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His first poems were written in Latin, but he afterwards devoted himself completely to German poetry. Opitz is the true representative of the classical poetry of the Tou m. In him we also see the first traces of that baneful alliance between princes and poets which has deprived the German na- tion of so many of her best sons.

But the charge of mean motives h. Poets require an audience, and at his time there was no class of people willing to lis- ten to poetry, except the inmates of the small Ger- man courts. They di- vided the spoil, and there was neither a nobility, nor a clergy, nor a national party to control or resist them. In England, the royal power had,. In Germany the royal power w. These small principalities explain the weakness of Germany in her relation with foreign powers, and the instability of her political constitution.

The third estate could never gain that share in the government which it had obtained, by its united action, in other coun- tries ; and no form of government can be stable which is deprived of the support and the active coopera- tion of the middle classes. Constitutions have been granted by enlightened sovereigns, such as Joseph II. There is no longer a German nobility in the usual sense of the word.

Its vigor was exhausted when the powcrftxl vassals of the empire became pow- erless sovereigns with the titles of king or duke, while what remained of the landed nobility became more reduced with every generation, owing to the absence of the system of primogeniture. There is no longer a clergy as a powerftil body in the state. No third estate exists powerful enough to defend the in- terests of the commonwealth against the encroach- ments of the sovereign ; and public opinion, though it may pronounce itself within certain limits, has no means of legal opposition, and must choose, at every critical moment, between submission to the royal will and rebellion.

The former is monopolized by the sovereigns, the latter belongs to a small class of learned men. These two soon begin to attract each other. The kings seek the society, the advice, and support of liter- ary men ; whilst literary men court the patronage of kings, and acquire powerful influence by governing those who govern the people.

From the time of Opitz there have been few men of eminence in litera- ture or science who have not been drawn toward one of the larger or smaller courts of Germany ; and the whole of our modem literature bears the marks of this union between princes and poets. It has been said that the existence of these numerous centres of civilization has proved beneficial to the growth of lit- erature ; and it has been pointed out that some of the smallest courts, such as Weimar, have raised the greatest men in poetry and science.

Goethe himself gives expression to this opinion. And this culture, does it not emanate from the numerous courts which grant it support and pat- ronage? Suppose we bad had in Germany for centu- ries but two capitals, Vienna and Berlin, or but one ; I should like to know how it would have fared with German civilization, or even with that general well- being which goes hand in hand with tme civilization. Has France had more than one capital? Has England had more than one court? Truly national poetry exists only where there is a truly national life ; and the poet who, in creating his works, thinks of a whole nation which will listen to him and be proud of him, is inspired by a nobler pas- sion than he who looks to his royal master, or the ap- plause even of the most refined audience of the dames de la oour.

There a poet laureate may hold an independent and dignified X si- tion, conscious of his own worth, and of the support of the nation. But in despotic countries, the favor even of the most enlightened sovereign is dangerous. The first is repre- sented by men like Opitz and Weekherlin, and it exer- cised an influence in the North of Germany on Simon Dach, Paul Flemming, and a number of less gifled poets, who are generally known by the name of the KSnigsherg School. Its character is pseudo-classical. All these poets endeavored to write correctly, sedately, and eloquently.

But it would be difficult to find in all their writings one single thought, one single expres- sion, that had not been used before. The second Sile- sian school is more ambitious ; but its poetic flights are more disappointing even than the honest prose of Opitz. Hoff- mannswaldau and Lohenstein, the chief heroes of the second Silesian school, followed in their track, and did not succeed better.

Their compositions are bom- bastic and full of metaphors. It is a poetry of adjec- tives, without substance, truth, or taste. Yet their poetry was admired, praised not less than Goethe and Schiller were praised by their contemporaries, and it lived beyond the seventeenth century. There were but few men during that time who kej t aloof from the spirit of these two Silesian schools, and were not in- fluenced by either Opitz or Iloffhiannswaldau. Among these independent poets we have to mention Friedrich von Logau, Andreas Gryphius, and Moscherosch. Beside these, there were some prose writers whose works are not exactly works of art, but works of origi- nal thought, and of great importance to us in tracing the progress of science and literature during the drear- iest period of German history.

The second Silesian school was defeated by Gott- sched, professor at Leipzig. Gottsched was the advocate of French models in art and poetry, and he used his wide-spread influence in recommending the correct and so-called classical style of the poets of the time. Then followed a loiicj literarv waHare: Gottsched and his followers at Leipzig defended the French, Bodmer and his friends in Switzerland the English style of literature. The former insisted on classical form and traditional rules ; the latter on natu- ral sentiment and spontaneous expression.

