new, impassable, abysmal 
 contrast with its opposite error. A trifle, some slender character, some 
 weakling humorist, some jest, or quip, or spiritual toy, is shaped into 
 most quaint, yet often truly living form ; but shaped somehow as with 
 the hammer of Vulcan, with three strokes that might have helped to 
 forge an ^gis. The treasures of his mind are of a similar description 
 with the mind itself ; his knowledge is gathered from all the kingdoms oc 
 Art, and Science, and Nature, and lies round him in huge unwieldy 
 heaps. His very language is Titanian ; deep, strong, tumultuous, shin- 
 ing with a thousand hues, fused from a thousand elements, and winding 
 in labyrinthic mazes. 
 
 Among Richter's gifts, perhaps the first that strikes us as truly great 
 is his Imagination ; for he loves to dwell in the loftiest and most solemn 
 provinces of thought ; his works abound with mysterious allegories, vis- 
 ions and typical adumbrations ; his Dreams, in particular, have a gloomy 
 vastness, broken here and there by wild far-darting splendour, and 
 shadowy forms of meaning rise dimly from the bosom of the void Infi- 
 nite. Yet, if I mistake not, Humour is his ruling quality, the quality 
 which lives most deeply in his inward nature, and most strongly influ- 
 ences his manner of being. In this rare gift, for none is rarer than 
 true humour, he stands unrivalled in his own country ; and among late 
 writers, in every other. To describe humour is difficult at all times, 
 and would perhaps be still more difficult in Richter's case. Like all 
 liis other qualities, it is vast, rude, irregular ; often perhaps overstrained 
 and extravagant : yet fundamentally it is genuine humour, the humour 
 of Cervantes and Sterne, the product not of Contempt but of Love, not 
 of superficial distortion of natural forms, but of deep though playful 
 sympathy with all forms of Nature. It springs not less from the heart 
 than from the head ; its result is not laughter, but something far 
 kindlier and better ; as it were, the balm which a generous spirit pours 
 over the wounds or life, and which none but a generous spirit can give 
 forth. Such humour is compatible with tenderest and sublimest feel- 
 ings, or rather, it is incompatible with the want of them. In Richter, 
 accordingly, we find a true sensibility ; a softness, sometimes a simple 
 humble pathos, which works its way into every heart. Some slight 
 incident is carelessly thrown before us : we smile at it perhaps, but 
 
JEAN PAUL FRTEDRICH RICHTER. 131 
 
 with a smile more sad than tears ; and tlie unpretending passage 
 in its meagre brevity sinks deeper into the soul than sentimental 
 volumes. 
 
 It is on the strength of this and its accompanying endowments, that 
 his main success as an artist depends. His favourite characters have al- 
 ways a dash of the ridiculous in their circumstances or their composi- 
 tion, perhaps in both : they are often men of no account ; vain, poor, 
 ignorant, feeble ; and we scarcely know how it is that we love them ; 
 for the author all along has been laughing no less heartily than we at 
 their ineptitudes ; yet so it is, his Fibel, his Fixlein, his Siebenkas, 
 even his Schmelzle, insinuate themselves into our affections ; and their 
 ultimate place is closer to our hearts than that of many more splendid 
 heroes. This is the test of true humour ; no wit, no sarcasm, no knowl- 
 edge will suffice ; not talent but genius will accomplish the result. It 
 is in studying these characters that we first convince ourselves of Rich- 
 ter's claim to the title of a poet, of a true creator. For with all his wild 
 vagueness, this highest intellectual honour cannot be refused him. 
 The figures and scenes which he lays before us, distorted, entangled, 
 indescribable as they seem, have a true poetic existence ; for we not 
 only liedv them, but we see them, afar o.T, by the wondrous light, which 
 none but the Poet, in the strictest meaning of that word, can shed over 
 them. 
 
 So long as humour will avail him, his management even of higher and 
 stronger characters may still be pronounced successful ; but, whenever 
 humour ceases to be applicable, hrs success is more or less imperfect. 
 In the treatment of heroes proper he is seldom completely happy. Tliey 
 shoot into rugged exaggeration in his hands, their sensibility becomes 
 too copious and tearful, their magnanimity too fierce, abrxipt and thor- 
 ough-going. In some few instances, they verge towards absolute fail- 
 ure : compared with their less ambitious brethren, they are almost of a 
 vulgar cast ; with all their brilliancy and vigour, too like that positive, 
 determinate, choleric, volcanic class of personages whom we meet witli 
 so frequently in novels ; they call themselves Men, aud do their utmost 
 to prove the assertion, but they cannot make lis believe it ; for after all 
 their vapouring and storming we see well enough tliat they are but En- 
 gines, with no more life than the Freethinkers' model in Martinus Scrib- 
 lerus^ the Nuremberg Man, who operated by a combination of pipes and 
 levers, and though he could breathe and digest perfectly, and even rea- 
 son as well as most country parsons, was made of wood and leather. In 
 the general conduct of such histories and delineations, Richter seldom 
 appears to advantage : the incidents are often startling and extravagant ; 
 the whole structure of the story has a rugged, broken, huge, artificial 
 aspect, and will not assume the air of truth. Yet its chasms are strangely 
 filled up with the costliest materials ; a world, a universe of wit and 
 knowledge and fancy and imagination has sent its fairest products to 
 
132 APPENDIX. 
 
 ado n the edifice ; the rude and rent cyclopean walls are resplendent 
 with jewels and beaten gold ; rich stately foliage screens it, the balmiest 
 odours encircle it -, we stand astonished if not captivated, delighted if 
 not charmed by the artist and his art. 
 
 By a critic of his own country, Richter has been named a Western 
 Oriental, an epithet which Goethe himself is at the pains to reproduce 
 and illustrate in his West- ostlichter D lean. The mildness, the warm all- 
 comprehending love attributed to Oriental poets, may in fact be discov- 
 ered in Richter ; not less their fantastic exaggeration, their brilliant ex- 
 travagance ; above all, their overflowing abundance, their lyrical 
 diffuseness, as if writing for readers who were altogether passive, to 
 whom no sentiment could be intelligible unless it were expounded and 
 dissected, and presented under all its thousand aspects. In this last 
 point, Richter is too much an Oriental : his passionate outpourings would 
 often be more effective were they far briefer. Withal, however, he is 
 a Western Oriental : he lives in the midst of cultivated Europe in the 
 nineteenth century ; he has looked with a patient and piercing eye on its 
 motley aspect ; and it is this Europe, it is the changes of its many-col- 
 oured life, that are held uj) to us in his works. His subject is Life ; his 
 chosen stiidy has been Man. Few have known the world better, or 
 taken at once a clearer and a kindlier view of its concerns. For Rich- 
 ter's mind is at peace with itself: a mild, humane, beneficent spirit 
 breathes through his works. His very contempt, of which he is by no 
 means incapable or sparing, is placid and tolerant ; liis affection is warm, 
 tender, comprehensive, not dwelling among the high places of the world, 
 not blind to its objects when found among the poor and lowly. Nature 
 in all her scenes and manifestations he loves with a deep, almost pas- 
 sionate love ; from the solemn phases of the starry heaven to the simple 
 floweret of the meadow, his eye and his heart are open for her charms 
 and her mystic meanings. From early years, he tells us, he may be 
 said to have almost lived under the open sky : here he could recreate 
 liimself, here he studied, here he often wrote. It is not with the feel- 
 ing of a mere painter and view-hunter that he looks on Nature : but he 
 dwells amid her beauties and solemnities as in the mansion of a Mother ; 
 he finds peace in her majestic peace ; he worships, in this boundless 
 Temple, the great original of Peace, to whom the earth and the fulness 
 thereof belongs. For Richter does not hide from us that he looks to 
 the Maker of the Universe as to his Father ; that in his belief of man's 
 Immortality lies the sanctuary of his spirit, the solace of all suffering, 
 the solution of all that is mysterious in human destiny. The wild free- 
 dom with which he treats the dogmas of religion must not mislead us to 
 suppose that he himself is irreligious or unbelieving. It is Religion, it is 
 Belief, in whatever dogmas expressed, or whether expressed in any, that 
 has reconciled for liim the contradictions of existence, that has over- 
 spread his path with light, and chastened the fiery elements of his 
 
JEAN PAUL FRIEDRICII RICHTER. 133 
 
 spirit by mingling with tliem Mercy and Humility. To many of my 
 readers it may be surprising, that in this respect Richter is almost soli- 
 tary among the great minds of his country. These men too, with few 
 exceptionSj seem to have arrived at spiritual peace, at full harmonious 
 development of being ; but their path to it has been different. In 
 Richter alone, among the great (and even sometimes truly moral) writ- 
 ers of his day,' do we find the Immortality of the Soul expressly in- 
 sisted on. nay so much as incidentally alluded to. This is a fact well 
 meriting investigation and reflection, but here is not the place for treat- 
 ing it 
 
 Of Richter's Works I have left myself no room for speaking individ- 
 ii-illy ; nor, except with large details, could the criticism of them be at- 
 tempted with any profit. His Novels, published in what order I have 
 not accurately learned, are the Unsichtbare Loge (Invisible Lodge) ; 
 Flegeljahre (Wild Oats) ; Lebe/i Flbels, Verpissers der Beinroch'schen Flhcl 
 (Life of Fibel ; or to translate the spirit of it : Life of Primer, Author 
 oc the Christ-church Primer) ; Lebendes Qninius Fixlein, and Sch/nekle^s 
 Rem', here presented to the English reader ; Katzenberger^s Raderei'se, 
 and the Jubelseiiior ; with two of much larger and more ambitious 
 structure, Hesperus and Titan, each of which I have in its turn seen 
 rated as his masterpiece : the former only is known to me. His work 
 on Criticism has been mentioned already : he has also written on Edu- 
 cation, a volume wKvaedi Levana ; the GampanertJud (Campanian Yale) 
 I understand to turn upon the Immortality of the Soul. His miscella- 
 neous and fugitive writings were long to enumerate. Essays, fantasies, 
 apologues, dreams, have appeared in various periodicals : the best of 
 these performances, collected and revised by himself, were published 
 some years ago under the title of Herbst-Blumiiu (Autumnal Flora). 
 There is also a GhrestoiaatJiie (what we should call Beauties) of Richter, 
 in four volumes. 
 
