"Then we are friends for ever. Hear me—In a short time Incholese will hold a magnificent entertainment; nothing like it has ever happened in Venice since I have been interested for the welfare of its people. The great hall will be crowded with visiters—the four splendid chandeliers will be lighted, and without doubt the hall shall glitter more brilliant than the jewelled cavern of Aladdin. The beautiful, the young, the gay, will be there, and in the midst of the merriment old age will forget its infirmities and leap like youth. The old, however, will get weary and retire. When the Doge and his attendants have gone, pour the contents of this vial into the wine you carry up, and the morning will afford your heart a brimming revenge. Venice is just restored to tranquillity; the plot of the foolish Bedmar and his more foolish associates has failed, and the reason why I will tell you—it was, because I was not consulted; the conspirators relied in their own cunning and strength and were justly disappointed. The guardian genius of this republic and of all republics can be overcome, and prostrated by a power not inferior to my own, but times and seasons and circumstances must be consulted if even I succeed. Our little plot is of far less import, and with the exception of the Doge and a few of the high officers we can sweep the hall. Be firm to the purpose. Give them the contents of the vial in their wine, and in three nights after I will show you the souls of all, and then you may roll in vengeance for your wrongs. Farewell, Farragio; remember to follow strictly my injunctions." It was past midnight, and without another word the little gentleman took his leave.
Time rolled heavily along, and nothing but the bustle of preparation enabled Farragio to endure its tardiness.
The eventful evening came. The Doge with the members of the Senate and their wives, and many distinguished citizens and their families, graced the sumptuous feast. Comino, according to promise, led in the beautiful Glorianna. The chandeliers blazed like jasper in the sunbeams, and threw additional charms from their lustre around the "fairest of the fair." She walked amid their light—proud as the Egyptian queen whose beauty made slaves of kings and brought conquerors at her feet. Lightly went the revel on; song and wine followed each other in quick succession; each guest seemed gayest of the gay, and gave heart and soul to the bewitching joy.
The Doge retired, the elder citizens soon followed; one by one they dropped off till youth alone was left to roll the revel anthem on—and loud and long it rang, till merry peals broke on the morning's verge.
Farragio, true to his hellish purpose, mingled the contents of the vial with the wine. All drank—and as if by the power of enchantment were hurried on to doom.
In the morning, smiles were on their marble lips. Incholese sat like one rapt in ectsacy, and Glorianna's fingers were still upon the harp whose melody had charmed the host to bliss—a silent throng they lingered there.
The little gentleman was also true to his appointment—in three days he showed to Farragio the souls of his enemies. But his own looked from its infernal abode upon those—in a place of less torment than the bottomless abyss that foamed its fury upon him.
My friend Bob for the most part made verses in commendation of the eyes and cheeks of Betty Manning. After her death, however, he at times left these to the worm, and wrote upon other matters.
One thing for which Bob was renowned was his disregard of everything like accuracy in his literary statements, and in his quotations from books. I find the following singular note appended to a little poem which with many others, fell to my care at his death.
"The flight of the Huma is in so rarified an atmosphere, that blood oozes from its pores; its plumage is constantly colored with it. The eyes, too, of this comrade of the clouds, unlike those of the eagle or hawk, have a sorrowful and lack lustre appearance."—Spix.
Bob must have found this note on the same page with the description of the "Chowchowtow." But that is no business of mine.
The verses to which the above note was appended were headed "The Huma."
The "Corpus Juris," which is written in Latin, has never been translated into any living tongue; yet it is the basis of law in nearly all Europe and America. It was written by Tribonien, Theophilus, Dorotheus, and John, and although called The Roman Law, is in nothing Roman but the name. It is in four parts—Institutes, Pandects or Digests, The Code, and The Novel Law. This celebrated book is full of pedantry, and abounds in the most whimsical platitudes. For example, in the chapter, "De patria potestate," 'The father loses his authority over the son in many ways, firstly, when the father dies, secondly, when the son dies,' &c. There is a Greek version of the Institutes by Angelus Politianus.
NO. III.
NO. III.
The following is from a poet of no ordinary talent, whose main fault is indolence. He gave it me for my collection, where I believe it has slumbered until now, since its conception. I think it a very pretty song, and hope it will be a favorite with your readers, to whom I lend it for May.
J. F. O.
GEORGE LUNT.
A Lecture on German Literature, being a Sketch of its history from its origin to the present day, delivered by request, before the Athenæum Society of Baltimore, on the 11th of February 1836, by GEORGEH. CALVERT, Translator of Schiller's Don Carlos: now first published.
A nation's literature is the embodied expression of its mind. That in a people, there be impulse, depth, individuality enough to give clear utterance to its thoughts, passions, and aspirations, and that these have the distinctness and consistency necessary to mould them into definite forms, denotes a degree of mental endowment and cultivation traceable in but few of the nations of whose history we have record. But few have attained to the creation and enjoyment of a literature. Regions of the globe there are, whole continents indeed of its surface, hitherto inhabited by races of men, who, like the cotemporaneous generations of brute animals, have only lived and died, leaving behind them nought but a tradition of their existence,—communities, in which the essentially human was too feebly developed to erect the brain-built structures, which, while they preserve and refine the spirit whence they arise, from it derive the indestructible character that perpetuates them, as honorable monuments of the past, and for the present ever-open temples whither the wise resort for worship and inspiration.
