Chapter 72

[152]Memoirs, ii. 294-6.[153]Memoirs, ii. 296-7.[154]Extract:Memoirs, ii. 298.[155]Extract of letter to Sir W.R. Hamilton, Dublin, Jan. 11, 1836. Here first printed.[156]Memoirs, ii. 344-6.[157]Memoirs, ii. 347-8.[158]Ibid.ii. 349.[159]Memoirs, ii. 350-1.[160]Here first printed. G.[161]Here first printed. G.[162]Memoirs, ii. 351-4.[163]Extract:Memoirs, ii. 357-8.[164]Memoirs, ii. 358.[165]Ibid.ii. 360.[166]Memoirs, ii. 360-1.[167]Ellen Parry (daughter of Dr. Parry), who died April 28, 1840. Wordsworth saw her April 28, 1839. He was again at Summer Hill, Bath, in April 1840.[168]Memoirs, ii. 362-3.[169]Sic: qu. 'Misapprehensions.'H.A.[170]Sic: 1. 'Poems.'II. A.[171]Memoirs, ii. 364-6.[172]Ibid.ii. 366.[173]Memoirs, ii. 367-9.[174]Memoirs, ii. 369-70.[175]Ibid.ii. 370-1.[176]Memoirs, ii. 371-3.[177]Memoirs, ii. 373-4.[178]Extract of letter to John Peace, Esq., Jan. 19, 1841:Memoirs, ii. 376.[179]Extract of letter to John Peace, Esq., January 19, 1841:Memoirs, ii. 376.[180]Memoirs, ii, 377.[181]Ibid.ii. 378.[182]Memoirs, ii. 382-3.[183]Dr. Seabury was consecrated bishop (of Connecticut) by Scottish bishops at Aberdeen, on 14th November 1784. Dr. White and Dr. Provoost were consecrated bishops (of New York and Pennsylvania) at Lambeth, 4th February 1787.[184]Memoirs, ii. 383-4.[185]Memoirs, ii. 384-5.[186]Ibid.ii. 387.[187]Memoirs, ii. 385.[188]Extract of letter to John Peace, Esq., Dec. 12, 1842:ibid.ii. 390-1.[189]Extract of letter to Nephew, March 22, 1843:ibid.ii. 391.[190]The venerable and illustrious soldier has only very recently died. Within ten days of his death he wrote the present Editor tenderly and reverentially of Wordsworth. G.[191]Memoirs, ii. 392-4.[192]Prelude, book v.[193]Memoirs, ii. 394-6.[194]Southey's account in hisLife and Correspondencerenders this statement questionable.[195]Referring to a translation by Sir W.R.H. ofDie Idealeof Schiller, to which a stanza was added by Sir W.—G.[196]Memoirs, ii. 404-5.[197]The title of Mr. J. Cottle's work isEssays on Socinianism, by Joseph Cottle. Lond.: Longmans.[198]Memoirs, ii. 405-6.[199]This was written in answer to an inquiry whether Wordsworth had by him any hymns calculated for a collection which I was making, and asking permission to insert his 'Noon-day Hymn.'H.A.[200]Memoirs, ii. 406.[201]Lord Lonsdale's death.[202]The respected Rector of Lowther, and Chancellor of the Diocese.[203]Memoirs, ii. 407-8.[204]The fête was given by Miss Fenwick, then at Rydal.[205]SeeMemoirs, c. xlv.[206]Memoirs, ii. 411-12.[207]Memoirs, ii. 412-13.[208]Walter Scottdied21st Sept.1832.S.T. Coleridge"25th July1834.Charles Lamb"27th Dec.1834.Geo. Crabbe"3rd Feb.1832.Felicia Hemans"16th May1835.Robert Southey"21st March1843.[209]The poem enclosed is 'The Westmoreland Girl,' dated June 6, 1845. The text corresponds with that in the one volume edition, with the exception of the two stanzas added in the next letter; and in the 1st stanza 'thoughtless' has been substituted for 'simple;' and in the 18th 'is laid' for 'must lie.'H.R.[210]Memoirs, ii. 414-17.[211]Memoirs, ii. 418-21.[212]Memoirs, ii. 151-2.[213]Memoirs, ii. 152-3.[214]Memoirs, ii. 422-3.[215]Memoirs, ii. 424-5.[216]Memoirs, ii. 432-3.[217]Memoirs, ii. 434.[218]To Mr. Moxon, Aug. 9, 1847.[219]29th Dec. 1847.[220][Note by Mr. Peace.] At Rydal Mount in 1838. Ephesians v. 20. 'My favourite text,' said he.[221]Memoirs, ii. 435-6.[222]Ibid.ii. 501-2.[223]Memoirs, ii. 502-3.[224]Ibid.ii. 503.[225]'There is a rhetorical amplitude and brilliancy in the Messias,' says Mr. Carlyle, 'which elicits in our critic (Mr. Taylor) an instinct truer than his philosophy is. Neither has the still purer spirit of Klopstock's odes escaped him. Perhaps there is no writing in our language that offers so correct an emblem of him as this analysis.' I remember thinking Taylor's 'clear outline' of the Messias the most satisfying account of a poem I ever read: it fills the mind with a vision of pomp and magnificence, which it is pleasanter to contemplate, as it were, from afar, massed together in that general survey, than to examine part by part. Mr. Taylor and Mr. Carlyle agree in exalting that ode of Klopstock's, in which he represents the Muse of Britain and the Muse of Germany running a race. The piece seems to me more rhetorical than strictly poetical; and if the younger Muse's power of keeping up the race depends on productions of this sort, I would not give a penny for her chance, at least if the contest relates to pure poetry. Klopstock'sHerman(mentioned afterwards,) consists of three chorus-dramas, as Mr. Taylor calls them:The Battle of Herman,Herman and the Princes, andThe Death of Herman. Herman is the Arminius of the Roman historians. S.C.[226]Leonidus, an epic poem, by R. Glover, first appeared in May, 1737: in the fifth edition, published in 1770, it was corrected and extended from nine books to twelve. Glover was the author of Boadicea and Medea, tragedies, which had some success on the stage. I believe thatLeonidashas more merit in the conduct of the design, and in the delineation of character, than as poetry.'He write an epic poem,' said Thomson, 'who never saw a mountain!' Glover had seen the sun and moon, yet he seems to have looked for their poetical aspects in Homer and Milton, rather than in the sky. 'There is not a single simile inLeonidas,' says Lyttleton, 'that is borrowed from any of the ancients, and yet there is hardly any poem that has such a variety of beautiful comparisons.' The similes of Milton come so flat and dry out of Glover's mangle, that they are indeed quiteanother thingfrom what they appear in the poems of that Immortal:ex. gr.Like wintry clouds, which, opening for a time,Tinge their black folds with gleams of scattered light:—Is not this Milton's 'silver lining' stretched and mangled?The Queen of NightGleam'd from the centre of th' etherial vault,And o'er the raven plumes of darkness shedHer placid light.This is flattened from the well-known passage in Comus.Soon will savage MarsDeform the lovelyringlets of thy shrubs.A genteel improvement upon Milton's 'bush with frizzled hair implicit.' Then we have——delicious to the sightSoft dales meand'ring show their flowery lapsAmong rude piles of nature,spoiled from——the flowery lapOf some irriguous valley spread its store.Thus does this poet shatter and dissolve the blooming sprays of another man's plantation, instead of pushing through them some new shoots of his own to crown them with fresh blossoms.Milton himself borrowed as much as Glover. Aye, ten times more; yet every passage in his poetry is Miltonic,—more than anything else. On the other hand, his imitatorsMiltonize, yet produce nothing worthy of Milton, the important characteristic of whose writings my father well expressed, when he said 'The reader of Milton must be always on his duty:he is surrounded with sense.' A man must have his sense to imitate him worthily. How we look through his words at the Deluge, as he floods it upon us in Book xi. l. 738-53!—The Attic bees produce honey so flavoured with the thyme of Hymettus that it is scarcely eatable, though to smell the herb itself in a breezy walk upon that celebrated Mount would be an exceeding pleasure; thus certain epic poems are overpoweringly flavoured with herbs of Milton, while yet the fragrant balm and fresh breeze of his poetry is not to be found in them. S.C.[227]The 'abrupt and laconic structure' of Glover's periods appears at the very commencement ofLeonidas, which has something military in its movement, but rather the stiff gait of the drilled soldier than the proud march of the martial hero.The virtuous Spartan who resign'd his lifeTo save his country at th' Oetaen straits,Thermopylae, when all the peopled eastIn arms with Xerxes filled the Grecian plains,O Muse record! The Hellespont they passedO'erpowering Thrace. The dreadful tidings swiftTo Corinth flew. Her Isthmus was the seatOf Grecian council. Orpheus thence returnsTo Lacedaemon. In assembly full, &c.Glover's best passages are of a soft character. This is a pleasingHomerism:Lycis dies,For boist'rous war ill-chosen. He was skill'dTo tune the lulling flute, and melt the heart;Or with his pipe's awak'ning strains allureThe lovely dames of Lydia to the dance.They on the verdant level graceful mov'dIn vary'd measures; while the cooling breezeBeneath their swelling garments wanton'd o'erTheir snowy breasts, and smooth Cayster's streamsSoft-gliding murmur'd by. The hostile blade, &c. Bk. VIII.And here is a pleasing expansion of Pindar, Olymp. II. 109:Placid were his days,Which flow'd through blessings. As a river pure,Whose sides are flowery, and whose meadows fair,Meets in his course a subterranean void;There dips his silver head, again to rise,And, rising, glide through flow'rs and meadows new;So shall Oïleus in those happier fields,Where never tempests roar, nor humid cloudsIn mists dissolve, nor white descending flakesOf winter violate th' eternal green;Where never gloom of trouble shades the mind,Nor gust of passion heaves the quiet breast,Nor dews of grief are sprinkled. Bk. X. S.C.