 To characterise these works would be difficult after the fullest in- 
 spection : to describe them to English readers would be next to impos- 
 sible. Whether poetical, philosophical, didactic, or fantastic, they 
 seem all to be emblems, more or less complete, of the singular mind 
 where they originated. As a whole, the first perusal of them, more 
 particularly to a foreigner, is almost infallibly offensive ; and neither 
 their meaning, nor their no-meaning, is to be discerned without long 
 and sedulous study. They are a tropical wilderness, full of endless 
 tortuosities ; but with the fairest flowers, and the coolest fountains ; 
 now overarching us with high umbrageous gloom, now opening in 
 
 ' The two venerable Jacobis belong, in character, if scarcely in date, to an older school ; 
 s > al-;o does Herder, from whom Richter learned much, both morally' and intellectnall}-, 
 and whom he seems to have ioved and leverenced beyond any other. Wieland is intelligi- 
 ble enough ; a sceptic in the stj4e of Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury, what we call a French 
 or Si'otch sceptic, a rather shallow species. Lessing also is a sceptic, but of a much no- 
 bler sort; a doubter who deserved to believe. 
 
134 APPENDIX. 
 
 long gorgeous vistas. We wander through them enjoying their wild 
 grandeur ; and by degrees, our half-contemptuous wonder at the Au- 
 thor passes into reverence and love. His face was long hid from us : 
 but we see him at length, in the firm shape of spiritual manhood ; a 
 vast and most singular nature, but vindicating his singular nature by 
 the force, the beauty and benignity which pervade it. In fine, we joy- 
 fully accept him for what he is, and was meant to be. The graces, the 
 polish, the sprightly elegancies which belong to men of lighter make, 
 we cannot look for or demand from him His movement is essentially 
 slow and cumbrous, for he advances not with one faculty, but with a 
 whole mind ; with intellect, and pathos, and wit. and humour, and 
 imagination, moving onward like a mighty host, motley, ponderous, 
 irregular and irresistible. He is not airy, sparkling and precise ; but 
 deep, billowy and vast. The melody of his nature is not expressed in 
 common note-marks, or writteii down by the critical gamut ; for it is 
 wild and manifold ; its voice is like the voice of cataracts and the sound- 
 ing of primeval forests. To feeble ears it is discord, but to ears that 
 understand it deep majestic music. 
 
 In his own country, we are told,' " Richter has been in fashion, then 
 out of fashion, then in it again ; till at last he has been raised far above 
 all fashionv" which indeed is his proper place. What his fate will be 
 in England is now to be decided. Could much-respected counsels from 
 admirers of Richter have availed with me. he had not at present been 
 put upon his trial. Predictions are unanimous that here he will be 
 condemned or even neglected. Of my countrymen, in this small in- 
 stance, I have ventured to think otherwise. To those, it is true, "the 
 space of whose Heaven does not extend more than three ells," and who 
 understand and perceive that with these three ells the Canopy of the 
 Universe terminates, Richter will justly enough appear a monster, 
 from without the verge of warm three-ell Creation ; and their duty, 
 with regard to him, will limit itself to chasing him forth of the habit- 
 able World, back again into his native Chaos If we judge of works 
 of art, as the French do of language, with a Cela ne se dit pas, Richter 
 will not escape his doom ; for it is too true that he respects not the maj- 
 esty of Use and Wont, and has said and thought much which is by no 
 means usually said and thought. In England, however, such prin- 
 ciples of literary jurisprudence are rarer. To many, I may hope, even 
 
 ' Franz Horn's PoeHe unci Beredsamkeit der Deutschen (Poetry and Eloquence of the 
 Germans, from Luther" .'^ time t(i the present) ; a work which I am bound to roconiniend 
 to all students of German literatur<', as a valuable t;:nide and indicator. Fating a certain 
 not altogether erroneous sectarianism in regard to religion ; and a certain janty priggish- 
 ness of style, nay, it must be owned, a cori'esponding priggishness of character, they will 
 find in Horn a lively, fair, well read, and on the whole interesting and instructive criti'*. 
 The work is in three volumns ; to which a prior publication, entitled I7inri'^<e (Outlines), 
 forma a foux'th ; bringing down the History, or rather Sketch, to the borders of the year 
 1819. 
 
JEAN PAUL FRIEDRIGH R] CUTER. 135 
 
 this dim glimpse of a spirit like Ricliter's will be gratifying; and if 
 it can hardly be expected that their first jndgment of him will be 
 favourable, curiosity may be awakened, and a second and a truer judg- 
 ment, on ampler grounds and maturer reflection, may follow. His 
 larger works must ultimately become known to us ; they deserve it 
 better than thousands which have had that honour. 
 
 Of the two Works here offered to the reader, little special explana- 
 tion is required. S.-hmelzle' ti Journey I have not found noticed by any 
 o: his German critics ; and must give it on my own respousibility, as 
 one of the most finished, as it is at least one of the simplest, among his 
 smaller humorous performances. The Life of Fixlein., no stepchild in 
 its own country, seems nevertheless a much more immature as it is a 
 much earlier composition I select it not without reluctance ; rather 
 from necessity than preference. Its faults, I am too sure, will strike 
 us much sooner than its beauties ; and even by the friendliest and 
 most patient critic, it must be admitted that among the latter, maiiy of 
 our Author's highest qualities are by no means exhibited in full con- 
 centration, nay, that some of them are wanting altogether, or at be.st, 
 indicated rather than evinced. Let the reader accept it with such 
 allowances ; not as Ricliter's best novel, which it is far from being, but 
 simj^h' as his shortest complete one ; not as a full impress of him, but 
 as a faint outline, intended rather to excite curiosity than to satisfy it. 
 On the whole, Ricliter's is a mind peculiarly difficult to represent by 
 specimen ; for its elements are complex and various, and it is not more 
 by quality than by quantity that it impresses us. 
 
 Both Works I have endeavoured to present in their full dimensions, 
 with all their appurtenances, strange as some of these may appear. If 
 the language seem rugged, heterogeneous, perplexed, the blame is not 
 wholly mine. Ricliter's style may be pronounced the most untrans- 
 latable, not in German only, but in any other modern literature ' Let 
 the English reader fancy a Burton writing, not an Anatomy of Melan- 
 clioly^ but a foreign romance, through the scriptory organs of a Jeremy 
 Bentham ! Richter exhausts all the powers of his own most ductile 
 language : what in him was overstrained and rude, would naturally be- 
 come not less but more so in the hands of his translator. 
 
 For this, and many other offences of my Author, apologies might be 
 attempted ; but much as I wish for a favourable sentence, it is not 
 
 1 The follo-.ving long title of a little German Book I may quote by way of premunition : 
 "K. Reinhold's Lexicon for iY.K^ Paul's Works, or Ey^planation of all the foreign 
 Words and rinm^nal Modes of Speech lohich occur in his Writings ; with short Notices of 
 the historical Ptrsons and Facts therein alluded to ; and plain German Versions of the 
 most difficult Passages in the Context. A necessary Assistant for all who icould read 
 those Works with Profit. First Volume containing Levana. Leipzig, 1S08.'" Unhap- 
 pily, with this First Volnme, K. Reinhold seema to have stopped short. More than 
 once, in the followiner page«, have I lonsred for hi- help: and been forced at last to rest 
 satisfied with a meaning, and too imperfect a conviction tiiat it v.'as the right one. 
 
136 APPENDIX. 
 
 meet that Ricliter, in the Literary Judgment-hall, should appear as a 
 culprit ; or solicit suffrages, which, if he cannot claim them, are un- 
 availing. With the hundred real, and the ten thousand seeming weak- 
 nesses of his cause, a fair trial is a thing he will court rather than 
 dread. 
 
 GOETHE. 
 