Out of the darkness that envelops all else of the primeval ages, the words of the Jewish writers shine upon the minds of every successive generation as brightly and fixedly as do the stars from the mysterious heavens upon the shifting appearances of our shallow earth; and the books of the Old Testament stand, the sole human relics of eldest time, as lofty objects of admiration to the literary as they are of wonder to the religious. Of the architectural and sculptural creations of the gifted Greeks, embodied in perishable marble, but a few fragments have been saved from the consuming breath of time; but in the poet's lines, fresh and perfect, lives the spirit which produced them. As audible and musical as is to-day the murmur upon the Chian shore of the same waves to which Homer listened, is still the sound of Grecian song, imparting through our ears as deep and new a pleasure as it did to those who fought at Salamis. The conquests Cæsar made with his sword, a few centuries wiped from the face of the earth, but time has not touched and cannot touch those of his pen; and, though the language wherein the imperial chiefs of Rome gave orders to the prostrate world, has passed from the mouths of men, so long as they shall value beauty and wisdom, will the cherished lines of Tacitus and of Virgil be reproduced for their enjoyment.
Of the many nations of antiquity, these three are the only ones that possessed enough of mind to have each a distinct literature.
Within a much shorter space of time than elapsed between the birth of Moses and the birth of Seneca, have grown up to the maturity needed for the cultivation of letters, double the number of modern nations, separately formed out of the deposites of northern hordes, who, overrunning central and southern Europe, settled upon the mouldering strata of the Roman Empire, infusing apparently by their mixture with the conquered people, a new vigor into the inhabitants of these regions. As the states of modern Europe date their origin from the confused period of this conquest, so does the literature of each trace its birth to the same, presenting in its history a bright and elaborate picture, standing forth on a rude and dark back ground.
Notable among them, for the depth and nature of its foundations, for the character of the influences which affected its progress, for the richness and fullness of its late development, and for its present power upon the general mind of the human race, is the literature of Germany. Little more than a sketch of its history is all that I can on this occasion undertake.
In order to present to your minds an outline whereby will be rendered easier the following of its course from its rise to the present day, I will, in the first place, label three great epochs in its progress, with the names which made them epochs. Of the first, however, can be given but the name of the work, that of its author being unknown. I allude to theNibelungenlied, the Song of the Nibelungen, the great Epic of the Germans, written about the beginning of the thirteenth century, more than a hundred years before the birth of Chaucer. Luther makes the second epoch, and Goethe represents the third. We have here a period embracing six hundred years. But long before the production of theNibelungenlied, and the cotemporaneous lyrical poetry, letters were cultivated in Germany and books written, which, though containing nothing worthy of preservation, deserve to be considered and respected as bold forerunners, that fitted the Germans to value the singers of the Nibelungen period, while for these they cultivatedthe language into the degree of flexibility and fullness required for the medium of poetry. Charlemagne, who in the eighth century, conquered and converted Germany to Christianity, established schools in the monasteries, caused to be collected the ancient songs and laws, ordered the preaching to be in German, and had translations made from Latin. As the immediate result of this beginning, chronicles and translations in verse of the Bible, were written by the inmates of monasteries during the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries.
The first period of German literature, I have named after theNibelungenlied, a work which is not only the greatest of its age, but stands alone and unapproached as a national epic in the literature of all modern Europe. This period is commonly called the Swabian, from the influence of the Swabian line of emperors, who commenced to reign as emperors of Germany in the twelfth century, and who, by their zealous and judicious encouragement of letters, made the Swabian dialect prevail over the Franconian, which had hitherto been predominant. In the Swabian dialect is written the Song of the Nibelungen, which, like the Iliad—according to the well supported theory of the great German philologist Wolff—is wrought into a compact whole out of the traditions, songs and ballads, current at the time of its composition. The name Nibelungen, is that of a powerful Burgundian tribe, whose tragic fate is the subject of the poem. Nibelungen is obviously a name derived from the northern mythology, and is transferred to the Burgundians, when these get possession of the fatal Nibelungen hoard of treasure. The time is in the fifth century, and the scene is on the Rhine and afterwards on the frontier of Hungary and Austria.
Chriemhild, a beautiful daughter of a king of the Burgundians, is wooed and won by Siegfried, a prince of Netherlands, who possesses an invisible cloak, a sword of magic power, the inexhaustible hoard of the Nibelungen, and, like Achilles, is invulnerable except in one spot. Brunhild, a princess, endowed, too, with supernatural qualities, weds at the same time king Gunther, Chriemhild's brother; having been won by force by Gunther, aided by Siegfried. Jealousy and discord grow up between the two princesses, and reach such a pitch, that Brunhild plots against the life of Siegfried, and has him treacherously assassinated by the brothers of his wife, who wound him through the vulnerable spot between his shoulders. After years of grief, during which she harbors designs of vengeance, Chriemhild accepts, as a means of avenging her wrongs, the offer of the hand of Etzel, king of the Huns, the Attila of history, and leaving Gunther's court, accompanies Etzel to Hungary. Hither, after a time, she invites with his champions, Gunther, who in the face of dark forebodings, accepts the invitation, and with a chosen army of Nibelungen, comes to Etzel's court, where by Chriemhild's contrivance, he and all his band are enclosed in an immense Minster and therein slain.
Such is the outline of the story of this poem, which consists of thirty-nine books, orAdventures, as they are called, extending to nearly ten thousand lines. Over the whole hangs the dark northern mythology, under whose mysterious influences the action proceeds. The narrative is full of life and picturesque beauty. The story is developed with life-like truth and sequence, and with a unity of design unsurpassed in any poetic work. Naif simplicity and tragic grandeur unite to give it attraction.