[228]This was accidentally confirmed to me by an old German gentleman at Helmstadt, who had been Klopstock's school and bed-fellow. Among other boyish anecdotes, he related that the young poet set a particular value on a translation of the PARADISE LOST, and always slept with it under his pillow.[229]Klopstock's observation was partly true and partly erroneous. In the literal sense of his words, and, if we confine the comparison to the average of space required for the expression of the same thought in the two languages, it is erroneous. I have translated some German hexameters into English hexameters, and find, that on the average three English lines will express four lines German. The reason is evident: our language abounds in monosyllables and dissyllables. The German, not less than the Greek, is a polysyllable language. But in another point of view the remark was not without foundation. For the German possessing the same unlimited privilege of forming compounds, both with prepositions and with epithets, as the Greek, it can express the richest single Greek word in a single German one, and is thus freed from the necessity of weak or ungraceful paraphrases. I will content myself with one example at present, viz. the use of the prefixed participlesver,zer,ent, andweg: thusreissento rend,verreissento rend away,zerreissento rend to pieces,entreissento rend off or out of a thing, in the active sense: orschmelzento melt—ver,zer,ent,schmelzen—and in like manner through all the verbs neuter and active. If you consider only how much we should feel the loss of the prefixbe, as in bedropt, besprinkle, besot, especially in our poetical language, and then think that this same mode of composition is carried through all their simple and compound prepositions, and many of their adverbs; and that with most of these the Germans have the same privilege as we have of dividing them from the verb and placing them at the end of the sentence; you will have no difficulty in comprehending the reality and the cause of this superior power in the German of condensing meaning, in which its great poet exulted. It is impossible to read half a dozen pages of Wieland without perceiving that in this respect the German has no rival but the Greek. And yet I feel, that concentration or condensation is not the happiest mode of expressing this excellence, which seems to consist not so much in the less time required for conveying an impression, as in the unity and simultaneousness with which the impression is conveyed. It tends to make their language more picturesque: itdepicturesimages better. We have obtained this power in part by our compound verbs derived from the Latin: and the sense of its great effect no doubt induced our Milton both to the use and the abuse of Latin derivatives. But still these prefixed particles, conveying no separate or separable meaning to the mere English reader, cannot possibly act on the mind with the force or liveliness of an original and homogeneous language such as the German is, and besides are confined to certain words.[230](A la Fortune. Liv. II. Ode vi. Œuvres de Jean Baptiste Rousseau, p.121, edit. 1820. One of the latter strophes of this ode concludes with two lines, which, as the editor observes, have become a proverb, and of which the thought and expression are borrowed from Lucretius:cripitur persona, manet res:III. v. 58.Montrez nous, guerriers magnanimes,Votre vertu dans tout son jour:Voyons comment vos coeurs sublimesDu sort soutiendront le retour.Tant que sa faveur vous seconde,Vous étes les maîtres du monde,Votre gloire nous éblouit:Mais au moindre revers funeste,Le masque tombe, l'homme reste,Et le heros s'évanouit.Horace, says the Editor, en traitant ce même sujet, liv. X. ode XXXV. et Pindare en l'esquissant à grands traits, au commencement de sa douzième Olympique, n'avoient laissé à leurs successeurs que son côté moral à envisager, et c'est le parti que prit Rousseau. The general sentiment of the ode is handled with great dignity in Paradise Regained. Bk. III. l. 43—157—a passage which, as Thyer says, contains the quintessence of the subject. Dante has some noble lines on Fortune in the viith canto of theInferno,—lines worthy of a great mystic poet. After referring to the vain complaints and maledictions of men against this Power, he beautifully concludes:Ma ella s'è beata e ciò non ode:Con l'altre prime creature lietaVolve sua spera, e beata si gode.J.B. Rousseau was born in 1669, began his career at the close of the age of Louis Quatorze, died at Brussels, March 17, 1741. He had been banished from France, by an intrigue, on a false charge, as now seems clear, of having composed and distributed defamatory verses, in 1712; and it was engraved upon his tomb that he was 'thirty years an object of envy and thirty of compassion.' Belonging to the classical school of the 17th century, of which he was the last survivor, he came somewhat into conflict with the spirit of the 18th, which was preparing a new vintage, and would have none but new wine in new bottles. Rousseau, however, was a very finished writer in his way, and has been compared to Pindar, Horace, Anacreon and Malherbe. His ode toM. le Comte du Lucis as fine an example as I know of the modern classical style. This is quite different from that which is exemplified in Wordsworth's Laodamia and Serjeant Talfourd's Ion; for in them the subjects only are ancient, while both the form and spirit are modern; whereas in the odes of Rousseau a modern subject is treated, as far as difference of times and language will allow, in the manner and tone of the Ancients. Samson Agonistes and Goethe's Iphigenia in Tauris are conformed to ancient modes of thought, but in them the subject also is taken from antiquity. Rousseau's works consist of Odes, Epistles in verse, Cantatas, Epigrams, &c. &c. He wrote for the stage at the beginning of his literary life, but with no great success. S.C.)[231]Voss, who lived from Feb. 20, 1751, to March, 1826, was author of the Luise, 'a rural epopaea of simple structure divided into three idyls, which relate the betrothment and marriage of the heroine.' This is a pleasing and very peculiar poem, composed in hexameter verse. 'The charm of the narrative,' says Mr. T., 'consists in the minute description of the local domestic manners of the personages.' The charm consists, I think, in the blending of these manners with the beauty of Nature, and the ease and suitability of the versification. Voss's translation of the Odyssey is praised for being so perfect an imitation of the original. The Greek has been rendered, 'with a fidelity and imitative harmony so admirable, that it suggests to the scholar the original wording, and reflects, as from a mirror, every beauty and every blemish of the ancient poem.' Hist. Survey, pp. 61-68. S. C.[232]Act III. Sc. 2. The night scene, which is the 5th of Act iv, is fine too in a frantic way. The songs it contains are very spirited. That sung by the Robbers is worthy of a Thug; it goes beyond our notions of any European bandit, and transports us to the land of Jaggernat. S. C.[233]The works of Bürger, who was born on the first day of 1748, died June 8, 1794, consist of Poems (2 vols.), Macbeth altered from Shakespeare, (pronounced by Taylor,—no good judge ofShakespeare,—in some respects superiour to the original,) Muuchaüsen's Travels; Translations; (of the six first books of the Iliad, and some others); Papers philological and political. His fame rests chiefly on three ballads, The Wild Hunter, The Parson's Daughter, and Lenore. The powerful diction and admirable harmony,—rhythm, sound, rhyme of these compositions Mr. Taylor describes as the result of laborious art; it strikes me, from the outline which he has given of Bürger's history, that the violent feelings, the life-like expression of which constitutes their power and value, may have been partly the reflex of the poet's own mind. His seems to have been a life of mismanagement from youth till middle age. Like Milton, he lost a beloved second wife by childbed in the first year of marriage: like him, he married a third time, but without his special necessity—blindness and unkind daughters. He wedded a lady who had fallen in love with his poetry, or perhaps his poetical reputation: an union founded, as it appears, in vanity, ended in vexation of spirit: and as Death, which had deprived him of two wives, did not release him from a third, he obtained his freedom, at the end of little more than three years, from a court of justice. Why did Klopstock undervalue, by preference of such a poet, the lofty-minded Schiller—the dearest to England of all German bards; perhaps because the author of Wallenstein was a philosopher, and had many things in his philosophy which the author of The Messiah could not find inhisheaven and earth. S.C.