 The distinguished and peculiar man, who occupies the last volume 
 in our Collection, has lightened the task of his biographers and critics, 
 by a work of great interest, which he has himself given to the world, 
 and of which some more or less accurate resemblance is also before the 
 English reader. In his Dichtunfj und WaJirheit, Goethe lias accom- 
 plished the difficult problem of autobiography with what seems a sin- 
 gular success; here, in the kindest and coolest spirit, he conducts us 
 through the scenes of his past existence ; unfolds with graphic clear- 
 ness, and light gay dignity, whatever influenced the formation of his 
 character and mode of thought ; depicting all with the knowledge of a 
 chief actor, and the calm impartial penetration of a spectator ; speaking 
 of himself as many would wish, but few are able, to speak of them- 
 selves : In the temper oZ a third party, and not sooner or not farther 
 than others are desirous and entitled to hear that subject treated. If 
 the old remark is true, that a faithful secret-history of the humblest 
 liuman being would be attractive and instructive to th3 highest, this 
 picture of the spiritual and moral growth of a Goethe may well be con- 
 sidered as deserving no common attention. I am sorry to understand 
 that the English version of the work is not from the German, but from 
 the French : judgiiig by the size of the book, the business of curtail- 
 ment in this Life of Goethe must have been proceeded in with a liberal 
 and fearless hand ; it seems also that there are additions, which probably 
 are still more offensive. To this copy of the portrait, defaced and dis- 
 torted as it cannot fail to be, I must not refer the reader : yet all that 
 can be attempted here is a few slight sketches, more in the way of com- 
 mentarv than of narrative. 
 
 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born at Frankfort on the Mayn, on 
 the 28th of August 1749. The station and circumstances of his family 
 were of a favourable sort : his father bore the title of Imperial Coun- 
 cillor, and though personally unconnected with active affairs, stood in 
 close relation with the influential and cultivated classes of the com- 
 munity. Both parents appear likewise to have been of a determinate 
 and genuine form of mind, possessing many virtues, and no inconsid- 
 erable share of intellectual gifts and attainments. In the height of his 
 fame, it was observed of Goethe, that his true-hearted, idiomatic and 
 expressive style of speech recalled his mother to memory ; who, while 
 nursinc her fair boy on her knee, had little dreamed that in him her 
 
GOETHE. 137 
 
 own good and kindly character was to be transfigured to such beauty 
 and enlargement, and transmitted in glorious emblems to distant conn- 
 tries and succeeding ages.- The fatlier, of course, was fashioned in a 
 more rugged mould, and seems also to have been originally of^ sterner 
 stuff ; a rigorous, abrupt, positive and thoroughgoing man ; somewhat 
 of a humorist, for he actually built his house from the top downwards ; 
 testy. and indomitable, but not ill natured or ungenerous ; clear in liis 
 perceptions, as he was resolute in his actions ; and withal Ol an lionest 
 and manly heart Both these modes of character appear to have united 
 in tlie son ; the liveliest susceptibility of all sorts was superadded to 
 them ; and the scene he lived in acted on him with strong and compli- 
 cated influences. These earliest images o'l his memory lie has set before 
 us with the most graceful simi)licity in the work above referred to : the 
 aspects of life in Gotliic Frankfort, Avith its old German minds and old 
 German manners, are brought home to our eyes ; we walk among rich 
 old-fashioned wondrous objects, and converse with originals as wondrous 
 and old-fashioned as their abode. 
 
 Goethe was destined, as his father had been, for the profession of 
 law ; and in due time, lie went successively to Leipzig and Strasburg, 
 to prepare for, and to undertake, the study of it. But his quick, im- 
 passioned and discursive mind, impressed by the most varied impulses, 
 was continually diverging into many provinces remote enough from this 
 his appointed occupation ; for which, as was naturally to be expected, 
 he had never shown any preference ; though, from time to time, he had 
 not failed to prosecute, with fits of resolute diligence, the tasks prescribed 
 by it In 1771, he obtained his degree : but if the form of his outward 
 life might now seem clear and determined, his inward world was still in 
 a state of uproar and disorder. The ambition of wealth and oflicial 
 celebrity would not seize him with due force : a thousand vague pur- 
 poses, and vehement wishes, and brightest and blackest forecastings, 
 were conflicting within him ; for a strong spirit was here struggling to 
 body itself forth from the most discordant elements ; and what was at 
 last to rise as. a fair universe of thought still rolled as a dim and waste- 
 ful chaos. 
 
 By degrees, however, after not a little suffering in many hard con- 
 tests with himself and his circumstances, he began to emerge from 
 these troubles : light dawned on his course ; and his true destination, 
 a life of literature, became more and more plain to him. His first 
 e. Torts were crowned with a success well calculated to confirm him 
 in such purposes. Gdtz roil Berlkhingen, an historical drama of the 
 Feudal Ages, appeared in 1773 ; by the originality both of its subjects 
 and its execution, attracting the public eye to the young author : and 
 next year his Sorroirsof Werter rose like a literary meteor on the world ; 
 and carried his name on its blazing wings, not only over Germany, but 
 into the remotest corners of Europe. The chief incident of this work 
 
138 APPENDIX. 
 
 had been suggested by a tragical catastrophe, which had occurred in his 
 neighbourhood, during a residence at Wetzlar : the emotions and de- 
 lineations which give life to it ; the vague impassioned longing, the 
 moody melancholy, the wayward love and indignation, the soft feeling 
 and the stern philosophy, which characterise the hero, he had drawn 
 from his own past or actual experience. 
 
 The works just mentioned, though noble specimens of youthful talent, 
 are still not so much distinguished by their intrinsic merits, as by their 
 splendid fortune. It would be difficult to name two books, which have 
 exercised a deeper influence on the subsequent literature of Europe, 
 than these two performances of a young author ; his first-fruits, the prod- 
 uce of his twenty-fourth year. Werter appeared to seize the hearts of 
 men in all quarters of the world, and to utter for them the word which 
 they had long been waiting to hear. As usually happens, too, this same 
 word once uttered was soon abundantly repeated ; spoken in all dialects, 
 and chanted through all the notes of the gamut, till at length the sound 
 of it had grown a weariness rather than a pleasure. Fceptical sentimen- 
 tality, view-hunting, love, friendship, suicide and desperation, became 
 the staple of literary ware ; and though the epidemic, after a long 
 course of years, subsided in Germany, it reappeared with various modi- 
 fications in other countries ; and everywhere abundant traces of its good 
 and bad effects are still to be discerned. The fortune of BeiiicMngen 
 with the Iron Hand, though less sudden, was by no means less exalted. 
 In his own country, GotZy though he now stands solitary and childless, 
 became the parent of an innumerable progeny of chivalry plays, feudal 
 delineations, and poetico-antiquarian performances ; which, though 
 long ago deceased, made noise enough in their day and generation : and 
 with ourselves his influence has been perhaps still more remarkable. 
 Sir Walter Scott's first literary enterprise was a translation of Gotz von 
 Berlichmgen : and if genius could be communicated like instruction, 
 we might call this work of Goethe's the prime cause of Marmion and 
 the Lady of tlce Lake^ with all that has followed from the same creative 
 hand. Truly, a grain of seed that has lighted in the right soil! For if 
 not firmer and fairer, it has grown to be taller and broader than any 
 other tree ; and all the nations of the Earth are still yearly gathering of 
 its fruit. 
 
 But overlooking these spiritual genealogies, which bring little cer- 
 tainty and little profit, it m'ay be sufficient to observe of Berlicldnxjen and 
 Werter^ that they stand prominent among the causes, or, at the very 
 least, among the signals, of a great change in modern Literature. The 
 former directed men's attention with a new force to the picturesque ef- 
 fects of the Past ; and the latter,' for the first time, attempted the more 
 accurate delineation of a class of feelings, deeply important to modern 
 minds ; but for which our elder poetry offered no exponent, and per- 
 haps co\ild offer none, because they are feelings that arise from passion 
 
O GET HE. 139 
 
 incapable of being converted into action, and belong chiefly to an age 
 as indolent, cultivated and unbelieving as our own. This, notwithstand- 
 ing the dash of falsehood which may exist in Werter itself, and the 
 boundless delirium of extravagance which it called forth in others, is a 
 high praise which cannot justly be denied it. The English reader ought 
 also to understand that our cuvent version of Werter is mutilated and 
 inaccurate: it comes to us through the all-subduing medium of the 
 French ; shorn of its caustic strength ; with its melancholy rendered 
 maudlin ; its hero reduced from the stately gloom of a broken-hearted 
 poet to the tearful wrangling of a dyspeptic tailor. 
 
 One of the very first to perceive the faults of these works, and the 
 ridiculous extravagance of their imitators, was Goethe himself. In this 
 unlooked-for and unexampled popularity, he was far from feeling that 
 he had attained his object : this first outpouring of his soul had calmed 
 its agitations, not exhausted or even indicated its strength ; and he now 
 began to see afar off a much higher region, as well as glimpses of the 
 track by which it might be reached. To cultivate his own spirit, not 
 only as an author, but as a man ; to obtain dominion over it, and wield 
 its resources as instruments in the service of what seemed Good and 
 Beautiful, had been his object more or less distinctly from the first, as 
 it is that of all true men in their several spheres. According to his own 
 deep maxim, that 'Doubt of any sort can only be removed by Action,' 
 this object had now become more clear to him ; and he may be said to 
 have pursued it to the present hour, with a comprehensiveness and un- 
 wearied perseverance, rarely if ever exemplified in the history of such 
 a mind. 
 