At the time when the song of the Nibelungen was written, Germany was richer than any European country in poetic literature. Besides this great Epic, many poems of an epic character were written, relating, in addition to national themes, to Charlemagne and his knights, King Arthur and his round table, and others noted in the times of chivalry. There too flourished theMinnesinger, that is, love-singers, numbers of them knights and gentlemen, who, in imitation of the Troubadours of southern France, cultivated poetry and sang of love and war. The characteristics of theMinnelieder, or love songs, are simplicity, truth, and earnestness of feeling, joined with beautiful descriptions of nature. The golden age of German romantic poetry, was in the beginning of the thirteenth century. After the fall of the Hohenshauffen family from the imperial throne in the middle of this century, anarchy and civil war prevailed for a time in Germany. The nobility, given up to petty warfare, soon fell back from the state of comparative culture to which, by devotion to poetry, they had ascended, into rudeness and grossness.
Meanwhile the towns, particularly the imperial cities, which were directly under the emperor, were growing into importance. In these the civilization of the age centered. To them too, Poetry fled for preservation, and, deserted by nobles, took refuge with mechanics. And in a spirit that cannot be too warmly praised, was she welcomed. Zealously and earnestly did the worthy shoemakers, and carpenters of Nüenberg, Augsburg, Strasburg, and other towns betake themselves to reading poetry, and writing verse,—for with all their good will and zeal and laborious endeavors, they could produce only a mechanical imitation of their predecessors. Nevertheless, much good did they do. For carrying on the business of verse-making, they formed themselves into guilds or associations, on the principle of those established by the different trades: hence their name of master-singers, an apprenticeship being required for admission into the guild. So respectable and so much respected were these associations, that knights and priests did not disdain to belong to them. Thus did the master-singers, though ungifted with the soul of poetry which animated the Minnesingers, keep alive the love of literature and preserve as it were its body. Their most prosperous period was in the 15th century, when several of their number laid the foundation of the German Drama, and by their writings, particularly the satirical, contributed to prepare the German mind for the influence of Luther. Especially distinguished were men with the unmusical names of Hans Folks, Hans Rosenplüt, and Hans Sacks. The last,—an industrious shoemaker who still found time to write numberless dramas, not without wit, spirit and invention,—still holds an honorable place in German Literature.
During the same period, the result of the tendency to intellectual developement then manifested throughout Europe,—were first founded in Germanic Universities. The oldest is that of Prague, established by Charles IV in 1345. In imitation of it, that of Heidelberg was founded in 1386; and in the following century they multiplied all over Germany. Their effects were for a time injurious. By introducing Latin, they broughtcontempt upon the native language, and as a consequence, contempt also upon native poetry. This influence lasted until within less than a century of the present time. It is only indeed fifty years since the practice, for a long while universal, of lecturing in Latin, was entirely disused in the universities of Germany. As the universities rose, literature sank. Latin usurped the place of German: scholastic philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, and medicine with its kindred studies,—for, as yet there was no science, engrossed these seats of mental labor. But even in the early stage of their existence, while delving blindly at veins, many of them not destined ever to yield a precious metal, they have a claim to be regarded with honor and thankfulness, not only as the sources of so much after-fertility, but that within their walls was disciplined and instructed, and stored with the manifold learning which made more fearful its gigantic powers, that mind whose startling flashes fixed, in the opening of the 16th century, the gaze of the world it was about to overspread with a purifying conflagration. In 1503 was first heard in public, lecturing in the university of Erfurt, on the physics and ethics of Aristotle, the voice of Martin Luther.
On the long undulating line of human progression, here and there appear, at wide distances apart, men, in whom seem to centre, condensed into tenfold force, the faculties and spirit of humanity, apparently for the purpose of furthering by almost superhuman effort, its great interests,—men who, through the union of deep insight with wisest action, utter words and do deeds, which so touch, as with the hand of inspiration, the chords of the human heart, that their fellow men start up as though a new spring were moved in their souls, and, shaking off the clogging trammels of custom, bound forward on their career with freer motion and wider aim. High among these gifted few, stands Luther,—the successful assertor, in the face of deeply founded and strongly fortified authority, of mental independence. This is not the occasion to dwell on the keen sagacity, the wise counsel, the hardy acts, the stern perseverance, the broad labors, wherewith this mighty German made good his bold position, and, partly the trumpet-tongued spokesman, and partly the creator of the spirit of his age, so powerfully affected the world's destiny. I have here to speak of his influence upon the literature of Germany. That influence was twofold. First, by the mental enfranchisement—whereof he was the agent and instrument—of a large mass of the German people, he gave an impetus to thought and a scope to intellectual activity, and thereby opened up the deep springs of the German mind; and secondly, by one great and unsurpassed literary effort, he fixed the language of his country. The bold spirit of inquiry, of which he set the example with such immense consequences—and with such immense consequences because it was congenial to his countrymen,—has been the chief agent in working out the results that in our age have given to German literature its elevated rank: while upon the dialect which, two hundred years after his death, was the pliant medium for the thoughts of Kant and the creations of Goethe, he exerted such a power, that it is called Luther's German.
When Luther began to preach and to write, Latin was the language of the learned. Towards the end of the 15th century, that is, about the period of his birth, unsuccessful attempts were made to circulate translations of the ancient classics. The translations found few readers and made no impression. Cotemporaneous with Luther, and a forerunner of the great Reformer in attacking with boldness and skill the usurpations of the Roman hierarchy, was Ulrich von Hutten, a name much honored in Germany. But he wrote excellent Latin and wretched German. The union in one man of the power to fix upon himself, and hold as by a spell, the minds of his countrymen, with the power of a language-genius over his native tongue—a union consummated in Luther—was required, to raise the German language from its degraded, enfeebled condition, to its due place, as the universal medium of intercommunication among Germans of all classes.