[234]Oberon, Canto viii. stanzas 69-80. The little touch about the new born babe's returning its mother's kiss is very romantic: though put modestly in the form of a query:—Und scheint nicht jeden KussSein kleiner mund dem ihren zu entsaugen?The wordentsaugen (suck off)is expressive—it very naturally characterises the kiss of an infant five minutes of age. Wieland had great nursery experience. 'My sweetest hours,' says he, in a letter quoted in the Survey,' are those in which I see about me, in all their glee of childhood, my whole posse of little half-way things between apes and angels.'Mr. Sotheby's translation of the Oberon made the poem popular in this country. The original first appeared in 1780. S. C.[235]Thesedisenchantersput one in mind of the ratcatchers, who are said and supposed to rid houses of rats, and yet the rats, somehow or other, continue to swarm. The Kantean rats were not aware, I believe, when Klopstock spoke thus, of the extermination that had befallen them: and even to this day those acute animals infest the old house, and steal away the daily bread of the children,—if the old notions of Space and Time, and the old proofs of religious verities by way of theunderstandingandspeculative reason,must be called such. Whether or no these are their true spiritual sustenance, or the necessary guard and vehicle of it, is perhaps a question.But who were Nicolai and Engel, and what did they against the famous enchanter? The former was born in 1733, at Berlin, where he carried on his father's business of book-selling, pursued literature with marked success, and attained to old age, full of literary honours. By means of three critical journals (theLiteratur-Briefe,theBibliothek der Schönen Wissenschaftern,and theAllgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek,) which he conducted with the powerful cooperation of Lessing, and of his intimate friend Mendelssohn, and to which he contributed largely himself, he became very considerable in the German world of letters, and so continued for the space of twenty years. Jördens, in his Lexicon, speaks highly of the effect of Nicolai's writings in promoting freedom of thought, enlightened views in theology and philosophy, and a sound taste in fine literature—describes him as a brave battler with intolerance, hypocrisy, and confused conceptions in religion; with empty subtleties, obscurities, and terminologies, that can but issue in vain fantasies, in his controversial writings on the 'so-named critical philosophy.' He engaged with theKritik der reinen Vernunft,on its appearance in 1781, in theAllgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek;first explained his objections to it in the 11th vol. of hisReisebeschreibung, (Description of a Journey through Germany and Switzerland in the year 1781,) and afterwards, in his romance entitled The Life and Opinions of Sempronius Gundibert, a German Philosopher, sought to set forth the childish crotchets and abuses imputable to many disciples of this philosophy in their native absurdity. Theratsbonealluded to by Klopstock, was doubtless contained in the above-named romance, which the old poet probably esteemed more than Nicolai's more serious polemics.Gundibert has had its day, but in a fiction destined to a day of longer duration,—Goethe's Faust,—the Satirist is himself most effectively satirised. There he is, in that strange yet beautiful temple, pinned to the wall in a ridiculous attitude, to be laughed at as long as the temple itself is visited and admired. This doom came upon him, not so much for his campaign against the Kanteans, as for hisJoys of Werter,—because he had dared to ridicule a book, which certainly offered no small temptations to the parodist. Indeed he seems to have been engaged in a series of hostilities with Fichte, Lavater, Wieland, Herder, and Goethe.(See Mr. Hayward's excellent translation of Faust, of which I have heard a literary German say that it gave a better notion of the original than any other which he had seen.)In theWalpurgisnachtof the Faust he thus addresses the goblin dancers:—Ihr seyd noch immer da! Nein das ist unerhört!Verschwindet doch! Wir haben ja aufgeklärt!'Fly!Vanish! Unheard of impudence! What, still there!In this enlightened age too, when you have beenProved not to exist?'—Shelley's Translation.Do we not see the doughty reviewer before us magisterially waving his hand and commanding the apparitions to vanish?—then with despondent astonishment exclaiming:Das Teufelspack es fragt nach keiner Regel.Wir sind so klug und dennoch spukt's in Tegel.So wise we are! yet what fantastic fooleries still stream forth from my contemporary's brains; how are we still haunted! The speech of Faust concerning him is mis-translated by Shelley, who understood the humour of the piece, as well as the poetry, but not the particular humours of it. Nothing can be more expressive of a conceited, narrow-minded reviewer. 'Oh he!—he is absolutely everywhere,—What others dance, he must decide upon. If he can't chatter about every step, 'tis as good as not made at all.Nothing provokes him so much as when we go forward. If you'd turn round and round in a circle, as he does in his old mill, he'd approve of that perhaps; especially if you'd consult him about it.''A man of such spirited habitudes,' says Mr. Carlyle, after affirming that Nicolai wrote against Kant's philosophy without comprehending it, and judged of poetry, as of Brunswick Mum, by its utility, 'is now by the Germans called aPhilister. Nicolai earned for himself the painful pre-eminence of beingErz Philister, Arch Philistine.' 'He, an old enemy of Goethe's,' says Mr. Hill, in explanation of the title in which he appears in theWalpurgisnacht, 'had published an account of his phantasmal illusions, pointing them against Fichte's system of idealism, which he evidently confounded with what Coleridge would have called Subjective Idolism.'Such was this wondrousdisenchanterin the eyes of later critics than Klopstock: a man strong enough to maintain a long fight against genius, not wise enough to believe in it and befriend it. How many a controversialist seems a mighty giant to those who are predisposed to his opinions, while, in the eyes of others, he is but a blind floundering Polyphemus, who knows not how to direct his heavy blows; if not a menacing scarecrow, with a stake in his hand, which he has no power to drive home! I remember reading a thin volume in which all metaphysicians that had ever left their thoughts behind them were declared utterly in the wrong—all up to, but not including, the valiant author himself. The world had lain in darkness till he appeared, like a new Phoebus, on the scene. This great man despatched Kant's system—(never having read a syllable of any work of Kant's)—in a page and a quarter! and the exploit had its celebraters and admirers. Yet strange to say, the metaphysical world went on just as if nothing had happened!—after the sun was up, it went groping about, as if it had never been enlightened, and actually ever since has continued to talk as if Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and other metaphysicians understood the nature of the things they wrote about rathermorethan the mass of mankind, instead ofless! Verschwindet doch! might this author say, as Nicolai said to the spectres of the Brocken and the phantoms of literature,Verschwindet doch!Wir haben ja aufgeklärt.Engel opposed Kant in philosophical treatises, one of which is entitledZwei Gerpräche den Werth der Kritik betreffend. He too occupied a considerable space in Literature—his works fill twelve volumes, besides a few other pieces. 'To him,' says Jördens, 'the criticism of taste and of art, speculative, practical, and popular philosophy, owe many of their later advances in Germany.' Jördens pronounces his romance, entitledLorenz Stark, a masterpiece in its way, and says of his plays, that they deserve a place beside the best of Lessing's. He was the author of a miscellaneous work, entitled The Philosopher for the World, and is praised by Cousin as a meritorious anthropologist. Engel was born September 11, 1741, at Parchim, of which his father was pastor, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin; died June 28, 1802. Neither Nicolai nor Engel is noticed by Cousin among the adversaries of Kant's doctrine: the intelligent adversaries,—who assailed it with skill and knowledge, rather proved its strength than discovered its weakness.Fortius acri ridiculum; but this applies only to transient triumphs, where the object of attack, though it furnishesoccasionfor ridicule, affords no justcausefor it. S.C.