 His external relations had already ceased to obstruct him in this pur- 
 suit, and they now became more favourable than ever. In 177G, the 
 Heir Apparent of Weimar was passing through Frankfort ; on which oc- 
 casion, by the intervention of some friends, he waited upon Goethe. 
 The visit must have been mutually agreeable ; for a short time after- 
 wards, the young author was invited to Court ; apparently, to contribute 
 his assistance in various literary institutions and arrangements, then 
 proceeding or contemplated ; and in pursuance of this honourable call, 
 he accordingly settled at Weimar, with the title of Legationsrafh, and 
 the actual dignity of a place in the Collegium^ or Council. The connex- 
 ion, begun under such favourable auspices, and ever since continued 
 unimpaired, has been productive of important consequences, not only 
 to Weimar, but to all Germany. The noble purpose undertaken by the 
 Duchess Amelia, was zealously forwarded by the young Duke on his ac- 
 cession ; under whose influence, supported and directed by his new 
 Councillor, this inconsiderable state has gained for itself a fairer dis- 
 tinction than any of its larger, richer, or more warlike rivals. By 
 degrees, whatever was brightest in the genius of Germany had been 
 gathered to this little Court : a classical theatre was under the superin- 
 
140 APPENDIX. 
 
 tendence of Goethe and Schiller ; here Wieland taught and sung ; in 
 the pulpit was Herder : and possessing siTch a four, the small town of 
 Weimar, some twenty years ago, might challenge the proudest capital of 
 the world to match it in intellectual wealth. Occupied so profitably to 
 his country, and honourably to himself, Goethe continued rising in esti- 
 mation with his Prince : by degrees, a political was added to his literary 
 influence ; in 1779 he became Privy Councillor ; President in 1782 ; 
 and, at length, after his return from Italy, where he had spent two 
 years in various studies and observation, he was appointed Minister ; a 
 post which he only a few years ago resigned, on his final retirement 
 from public affairs. In this, his second country, he still' resides. The 
 German biographies are careful to inform us that by the Duke of Wei- 
 mar he was ennobled ; and decorated by Alexander and Napoleon, and 
 various other kings and kaisers, with their several insignia of honour. 
 
 A much purer and more imperishable series of honours he has earned 
 for himself, by the peaceful efforts of his own genius. His active duties 
 were, at all times, more or less intimately connected with literature ; 
 they seem not to have obstructed the silent labours of his closet ; and 
 perhaps they rather forwarded the great business of his life, a thorough 
 universal culture of all his being. Goethe's history is a picture of the 
 most diverse studies and acquisitions : Literature he has tried success- 
 fully in nearly every one of its departments ; with Art, ancient and 
 modern, he has familiarised himself beyond a rival ; Science, also, he 
 seems to have surveyed with no careless or feeble eye, and his contribu- 
 tions to several of its branches, particularly of Botany and Optics, have 
 been thankfully received by their professors. Some of our readers may 
 be surprised to learn, that the painted Diagram of Mountain-altitudes 
 which ornaments their libraries, exhibiting in one view the successive 
 elevations of the Globe, was devised by the Author of Faust and TJm 
 Sorrows of Wertcr. 
 
 Goethe's purely literary works amount to between twenty and thirty 
 considerable volumes. A bare enumeration of their names, without 
 note or comment, would be perplexing rather than instructive ; and for 
 note or comment of the humblest sort our present limits are too narrow. 
 In the province of the Drama, omitting Egmont^ Iphigenie,, and multi- 
 tudes of lighter pieces, we must mention, as entitled to peculiar distinc- 
 tion, the tragedy of Torquato Tasso, and the play of Faust. The first 
 paints, in simple gracefulness, tlxe poetic temperament at conflict with 
 the ordinances of vulgar life ; a pure and touching picture, full of wis- 
 dom, calm depth and unostentatious pathos. The second, of a still 
 deeper character, images forth, in the superstitious tradition of Faust, 
 the contest of the good principle in human nature with the bad ; the 
 struggle of Man's Soul against Ignorance, Sin and Suffering ; the indirect 
 subject of many, perhaps of all true poems ; but here treated directly, 
 with a wild mysterious impressiveness, which' distinguishes this play 
 
GOETHE. 141 
 
 from every other. Faunt and also Iphigenie have been translated into 
 English. 
 
 Another singular performance of Goethe's is Reinecke FucTis, a poetic 
 version of tlie old tale, said to be originally a Netherlands political pas- 
 quinade, and which exists in English, under the corresponding title of 
 Reynard the Fox. Goethe's work is written in hexametei-s, in twelve 
 books, like another ^neid : a wondrous affair ; imbued with the truest 
 humour, full of marvellous imitations, grotesque descriptions, and mani- 
 fold moralities. If beasts could speak, we should surely expect them 
 to express their 'general views' as they are made to do in this epos : 
 the ass here is a philosophical masticator of thistles and gorse ; Bruin 
 thinks, and talks, and acts, like a very bear ; and ' Malapertus the For- 
 tress' is still redolent of murdered poultry. Nor is this strange mimicry 
 the sole charm of the work ; for there is method in its madness ; across 
 these marvellous delineations we discern a deeper significance. It is a 
 parody of human life, as it were, a magic picture, with forms of the 
 wildest mirth, which, while we gaze on them, sadden into serious and 
 instructive, though still smiling, monitors. Herman tmd Dorothea is 
 also written in hexameters, and with a cheerful earnestness, which has 
 recommended it to great favour with the Germans You see it printed 
 in gay miniature, with gilding and decorations ; and friend testifies his 
 kindness to friend by the present of this Citic Epos. 
 
 In the Romance department, Goethe has written several works, and 
 on peculiar principles. Besides Wei'ter, we have Wilhehn Meister's 
 Apprentkeship, and Die Wdhliencandtschaften (The Elective Affinities) ; 
 and five years ago he published the first volume of Wilhehn Meister'a 
 Travels, a fragment which the reader is now to have an opportunity of 
 perusing. These performances, though bearing the common name of 
 novel, are of very varied quality : and some of them but ill represented 
 by so trivial a title. Wilhelm Meister^s Apprenticeship, for instance, 
 whatever may be thought of it in other respects, has a deeper ob'ect 
 than many a poem which has called itself epic : nor was it hastily or 
 carelessly huddled together without study ; for this novel, it would ap- 
 pear, lay ten years in the Author's mind and hand, one year longer than 
 even the Horatian period. Like many of his other works, Meister has 
 called forth a numerous series of imitations ; but the strength of such 
 productions lies less in the form than in the substance, which it is not 
 so easy to copy ; and accordingly, when most of these ' Art-novels ' are 
 forgotten, Meister alone continues rising in esteem. Except the Wahl- 
 rei'icandtschaften, all Goethe's novels are now in English. 
 
 Of his numerous short Poems it is difficult to sav a well-weished 
 word : for they are of all sorts, gay and grave, descriptive, lyrical, 
 didactic, idyllic, epigrammatic ; and of all these species, the common 
 name, without long expositions, would, when applied to him, excite a 
 false idea. Goethe is nowhere more entirely original, more fascinating. 
 
142 \ APPENDIX. 
 
 more indescribable, than in his smaller poems. One quality which very 
 generally marks them, particularly those of a later date, is their pecul- 
 iar expressiveness, their fulness of meaning. A single thing is said, 
 and a thousand things are indicated. They are spells which cleave to 
 our memory, and by which we summon beautiful spirits from the vasty 
 deep of thought. Often at the first aspect they appear commonplace, 
 or altogether destitute of significance : we look at the lines on the can- 
 vas ; and they seem careless dashes, mere random strokes, representing 
 nothing save the caprices of their author ; we change our place, we 
 sluLt and shift, till we find the right point of view ; and all at once a 
 lair figure starts into being, encircled with graces and light charms, 
 and by its witcheries attracting heart and mind. In his songs he recalln 
 to us those of Shakspeare : they are not speeches, but musical tones ; the 
 sentiment is not stated in logical sequence, but poured forth in fitful 
 and fantastic suggestions : they are the wild wood-notes of the nightin- 
 gale ; they are to be sung, not said. 
 
 A large portion of Goethe's writings still remains to be classed under 
 the head of Miscellanies. We have sketches o£ Travels ; dissertations, 
 direct or allegorical, on Art ; autobiography, continuous or in frag- 
 ments ; fantasies, dialogues, or other light essays, on Taste, Manners, 
 and Morals ; there is even a short treatise on the geography of the 
 Children of Israel's journey into Canaan ! Nor has he disdained the 
 humble oflices of a translator and editor. The Life of Benvenuto Cellini, 
 which lately appeared in English, he long ago translated, with notes. 
 Voltaire's Maliomet had a similar honour from him ; also Diderot's 
 Neoeu de Mameau, the original of which was published only very lately, 
 many years after the German version. His editorial functions, I be- 
 lieve, he has not yet laid aside ; for tv^o periodicals, the 3fo)'p7iologie 
 and the Kunst und Alterthuin (Art and Antiquities), are still occasion- 
 ally continued under his direction and cooperation. 
 