About this time, two dialects contended for supremacy—if in a period of such literary stagnation their rivalry can be termed a contest. These were, the Low German, prevalent in Westphalia and Lower Saxony, and the High German, spoken in Upper Saxony. The latter had just obtained the ascendancy over the former in the Diet and the Courts of Justice. The High German, therefore, modifying it however, in his use of it, Luther adopted in his great work; and by the adoption for ever determined the conflict. This great work was the translation of the Bible.
While by speech and deed, writing, preaching, and acting, he fomented and directed the mighty struggle for liberty, whereto his bold words—called by his countryman Jean Paul "half-battles"—had roused the civilized world, Luther took time to labor at the task whose accomplishment was to forward so immensely his triumph, and which, executed as it was by him, is an unparalleled literary achievement. At the end of thirteen years, he finished his translation. "Alone he did it;" and alone it stands, pre-eminent in the world among cotemporaneous performances for its spiritual agency, and in Germany for its influence upon literature. Before him, there scarcely existed a written German prose. He presented to his country a complete language. With such a compelling and genial power did he mould into a compact, fully equipt whole, the crude and fluctuating elements of the German language of the 15th century, that it may be said, his mother tongue came from him suddenly perfected. And not only did he, in vigor, flexibility, precision, and copiousness, vastly excel all who had written before him, but not even could those who came after him follow in his footsteps in command over the new language, for a century. The time when the pliant, well-proportioned body he created was to indue the spirit of the German people, was postponed to a distant period: and of this very postponement, was he too the cause; for the religious and civil wars, the disputes and jealousies, consequent upon the great schism he produced, so engrossed during a long period the German mind, that literature languished. In the latter half of the 16th century, it was poor. In the 17th, through the impulse given to thought by the Reformation, it would have revived, but for the outbreaking of the terriblethirty years' war, which, remotely caused by the division between Catholics and Protestants, commenced in 1618 and lasted till 1648, and which not only during its continuance desolated and brutalized Germany, but left it impoverished, disorganized, and, by the protracted internal strife and foreignparticipation therein, in spirit to a great degree denationalized.
Here in our rapid survey of German literature, it will be well for a moment to pause, and before entering upon the period in which it attained its full multiform development, cast a look back upon the stages through which we have traced its progress.
We have seen, that in the 12th and 13th centuries, the mind of the German people manifested its native depth and beauty in the fresh rich bloom of a poetry, characterised in a rude age by tenderness and grandeur. Before this, it had evinced its ready capability, in the production of chronicles and translations in verse from the Bible, the moment opportunity was given it in the monasteries early founded by the enlightened spirit of Charlemagne. Afterwards, in the 14th and 15th centuries, in the wars and contests incident to the political development of Germany, the nobles—to whom, and the clergy, the knowledge of letters was at first confined—were drawn off by grosser excitements from the culture and encouragement of poetry. With the fine instinct that knows, and the aspiring spirit that strives after the highest, which denote a people of the noblest endowments, poetry—thrown aside as the plaything of idle hours by warrior knights—was cherished by peaceful artizans, whose zealous devotion vindicated their worthiness of the great gift about to be bestowed; by whose wondrous potency, not only were the hitherto barred portals of all pre-existing literature thrown down, but a highway was opened to all who should seek access by letters to the temples of wisdom or fame.
The invention of printing preceded the birth of Luther about half a century. This great event—infinitely the greatest of a most eventful age—facilitated vastly his labors and made effective his efforts. It showered over Germany the new language and the new ideas embodied in his translation of the Bible and his other writings. Thus, through its means chiefly, the German mind was progressive, notwithstanding the long period, extending through a century, of internal convulsion, ending in physical exhaustion, which followed Luther's death. The language, nervous, copious, homogeneous, as it came from Luther, was fixedly established,—a standard by which the corruptions and ungerman words, introduced through the long and intimate intercourse with foreigners during thethirty years' war, could be cast out.
In the beginning of the 17th century, in the midst of the civil war, an attempt was made to revive literature by Martin Opitz, a Silesian. Silesia was then not included in the German empire. The language of the peasantry was bad Polish; but German had been introduced into the towns. Silesia suffered little from thethirty years' war. Here, therefore, was made the beginning of the endeavors which, after various fluctuations, resulted in the rich literary produce of the 18th century. Opitz was a scholar, versed in ancient literature as well as in that of France and of Holland, which latter had in the age of Hugo Grotius higher literary pretensions than at present. He endeavored to introduce a classical spirit into German poetry, and to create a new poetical language; but he was not a man of high genius, and therefore, though entitled to praise for his zeal and for having given to the German mind an impulse towards the path, so long deserted, neither he nor his feebler followers are now read but by the literary antiquarian or historian. Through the 17th and first part of the 18th centuries, writers were not wanting; but their productions were without force or originality. Though heartily devoted to letters, they were powerless to revive literature. Their efforts betoken a craving for that which they could not supply. Vile imitations of French taste, extravagant romances, exaggerated sentiment, are the characteristics of the works wherewith it was attempted to supply the national want of a literature. The authors of these were, however, the precursors of a class, who, themselves shining luminaries compared to those who preceded them, were made pale by the brilliant light of the mighty spirits in whom and through whom the literature of Germany now stands the object of admiration and of study to the most cultivated scholars of all nations, and, by general acknowledgment, unsurpassed by that of any other people for richness, for depth and truth of thought and sentiment, for beauty in its forms and solidity of substance, for, in short, multifarious excellence.