The ques- tion was, whether poets should imitate the works of the classics, or imitate the classics who had become classics by imitating nobody. A German professor wields an immense power by means of his journals. It was' in this that Professor Gottsched triumphed for a long time over Bodmer and his party, till at last public opinion became too strong, and the dictator died the laughing-stock of Germany.

It was in the very thick of this literary struggle that the great heroes of German poetry grew up, — Klop- stock, Lessing, Wieland, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller. Goethe, who knew both Gottsched and Bodmer, has described that period of fermentation and transition in which his own mind was formed, and his e. He does justice to Gunther, and more than justice to Liscow. He shows the influence which men like Brockes, Hagedom, and Haller exercised in making poetry re- spectable.

The history of literature is but an applied history of civilization. As in the history of civilization we watch the play of the three constituent classes of society, — clergy, nobility, and commoners, — we can see, in the history of litera- ture, how that class which is supreme politically shows for the time being its supremacy in the literary pro- ductions of the age, and impresses its mark on the works of poets and philosophers.

Speaking very generally, we might say that, during the first period of German history, the really moving, civilizing, and ruling class was the clergy ; and in the whole of German literature, nearly to the time of the Crusades, the clerical element predominates. The second period is marked by the Crusades, and the tri- umph of Teutonic and Romantic chivalry, and the lit- erature of that period is of a strictly correspondent tone.

After the Crusades, and during the political anarchy that followed, the sole principle of order and progress is found in the towns, and in the towns the poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries finds its new home. At last, at the time of the Reforma- tion, when the political life of the country assumed for a time a national character, German literature also is for a short time national. They pro- duced a national spirit, free from profes. But with the exception of these short lucid intervals, Gennany has always been under the abso- lute despotism of a number of small sovereigns and great professors, and her literature has been through- out in the hands of court poets and academic critics.

Klopstock, Lessing, and Schiller are most free from either influence, and most impressed with the duties which a poet owes, before all, to the nation to which he belongs. Lessing looked more to his own age, but he looked in vain for national heroes. It was owing to the rottenness of his time that he always took, and was forced to take, a polemical position. He never condescended to amuse a provin- cial court by masquerades and comedies, nor did he degrade his genius by pandering, like Wieland, to the taste of a profligate nobility.

These considerations, however, must not interfere with our appreciation of the great- ness of Goethe. On the contrary, when we see the small sphere in which he moved at Weimar, we ad- mire the more the height to which he grew, and the freedom of his genius. And it is, perhaps, owing to this very absence of a strongly marked national feeling, that in Germany the first idea of a world-literature was conceived. And, from this point of view, his idea of a world-literature has been realized, and his own works have gained their place side by side with the works of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare.

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But, so long as there are different languages and dif- ferent nations, let each poet think and work and write for his own people, without caring for the applause of other countries. Science and philosophy are cosmo- politan ; poetry and art are national: Fourth Century after Christ. Old High-German ; — Vocabulary of St. Translation of the Gospel of St. Exhortation addressed to the Christian Laity. Literal Translations of the Hymns of the Old Church: Deus qui cordi lumen es. The Song of Hildebrand and his son Hadubrand, — in allitcratire metre. The Prayer from the Monastery of Wessobrun, — in alliter- adve metre.

Muspilli, or on the Last Judgment, — alliterative poem. The Heliand, or the Saviour, — old Saxon poem, in allit- erative metre. Translation of the Psalms. Translation of Boethius de Consolatione. Merigarto, or the Earth, — fragment of a geographical poem. Poetical Translation of the Books of Moses. Historical Poem on Anno, Bishop of Cologne.

Poetical Chronicle of the Roman Emperors. Nortperti Tractatus de Virtutibus, translated. The poem of Roland, by Konrad the Priest. The poem of Alexander, by Lamprecht the Priest. Poem of Reinhart the Fox. Dietmar von Aist, — lyrics. The Spcrvogel, — lyrics. The Kiirenberger, — lyrics.

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The Encid, by Heinrich von Veldecke. The Old Reinmar, — lyrics. Walther von der Vogel weide, — lyrics. Wolf ram von Esehenbach, — 1. Otto von Botenlaubc, — lyrics. Gudrun, — epic poem. Gottfried von Neifen, — lyrics. Ulrich von Lichtenstein, — lyrics. Sermon of Friar Berthold of Regensburg. Rcinuiar von Zweter, — lyrics. Master Stolle, — satire. The Marner, — lyrics. Master Konrad of Wurzburg, — 1. Extract from the Trojan War. Anonymous poet, — extract from the life of St. Heinrich, Duke of Breslau, — lyrics. Master Johann Hadlaub, — lyrics.