 Such are some specimens of the labours, in which Goethe has spent 
 many diligent and most honourable years. That they are too varied to 
 be all excellent, that he would have better cared for his fame, had he 
 limited his efforts to a narrower circle, is an obvious cavil ; to which 
 also he can reply, as he has already done for D'Alembert, that there 
 are higher things on Earth than fame ; that a universal develop- 
 ment of our spiritual nature may actually be more precious to us 
 than the solace of our vanity ; that the true business is to &.', not to 
 83em ; and that intellectual arUsansMj), however wondered at, is less 
 desirable than intellectual 'manhood. Goethe has a right to speak on 
 this subject : for he has tried public favour, and tried the want of it ; 
 and found that he could hold on his way through either fortune. 
 Thirty years ago, he might be said to be without an audience even in 
 his own country ; his best works were received with chilling apathy, or 
 objected to with the most melancholy stolidity ; and many a good- 
 
GOETHE. 143 
 
 natnred friend might be heard lamenting that the genius of Goethe 
 should have faded with the fire of his youth, that the author of Werter 
 and Bi dirhirirjcn should have, sunk to Meister and Torquato Tasso. 
 Goethe had outgrown his generation ; his culture was too high for its 
 apprehension. He went on unweariedly to cultivate himself still 
 farther. These things have their day : the reign of Stupidity is boister- 
 ous and boastful ; but it shall not endure forever. A better race of 
 critics arose ; the Nicolais ' and Mansos gave place to the Schlegels, the 
 Tipcks, the Richters. Goethe has lived to see a truer time ; his calm 
 perseverance has met with its outward as well as its inward rewards ; 
 and what was once the solitary consciousness of his own mind, is now 
 reflected back to him from millions of approving minds. In the even- 
 ing of his glorious life, a destiny has been provided for him such as 
 falls to the lot of few mortals. Secluded in the bosom of his family ; 
 surrounded, and still occupied, with whatever is curious in literature, 
 science, or art, the venerable Master, in looking at the bright past, may 
 lind it yet in harmony with the present and the future : for his heart 
 and hand are still busy in his vocation ; faces that love him gladden 
 his abode ; and voices of reverence and gratitude reach him from all 
 ends of the world. His mental faculties seem visited by no decay : the 
 work written last year is as full of life as the work written threescore 
 years ago : his mind is growing older, but more interesting, as well as 
 older ; it is stiller, wiser, lovelier ; and the long shadows of evening 
 are blended with the mellowest sunshine. His West-dstlicher Divan, a 
 series of Western-oriental sketches and poems, is still as graceful and 
 expressive as if half a century had been subtracted from its date. Wd- 
 Jielni Meistefs Travels was published in 1821 ; and some of our readers 
 may peruse it with a new interest, as the singular specimen of a light 
 and living poem by a man of seventy-two. 
 
 J Nicolai was a Bookseller in Berlin ; a man of a shrewd, inquiring, substantial mind ; 
 what is called a sound prnctical man. He had made considerable attainments in knowl- 
 edge, by his own unaided eft' jrts ; and was indeed a very meritorious person, had he not 
 committed one fuadainental error : To the very last he never could persuade himself 
 that there was anything in Heaven or Earth which had not been dreamed of in his 
 philosophy. Ho was animated with a fierce zeal against Jesuits ; in this most people 
 thought him partly right : but when he wrote against Kant's philosophy, without com- 
 prehending it ; and judged of poetry as he judged of Brunswick mum, by its utilU;/, 
 many people thought him wrong. A man of such spiritual habitudes is now by the Ger- 
 mans called a Ph lister, Philistine: Nicolai earned for himself the painful preeminence 
 of being Et-z- Philister, Arch-Fhilistme. Stray specimens of the rhilist.ne nation arc 
 said to exist in our o\\'n Islands ; but we have no name for them like the Germans ; who 
 indeed, by this cheek-burning, may perhaps be thought to have cleaned their country too 
 well of these Uncircumcised. By way of explanation, I should add, that Philister, in the 
 dialect of German Universities, corresponds to the Brute of Cambridge ; designating 
 every non-student. As applied to Nicolai and his kindred, it came into use in the pei-iod 
 of Xenien (see § Tieck) ; and in this sense it is now to be found, with all its derivatives, 
 even in gi-ave writings. At present, the literary Philistine seldom shows, never pa- 
 rades himself in Germany ; and when he does appear he is in the last stage of emacia- 
 tioii. 
 
144 APPENDIX. 
 
 Of a nature so rare and complex it is difficult to form a true compre- 
 hension ; difficult even to express what comprehension we have formed. 
 In Goethe's mind, the first aspect that strikes us is its calmness, then 
 its beaut}' ; a deeper inspection reveals to us its vastness and unmeas- 
 ured strength. This man rules, and is not ruled. The stern and fiery 
 energies of a most passionate soul lie silent in the centre of his being ; 
 a trembling sensibility has been inured to stand, without flinching or 
 murmur, the sharpest trials. Nothing outward, nothing inward, shall agi- 
 tate or control him. The brightest and most capricious fancy, the most 
 piercing and inquisitive intellect, the wildest and deepest imagination ; 
 the highest thrills of joy, the bitterest pangs of sorrow : all these are his, 
 he is not theirs. While he moves every heart from its stedfastness, his 
 own is firm and still : the words that search into the inmost recesses of 
 our nature, he pronounces with a tone of coldness and equanimity ; in 
 the deepest pathos he weeps not, or his tears are like water trickling 
 from a rock of adamant. He is king of himself and of his world ; nor 
 does he rule it like a vulgar great man, like a Napoleon or Charles 
 Twelfth, by the mere brute exertion of his will, grounded on no princi- 
 ple, or on a false one : his faculties and feelings are not fettered or 
 prostrated under the iron sway of Passion, but led and guided in kindly 
 union under the mild sway of Reason ; as the fierce primeval elements 
 of Nature were stilled at the coming of Light, and bound together under 
 its soft vesture, into a glorious and beneficent Creation. 
 
 This is the true Rest of naan ; no stunted unbelieving callousness, no 
 reckless surrender to blind Force, no opiate delusion ; but the harmoni- 
 ous adjustment of Necessity and Accident, of what is changeable and 
 what is unchangeable in our destiny ; the calm supremacy of the spirit 
 over its circumstances ; the dim aim of every human soul, the full at- 
 tainment of only a chosen few. It comes not unsought to any ; but the 
 wise are wise because they think no price too high for it. Goethe's in- 
 ward home has been reared by slow and laborious efforts ; but it stands 
 on no hollow or deceitful basis : for his peace is not from blindness, 
 but from clear vision ; not from uncertain hope of alteration, but from 
 sure insight into what cannot alter. His world seems once to have been 
 desolate and baleful as that of the darkest sceptic : but he has covered 
 it anew with beauty and solemnity, derived from deeper sources, over 
 which Doubt can have no sway. He has inquired fearlessly, and fear- 
 lessly searched out and denied the False ; but he has not forgotten, 
 what is equally essential and infinitely harder, to search out and admit 
 th;; True. His heart is still full of warmth, though liis head is clear 
 and cold ; the world for him is still full of grandeur, though he 
 clothes it with no false colours ; his fellow-creatures are still objects of 
 reverence and love, though their basenesses are p^.ainer to no eye than 
 to his. To reconcile these contradictions is the task of all good men, 
 each for himself, in his own way and manner ; a task which, in our 
 
GOETHE. 145 
 
 age, is encompassed with difficulties peculiar to the time ; and which 
 Goethe seems to have accomplished with a success that few can rival. A 
 mind so in unity with itself, even though it were a poor and small 
 one, would arrest our attention, and win some kind regard from us ; 
 but when this mind ranks among the strongest and most complicated 
 of the species, it becomes a sight full of interest, a study full of deep 
 instruction. 
 
 Such a mind as Goethe's is the fruit not only of a royal endowment 
 by nature, but also of a culture proportionate to lier bounty. In 
 Goethe's original form of spirit we discern the highest gifts of man- 
 hood, without any deficiency of the lower : he has an eye and a heart 
 equally for the sublime, the common, and the ridiculous ; the elements 
 at once of a poet, a thinker, and a wit. Of his culture w« have often 
 spoken already ; and it deserves again to be held up to praise and imi- 
 tation. This, as he himself unostentatiously confesses, has been the 
 soul of all his conduct, the great enterprise of his life, and few that un- 
 derstand him will be apt to deny that he has prospered. As a writer, 
 liis resources have been accumulated from nearly all the provinces of 
 liuman intellect and activity ; and he has trained himself to use these 
 complicated instruments with a light expertness which we might have 
 admired in the professor of a solitary department. Freedom, and grace, 
 and smiling earnestness are the characteristics of his works : the matter 
 of them flows along in chaste abundance, in the softest combination ; 
 and their style is referred to by native critics as the highest specimen 
 of the German tongue. On this latter point the vote of a stranger may 
 well be deemed unavailing ; but the charms of Goethe's style lie deeper 
 than the mere Avords ; for language, in the hands of a master, is the ex- 
 press image of thought, or rather it is the body of which thought is the 
 soul ; the former rises into being together with the latter, and the graces 
 of the one are shadowed forth in the movements of the other. Goethe's 
 language, even to a foreigner, is full of character and secondary mean- 
 ings ; polished, yet vernacular and cordial, it sounds like the dialect of 
 wise, ancient, and true-hearted men : in poetry, brief, sharp, simple 
 and expressive ; in prose, perhaps still mure pleasing ; for it is at once 
 concise and full, rich, clear, unpretending and melodious ; and the 
 sense, not presented in alternating flashes, piece after piece revealed 
 and withdrawn, rises beTore us as in continuous dawning, and stands at 
 last simultaneously complete, and bathed in the mellowest and ruddiest 
 sunshine. It brings to mind what the prose of Hooker, Bacon, Milton, 
 Browne, would have been, had they written under the good, without 
 the bad influences, of that Frencli precision, which has polished and at- 
 tenuated, trimmed and impoverished, all modern languages ; made our 
 meaning clear, and too often shallow as well as clear. 
 