Gottsched, Bodmer, Haller, Gellert, Rabener, Gleim, Kleist, Gessner, Hagedorn, are names worthy of honor, though their volumes are now seldom disturbed in their repose on the shelves of public libraries. They broke the long darkness with a promising streak of light, which expanded into day in the works of Klopstock, Winkelman, Lessing, Herder, Wieland, Goethe, Schiller, Richter.
The two first named of the first class, Gottsched and Bodmer, are noted in German literature as the chiefs of two rival schools, in the merging of which into more enlarged views,—whereto their lively conflict greatly contributed,—appeared the second class. Gottsched aimed to create a German literature by imitating French models and introducing the French spirit. Bodmer warmly opposed Gottsched, and by translations from English authors,—far more congenial to the German people than French,—endeavored to produce good by English influence. This was in the first half of the 18th century. They both did service. Their keen rivalry excited the German mind. The fertile soil was stirred, and from its depths burst forth in thronging profusion a mighty progeny, as though the land of Herman and of Luther had been slow in bringing forth the children that were to make her illustrious, because they were a brood of giants, whose first cries startled even the mother that bore them. In one grand symphony ascended their matured voices, lifting up the minds of their countrymen to loftiest aspirations, and sounding in the uttermost parts of the earth, wherever there were ears that could embrace their artful music.
Accustomed to spiritless imitations, the souls of the deep-minded Germans were moved with unwonted agitation by theMessiahof Klopstock, of which the first books were published in the middle of the 18th century. A voice, free and vigorous, such as since Luther none had been heard, was eagerly heeded, and with warm acclaim all over Germany responded to. To literature a new impulse was given, to swell the which rose other voices, similar in strength and originality—especially those of Kant in philosophy, and Lessing in criticism. 'Mid this heaving and healthy excitement, came with maddening power the first wild outpourings of the master-spirit, not of Germany only, but of theage. Twenty years after theMessiah, appeared the first works of the then youthful Goethe, whom in our day, but four years back, we have seen at the age of four score descend gently to the tomb, having reached the natural end of a life that was only less productive than that of Shakspeare. Ten years later, another mighty genius announced himself, the only one who has been honored with the title of Goethe's rival, and Schiller burst upon Germany and the world in theRobbers. Poets, philosophers, critics, historians—of highest endowment, genial, profound, of many-sided culture, world-famous, illustrate this brilliant epoch.
A brief description of the career and best productions of the most noted among them, will enable you to understand why, in the latter half of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries, German literature suddenly reached so high a stage of perfection.
Klopstock has the high merit of being the leader of the glorious band, through whose teeming minds the want of a national literature was so suddenly and fully satisfied. Klopstock was the first who by example taught the Germans the lesson they were most apt at learning, that the French rules of taste are not needed for the production of excellence. Therefore is he called by Frederick Schlegel the founder of a new epoch, and the father of the present German literature. Born at Quedlinburg, a small town of North Germany, he was sent to school to the Schulpforte, then and now one of the most famous schools in Germany. As a boy, he was noted for warmth of feeling and patriotic enthusiasm. A youth under age, he conceived the idea of writing a national epic, taking for a subject the exploits of Henry I, Emperor of Germany. This design he however abandoned for that of a religious epic, and at twenty-one planned and commenced, before he knew of Milton's poems, hisMessiah. In his own deep meditative mind, wrought upon by religious and patriotic zeal, originated and was matured the bold conception. Klopstock was in his twenty-fourth year when the first three books of theMessiahappeared. His countrymen, ever susceptible to religious appeals, and prepared at that period for the literary revolution, or, more properly, creation, of which theMessiahwas the first great act, received it with an enthusiasm to which they had long been unused. The people beheld the young poet with veneration, and princes multiplied upon him honors and pensions. The remaining books were published gradually, and in the execution of his lofty work, the German bard felt, as was natural, the influence of the genius and precedent verse of Milton and of Dante. Like Paradise Lost, theMessiahhas won for its author a reputation with thousands, even of his countrymen, where it has been read by one. Klopstock also attempted tragedy; but in this department he failed signally. Indeed, he had no clear notion of the essential nature of the drama, as may be inferred from the fact of his choosing as the subject for a tragedy, the death of Adam. But, as a lyrical poet, he is even greater than as an epic, and for the excellence of his odes justly has he been styled the modern Pindar. In these,—distinguished for condensation of thought, vigor of language, and poetic inspiration,—the Germans first learned the full capacity of their language in diction and rhythm.
As to Klopstock is due the praise of being the first to teach the Germans by great examples, that reliance upon native resources, and independence of the contracting sway of meager French conventional rules, were the only paths to the production of original, enduring literature; to Lessing belongs that of enforcing the wholesome lesson by precept. Lessing is the father of modern criticism. Born in Kaments, a small town of Lusatia, in 1729, five years later than Klopstock, he wrote at the age of twenty-two a criticism of theMessiah. Later, in his maturity, he produced hisDramaturgie, or, theatrical and dramatic criticism, and hisLaocoon, or, the limits of poetry and the plastic arts. He sought always for first principles; and in the search he was guided by a rare philosophic acuteness, co-operating with strong common sense. His fancy—whereof a good endowment is indispensable to a critic—is ever subordinate to his reason; his fine sensibility to the beautiful, supplying materials for the deduction of principles of taste and composition by his subtle understanding. Though greater as a critic than as a poet or creator, he has nevertheless left three different works in the dramatic form, that are classics in German literature;—Minna von Barnkelm, a comedy;Amelia Galotti, a domestic tragedy; andNathan the Wise, a didactic poem of unique excellence. He himself regarded as his best work hisFables, remarkable for sententiousness, simplicity of language, and pithy significance. His prose style, concise, transparent, forcible without dryness, is a model for the literary student. Not the least of his great services is, that he was the first to draw attention in Germany to Shakspeare, whose supremacy over all poets has since been no where more broadly acknowledged, and the causes of it no where more lucidly developed.