The Great Rosegarden, — popular epic poem. Master Eckhart, — homily. Hermann von Fritzlar, — life of St. Johann Tauler, — sermon. Peter Suehenwirt, — on the death of Leopold, Duke of Austria, Oswald von Wolkenstein, — lyrics. Michael Bclicim, — Mcistergesang. Letter on the Diet of the Jackdaws and Crows. Poem on his Illness. Philipp Nicolai, — sacred songs. Justus Jonas, — sacred songs. Letter to Franz von Sickingen. Sebastian Frank, — 1. Preface to his Germania. Burkard Waldis, — fables.

Hans Sachs, — 1. Poem on the Death of Martin Luther. Poem on the War. Johann Fischart, — 1. Exhortation addressed to the German people. Georg Rollenhagen, — fable. Popular Books, — 1. Johannes Hecrmann, — sacred song. Johann Arndt, — 1. On the Power and Necessity of Prayer. Jacob Bohme, Mysterium Magnum. Simon Dacb and the Ednigsberg School. Andreas Gryphius, — 1. Johann Michael Moschcrosch, — satires.

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Within their holy bounds a couch we'd make. And such was his sympathy with the world at large that he could not bear to see in any rank of life the image of man, created in the likeness of God, distorted by cun- ning, pride, and selfishness. Yet even a Turner has failed to render mediocre poetry popular by his illustrations, and there is nothing to show that the caricatures of Brant were preferred to his satires. I take no wisdome by them, not yet avayle, Nor them perceave not, and then I them despise: In Goethe, too, the philosophical element was strong, but it was kept under by the practical tendencies of his mind. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. The people were hungry and thirsty after religious teaching.

Hoffmannswaldau and Lohenstein, — Second Silesian School. Abraham a Santa Clara, — sermon. Philipp Jacob Spener, — on Luther. Gottfried Arnold, — sacred poem. Hans Assmann von Abschatz. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz, — on the German Lan- guage. Ewald Christian von Kleist. Christian Friedrich Daniel Schnbart. Friedrich Leopold und Christian Grafen ru Stollberg. Johann Gottfried von Herder. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller. Jean Paul Friedrich Bichter. Digitized by Google n. We listen, we admire, but we do not compare the heroes of St.

They seem a different race of men from those who are now living, and poetry and tradition have lent to their royal frames such colossal proportions that we hardly dare to criticise the legend- ary history of their chivalrous achievements. It was a time of heroes, of saints, of martyrs, of miracles 1 Thomas a Becket was murdered at Canterbury, but for more than three hundred years his name lived on, and his bones were working miracles, and his soul seemed as it were embodied and petrified in the lofty pillars that surround the spot of his martyrdom.

Abelard was persecuted and imprisoned, but his spirit revived in the Reformers of the sixteenth century, 1 Du! Heraosgegeben von Karl Lachmann nnd Moritz Haupt. Barbarossa was drowned in the same river in which Alexander the Great had bathed his royal limbs, but his fame lived on in every cottage of Germany, and the peasant near the Kyffhauser still believes that some day the mighty Emperor will awake from his long slumber, and rouse the people of Germany from their fatal dreams.

We dare not hold communion with such stately heroes as Frederick the Red-beard and Richard the Lion-heart ; they seem half to belong to the realm of fable. We feel from our very school-days as if we could shake hands with a Themistocles and sit doAvn in the company of a Julius Cajsar, but we are awed by the presence of those tall and silent knights, with their hands folded and their legs crossed, as we see them reposing in full armor on the tombs of our cathedrals.

And yet, however different in all other respects, these men, if they once lift their steel beaver and unbuckle their rich armor, are wonderfully like our- selves, Let us read the poetry which they either wrote themselves, or to which they liked to listen in their castles on the Rhine or under their tents in Pal- estine, and we find it is poetry which a Tennyson or a Moore, a Goethe or Heine, might have written.

It is modem poetry, — poetry unknown to the ancient world, — and who invented it nobody can tell. It is sometimes called Roinantic, but this is a strange misnomer. Neither the Romans, nor the lineal descendants of the Romans, the Italians, the Provencals, the Spaniards, can claim that poetry as their own.

It is called sen- timental poetry, the poetry of the heart rather than of the head, the picture of the inward rather than of the outward world.