[152]Memoirs, ii. 294-6.

[153]Memoirs, ii. 296-7.

[154]Extract:Memoirs, ii. 298.

[155]Extract of letter to Sir W.R. Hamilton, Dublin, Jan. 11, 1836. Here first printed.

[156]Memoirs, ii. 344-6.

[157]Memoirs, ii. 347-8.

[158]Ibid.ii. 349.

[159]Memoirs, ii. 350-1.

[160]Here first printed. G.

[161]Here first printed. G.

[162]Memoirs, ii. 351-4.

[163]Extract:Memoirs, ii. 357-8.

[164]Memoirs, ii. 358.

[165]Ibid.ii. 360.

[166]Memoirs, ii. 360-1.

[167]Ellen Parry (daughter of Dr. Parry), who died April 28, 1840. Wordsworth saw her April 28, 1839. He was again at Summer Hill, Bath, in April 1840.

[168]Memoirs, ii. 362-3.

[169]Sic: qu. 'Misapprehensions.'H.A.

[170]Sic: 1. 'Poems.'II. A.

[171]Memoirs, ii. 364-6.

[172]Ibid.ii. 366.

[173]Memoirs, ii. 367-9.

[174]Memoirs, ii. 369-70.

[175]Ibid.ii. 370-1.

[176]Memoirs, ii. 371-3.

[177]Memoirs, ii. 373-4.

[178]Extract of letter to John Peace, Esq., Jan. 19, 1841:Memoirs, ii. 376.

[179]Extract of letter to John Peace, Esq., January 19, 1841:Memoirs, ii. 376.

[180]Memoirs, ii, 377.

[181]Ibid.ii. 378.

[182]Memoirs, ii. 382-3.

[183]Dr. Seabury was consecrated bishop (of Connecticut) by Scottish bishops at Aberdeen, on 14th November 1784. Dr. White and Dr. Provoost were consecrated bishops (of New York and Pennsylvania) at Lambeth, 4th February 1787.

[184]Memoirs, ii. 383-4.

[185]Memoirs, ii. 384-5.

[186]Ibid.ii. 387.

[187]Memoirs, ii. 385.

[188]Extract of letter to John Peace, Esq., Dec. 12, 1842:ibid.ii. 390-1.

[189]Extract of letter to Nephew, March 22, 1843:ibid.ii. 391.

[190]The venerable and illustrious soldier has only very recently died. Within ten days of his death he wrote the present Editor tenderly and reverentially of Wordsworth. G.

[191]Memoirs, ii. 392-4.

[192]Prelude, book v.

[193]Memoirs, ii. 394-6.

[194]Southey's account in hisLife and Correspondencerenders this statement questionable.

[195]Referring to a translation by Sir W.R.H. ofDie Idealeof Schiller, to which a stanza was added by Sir W.—G.

[196]Memoirs, ii. 404-5.

[197]The title of Mr. J. Cottle's work isEssays on Socinianism, by Joseph Cottle. Lond.: Longmans.

[198]Memoirs, ii. 405-6.

[199]This was written in answer to an inquiry whether Wordsworth had by him any hymns calculated for a collection which I was making, and asking permission to insert his 'Noon-day Hymn.'H.A.

[200]Memoirs, ii. 406.

[201]Lord Lonsdale's death.

[202]The respected Rector of Lowther, and Chancellor of the Diocese.

[203]Memoirs, ii. 407-8.

[204]The fête was given by Miss Fenwick, then at Rydal.

[205]SeeMemoirs, c. xlv.

[206]Memoirs, ii. 411-12.

[207]Memoirs, ii. 412-13.

[208]Walter Scottdied21st Sept.1832.S.T. Coleridge"25th July1834.Charles Lamb"27th Dec.1834.Geo. Crabbe"3rd Feb.1832.Felicia Hemans"16th May1835.Robert Southey"21st March1843.

[208]

Walter Scottdied21st Sept.1832.S.T. Coleridge"25th July1834.Charles Lamb"27th Dec.1834.Geo. Crabbe"3rd Feb.1832.Felicia Hemans"16th May1835.Robert Southey"21st March1843.

[209]The poem enclosed is 'The Westmoreland Girl,' dated June 6, 1845. The text corresponds with that in the one volume edition, with the exception of the two stanzas added in the next letter; and in the 1st stanza 'thoughtless' has been substituted for 'simple;' and in the 18th 'is laid' for 'must lie.'H.R.

[210]Memoirs, ii. 414-17.

[211]Memoirs, ii. 418-21.

[212]Memoirs, ii. 151-2.

[213]Memoirs, ii. 152-3.

[214]Memoirs, ii. 422-3.

[215]Memoirs, ii. 424-5.

[216]Memoirs, ii. 432-3.

[217]Memoirs, ii. 434.

[218]To Mr. Moxon, Aug. 9, 1847.

[219]29th Dec. 1847.

[220][Note by Mr. Peace.] At Rydal Mount in 1838. Ephesians v. 20. 'My favourite text,' said he.

[221]Memoirs, ii. 435-6.

[222]Ibid.ii. 501-2.

[223]Memoirs, ii. 502-3.

[224]Ibid.ii. 503.

[225]'There is a rhetorical amplitude and brilliancy in the Messias,' says Mr. Carlyle, 'which elicits in our critic (Mr. Taylor) an instinct truer than his philosophy is. Neither has the still purer spirit of Klopstock's odes escaped him. Perhaps there is no writing in our language that offers so correct an emblem of him as this analysis.' I remember thinking Taylor's 'clear outline' of the Messias the most satisfying account of a poem I ever read: it fills the mind with a vision of pomp and magnificence, which it is pleasanter to contemplate, as it were, from afar, massed together in that general survey, than to examine part by part. Mr. Taylor and Mr. Carlyle agree in exalting that ode of Klopstock's, in which he represents the Muse of Britain and the Muse of Germany running a race. The piece seems to me more rhetorical than strictly poetical; and if the younger Muse's power of keeping up the race depends on productions of this sort, I would not give a penny for her chance, at least if the contest relates to pure poetry. Klopstock'sHerman(mentioned afterwards,) consists of three chorus-dramas, as Mr. Taylor calls them:The Battle of Herman,Herman and the Princes, andThe Death of Herman. Herman is the Arminius of the Roman historians. S.C.