Cotemporary with Klopstock and Lessing, and, from his works and influence, deserving of being mentioned next to them, was Wieland, born in 1733 in Biborach, a town of Swabia. Wieland commenced writing at the age of seventeen, and finished at that of eighty, during which extended period he addicted himself to almost every department of authorship. He is the first German who translated Shakspeare. As the author ofOberon, his name is familiar to English readers. This is much the best work of Wieland, more remarkable for grace and sprightliness than force or originality. He drew largely from the Greeks, Italians, English and French, and though a poet and writer of high and various merit, but a small portion of the much he has written is now read.
Following chronological order in this fertile period, we come after Wieland to Herder, born at Mohrungen, a small town of Eastern Prussia, in 1744. Like Wieland, Goethe, and Schiller, Herder was drawn to Weimar by the munificient spirit of the Duchess Amalia, and her son, the grand Duke Augustus, illustrious and ever memorable, as enlightened fosterers of genius—shining examples to sovereigns, kingly or popular. Herder was appointed in his thirty-second year, court preacher at Weimar, and there passed the remainder of his life, in diversified usefulness, simultaneously inspecting schools and elaborating philosophical essays, learnedly elucidating the Old Testament, and at the same time reviving and awakening a taste for national songs. His greatest work, entitledIdeas for the Philosophy of History, is esteemed one of the noblest productions of modern times. Herder is called by Richter, a Christian Plato.
And here, next to Herder, and a congenial and profounder spirit, we will speak of Richter himself, born in1763. Richter, better known by his Christian names, Jean Paul, is a fine sample of the German character. The truthfulness of the Germans, their deep religious feeling, their earnestness and their playfulness, (far removed from frivolity) their enthusiasm and their tendency to the mystical, their warm affections and aptness to sympathy, are all not only traceable in his works, but prominent in the broad vivid lines of his erratic pen. In the union of learning with genius, Richter surpasses Coleridge. His wonderful fictions are out of the reach of common readers, not more by their learned illustrations and their subtleties, than by their wild irregularity of form and arbitrary structure, whereby the world generally is deprived of the enjoyment of a fund of the most tender pathos, gorgeous description, bold, keen wit and satire, and the richest humor in modern literature. His two greatest works are on education, and on the philosophy of criticism. He was several years in writing each; and storehouses they are of deep and just thought, of searching analysis, and of great truths, evolved by the reason of one of the world's profoundest thinkers, and illuminated by flashes of genius of almost painful intensity. They are works, each of them, to be studied page by page. Nothing similar to or approaching them exists in English literature.
Of the writers who in this remarkable epoch belong to the first class in the highest department of letters, the poetical or creative, we have spoken—in the cursory manner necessary in a general sketch—of all, save the two greatest, Schiller and Goethe.
Frederick Schiller was born in 1759, at Marbach, a small town of Wurtemberg. In his mind seem to have been blended, and there strengthened, elevated, and refined, the qualities of his parents—the one, a man of clear upright mind; the other, a woman of more than common intelligence and taste, who both enjoyed the fortune of living to witness the greatness of their son. Schiller had the benefit of good early instruction. At the age of fourteen he was placed in a high school, just founded by the reigning Duke of Wurtemberg, and conducted with military discipline. Here, while his daily teachers were tasking him with irksome lessons, first of jurisprudence and afterwards of medicine, the chained genius, chafing like the lion in his cage, was brooding over the thoughts, and by stealth feeding with a translation of Shakspeare the cravings, which nature had implanted in him to produce one of her noblest works—a great poet. At eighteen he began, within the walls of the Duke's military school,The Robbers, often feigning sickness, that he might have a light in his room at night to transfer to paper his daring conception and burning thoughts. He postponed its publication until after he had finished his college course and had obtained the post of surgeon in the army, in his twenty-first year. The appearance ofThe Robbers, as a consequence of the formal drilling of the self-complacent pedagogues of the Duke of Wurtemberg, I have elsewhere1likened to the explosion of a mass of gunpowder under the noses of ignorant boys drying it before a fire to be used as common sand. Schiller himself, in after life, described it as "a monster, for which by good fortune the world has no original, and which I would not wish to be immortal, except to perpetuate an example of the offspring which genius, in its unnatural union with thraldom, may give to the world." Never did a literary work produce a stronger impression. With enthusiastic admiration, the world hailed in it the advent of a mighty poet.
1North American Review, for July 1834.