 But Goethe's culture as a writer is perhaps less remarkable than his 
 culture as a man. lie has learned not in head only, but aLso in heart ; 
 10 
 
140 APPENDIX. 
 
 not crom Art and Literature, but also by action and passion, in the 
 ragged school of Experience. If asked what was the grand character- 
 istic of his writings, we should not say knowledge, but wisdom. A 
 mind that has seen, and suffered, and done, speaks to us of what it has 
 tried and conquered. A gay delineation will give us notice of dark and 
 toilsome experiences, of business done in the great deep of the spirit ; 
 a maxim, trivial to the careless eye, will rise with light and solution 
 over long perplexed periods of our own history. It is thus that heart 
 speaks to heart, that the life of one man becomes a possession to all. 
 Here is a mind of the most subtle and tumultuous elements ; but it is 
 governed in peaceful diligence, and its impetuous and ethereal faculties 
 work softly together for good and noble ends. Goethe may be called a 
 Philosopiier ; for he loves and has pi'actised as a man the wisdom which, 
 as a poet, he inculcates. Composure and cheerful seriousness seem to 
 breathe over all his character. There is no whining over human woes: 
 it is understood that we must all simply strive to alleviate or remove 
 them. There is no noisy battling- for opinions ; but a persevering effort 
 to make Truth lovely and recommend her, by a thousand avenues, to 
 the hearts of all men. Of his personal manners we can easily believe 
 the universal report, as often given in the way of censure as of praise, 
 that he is a man of consummate breeding and the stateliest presence : 
 for an air of polished tolerance, of courtly, we might almost say majes- 
 tic repose, and serene humanity, is visible throughout his works. In 
 no line of them does he speak with asperity of any man ; scarcely ever 
 even of a thing. He knows the good, and loves it ; he knows the bad 
 and hateful, and rejects it ; but in neither case with violence : his love 
 is calm and active ; his rejection is implied rather than pronounced ; 
 meek and gentle, though we see that it is thorough, and never to be 
 revoked. The noblest and the basest he not only seems to comprehend, 
 but to personate and body forth in their most secret lineaments : hence 
 actions and opinions appear to him as they are, with all the circum- 
 stances which extenuate or endear them to the hearts where they origi- 
 nated and are entertained. This also is the spirit of our Shakspeare, 
 and perhaps of every great dramatic poet. Shakspeare is no sectarian ; 
 to all he deals with equity and mercy ; because he knows all, and his 
 heart is wide enough for all. In his mind the world is a whole ; he 
 figures it as Providence govern it ; and to him it is not strange that the 
 sun should be caused to shine on the evil and the good, and the rain to 
 fall on the just and the unjust. 
 
 Goethe lias been called the German Voltaire ; but it is a name which 
 does him wrong, and describes him ill. Except in the corresponding 
 variety of their pursuits and knowledge, in which, perhaps, it does Vol- 
 taire wrong, the two cannot be compared. Goethe is all, or the best of all, 
 tha^, Voltaire was, and he is much that Voltaire did not dream of. To 
 say nothing of his dignified and truthful character as a man, he belongs, 
 
GOETHE. 147 
 
 as a thinker and a writer, to a far higher class tlian this tmfant f/dte du 
 iiwnde qii'il (jdta. He is not a questioner and a despiser, but a teacher 
 and a reverencer ; not a destroyer, but abuilder-up ; not a wit only, but 
 a wise man Of him Montesquieu could not have said, with even epi- 
 grammatic truth : 11 a jdifs (/'((^ personne Vesprit que tout le monde n. 
 Voltaire was the cleverest of all past and present men ; but a great man 
 is something more, and this he surely was not. 
 
 As poets, the two lived not in the same hemispliere, not in the same 
 world. Of Voltaire's poetry, it were blindness to deny the polished in- 
 tellectual vigour, the logical symmetry, the flashes that from time to 
 time give it the colour, if not tlii warmth, of fire : but it is in a far othsr 
 sense than this that Goethe is ii poet ; in a sense of which the French 
 literature has never accorded any exainple. We may venture to say of 
 him, that his province is high and peculiar ; higher than any poet but 
 himself, for several generations, has so far succeeded in, perhaps even 
 lias stedfastly attempted. In reading Goethe's poetry, it perpetually 
 strikes us that we ai-e reading the poetry of our own day and generation. 
 No demands are made on our credulity ; the light, the science, the 
 scepticism of the age, are not hid from us. He does not deal in anti- 
 quated mythologies, or ring changes on traditionary poetic forms ; there 
 are no supernal, no infernal influences, for Faust is an apparent rather 
 than a real exception : but there is the barren prose of the nineteenth 
 century, the vulgar life which we are all leading ; and it starts into 
 strange beauty in liis hands ; and we pause in delighted wonder to be- 
 liold Jhe flower of Poesy blooming in that parched and rugged soil. 
 This is the end of his Mignons and Harpers, of his Tassos and Meisters. 
 Poetry, as he views it, exists not in time or place, but in the spirit of 
 man ; and Art, with Nature, is now to perform for the poet, what Nature 
 alone performed of old. The divinities and demons, the witches, spec- 
 tres, and fairies, are vanished from the world, never again to be re- 
 called : but the Imagination which created these still lives, and will for- 
 ever live in man's soul ; and can again pour its wizard light over the 
 Universe, and summon forth enchantments as lovely or impressive, and 
 which its sister faculties will not contradict. To say that Goethe has 
 accomplished all this, would be to say that his genius is greater than 
 was ever given to any man ; for if it was a high and glorious mind, or 
 rather series of minds, that peopled the first ages with their peculiar 
 forms of poetry, it must be a series of minds much higher and more 
 glorious that shall so people the present. The angels and demons that 
 can lay prostrate our hearts in the nineteenth century, must be of an- 
 other and more cunning fashion than those that subdued ns in the 
 ninth. To have attempted, to have begun this enterprise, may be ac- 
 counted the greatest praise. That Goethe ever meditated it in the form 
 here set forth, we have no direct evidence ; but indeed such is the end 
 and aim of high poetry at all times and seasons ; for the fiction of the 
 
148 APPENDIX. 
 
 poet is not falsehood, but the purest truth ; and if he would lead cap- 
 tive our whole being, not rest satisfied with a part of it, he must ad- 
 dress us on interests that are^ not that were, ours ; and in a dialect 
 which finds a response, and not a contradiction, within our bosoms. 
 
 How Goethe has fulfilled these conditions in addressing us, an inspec- 
 tion of his works, but no description, can inform us. Let me advise 
 the reader to study them, and see. If he come to the task with an 
 opinion that poetry is an amusement, a passive recreation ; that its 
 highest object is to supply a languid mind with fantastic shows and in- 
 dolent emotions, his measure of enjoyment is likely to be scanty, and 
 his criticisms will be loud, angry and manifold. But if he know and 
 believe that poetry is the essence of all science, and requires the 
 purest of all studies ; if he recollect that the new may not always be 
 the false ; that the excellence which can be seen in a moment is not 
 usually a very deep one ; above all, if his own heart be full of feelings 
 and experiences, for which he finds no name and no solution, but which 
 lie in pain imprisoned and unuttered in his breast, till the Word be 
 spoken, the spell that is to unbind them, and bring them forth to lib- 
 erty and light ; then, if I mistake not, he will find that in this Goethe 
 there is a new world set before his eyes ; a world of Earnestness and 
 Sport, of solemn cliff and gay plain ; some such temple — far inferior, 
 as it may well be, in magnificence and beauty, but a temple of the same 
 architecture —some such temple for the Spirit of our age, as the Shak- 
 speares and Spensers have raised for the Spirit of theirs. 
 
 This seems a bold assertion : but it is not made without deliberation, 
 and such conviction as it has stood within my means to obtain. If it 
 invite discussion, and forward the discovery of the truth in this matter, 
 its best purpose will be answered. Goethe's genius is a study for other 
 minds than have yet seriously engaged with it among us. By and by, 
 apparently ere long, he will be tried and judged righteously ; he him- 
 self, and no cloud instead of him ; for he comes to us in such a ques- 
 tionable shape, that silence and neglect will not always serve our pur- 
 pose. England, the chosen liome of justice in all its senses, where the 
 liumblest merit has been acknowledged, and the highest fault not un- 
 duly punished, will do no injustice to this extraordinary man. And if, 
 when her impartial sentence has been pronounced and sanctioned, it 
 shall appear that Goethe's earliest admirers have wandered too far into 
 the language of panegyric, I hope it may be reckoned no unpardonable 
 sin. It is spirit-stirring rather than spirit-shar])ening, to consider that 
 there is one of the Prophets here with us in our own day ; that a man 
 who is to be numbered with the Sages and /S'am Vatea, the Shakspeares, 
 the Tassos, the Cervanteses of the world, is looking on the things which 
 we look on, has dealt with the very thoughts which we have to deal 
 with, is reigning in serene dominion over tbe perplexities and contra- 
 dictions in which we are still painfully entangled. 
 