[226]Leonidus, an epic poem, by R. Glover, first appeared in May, 1737: in the fifth edition, published in 1770, it was corrected and extended from nine books to twelve. Glover was the author of Boadicea and Medea, tragedies, which had some success on the stage. I believe thatLeonidashas more merit in the conduct of the design, and in the delineation of character, than as poetry.'He write an epic poem,' said Thomson, 'who never saw a mountain!' Glover had seen the sun and moon, yet he seems to have looked for their poetical aspects in Homer and Milton, rather than in the sky. 'There is not a single simile inLeonidas,' says Lyttleton, 'that is borrowed from any of the ancients, and yet there is hardly any poem that has such a variety of beautiful comparisons.' The similes of Milton come so flat and dry out of Glover's mangle, that they are indeed quiteanother thingfrom what they appear in the poems of that Immortal:ex. gr.Like wintry clouds, which, opening for a time,Tinge their black folds with gleams of scattered light:—Is not this Milton's 'silver lining' stretched and mangled?The Queen of NightGleam'd from the centre of th' etherial vault,And o'er the raven plumes of darkness shedHer placid light.This is flattened from the well-known passage in Comus.Soon will savage MarsDeform the lovelyringlets of thy shrubs.A genteel improvement upon Milton's 'bush with frizzled hair implicit.' Then we have——delicious to the sightSoft dales meand'ring show their flowery lapsAmong rude piles of nature,spoiled from——the flowery lapOf some irriguous valley spread its store.Thus does this poet shatter and dissolve the blooming sprays of another man's plantation, instead of pushing through them some new shoots of his own to crown them with fresh blossoms.Milton himself borrowed as much as Glover. Aye, ten times more; yet every passage in his poetry is Miltonic,—more than anything else. On the other hand, his imitatorsMiltonize, yet produce nothing worthy of Milton, the important characteristic of whose writings my father well expressed, when he said 'The reader of Milton must be always on his duty:he is surrounded with sense.' A man must have his sense to imitate him worthily. How we look through his words at the Deluge, as he floods it upon us in Book xi. l. 738-53!—The Attic bees produce honey so flavoured with the thyme of Hymettus that it is scarcely eatable, though to smell the herb itself in a breezy walk upon that celebrated Mount would be an exceeding pleasure; thus certain epic poems are overpoweringly flavoured with herbs of Milton, while yet the fragrant balm and fresh breeze of his poetry is not to be found in them. S.C.

'He write an epic poem,' said Thomson, 'who never saw a mountain!' Glover had seen the sun and moon, yet he seems to have looked for their poetical aspects in Homer and Milton, rather than in the sky. 'There is not a single simile inLeonidas,' says Lyttleton, 'that is borrowed from any of the ancients, and yet there is hardly any poem that has such a variety of beautiful comparisons.' The similes of Milton come so flat and dry out of Glover's mangle, that they are indeed quiteanother thingfrom what they appear in the poems of that Immortal:ex. gr.

Like wintry clouds, which, opening for a time,Tinge their black folds with gleams of scattered light:—

Is not this Milton's 'silver lining' stretched and mangled?

The Queen of NightGleam'd from the centre of th' etherial vault,And o'er the raven plumes of darkness shedHer placid light.

This is flattened from the well-known passage in Comus.

Soon will savage MarsDeform the lovelyringlets of thy shrubs.

A genteel improvement upon Milton's 'bush with frizzled hair implicit.' Then we have

——delicious to the sightSoft dales meand'ring show their flowery lapsAmong rude piles of nature,

spoiled from

——the flowery lapOf some irriguous valley spread its store.

Thus does this poet shatter and dissolve the blooming sprays of another man's plantation, instead of pushing through them some new shoots of his own to crown them with fresh blossoms.

Milton himself borrowed as much as Glover. Aye, ten times more; yet every passage in his poetry is Miltonic,—more than anything else. On the other hand, his imitatorsMiltonize, yet produce nothing worthy of Milton, the important characteristic of whose writings my father well expressed, when he said 'The reader of Milton must be always on his duty:he is surrounded with sense.' A man must have his sense to imitate him worthily. How we look through his words at the Deluge, as he floods it upon us in Book xi. l. 738-53!—The Attic bees produce honey so flavoured with the thyme of Hymettus that it is scarcely eatable, though to smell the herb itself in a breezy walk upon that celebrated Mount would be an exceeding pleasure; thus certain epic poems are overpoweringly flavoured with herbs of Milton, while yet the fragrant balm and fresh breeze of his poetry is not to be found in them. S.C.

[227]The 'abrupt and laconic structure' of Glover's periods appears at the very commencement ofLeonidas, which has something military in its movement, but rather the stiff gait of the drilled soldier than the proud march of the martial hero.The virtuous Spartan who resign'd his lifeTo save his country at th' Oetaen straits,Thermopylae, when all the peopled eastIn arms with Xerxes filled the Grecian plains,O Muse record! The Hellespont they passedO'erpowering Thrace. The dreadful tidings swiftTo Corinth flew. Her Isthmus was the seatOf Grecian council. Orpheus thence returnsTo Lacedaemon. In assembly full, &c.Glover's best passages are of a soft character. This is a pleasingHomerism:Lycis dies,For boist'rous war ill-chosen. He was skill'dTo tune the lulling flute, and melt the heart;Or with his pipe's awak'ning strains allureThe lovely dames of Lydia to the dance.They on the verdant level graceful mov'dIn vary'd measures; while the cooling breezeBeneath their swelling garments wanton'd o'erTheir snowy breasts, and smooth Cayster's streamsSoft-gliding murmur'd by. The hostile blade, &c. Bk. VIII.And here is a pleasing expansion of Pindar, Olymp. II. 109:Placid were his days,Which flow'd through blessings. As a river pure,Whose sides are flowery, and whose meadows fair,Meets in his course a subterranean void;There dips his silver head, again to rise,And, rising, glide through flow'rs and meadows new;So shall Oïleus in those happier fields,Where never tempests roar, nor humid cloudsIn mists dissolve, nor white descending flakesOf winter violate th' eternal green;Where never gloom of trouble shades the mind,Nor gust of passion heaves the quiet breast,Nor dews of grief are sprinkled. Bk. X. S.C.

The virtuous Spartan who resign'd his lifeTo save his country at th' Oetaen straits,Thermopylae, when all the peopled eastIn arms with Xerxes filled the Grecian plains,O Muse record! The Hellespont they passedO'erpowering Thrace. The dreadful tidings swiftTo Corinth flew. Her Isthmus was the seatOf Grecian council. Orpheus thence returnsTo Lacedaemon. In assembly full, &c.

Glover's best passages are of a soft character. This is a pleasingHomerism:

Lycis dies,For boist'rous war ill-chosen. He was skill'dTo tune the lulling flute, and melt the heart;Or with his pipe's awak'ning strains allureThe lovely dames of Lydia to the dance.They on the verdant level graceful mov'dIn vary'd measures; while the cooling breezeBeneath their swelling garments wanton'd o'erTheir snowy breasts, and smooth Cayster's streamsSoft-gliding murmur'd by. The hostile blade, &c. Bk. VIII.

And here is a pleasing expansion of Pindar, Olymp. II. 109:

Placid were his days,Which flow'd through blessings. As a river pure,Whose sides are flowery, and whose meadows fair,Meets in his course a subterranean void;There dips his silver head, again to rise,And, rising, glide through flow'rs and meadows new;So shall Oïleus in those happier fields,Where never tempests roar, nor humid cloudsIn mists dissolve, nor white descending flakesOf winter violate th' eternal green;Where never gloom of trouble shades the mind,Nor gust of passion heaves the quiet breast,Nor dews of grief are sprinkled. Bk. X. S.C.

[228]This was accidentally confirmed to me by an old German gentleman at Helmstadt, who had been Klopstock's school and bed-fellow. Among other boyish anecdotes, he related that the young poet set a particular value on a translation of the PARADISE LOST, and always slept with it under his pillow.