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It is subjective, as distinguished from objective poetry, as the German critics, in their scho- lastic language, are fond of expressing it. It is Gothic, as contrasted with classical poetry. The one, it is said, sublimizcs nature, the other bodies forth spirit ; the one deifies the human, the other humanizes the divine ; the one is ethnic, the other Christian.

But all these are but names, and their true meaning must be discovered in the works of art themselves, and in the history of the times which produced the artists, the poets, and their ideals. The work which has caused these reflections is a volume of German poetry, just published by Lach- mann and Haupt. This period may well be called the spring of German poetry, though the summer that followed was but of short duration, and the autumn was cheated of the rich harvest which the spring had promised. The spring, beauty, gayety, were objects that could never tire: It was a universal noise of song, as if the spring of manhood had arrived, and warblings from every spray — not, indeed, without in- finite twitterings also, which, except their gladness, had no music — were bidding it welcome.

The brightest sky of spring is not with- out its clouds in Germany, and the German heart is never happy without some sadness. Here is a specimen of an anon- ymous poem ; and anonymous poetry is an invention peculiarly Teutonic. It is very grievous. I do not mean gold or silver; It is more like a human heart. When I had tamed him, As I would have him. And had well tied his feathers With golden chains, He soared up very high, And flew into other lands.

I saw the falcon since. Who would fain be loved. And then the coy maiden answers: I from both will keep me, and thus will sorrow never. The subject was taken by him from a French source. It belonged originally to the British cycle of Arthur and his knights. But Wolfram took the story merely as a skeleton, to which he himself gave a new body and soul.

The glory and happiness which this world can give is to him but a shadow, — the crown for which his hero fights is that of the Holy Grail. Faith, Love, and Honor are the chief subjects of the so-called Minnesanger. They are not what we should call erotic poets. JSMtme means love in the old German language, but it means, originally, not so much passion and desire, as thoughtftilness, reverence, and remem- brance. Yet there is a simplicity about these old songs, a want of effort, an entire absence of any attempt to please or to -surprise ; and we listen to them as we listen to a friend who tells us his sufferings in broken and homely words, and whose trathful prose appeals to our heart more strongly than the most elab- orate poetry of a Lamartine or a Heine.

It is ex- tremely difficult to translate these poems from the lan- guage in which they are written, tlie so-called Middle High-German, into Modem German, — much more so to render them into English. But translation is at the same time the best test of the trae poetical value of any poem, and we believe that many of the poems of the Minnesangers can bear that test. Here is another poem, very much in the style of the one quoted above, but written by a poet whose name is known, — Dietmar von Eist: She saw a falcon flying. Thus I too had done.

I chose myself a man: Him my eyes selected. BMotiful ladies envy me for it. I did not desire the beloved of any one of them. Now woe to thee, joy of snnuner I The song of birds is gone ; So are the leaves of the lime-tree: Henceforth, my pretQr eyes too Will be overcast. My love, thou shouldst take leave Of other ladies ; Tee, my hero, thou shouldst avoid them. When thou sawest me first, I seemed to thee in truth Bight lovely made: They were copied and preserved with the greatest care in the albums of kings and queens, and some of them were translated into foreign languages.

His poems, however, are not easy to read, and we should have been thankffil for some more help than the edi- tors have given us in their notes. She makes me free from all sorrow. That belongs to her; the beautiful woman gives me always Joy, and a high mind, If I think of it, what she does for me. There I should go; I long so much for her.

That nothing sad may ever befiill me through her. Yet we like to read them as part of the bright history of those by-gone days. From the Sea to the Rhine, I would gladly give it all. Who was the impertinent German that dared to ftill in love with a Queen of England?

We do not know. Her daughter, too, Mathilde, who was married to Henry the Lion of Saxony, inspired many a poet of those days. Her beauty was celebrated by the Pro- vencal Troubadours ; and at the court of her husband, she encouraged several of her Gennan vassals to follow the example of the French and Norman knights, and sing the love of Tristan and Isolt, and the adventures of the knights of Charlemagne.

They must have been happy times, those times of the Cru- sades I Nor have they passed away without leaving their impress on the hearts and minds of the nations of Europe. The Holy Sepulchre, it is true, is still in the hands of the Infidels, and the bones of the Cru- saders lie buried in unhallowed soil, and their deeds of valor are well-nigh forgotten, and their chivalrous Tournaments and their Courts of Love are smiled at by a wiser generation.