GOETHE. ' 149 
 
 That Goethe's mind is full of inconsistencies and shortcomings, can 
 be a secret to no one who has heard of the Fall of Adam. Nor would it 
 be difficult, in this place, to muster a long catalogue of darknesses defac- 
 ing our perception of this brightness : but it might be still less profit- 
 able than it is difficult ; for in Goethe's writings, as in those of all true 
 masters, an apparent blemish is apt, after maturer study, to pass into 
 a beauty. His works cannot be judged in fractions, for each of them 
 is conceived and written as a whole ; the humble and common may be 
 no less essential there than the high and splendid : it is only Chinese 
 pictures that have no shade. There is a maxim, far better known than 
 practised, that to detect faults is a much lower occupation than to rec- 
 ognise merits. We may add also, that though far easier in the execii- 
 tion, it is not a whit more certain in the result. What is the detecting 
 of a fault, but the feeling of an incongruity, of a contradiction, which 
 may exist in ourselves as well as in the object ? Who shall say in 
 which ? None but he who sees this object as it is, and himself as he is. 
 We have all heard of the critic fly ; but none of us doubts the compass 
 of his own vision. It is thus that a high work of art, still more that a 
 high and original mind may at all times calculate on much sorriest criti- 
 cism. In looking at an extraordinary man, it were good for an ordinary 
 man to be sure of seeing him, before attempting to oversee liim. Hav- 
 ing ascertained that Goethe is an object deserving study, it will be time 
 to censure his faults when we have clearly estimated his merits ; and if 
 we are wise judges, not till then. 
 
 Whether this work of WiHielm Meistefs Wanderjahre^ will exalt or 
 depress our actual judgment of him, I pretend not to predict. Like all 
 Goethe's works, its immediate reception is doubtful, or rather, perhaps, 
 it is not doubtful. That these Travels will surprise and disappoint the 
 reader, is too likely ; and perhaps the reader of the Apprenticesliip will 
 be more surprised than any other. The book is called a romance ; but 
 it treats not of romance characters or subjects ; it has less relation to 
 Fielding's Tom Jones than to Spenser's Faery Queen. The scene is not 
 laid on this firm Earth, but in a fair Utopia of Art and Science and free 
 Activity : the figures, light and aeriform, come unlocked for, and melt 
 away abruptly, like the pageants of Prospero in his enchanted Island. 
 
 • Wan:lerjahre denotes the period which a German artisan is, by law or usage, obliged 
 to pass in travelling, to perfect himself in his craft, after the conclusion of his Lehrjahre 
 (Apprenticeship), and before his Mastership can begin. In many gilds this custom is as 
 old as their existence, and continues still to be indispensable ; it is said to have originated 
 in the frequent journeys of the German Empei'ors to Italy, and the consequent improve- 
 ment observed in such workmen among their menials as had attended them thither. 
 Most of the gilds are what is called geftchenkten, that is, presenting, having presents to 
 give to needy loandering brothers. This word Wande^'jahre I have been obliged to trans- 
 late by Travels, after in vain casting about for an expression that should more accurately 
 represent it. Our mechanics have a word much nearer the mark ; but this was never 
 printed ; and must not be printed, for the first time, here. 
 
150 - ■ APPENDIX. 
 
 Whether this the baseless fabric of their vision is beautiful and signifi- 
 cant like his, or vague and false, onr readers are now to determine. To 
 a reader of the original this question may appear already pretty well de- 
 cided : in both languages, it is true, the work is still a fragment, hang- 
 ing suspended in middle air ; but the matchless graces of its workman- 
 ship, the calm fulness, the noble simplicity of its style, are, in many 
 points, for the one language only. 
 
 Nevertheless, I present this work to the English people without re- 
 luctance or misgivings, persuaded that though it may be caviare to the 
 general, there are not wanting tastes among us to discern its worth and 
 worthlessness, even under its present disadvantages, and to pronounce 
 truly on both. Of his previous reception in this country, neither Goethe 
 nor his admirers have reason to complain. By all men who have any 
 pretension to depth or sensibility of mind, the existence of a high and 
 peculiar genius has been cheerfully recognised in him ; a fact which, 
 considering the unwonted and in many points forbidding aspect of his 
 chief works, does honour both to the author and his critics ; while their 
 often numerous and grave objections have proved only that they had 
 studied him with the cursory eye, which may suffice for cursory writers, 
 but for him is not sufficient, nor likely to be final. In no quarter has 
 there appeared any tendency to wilful unfairness, any jealousy as to- 
 wards a stranger, any disposition to treat him otherwise than according 
 to his true deserts. Indeed, wherefore should there ? We of England 
 have of all nations, past and present, the least cause to be jealous with 
 this mean jealousy. Our own literature is peopled with kingly names ; 
 our language is beautiful with their English intellects and English char- 
 acters ; their works live forever in our hearts. If we cannot love and 
 liold fast our own, and yet be just to others, who is there that can ? In 
 soliciting and anticipating a true estimate of Goethe, 1 have only to wish 
 that the same sentiments may continue with us. 
 
 For the rest, if it seem that I advocate this cause too warmly ; that 
 Goethe's genius, whether it be good or bad, is in truth a very small con- 
 cern to us, I may be allowed to remind my readers, that the existence 
 or non-existence of a new Poet for the World in our own time, of a new 
 Instructor and Preacher of Truth to all men, is really a question of more 
 importance to us than many that are agitated with far greater noise- 
 
FRACTIONS: TRAGEDY OF THE NIGHT-MOTH. 15J 
 
 n. 
 
 FKACTIONS. 
 
 [1823-1833.] 
 
 I. 
 TRAGEDY OF THE NIGHT-MOTH. 
 
 Magna ausus. 
 
 'Tis placid midniglit, stars are keeping 
 Their meek and silent course in heaven; 
 
 Save pale recluse, for knowledge seeking, 
 All mortal things to sleep are given. 
 
 But see ! a wandering Niglit moth enters, 
 
 Allured by taper gleaming bright ; 
 A while keeps hovering round, then ventures 
 
 On Goethe's mystic page to light. 
 
 With awe she views the candle blazing ; 
 
 A universe of fire it seems 
 To n\oi\v-sacante with rapture gazing, 
 
 Or Fount whence Life and Motion streams. 
 
 What passions in her small heart whirling, 
 
 Hopes boundless, adoration, dread ; 
 At length her tiny pinions twirling. 
 
 She darts and— puff ! — the moth is dead I 
 
 Tlie sullen flame, for her scarce sparkling, 
 
 Gives but one hiss, one fitful glare ; 
 Now bright and busy, now all darkling, 
 
 She snaps and fades to empty air. 
 
 Her bright gray form that spread so slimly, 
 
 Some fan she seemed of pigmy Queen ; 
 Her silkv cloak that lav so trimlv. 
 
 Her wee, wee eyes that looked so keen. 
 
 Last moment here, now gone forever. 
 
 To naught are passed with fiery pain ; 
 And ages circling round shall never 
 
 Give to this creature shape again ! 
 
152 APPENDIX. 
 
 Poor moth ! near weeping I lament thee, 
 Thy glossy form, thy instant woe ; 
 
 'Twas zeal for ' things too high ' that sent thee 
 From cheery earth to shades below. 
 
 Short speck of boundless Space was needed 
 For liome, for kingdom, world to thee ! 
 
 Where passed unheeding as unheeded, 
 Thy little life from sorrow free. 
 
 But syren hopes from out thy dwelling 
 Enticed thee, bade thee earth explore, — 
 
 Thy frame so late with rapture swelling. 
 Is swept from earth forevermore ! 
 
 Poor moth ! thy fate my own resembles : 
 Me too a restless asking mind 
 
 Hath sent on far and weary rambles, 
 To seek the good I ne'er shall find. 
 
 Like thee, with common lot contented, 
 With humble joys and vulgar fate, 
 
 I might have lived and ne'er lamented, 
 Moth of a larger size, a longer date ! 
 
 But Nature's majesty unveiling 
 
 What seem'd her wildest, grandest charms, 
 
 Eternal Truth and Beauty hailing, 
 Like thee, I rushed into her arms. 
 
 What gained we, little moth ? Thy ashes, 
 Thy one brief parting pang may show : 
 
 And thoughts like these, for soul that dashes 
 From deep to deep, are — death more slowl 
 
 II. 
 
 CUI BONO. 
 
 What is Hope ? A smiling rainbow 
 Children follow through the wet ; 
 
 'Tis not here, still yonder, yonder : 
 Never urchin found it vet. 
 
 What is Life ? A thawing iceboard 
 On a sea with sunny shore ; — 
 
 Gay we sail ; it melts beneath us ; 
 We are sunk, and seen no more. 
 
FRACTIONS: FOUR FABLES. 153 
 
 What is Man ? A foolish baby, 
 
 Vainly strives, and fights, and frets ; 
 Demanding all, deserving nothing ; — 
 
 One small grave is what he gets. 
 
 III. 
 
 FOUR FABLES. 
 
 1. 
 