[229]Klopstock's observation was partly true and partly erroneous. In the literal sense of his words, and, if we confine the comparison to the average of space required for the expression of the same thought in the two languages, it is erroneous. I have translated some German hexameters into English hexameters, and find, that on the average three English lines will express four lines German. The reason is evident: our language abounds in monosyllables and dissyllables. The German, not less than the Greek, is a polysyllable language. But in another point of view the remark was not without foundation. For the German possessing the same unlimited privilege of forming compounds, both with prepositions and with epithets, as the Greek, it can express the richest single Greek word in a single German one, and is thus freed from the necessity of weak or ungraceful paraphrases. I will content myself with one example at present, viz. the use of the prefixed participlesver,zer,ent, andweg: thusreissento rend,verreissento rend away,zerreissento rend to pieces,entreissento rend off or out of a thing, in the active sense: orschmelzento melt—ver,zer,ent,schmelzen—and in like manner through all the verbs neuter and active. If you consider only how much we should feel the loss of the prefixbe, as in bedropt, besprinkle, besot, especially in our poetical language, and then think that this same mode of composition is carried through all their simple and compound prepositions, and many of their adverbs; and that with most of these the Germans have the same privilege as we have of dividing them from the verb and placing them at the end of the sentence; you will have no difficulty in comprehending the reality and the cause of this superior power in the German of condensing meaning, in which its great poet exulted. It is impossible to read half a dozen pages of Wieland without perceiving that in this respect the German has no rival but the Greek. And yet I feel, that concentration or condensation is not the happiest mode of expressing this excellence, which seems to consist not so much in the less time required for conveying an impression, as in the unity and simultaneousness with which the impression is conveyed. It tends to make their language more picturesque: itdepicturesimages better. We have obtained this power in part by our compound verbs derived from the Latin: and the sense of its great effect no doubt induced our Milton both to the use and the abuse of Latin derivatives. But still these prefixed particles, conveying no separate or separable meaning to the mere English reader, cannot possibly act on the mind with the force or liveliness of an original and homogeneous language such as the German is, and besides are confined to certain words.

[230](A la Fortune. Liv. II. Ode vi. Œuvres de Jean Baptiste Rousseau, p.121, edit. 1820. One of the latter strophes of this ode concludes with two lines, which, as the editor observes, have become a proverb, and of which the thought and expression are borrowed from Lucretius:cripitur persona, manet res:III. v. 58.Montrez nous, guerriers magnanimes,Votre vertu dans tout son jour:Voyons comment vos coeurs sublimesDu sort soutiendront le retour.Tant que sa faveur vous seconde,Vous étes les maîtres du monde,Votre gloire nous éblouit:Mais au moindre revers funeste,Le masque tombe, l'homme reste,Et le heros s'évanouit.Horace, says the Editor, en traitant ce même sujet, liv. X. ode XXXV. et Pindare en l'esquissant à grands traits, au commencement de sa douzième Olympique, n'avoient laissé à leurs successeurs que son côté moral à envisager, et c'est le parti que prit Rousseau. The general sentiment of the ode is handled with great dignity in Paradise Regained. Bk. III. l. 43—157—a passage which, as Thyer says, contains the quintessence of the subject. Dante has some noble lines on Fortune in the viith canto of theInferno,—lines worthy of a great mystic poet. After referring to the vain complaints and maledictions of men against this Power, he beautifully concludes:Ma ella s'è beata e ciò non ode:Con l'altre prime creature lietaVolve sua spera, e beata si gode.J.B. Rousseau was born in 1669, began his career at the close of the age of Louis Quatorze, died at Brussels, March 17, 1741. He had been banished from France, by an intrigue, on a false charge, as now seems clear, of having composed and distributed defamatory verses, in 1712; and it was engraved upon his tomb that he was 'thirty years an object of envy and thirty of compassion.' Belonging to the classical school of the 17th century, of which he was the last survivor, he came somewhat into conflict with the spirit of the 18th, which was preparing a new vintage, and would have none but new wine in new bottles. Rousseau, however, was a very finished writer in his way, and has been compared to Pindar, Horace, Anacreon and Malherbe. His ode toM. le Comte du Lucis as fine an example as I know of the modern classical style. This is quite different from that which is exemplified in Wordsworth's Laodamia and Serjeant Talfourd's Ion; for in them the subjects only are ancient, while both the form and spirit are modern; whereas in the odes of Rousseau a modern subject is treated, as far as difference of times and language will allow, in the manner and tone of the Ancients. Samson Agonistes and Goethe's Iphigenia in Tauris are conformed to ancient modes of thought, but in them the subject also is taken from antiquity. Rousseau's works consist of Odes, Epistles in verse, Cantatas, Epigrams, &c. &c. He wrote for the stage at the beginning of his literary life, but with no great success. S.C.)

Montrez nous, guerriers magnanimes,Votre vertu dans tout son jour:Voyons comment vos coeurs sublimesDu sort soutiendront le retour.Tant que sa faveur vous seconde,Vous étes les maîtres du monde,Votre gloire nous éblouit:Mais au moindre revers funeste,Le masque tombe, l'homme reste,Et le heros s'évanouit.

Horace, says the Editor, en traitant ce même sujet, liv. X. ode XXXV. et Pindare en l'esquissant à grands traits, au commencement de sa douzième Olympique, n'avoient laissé à leurs successeurs que son côté moral à envisager, et c'est le parti que prit Rousseau. The general sentiment of the ode is handled with great dignity in Paradise Regained. Bk. III. l. 43—157—a passage which, as Thyer says, contains the quintessence of the subject. Dante has some noble lines on Fortune in the viith canto of theInferno,—lines worthy of a great mystic poet. After referring to the vain complaints and maledictions of men against this Power, he beautifully concludes:

Ma ella s'è beata e ciò non ode:Con l'altre prime creature lietaVolve sua spera, e beata si gode.

J.B. Rousseau was born in 1669, began his career at the close of the age of Louis Quatorze, died at Brussels, March 17, 1741. He had been banished from France, by an intrigue, on a false charge, as now seems clear, of having composed and distributed defamatory verses, in 1712; and it was engraved upon his tomb that he was 'thirty years an object of envy and thirty of compassion.' Belonging to the classical school of the 17th century, of which he was the last survivor, he came somewhat into conflict with the spirit of the 18th, which was preparing a new vintage, and would have none but new wine in new bottles. Rousseau, however, was a very finished writer in his way, and has been compared to Pindar, Horace, Anacreon and Malherbe. His ode toM. le Comte du Lucis as fine an example as I know of the modern classical style. This is quite different from that which is exemplified in Wordsworth's Laodamia and Serjeant Talfourd's Ion; for in them the subjects only are ancient, while both the form and spirit are modern; whereas in the odes of Rousseau a modern subject is treated, as far as difference of times and language will allow, in the manner and tone of the Ancients. Samson Agonistes and Goethe's Iphigenia in Tauris are conformed to ancient modes of thought, but in them the subject also is taken from antiquity. Rousseau's works consist of Odes, Epistles in verse, Cantatas, Epigrams, &c. &c. He wrote for the stage at the beginning of his literary life, but with no great success. S.C.)

[231]Voss, who lived from Feb. 20, 1751, to March, 1826, was author of the Luise, 'a rural epopaea of simple structure divided into three idyls, which relate the betrothment and marriage of the heroine.' This is a pleasing and very peculiar poem, composed in hexameter verse. 'The charm of the narrative,' says Mr. T., 'consists in the minute description of the local domestic manners of the personages.' The charm consists, I think, in the blending of these manners with the beauty of Nature, and the ease and suitability of the versification. Voss's translation of the Odyssey is praised for being so perfect an imitation of the original. The Greek has been rendered, 'with a fidelity and imitative harmony so admirable, that it suggests to the scholar the original wording, and reflects, as from a mirror, every beauty and every blemish of the ancient poem.' Hist. Survey, pp. 61-68. S. C.

[232]Act III. Sc. 2. The night scene, which is the 5th of Act iv, is fine too in a frantic way. The songs it contains are very spirited. That sung by the Robbers is worthy of a Thug; it goes beyond our notions of any European bandit, and transports us to the land of Jaggernat. S. C.