But much that is noble and heroic in the feelings of the nineteenth century has its hidden roots in the thirteenth. Gothic architec- ture and Gothic poetry are the children of the same mother ; and if the true but unadorned language of the heart, the aspirations of a real faith, the sorrow and joy of a true love, are still listened to by the na- tions of Europe ; and if what is called the Romantic school is strong enough to hold its ground against the classical taste and its royal patrons, such as Louis XIV.

It was commenced by Lachmann, the greatest critic, after Wolf, that Germany has produced. Lachmann died before the work was finished, and Professor Haupt, his successor at Berlin, undertook to finish it. Digitized by Google m. The history of the German Reformation assumes a living, intelligible, and human character in the biogra- phies of the Reformers ; and no historian would im- agine that he understood the secret springs of tliat mighty revolution in Germany without having read the works of Hutten, the table-talk of Luther, the letters of Melancthon, and the sermons of Zwingle.

But although it is easy to single out representative men in the great decisive struggles of history, they are more difficult to find during the preparatory periods. The years from to are -as important as the years from to , — nay, to the thoughtful historian, that silent period of incubation is perhaps of deeper interest than the violent outburst of the sixteenth cen- tury. But where, during those years, are the men of sufficient eminence to represent the age in which they lived? It was an age of transition and preparation, of dissatisfaction and hesitation.

Herausgegeben von Friedriob Zamcke. One of the most interesting men in whose life and writings the history of the preliminary age of the Ger- man Reformation may be studied, is Sebastian Brant, the famous author of the famous Ship of Fools. The Council of Basle had fiiiled to fulfill the hopes of the German laity as to a reformatio eeeleeice in eapite et membria. The Germans, he says, do not care for science nor for a knowledge of classical literature, and they have hardly heard the name of Cicero or any other orator.

They were dangerous neighbors — these barbarians, who could make such discoveries as the art of printing ; and Brant lived to see the time when Joh.

Caesarius was able to write to a friend of his: Brant was very early the friend of Peter Schott, and through him had been brought in contact with a circle of learned men, who were busily engaged in founding Jne of the first schools of classical learning at Schlettstadt. Brant afterwards went to Basle to study law. Basle was then a young university. It had only been founded in , but it was already a successfid rival of Heidelberg. The struggle between the Realists and Nominalists was then raging all over Europe, and it divided the Uni- versity of Basle into two parties, each of them trying to gain influence and adherents among the young stu- dents.

It has been usual to look upon the Realists as the Conservative, and upon the Nominalists as the Liberal party of the fifteenth century. But although at times this was the case, philosophical opinions, on which the differences between these two parties were founded, were not of sufficient strength to determine for any length of time the political and religious bias of either school.

Ockam himself was a Franciscan, and those who thought with him were called doctorea renovatorea and aophistee. Suddenly, however, the tables were turned. At Oxford, tlie Realists, in fol- lowing out their principles in a more independent spirit, had arrived at results dangerous to the peace of the Church. As philosophers, they began to carry out the doctrines of Plato in good earnest ; as reformers, tliey looked wistfully to the early centuries of the Christian Church.

The same liberal and independent spirit reached from Oxford to Prague, and the expul- sion of the German nation from that university may be traced to the same movement. The Realists were at that time no longer in the good odor of orthodoxy ; and, at the Council of Constanz, the Nominalists, such as Job. Gerson and Petrus de Alliaco, gained triumphs which seemed for a time to make them the arbiters of public opinion in Germany, and to give them the means of securing the Church against the attacks of Huss on one side, and against the more dangerous en- croachments of the Pope and the monks on the other.

This triumph, however, was of short duration.

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All the rights which the Germans seemed to have conquered at the Councils of Constanz and Basle were sacrificed by their own Emperor. The Nominalist party lost all VOL. It was looked upon with suspicion by Pope and Emperor. It was banished from courts and universities, and the disci- ples of the Realistic school began a complete crusade against the followers of Ockam. Johannes Heynlin a Lapide, a former head of a house in Paris, migrated to Basle, in order to lend his influence and authority to the Realist party in that rising university.

Trithemius says of him: On many points the Realists were more tolerant, or at least more enlight- ened, than the Nominalists. They counted among themselves better scholars than the adherents of Ockam. They were the first and foremost to point out the uselessness of the dry scholastic system of teaching grammar and logic, and notliing else.

And though they cherished their own ideas as to the su- preme authority of the Pope, the divine right of the Emperor, or the immaculate conception of the Virgin a dogma denied by the Dominicans, and defended by the Franciscans , they were always ready to point out abuses and to suggest reforms. The age in which they lived was not an age of decisive thoucht or deci- sive action. There was a want of character in individ- uals as well as in parties ; and the 'points in which they differed were of small importance, though they masked differences of greater weight.