 Once upon a time, a man, somewhat in drink belike, raised a dread- 
 ful outcry at the corner of the market-place, ' 1 hat the world was all 
 turned topsy-turvy ; that the men and cattle were all walking with 
 their feet uppermost ; that the houses and earth at large if they did 
 not mind it) would fall into the sky ; in short, that unless prompt 
 means were taken, things in general were on the high road to the 
 Devil." As the people only laughed at him, he cried the louder and 
 more vehemently ; nay, at last, began objuring, foaming, imprecating ; 
 when a good-natured auditor, going up. took the orator by the haunches, 
 and softly inverting his position, set him down — on his feet. The 
 which upon perceiving, his mind was staggered not a little. "Ha! 
 deuce take it !" cried he, rubbing his eyes, '"so it was not the world 
 that was lianging by its feet then, but I that was standing on my 
 head ! " - 
 
 Censor, Casti gator mo J' am, Radical Reformer, by whatever name thou 
 art called ! have a care ; especially if thou art getting loud ! 
 
 PiLPAY Junior. 
 
 2.* 
 
 "Gentlemen," said a conjurer, one fine starry evening, " Ihese 
 heavens are a deceptio visus ; what you call stars are nothing but fiery 
 motes in the air. Wait a little, I will clear them off, and show you how 
 the matter is." Whereupon the artist produced a long syringe of great 
 force ; and, stooping over the neighbouring puddle, filled it with mud 
 and dirty water, which he then squirted with might and main against 
 the zenith. The wiser of the company unfurled their umbrellas; but 
 most part, looking up in triiimph; cried, " Down with delusion ! It is 
 an age of science ! Have we not tallow lights then ? " Here the mud 
 and dirty water fell, and bespattered and beplastered these simple per- 
 sons, and even put out the eyes of several, so that they never saw the 
 stars any more. 
 
 Enlightened Utilitarian ! art thou aware that this patent logic-mill of 
 thine, which grindeth with such a clatter, is but a mill ? P. J. 
 
154 APPENDIX. 
 
 3. 
 
 " It is I that support this household," said a hen one day to herself ; 
 " the master cannot breakfast without an egg, for lie is dyspeptical 
 and would die, and it is I that lay it. And here is this ugly poodle, 
 doing nothing earthly, and gets thrice the victual I do, and is caressed 
 all day ! By the Cock of Minerva, they shall give me a double portion 
 of oats, or they have eaten their last Qe,g\ " But much as she cackled 
 and creaked, the scullion would not give her an extra grain ; where- 
 upon, in dudgeon, she hid her next egg in the dunghill, and did noth- 
 ing but cackle and creak all day. The scullion suffered her for a week, 
 then (by order) drew her neck, and purchased other eggs at sixpence 
 the dozen. 
 
 Man ! why frettest thou and whinest thou ? This blockhead is hap- 
 pier than thou, and still a blockhead ? — Ah, sure enough, thy wages 
 are too low ! AVilt thou strike work with Providence then, and force 
 him to ' an alternative ? ' Believe it, he will do without thee : il rCy a 
 
 jioiiit echo tame necessaire. P. J. 
 
 4. 
 
 ' ' What is the use of thee, thou gnarled sapling ? " said a young larch- 
 tree to a young oak. "I grow three feet in a year, thou scarcely as 
 many inches ; I am straight and taper as a reed, thou straggling and 
 twisted as a loosened withe." — "And thy duration," answered the oak, 
 " is some third part of man's life, and I am appointed to flourish for a 
 thousand years. Thou art felled and sawed into paling, where thou 
 rottest and art burned after a single summer ; of me are fashioned bat- 
 tle-ships, and I carry mariners and heroes into unknown seas." 
 
 The richer a nature, the harder and slower its development. Two 
 boys were once of a class in the Edinburgh grammar-school : John ever 
 trim, precise and dux ; Walter ever slovenly, confused and dolt. In 
 due time, John became Bailie John of Hunter-square, and Walter be- 
 came Sir Walter Scott of the Universe. 
 
 The quickest and completest of all vegetables is the cabbage. 
 
 P. J. 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE SOWER'S SONG. 
 
 Now hands to seedsheet, boys, 
 
 We step and we cast ; old Time's on wing ; 
 
 And would ye partake of Harvest's joys, 
 
 The corn must be sown in Spring. 
 
 Fall gently and stilly good corn, 
 Lie warm in thy earthy bed ; 
 And stand so yelloic some morn^ 
 For beast and ma7i must be fed. 
 
FRACTIONS: ADIEU. 155 
 
 Old Earth is a pleasure to see 
 In sunshiny cloak of red and green ; 
 The furrow lies fresh ; this Year will be 
 As Years that are past have been. 
 FaU gently^ &c. 
 
 Old Mother, receive this corn, 
 The son of Six Thousand golden sires : 
 All these on thy kindly breast were born; 
 One more thy poor child requires. 
 Fall gently, &c. 
 
 Now steady and sure again, 
 And measure of stroke and step we keep ; 
 Thus up and thus down we cast our grain : 
 Sow well and you gladly reap. 
 
 Fall gently and still, good corn, 
 
 Lie warm in thy earthy bed; 
 
 And stand so yelloic some morn, 
 
 Fo7' beast and man must be fed. 
 
 V. 
 ADIEU. 
 
 Let time and chance combine, combine, 
 Let time and chance combine ; 
 The fairest love from heaven above, 
 That love of yours was mine, 
 
 My dear, 
 That love of yours was mine. 
 
 The past is fled and gone, and gone, 
 The past is fled and gone ; 
 If naught but pain to me remain, 
 I'll fare in memory on. 
 
 My dear, 
 I'll fare in memory on. 
 
 The saddest tears must fall, must fall, 
 The saddest tears must fall ; 
 In weal or woe, in this world below, 
 I love you ever and all, 
 
 My dear, 
 I love you ever and all. 
 
156 APPENDIX. 
 
 A long road full of pain, of pain, 
 
 A long road full of pain ; 
 
 One soul, one heart, sworn ne'er to party 
 
 We ne'er can meet again, 
 
 My dear, 
 We ne'er can meet again. 
 
 Hard fate will not allow, allow, 
 Hard fate will not allow ; 
 We blessed were as the angels are,— 
 Adieu forever now, 
 
 My dear. 
 Adieu forever now. 
 
 VI. 
 
 THE BEETLE. 
 
 Poor hobbling Beetle, needst not haste ; 
 Should Traveller Traveller thus alarm ? 
 Pursue thy journey through the waste, 
 Not foot of mine shall work thee harm. 
 
 Who knows what errand grave thou hast, 
 * Small family ' — that have not dined ? 
 Lodged under pebble, there they fast. 
 Till head of house have raised the wind f 
 
 Man's bread lies 'mong the feet of men ; 
 For cark and moil sufficient cause ! 
 Who cannot sow would reap ; — and then 
 In Beetledom are no Poor-Laws. 
 
 And if thy Wife and thou agree 
 But ill, as like when short of victual, 
 I swear, the Public Sympathy 
 Thy fortune meriteth, poor Beetle. 
 
 Alas, and I should do thee skaith. 
 To realms of Night with heeltap send ! 
 Who judg'd thee worthy pains of Death ?- 
 On Earth, save me, without a Friend I 
 
FRACTIONS: FORTUNA. 157 
 
 Pass on, poor Eeetle, venerable 
 Art thou, were wonders. ne'er so rife ; 
 Thou hast what Bel to Tower of Babel 
 Not gave : the cliief of wonders — Life. 
 
 Also of * ancient family,' 
 Though small in size, of feature dark : 
 What Debrett's Peer surpasseth thee ? 
 Thy Ancestor was in Noah's Ark. 
 
 VIL 
 
 TO-DAY. 
 
 So here hath been dawning 
 Another blue Day : 
 Think wilt thou let it 
 Slip useless away. 
 
 Out of Eternity 
 
 This new Day is born ; 
 
 Into Eternity, 
 
 At night, will return. 
 
 Behold it aforetime 
 No eye ever did : 
 So soon it forever 
 From all eyes is hid. 
 
 Here hath been dawning 
 Another blue Day : 
 Think wilt thou let it 
 Slip useless away. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 FORTUNA. 
 
 The wind blows east, the wind blows west, 
 
 And the frost falls and the rain : 
 
 A weary heart went thankful to rest, 
 
 And must rise to toil again, 'gain, 
 
 And must rise to toil again. 
 
:158 APPENDIX. 
 
 The wind blows east, the wind blows west, 
 And there comes good luck and bad ; 
 The thriftiest man is the cheerf ullest : 
 'Tis a thriftless thing to be sad, sad, 
 'Tis a thriftless thing to be sad. 
 
 The wind blows east, the wind blows west ; 
 
 Ye shall know a tree by its fruit : 
 
 This world, they say, is worst to the best ; — 
 
 But a dastard has evil to boot, boot, 
 
 But a dastard has evil to boot. 
 
 The wind blows east, the wind blows west ; 
 
 What skills it to mourn or to talk ? 
 
 A journey I have, and far ere I rest ; 
 
 I must bundle my wallets and walk, walk, 
 
 I must bundle my wallets and walk. 
 
 The wind does blow as it lists alway ; 
 Canst thou change this world to thy mind ? 
 The world will wander its own wise way ; 
 I also will wander mine, mine, 
 I also will wander mine. 
 
/ tv' 
 
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