[233]The works of Bürger, who was born on the first day of 1748, died June 8, 1794, consist of Poems (2 vols.), Macbeth altered from Shakespeare, (pronounced by Taylor,—no good judge ofShakespeare,—in some respects superiour to the original,) Muuchaüsen's Travels; Translations; (of the six first books of the Iliad, and some others); Papers philological and political. His fame rests chiefly on three ballads, The Wild Hunter, The Parson's Daughter, and Lenore. The powerful diction and admirable harmony,—rhythm, sound, rhyme of these compositions Mr. Taylor describes as the result of laborious art; it strikes me, from the outline which he has given of Bürger's history, that the violent feelings, the life-like expression of which constitutes their power and value, may have been partly the reflex of the poet's own mind. His seems to have been a life of mismanagement from youth till middle age. Like Milton, he lost a beloved second wife by childbed in the first year of marriage: like him, he married a third time, but without his special necessity—blindness and unkind daughters. He wedded a lady who had fallen in love with his poetry, or perhaps his poetical reputation: an union founded, as it appears, in vanity, ended in vexation of spirit: and as Death, which had deprived him of two wives, did not release him from a third, he obtained his freedom, at the end of little more than three years, from a court of justice. Why did Klopstock undervalue, by preference of such a poet, the lofty-minded Schiller—the dearest to England of all German bards; perhaps because the author of Wallenstein was a philosopher, and had many things in his philosophy which the author of The Messiah could not find inhisheaven and earth. S.C.

[234]Oberon, Canto viii. stanzas 69-80. The little touch about the new born babe's returning its mother's kiss is very romantic: though put modestly in the form of a query:—Und scheint nicht jeden KussSein kleiner mund dem ihren zu entsaugen?The wordentsaugen (suck off)is expressive—it very naturally characterises the kiss of an infant five minutes of age. Wieland had great nursery experience. 'My sweetest hours,' says he, in a letter quoted in the Survey,' are those in which I see about me, in all their glee of childhood, my whole posse of little half-way things between apes and angels.'Mr. Sotheby's translation of the Oberon made the poem popular in this country. The original first appeared in 1780. S. C.

[234]Oberon, Canto viii. stanzas 69-80. The little touch about the new born babe's returning its mother's kiss is very romantic: though put modestly in the form of a query:

—Und scheint nicht jeden KussSein kleiner mund dem ihren zu entsaugen?

The wordentsaugen (suck off)is expressive—it very naturally characterises the kiss of an infant five minutes of age. Wieland had great nursery experience. 'My sweetest hours,' says he, in a letter quoted in the Survey,' are those in which I see about me, in all their glee of childhood, my whole posse of little half-way things between apes and angels.'

Mr. Sotheby's translation of the Oberon made the poem popular in this country. The original first appeared in 1780. S. C.

[235]Thesedisenchantersput one in mind of the ratcatchers, who are said and supposed to rid houses of rats, and yet the rats, somehow or other, continue to swarm. The Kantean rats were not aware, I believe, when Klopstock spoke thus, of the extermination that had befallen them: and even to this day those acute animals infest the old house, and steal away the daily bread of the children,—if the old notions of Space and Time, and the old proofs of religious verities by way of theunderstandingandspeculative reason,must be called such. Whether or no these are their true spiritual sustenance, or the necessary guard and vehicle of it, is perhaps a question.But who were Nicolai and Engel, and what did they against the famous enchanter? The former was born in 1733, at Berlin, where he carried on his father's business of book-selling, pursued literature with marked success, and attained to old age, full of literary honours. By means of three critical journals (theLiteratur-Briefe,theBibliothek der Schönen Wissenschaftern,and theAllgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek,) which he conducted with the powerful cooperation of Lessing, and of his intimate friend Mendelssohn, and to which he contributed largely himself, he became very considerable in the German world of letters, and so continued for the space of twenty years. Jördens, in his Lexicon, speaks highly of the effect of Nicolai's writings in promoting freedom of thought, enlightened views in theology and philosophy, and a sound taste in fine literature—describes him as a brave battler with intolerance, hypocrisy, and confused conceptions in religion; with empty subtleties, obscurities, and terminologies, that can but issue in vain fantasies, in his controversial writings on the 'so-named critical philosophy.' He engaged with theKritik der reinen Vernunft,on its appearance in 1781, in theAllgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek;first explained his objections to it in the 11th vol. of hisReisebeschreibung, (Description of a Journey through Germany and Switzerland in the year 1781,) and afterwards, in his romance entitled The Life and Opinions of Sempronius Gundibert, a German Philosopher, sought to set forth the childish crotchets and abuses imputable to many disciples of this philosophy in their native absurdity. Theratsbonealluded to by Klopstock, was doubtless contained in the above-named romance, which the old poet probably esteemed more than Nicolai's more serious polemics.Gundibert has had its day, but in a fiction destined to a day of longer duration,—Goethe's Faust,—the Satirist is himself most effectively satirised. There he is, in that strange yet beautiful temple, pinned to the wall in a ridiculous attitude, to be laughed at as long as the temple itself is visited and admired. This doom came upon him, not so much for his campaign against the Kanteans, as for hisJoys of Werter,—because he had dared to ridicule a book, which certainly offered no small temptations to the parodist. Indeed he seems to have been engaged in a series of hostilities with Fichte, Lavater, Wieland, Herder, and Goethe.(See Mr. Hayward's excellent translation of Faust, of which I have heard a literary German say that it gave a better notion of the original than any other which he had seen.)In theWalpurgisnachtof the Faust he thus addresses the goblin dancers:—Ihr seyd noch immer da! Nein das ist unerhört!Verschwindet doch! Wir haben ja aufgeklärt!'Fly!Vanish! Unheard of impudence! What, still there!In this enlightened age too, when you have beenProved not to exist?'—Shelley's Translation.Do we not see the doughty reviewer before us magisterially waving his hand and commanding the apparitions to vanish?—then with despondent astonishment exclaiming:Das Teufelspack es fragt nach keiner Regel.Wir sind so klug und dennoch spukt's in Tegel.So wise we are! yet what fantastic fooleries still stream forth from my contemporary's brains; how are we still haunted! The speech of Faust concerning him is mis-translated by Shelley, who understood the humour of the piece, as well as the poetry, but not the particular humours of it. Nothing can be more expressive of a conceited, narrow-minded reviewer. 'Oh he!—he is absolutely everywhere,—What others dance, he must decide upon. If he can't chatter about every step, 'tis as good as not made at all.Nothing provokes him so much as when we go forward. If you'd turn round and round in a circle, as he does in his old mill, he'd approve of that perhaps; especially if you'd consult him about it.''A man of such spirited habitudes,' says Mr. Carlyle, after affirming that Nicolai wrote against Kant's philosophy without comprehending it, and judged of poetry, as of Brunswick Mum, by its utility, 'is now by the Germans called aPhilister. Nicolai earned for himself the painful pre-eminence of beingErz Philister, Arch Philistine.' 'He, an old enemy of Goethe's,' says Mr. Hill, in explanation of the title in which he appears in theWalpurgisnacht, 'had published an account of his phantasmal illusions, pointing them against Fichte's system of idealism, which he evidently confounded with what Coleridge would have called Subjective Idolism.'Such was this wondrousdisenchanterin the eyes of later critics than Klopstock: a man strong enough to maintain a long fight against genius, not wise enough to believe in it and befriend it. How many a controversialist seems a mighty giant to those who are predisposed to his opinions, while, in the eyes of others, he is but a blind floundering Polyphemus, who knows not how to direct his heavy blows; if not a menacing scarecrow, with a stake in his hand, which he has no power to drive home! I remember reading a thin volume in which all metaphysicians that had ever left their thoughts behind them were declared utterly in the wrong—all up to, but not including, the valiant author himself. The world had lain in darkness till he appeared, like a new Phoebus, on the scene. This great man despatched Kant's system—(never having read a syllable of any work of Kant's)—in a page and a quarter! and the exploit had its celebraters and admirers. Yet strange to say, the metaphysical world went on just as if nothing had happened!—after the sun was up, it went groping about, as if it had never been enlightened, and actually ever since has continued to talk as if Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and other metaphysicians understood the nature of the things they wrote about rathermorethan the mass of mankind, instead ofless! Verschwindet doch! might this author say, as Nicolai said to the spectres of the Brocken and the phantoms of literature,Verschwindet doch!Wir haben ja aufgeklärt.Engel opposed Kant in philosophical treatises, one of which is entitledZwei Gerpräche den Werth der Kritik betreffend. He too occupied a considerable space in Literature—his works fill twelve volumes, besides a few other pieces. 'To him,' says Jördens, 'the criticism of taste and of art, speculative, practical, and popular philosophy, owe many of their later advances in Germany.' Jördens pronounces his romance, entitledLorenz Stark, a masterpiece in its way, and says of his plays, that they deserve a place beside the best of Lessing's. He was the author of a miscellaneous work, entitled The Philosopher for the World, and is praised by Cousin as a meritorious anthropologist. Engel was born September 11, 1741, at Parchim, of which his father was pastor, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin; died June 28, 1802. Neither Nicolai nor Engel is noticed by Cousin among the adversaries of Kant's doctrine: the intelligent adversaries,—who assailed it with skill and knowledge, rather proved its strength than discovered its weakness.Fortius acri ridiculum; but this applies only to transient triumphs, where the object of attack, though it furnishesoccasionfor ridicule, affords no justcausefor it. S.C.