Basle could then boast of some of the most eminent men of the time. Se- bastian lirant, though on friendly terms with most of these men, was their junior ; and, among his contem- poraries, a new generation grew up, more indepen- dent and more free-spoken than their masters, though as yet very far from any revolutionary views in mat- ters of Church or State. Feuds broke out very soon between the old and the young schools.

Wimpheling, at the request of Geiler of Kaisersberg, had to punish him for this audacity, and he did it in a pamphlet ftill of the most vulgar abuse. Brant himself, though he lived at Strassburg up to , did not join the standard of the Reformation. He had learned to grumble, to find fault, to abuse, and to condemn ; but his time was gone when the moment for action aiTivcd.

He had been one of the first, after the discovery of printing, to use the German language for political purposes. His fly-sheets, his illustrated editions, had given use- ful hints how to address the large masses of the peo- ple. Edition after edition followed, and translations were published in Latin, in Low-German, in Dutch, in French, and English. Some historians ascribe it to the wood-cuts. They are certainly very clever, and there is reason to suppose that most of them were, if not actually drawn, at least suggested by Brant himself.

Yet even a Turner has failed to render mediocre poetry popular by his illustrations, and there is nothing to show that the caricatures of Brant were preferred to his satires. Now his satires, it is true, are not very poweidul, nor pungent, nor original. But his style is free and easy.

Brant is not a ponderous poet. It is true that all this would hartlly be sufficient to secure a decided success for a work like his at the present day. But then we must remember the time in which he wrote. What had the poor people of Germany to read toward the end of the fifteenth century? Printing had been in- vented, and books were published and sold with great rapidity. People were not only fond, but proud, of reading books. But what were the books that were offered for sale?

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We find among the early prints of the fif- teenth century rehgious, theological, and classical works in great abundance, and we know that the respectable and wealthy burghers of Augsbimg and Strassburg were proud to fill their shelves with these portly volumes. But then German aldermen had wives, and daughters, and sons, and what were they to read during the long winter evenings? The poe- try of the thirteenth century was no longer intelligi- ble, and the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had produced very little that would be to the taste of young ladies and gentlemen.

The light literature of the day consisted en- tirely in novels ; and in spite of their miserable char- acter, their popularity was immense. People did not care any longer for the deep thoughts of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and the beautiful poetry of Gottfried von Strassburg. People are always fond of reading the liis- tory of their own times. If the good qualities of their age are brought out, they think of themselves or their friends; if the dark features of their contem- poraries are exhibited, they think of their neighbors and enemies.

There is a chapter on Misers, — and who would not gladly give a penny to a beggar? There is a chapter on Gluttony, — and who was ever more than a little exhilarated after dinner? There is a chapter on Dancing, — and who ever danced except for the sake of exercise? But he was too good a man to do this, and his con- temporaries no doubt were grateful to him for his for- bearance. The editor is a most minute and painstak- ing critic. He is, however, not only a critic, but a sensible and hon- est man.

It reproduces the matter, but not the manner of the original satire. Some portions are added by the trans- lator, Alexander Barclay, and in some parts his trans- lation is an improvement on the original. It was printed in , published , and went through several editions.

To keep the Pompe, the Helme, and eke the Sayle: For this is mr minde, this one pleasure have I, Of bookes to have great plentie and apparayle. I take no wisdome by them, not yet avayle, Nor them perceave not, and then I them despise: Thus am 1 a foote, and ail that sue that guise. For to have plentie it is a pleasant thing In my conceyt, and to have them ay in hande: But what they meane do I not understande.

By often brusshing and much diligence. Full goodly buunde in pleasant coverture. Of Damas, Sattin, or els of Velvet pure: For in thein is the cunning wherein I me boast.

And while they comment, ray bookes I tume and winde. For all is in them, and nothing in ray minde. Consider his sadness, his honestie devise. His clothing expresseth his inwarde prudence. Ye see no example of such inconvenience In his highness, but godly wit and gravitie. Ensue him, and sorrowe for your enormitie. Digitized by Google IV. The letters which have reached us fi-om every German capital relate no more than what we expected.

There were meetings and feastings, balls and theatrical representations. Address on Schiller, by Jacob Grimm. Schiller- Buck, von Tannenberg; Wien. Schiller's Life and Worts. Translated by Lady Wallace. London, Longman ami Co. Paris, Ha- chettc, In the evening torch processions might Ix!