That which roused enthusiasm throughout Germany, roused anger in the sovereign of Wurtemberg; and while all eyes were turned towards the land whence this piercing voice had been heard, he from whose bosom it issued was fleeing from his home to avoid a dungeon. For having gone secretly to Manheim, in a neighboring state, to witness the performance ofThe Robbers, the Duke had the young poet put under arrest for a week, and Schiller, learning that for repeating the transgression a severer punishment awaited him, fled in disguise, choosing rather to face the appalling reality of sudden self-dependence than brook the tyranny of mind, which to the soaring poet was even more grievous than to the high-souled man. He quickly found friends. Baron Dalberg supplied him with money, while he lived, for a short time, under the name of Schmidt in a small town of Franconia, until Madam von Wollzogen invited him to her estate near Meinungen. Under this lady's roof he gave free scope to his genius, and produced two more dramas—Fiesco, andKabal und Liebe(Court Intrigue and Love.) These, with theRobbers, constitute the first or untutored era of Schiller's literary life. With faults as glaring as their beauties are brilliant, they are now chiefly valued as the broad first evidence of that power, whose full exertion afterwards gave to the worldDon Carlos,Wallenstein, andTell, and to Schiller immortality. Their reputation obtained for him the post of poet to the Manheim theatre. Thence, after a brief period he went to Leipsic and to Dresden, developing his noble faculties by study and exercise. In 1789, at the age of thirty, he was appointed by the Grand Duke of Weimar, at the instigation of Goethe, professor of History in the university of Jena. Here and at Weimar he passed, in constant literary labor, the remainder of his too short life.
Schiller's great reputation rests, and will ever rest, unshaken, on his dramas. Regarding his first three, which we have named, as preparatory studies to his dramatic career, he has left six finished tragedies, viz.—Don Carlos,The Maid of Orleans,Wallenstein(in three parts,)Mary Stuart,The Bride of Messina, andWilliam Tell—works, in whose conception and execution the highest principles of art control with plastic power the glowing materials of a rich, deep, fervent mind, ordering and disposing them with such commanding skill, as to produce dramas, which are not merely effective in theatrical representation, and soul-stirring to the reader as pictures of passion, but which, by the rare combination of refined art with mental fertility and poetic genius, exhibit, each one of them, that highest result of the exertion of the human faculties—a great poem. Possessing, in common with other gifted writers, the various endowments needed in a dramatist and poet of the highest order, the individual characteristic of Schiller is elevation. The predominant tendency of his mind is ever upwards. Open his volumes any where, and in a few moments the reader feels himself lifted up into an ideal region. The leading characters in his plays, though true to humanity, have an ideal loftiness. You figure them to yourself as of heroic stature, such grandeur and nobleness is there in their strain of sentimentand expression. The same characteristic pervades his prose and lyrical poetry. Had he never written a drama, his two volumes of lyrical poetry would suffice to enthrone him among the first class of poets, so beautiful is it and at the same time of such depth of meaning, so musical and so thought-pregnant. No where is the dignity of human nature more nobly asserted than in the works of Schiller; as pure, and simple, and noble, as a man, as he is powerful and beautiful as a poet. In the full vigor of his faculties, his mind matured by experience and severe culture, and teeming with poetic plans, he died in 1805, having reached only his forty-sixth year.
Of Schiller's great rival and friend, Goethe, as of Schiller himself, I can, in the limited space allowed in such a lecture as this, only give you a rapid sketch.
John Wolfgang Goethe was born at Frankfort on the Maine in 1749, ten years before Schiller. "Selectest influences" leagued with nature to produce this wonderful man. To give its complete development to a mighty inward power, outward circumstances were most happily propitious. Upon faculties of the quickest sensibility, and yet of infinitely elastic power, wide convulsions and world-disturbing incidents bore with tempestuous force, dilating the congenial energies of the young genius, who suddenly threw out his fiery voice to swell the tumult round him, and announce the master spirit of the age. For a while, the thrilling melody of that voice mingled in concert with the deep tones of the passionate period whence it drew so much of its power. Soon, however, was it heard, uttering with calmer inspiration the words of wisdom, drawn from a source deeper than passion—passion subdued by the will, and tempered by culture. "It is not the ocean ruffled," says Jean Paul, "that can mirror the heavens, but the ocean becalmed."
Goethe's father was a prosperous honored citizen of Frankfort, improved by travel and study—a man of sound heart and sharp temper; his mother, a woman of superior mind and of genial character, to whom in her old age Madam de Stael paid a visit of homage, and who enjoyed the pleasure of introducing herself to her distinguished visiter with the words,—"I am the mother of Goethe." Under the guidance of such parents was Goethe's boyhood passed in the old free city of Frankfort, ever a place of various activity, where he witnessed when a child the coronation of an emperor of Germany, and the stir of a battle, fought in the neighborhood between Frederick the Great and the French—events of rare interest to any boy, and of deep import to one in whose unfolding a great poet was to become manifest. In due season he was sent to the university of Leipsic, famous then by the lectures of Gottsched, Gellert, Ernesti, and others. To the young Frankfort student the admired discourses of these sages of the time were but lessons in skepticism; their magisterial dicta and hollow dogmas being quickly dissolved in the fire of a mind, already in its youth competent to self-defence against error, though with vision too untried yet to pierce to the truth. From Leipsic he went to Strasburg, to complete his studies in the law, his father having destined him for a lawyer. A more imperious parent, however, had laid other commands on him, and while the words of law-professors were falling upon his outward ear, the inward mind was revolving the deeds ofGoetz von Berlichingen, and shaping the vast fragments of which in after years was built the wondrous world ofFaust.