But who were Nicolai and Engel, and what did they against the famous enchanter? The former was born in 1733, at Berlin, where he carried on his father's business of book-selling, pursued literature with marked success, and attained to old age, full of literary honours. By means of three critical journals (theLiteratur-Briefe,theBibliothek der Schönen Wissenschaftern,and theAllgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek,) which he conducted with the powerful cooperation of Lessing, and of his intimate friend Mendelssohn, and to which he contributed largely himself, he became very considerable in the German world of letters, and so continued for the space of twenty years. Jördens, in his Lexicon, speaks highly of the effect of Nicolai's writings in promoting freedom of thought, enlightened views in theology and philosophy, and a sound taste in fine literature—describes him as a brave battler with intolerance, hypocrisy, and confused conceptions in religion; with empty subtleties, obscurities, and terminologies, that can but issue in vain fantasies, in his controversial writings on the 'so-named critical philosophy.' He engaged with theKritik der reinen Vernunft,on its appearance in 1781, in theAllgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek;first explained his objections to it in the 11th vol. of hisReisebeschreibung, (Description of a Journey through Germany and Switzerland in the year 1781,) and afterwards, in his romance entitled The Life and Opinions of Sempronius Gundibert, a German Philosopher, sought to set forth the childish crotchets and abuses imputable to many disciples of this philosophy in their native absurdity. Theratsbonealluded to by Klopstock, was doubtless contained in the above-named romance, which the old poet probably esteemed more than Nicolai's more serious polemics.

Gundibert has had its day, but in a fiction destined to a day of longer duration,—Goethe's Faust,—the Satirist is himself most effectively satirised. There he is, in that strange yet beautiful temple, pinned to the wall in a ridiculous attitude, to be laughed at as long as the temple itself is visited and admired. This doom came upon him, not so much for his campaign against the Kanteans, as for hisJoys of Werter,—because he had dared to ridicule a book, which certainly offered no small temptations to the parodist. Indeed he seems to have been engaged in a series of hostilities with Fichte, Lavater, Wieland, Herder, and Goethe.

(See Mr. Hayward's excellent translation of Faust, of which I have heard a literary German say that it gave a better notion of the original than any other which he had seen.)

In theWalpurgisnachtof the Faust he thus addresses the goblin dancers:—

Ihr seyd noch immer da! Nein das ist unerhört!Verschwindet doch! Wir haben ja aufgeklärt!

'Fly!Vanish! Unheard of impudence! What, still there!In this enlightened age too, when you have beenProved not to exist?'—Shelley's Translation.

Do we not see the doughty reviewer before us magisterially waving his hand and commanding the apparitions to vanish?—then with despondent astonishment exclaiming:

Das Teufelspack es fragt nach keiner Regel.Wir sind so klug und dennoch spukt's in Tegel.

So wise we are! yet what fantastic fooleries still stream forth from my contemporary's brains; how are we still haunted! The speech of Faust concerning him is mis-translated by Shelley, who understood the humour of the piece, as well as the poetry, but not the particular humours of it. Nothing can be more expressive of a conceited, narrow-minded reviewer. 'Oh he!—he is absolutely everywhere,—What others dance, he must decide upon. If he can't chatter about every step, 'tis as good as not made at all.Nothing provokes him so much as when we go forward. If you'd turn round and round in a circle, as he does in his old mill, he'd approve of that perhaps; especially if you'd consult him about it.'

'A man of such spirited habitudes,' says Mr. Carlyle, after affirming that Nicolai wrote against Kant's philosophy without comprehending it, and judged of poetry, as of Brunswick Mum, by its utility, 'is now by the Germans called aPhilister. Nicolai earned for himself the painful pre-eminence of beingErz Philister, Arch Philistine.' 'He, an old enemy of Goethe's,' says Mr. Hill, in explanation of the title in which he appears in theWalpurgisnacht, 'had published an account of his phantasmal illusions, pointing them against Fichte's system of idealism, which he evidently confounded with what Coleridge would have called Subjective Idolism.'

Such was this wondrousdisenchanterin the eyes of later critics than Klopstock: a man strong enough to maintain a long fight against genius, not wise enough to believe in it and befriend it. How many a controversialist seems a mighty giant to those who are predisposed to his opinions, while, in the eyes of others, he is but a blind floundering Polyphemus, who knows not how to direct his heavy blows; if not a menacing scarecrow, with a stake in his hand, which he has no power to drive home! I remember reading a thin volume in which all metaphysicians that had ever left their thoughts behind them were declared utterly in the wrong—all up to, but not including, the valiant author himself. The world had lain in darkness till he appeared, like a new Phoebus, on the scene. This great man despatched Kant's system—(never having read a syllable of any work of Kant's)—in a page and a quarter! and the exploit had its celebraters and admirers. Yet strange to say, the metaphysical world went on just as if nothing had happened!—after the sun was up, it went groping about, as if it had never been enlightened, and actually ever since has continued to talk as if Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and other metaphysicians understood the nature of the things they wrote about rathermorethan the mass of mankind, instead ofless! Verschwindet doch! might this author say, as Nicolai said to the spectres of the Brocken and the phantoms of literature,

Verschwindet doch!Wir haben ja aufgeklärt.

Engel opposed Kant in philosophical treatises, one of which is entitledZwei Gerpräche den Werth der Kritik betreffend. He too occupied a considerable space in Literature—his works fill twelve volumes, besides a few other pieces. 'To him,' says Jördens, 'the criticism of taste and of art, speculative, practical, and popular philosophy, owe many of their later advances in Germany.' Jördens pronounces his romance, entitledLorenz Stark, a masterpiece in its way, and says of his plays, that they deserve a place beside the best of Lessing's. He was the author of a miscellaneous work, entitled The Philosopher for the World, and is praised by Cousin as a meritorious anthropologist. Engel was born September 11, 1741, at Parchim, of which his father was pastor, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin; died June 28, 1802. Neither Nicolai nor Engel is noticed by Cousin among the adversaries of Kant's doctrine: the intelligent adversaries,—who assailed it with skill and knowledge, rather proved its strength than discovered its weakness.Fortius acri ridiculum; but this applies only to transient triumphs, where the object of attack, though it furnishesoccasionfor ridicule, affords no justcausefor it. S.C.

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