The most touching account of all came from the small village of Cleversulzbach. VVe have seen, in the German papers, letters from St. Poets of higher rank than Schiller — Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe — have never aroused such world-wide sympathies ; and it is not without interest to inquire into the causes which have secured to Schiller this universal popularity.

It is a life not unknown to the English public, for it has been written by Carlyle. The last festivities, however, have given birth to several new biographies. Regnier, the distinguished tutor of the Comte de Paris. Are we reduced to appeal to the myste- rious working of an unknown power, if we wish to explain to ourselves why, in the same countrx' and at the same time, poetical genius assumed such different foims as are seen in the writings of Schiller and Goethe? Is it to be ascribed to what is called indi- viduality, a word which in truth explains nothing ; or is it possible for the historian and psychologist to dis- cover the hidden influences which act on the growing mind, and produce that striking variety of poetical genius which we admire in the works of contempo- raneous poets, such as Schiller and Goethe in Ger- many, or Wordsworth and BjTon in England?

Men grow not only from within, but also from without. We know that a poet is bom , — poeta nasoitur , — but we also know that his character must be foimed ; the seed is given, but the furrow must be ploughed in which it is to grow ; and the same grain which, if thrown on cultivated soil, springs into fullness and vigor, will dwndle away, stunted and broken, if cast upon shal- low and untilled land.

There are certain events in the life of every man which fashion and stamp his char- acter ; they may seem small and unimportant in them- selves, but they are great and important to each of us ; they mark that slight bend where two lines which had been ranning parallel begin to diverge, never to meet again.

The Greeks call such events epochs, i. We halt for a moment, we look about and wonder, and then choose our further way in life. We are told who his ancestors were. I believe they were bak- ers. We are informed that his mother possessed in her trousseau, among other things, four pairs of stock- ings, — three of cotton, one of wool. There are also long discussions on the exact date of his birth.

We hear a great deal of early signs of genius, or rather, we should say, of things done and said by most chil- dren, but invested with extraordinary significance if remembered of the childhood of great men. To tell the truth, we can find nothing veiy important in what we thus learn of the early years of Schiller, nor does the poet himself in later years dwell much on the rec- ollections of his dawning mind. The father was not what we should call a well-educated man. He had been brought up as a barber and surgeon ; had joined a Bavarian regiment in , during the Austrian war of succession ; and had acted as a non-commissioned officer, and, when occasion required, as a chaplain.

After the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle he had married the daughter of an innkeeper. He was a brave man, a God-fearing man, and, as is not unfrcquently the case with half-educated people, a man very fond of reading. What he had failed to attain himself, he wished to see realized in liis only son. The following prayer was found among the papers of the father: Thou hast heard me. Thanks be to Thee, bounteous Being, that Thou heedest the prayers of mortals. Their thoughts would dwell on the future at a time when other children live in the present only, and an adventurous spirit would be roused, without which no great work has ever been conceived and carried out.

In the family left Marbach on the Neckar. The father was ordered by the Duke of Wurtemberg to Lorch, a place on the frontier, wdiere he had to act as recruiting officer. His son received his education in the house of a clergyman, began Latin at six, Greek at seven; and as far as we are able to see, he neither seems to have considered him- self, nor to have been considered by his masters, as very superior to other boys. Ho was a good boy, ten- derly attached to his parents, fond of games, and regu- lar at school. He knew no fear, and he was full of the wannest sympathy for others.

The first quality se- cured him the respect, the second the love, of those with whom he came in contact. His parents, who were poor, had great difficulty in restraining his gener- osity. He would give away his school-books and the very buckles off his shoes. Both his fearlessness and universal sympathy are remarkable through the whole of his after-life. Not even his enemies could point out one trait of cow'ardice or selfishness in anything he ever did, or said, or wrote.

These qualities may not seem at first to be so potent. But see what growth there is in them. The education of a man of open mind is never ended. Then with openness of soul a man sees some way into all other souls that come near him, feels with them, has their experience, is in liimself a people.

Sym- pathy is the universal solvent. Nothing is understood without it. In the year there begins a new period in the life of Schiller. His father was settled at Ludwigs- burg, the ordinary residence of the reigning Duke of Wurtemberg, the Duke Charles. The philosophy which in France was smiled at by kings and statesmen, while it roused the people to insurrec- tion and regicide, produced in Germany a deeper im- pression on the minds of the sovereigns and ruling classes than of the people.

It is true that this liberal policy was generally carried out in a rather des- potic way, and people were emancipated and enlight- ened very much as the ancient Sa. We have an instance of this in the case of Schiller. Duke Charles had founded an. It was useless for the father to remon- strate, and explain to the Duke that his son had a decided inclination for the Church.