In his twenty-third year appearedGoetz von Berlichingen, the firstling of a pen, which, in the following sixty years, filled as many volumes with works of almost every form wherein literature embodies itself, a series of boundless wealth and unequalled excellence, to gain access to which, a year were well spent in daily labor to master the fine language it enriches. Two years later, appearedWerter, an agonizing picture of passion, which, like the first crude outburst of Schiller's genius, shot a thrill through the then agitated mind of Germany, and which Goethe afterwards, in the tranquillity of his purified faculties, looked back upon as a curious literary phenomenon. This work has never been directly translated into English (and a good translation of it were no easy achievement,) the book called "The Sorrows of Werter" being a translation of a French version, that does not give even the title of the original, which is, "The Sufferings of the Young Werther." And yet, by this doubly distorted image of a youthful ebullition, was the Protean giant for a long while measured in England, and through England, in America.
Soon after the publication of Werter, Goethe was invited to Weimar, where, honored and conferring honor, he lived the rest of his long and fruitful life. Appointed at once a member, he in a few years became president of the Council of State; and finally, after his return from Italy, at about the age of forty he was made one of the Grand Duke's Ministers, a post he for many years held. Directing the establishment and arrangement of museums, libraries, art-exhibitions, and theatrical representations, he contributed directly by practical labors, as well as by the brilliancy which the products of his pen shed upon his place of abode, to the fame and prosperity of Weimar.
In the poems of Shakspeare, is disclosed a mind, wherein capaciousness and subtlety, vigor and grace, clearness and depth, versatility and justness, combine and co-operate with such shifting ease and impressive effect, that ordinary human faculties are vainly tasked to embrace its perfectness and its immensity. Contemplating it, the keenest intelligence exhausts itself in analysis, and the most refined admiration ends in wonder. Inferior only to this consummation of human capabilities is the mind of Goethe, akin to Shakspeare's in the breadth and variety and subtlety of its powers. In comprehensiveness of grasp and ideal harmony in conceiving a poetic whole, the German approaches the mighty Englishman, and displays also in the delineation, or, more properly, the creation of characters, that instinctive insight and startling revelation of the human heart, which in Shakspeare almost at times make us think he were privy to the mystery of its structure. The same calmness and serene self-possession—a sign of supreme mental power—are characteristic of both. Like Shakspeare, Goethe never intrudes his personal individuality to mar the proportions of a work of art.
To pour out the wealth of a mind, which ranges over every province of human thought and action, Goethe adopts all the various forms in which poetry, according to its mood and object, moulds itself. In his epigrams, elegies, songs and ballads, he embodies the highest excellences of thelyrical. InEgmont, you have a boldspecimen of the romantictragedy;inIphygenia, a beautiful reproduction of the classical Greek; whileTorquato Tasso, a drama of the most exquisite grace and refinement, occupies a middle ground between the two. To pass from this toFaust, is to be suddenly borne away from a quiet scene of rural beauty to a rugged mountain peak, whence, through a tempest, you catch glimpses of the distant sunny earth, and mid the elemental strife, beautiful in its terrors, hear sounds as though a heaven-strung æolian harp snatched music from the blast. InHerman and Dorothea, executed with matchless felicity, reigns the pureepicspirit. This one poem were enough to make a reputation. But the highest exhibition of Goethe's manifold powers isWilhelm Meister, in which a mixed assemblage of fictitious personages, each one possessing the vital individuality and yet generic breadth of Falstaff and of Juliet, bound together in a vast circle of the most natural and complex relations, presents so truthful and significant and art-beautified a picture of the struggles and attainments, the joys and griefs, the labors and recreations, the capacities and failings of mortal men, that from its study we rise with strength freshened and feelings purified, and our vision of all earthly things brightened. Unhesitatingly characterizing this work as the greatest prose fiction ever produced, I close this brief notice of its wonderful author.
The writers I have named are they who have given existence and character to modern German literature. Yet, to omit all mention of a number of others, would be not only unjust to them, but an imperfection even in so rapid a sketch as this.
By the side of Lessing, I should have placed Winkelman, born in the beginning of the last century, whose history of ancient art is esteemed the best of all works in this department of criticism. It had great influence upon German literature. Among the poets who, next to the brilliant series already described, hold high places, are, Bürger, Koerner, (both known to English readers through translations), Voss—to whom, and to their own copious, flexible language, the Germans are indebted for the most perfect translations of Homer possessed by any people—Tieck, Novalis, Grilpazer. Besides these may be mentioned the Stolbergs, Hoelty, Tidge, Leisewits, Mülner, Collin, Mathison, Uland. Among a crowd of novelists, distinguished are the names of Engel, Fouquet, Lafontaine, and Hoffman, and Thummel, whose satirical novels have a high reputation. Of miscellaneous writers there is a host, among whom should be particularized, Mendelsohn, Jacobi, Lichtenberg. In historians Germany is especially rich. Johan von Müller, Heeren, Niebuhr, Raumer, O. Müller, are writers whose merits are acknowledged throughout Europe, and acquaintance with whose works is indispensable to the scholar who would have wide views and accurate knowledge of the spirit of history. In criticism the two Schlegels have a European reputation. The "Lectures on the Drama" of Augustus William Schlegel constitute the finest critical work extant. Of the well known learning, profoundness, and acuteness of the German philologists, theologians and metaphysicians, it were superfluous here to speak. In short, to conclude, the Germans, endowed by nature with mental capabilities inferior to those of no people of the earth, and enjoying for the last half century a more general as well as a higher degree of education than any other, and thus combining talent and genius with wide learning and laborious culture, possess a vast and various accumulation of productions, wherein are to be found in every province of letters works of highest excellence, which to the literary or scientific student, whatever be his native tongue, are inexhaustible sources of mental enjoyment and improvement.