Schiller was sent to the Academy in , and ordered to study law. The young student could not but see that an injustice had been done him, and the irritation which it caused was felt by him all the more deeply because it would have been dangerous to give expression to his feelings. The result was that he made no progress in the sub- jects which he had been commanded to study.

In he was allowed to give up law, not, however, to VOL. But medicine, though at first it seemed more attrac- tive, failed, like law, to call forth his full energies. The choice of the subject of his first dramatic composition was influenced by the circum- stances of his youth. His poetical sympathy for a character such as Karl Moor, a man who sets at defi- ance all the laws of God and man, can only be ac- counted for by the revulsion of feeling produced on his boyish mind by the strict military discipline to which all the pupils at the Academy were subjected.

His sense of right and wrong was strong enough to make him paint his hero as a monster, and to make him inflict on him the punishment he merited. The language in which Schiller paints his characters is powerful, but it is often wild and even coarse. All these vexations Schiller endured, because he knew lull well there was no escape from the favors of his royal protector.

His ambition had been roused. He had sat at Mannheim a young man of twenty, unknown, amid an audience of men and women who listened with rapturous applause to liis own thoughts and words. That evening at the theatre of Mannheim had been a decisive evening, — it was an epoch in the history of his life ; he had felt his power and the calling of his genius ; he had perceived, though in a dim dis- tance, the course he had to run and the laurels he had to gain. When he saw that the humor of the Duke was not likely to Improve, he fled from a place where his wings were clipped and his voice silenced.

Now, this flight from one small German town to another may seem a matter of very little consequence at present. With- out even the show of a trial the poet Schubart had been condemned to life-long confinement by this same Duke Charles. It was a bold, perhaps a reckless step. But whatever we may think of it in a moral point of view, as historians we must look upon it as the Hegira in the life of the poet. Schiller was now a man of one or two and twenty, thrown upon the world penniless, with nothing to depend on but his brains.

The next ten years were hard years for him ; they were years of unsettledness, sometimes of penury and despair, sometimes of extrav- agance and folly. Yet that mind, though less productive than might have been expected, was growing as every mind grows between the years of twenty and thirty ; and it was growing chiefly through contact with men. We must make full allowance for the powerful influence exercised at that time by the literature of the day by the writings of Herder, Lessing, and Goethe , and by political events, such as the French Revolution.

His life was rich in friendships, and what mainly upheld liim in his struggles and dangers was the sym- pathy of several high-bom and high-minded persons, in whom the ideals of his own mind seemed to have found their fullest realization. Next to oiu" faith in God, there is nothing so essen- tial to the healthy growth of our whole being as an unshaken faith in man.

There was at that time a powerful tension in the minds of men, and particularly of the higher classes, which led them to do things which at other times men only aspire to do. The impulses of a most exalted morality — a morality which is so apt to end in mere declamation and deceit — were not only felt by them, but obeyed and carried out. Frau von Wolzogen, knowing nothing of Schiller except that he had been at the same school with her son, received the exiled poet, though fully aware that by doing so she might have displeased the Duke and blasted her fortunes and those of her children.

Schiller preserved the tenderest attachment to this motherly friend through life, and his letters to her display a most charming innocence and purity of mind. Another friend was Komer, a young lawyer living at Leipzig, and afterwards at Dresden — a man who had himself to earn his bread. A third friend and patron of Schiller was Dalberg. He was the coadjutor, and was to have been the suc- cessor, of tlie Elector of Hesse, then an ecclesiastical Electorate. His rank was that of a reigning prince, and he was made afterwards by Napoleon Fiirst- Primas — Prince Primate — of the Confederation of the Rhine.

But it was not his station, his wealth, and influence, it was his mind and heart which made him the friend of Schiller, Goethe, Herder, Wieland, Jean Paul, and all the most eminent intellects of liis time. It is refreshing to read the letters of this Prince. Dalberg had promised Schiller a pension of 4, florins not 4, thalers, as M. Regnier asserts as soon as he should succeed to the Electorate, and Schiller in return had asked him for some hints with regard to his own future liter- ary occupations.

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To be remembered by a man of your heart and mind is a true joy to me. Schiller seemed to think that a pro- fessorial chair in a German university was a more honorable position than that of a poet. Thucydides and Xenophon would not deny that poets like Sophocles and Horace have had at least as much influence on the world as they themselves. The friends of virtue and truth ought now to act and speak all the more vigor- ously and straightforwardly. It is only when I hope to be hereafter of as- sistance to my friends that I wish for a better fate.

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