XXVIII. CHAP. not the offspring of Grecian democracy; it is the ardent passion, the inextinguishable desire, which sends forth the 1800-48. children of night into the sunshine of nature. We mount with him the waves of the German Ocean; we share, in imagination, in the spoils of mighty England; we pass the Pillars of Hercules, and see the "brood of winter' revelling in the blue waves and sunny isles and pendant vintages of the Ægean Sea. 25. His ele vated pic But it is not merely in depicting the warlike passions of the hosts whom the sea-kings of the north led forth to ture of love. conquer and desolate the world that Oehlenschlager is great; he represents with not less felicity the softer feeling which melted those breasts of iron, and caused them to yield a willing homage where force was not to be found, but beauty had supplied its place. Nowhere shall we find so finely painted as in his pages the workings of that passion which can alone tame the savage breast, which is ever strongest in the strong, most generous in the generous; which, when it is awakened in worthy breasts, loses all its dangers by being severed from all its selfishness; which rouses great aspirations, prompts to noble deeds, and which is rightly designated by the same name as the love of heaven, for it shares in all its purity. This passion, the object of ridicule to the man of the world who cannot feel, of astonishment to the man of business who cannot conceive it, is nevertheless the foundation of the imaginative literature of modern Europe, and constitutes the great distinction between it and the fictions of ancient times. As it had its birthplace among the warriors who issued from Scandinavia to overturn the Roman empire, so it has never been so nobly represented as by one of the most gifted of their descendants. Love, as represented in the pages of Oehlenschlager, is neither the wild passion bordering on insanity of the Greek dramatists, the infliction of which was deemed one of the curses of an offended Deity, nor the licentious desire of the Roman poets, which taste sought to refine and invention to multiply; XXVIII. 1800-48. it is neither the fierce passion of the harem, which, thirst- CHAP. ing for pleasure, perishes with enjoyment; nor the heartless vanity of the drawing-room, which, faithless to every one, seeks gratification in an endless succession of conquests. It is the profound feeling which, once awakened, can perish only with life itself; which shuns society, and is nursed in solitude; which time cannot weaken, nor distance sever; which shares with the devotion of the pilgrim its warmth, with the honour of chivalry its constancy; which commands respect from its disinterestedness, and becomes sublime from its immortality. Whoever has read with kindred feelings his beautiful dramas of Axel und Walburg and Das Land gefunden und verschwunden, will not deem these observations overcharged, and will see from what source the spirit of chivalry, which has so profoundly moved the heart and influenced the literature of modern Europe, has taken its rise. 26. GRILLPARZER is an author who belongs to the same school as Oehlenschlager, but he is more modified by the Grillparzer. literature of antiquity and the ideas of southern Europe. He is not less national in his feelings or graphic in his descriptions like him, he delights in painting the manners and ideas of the olden time, and bringing again on the stage the giant characters and heart-stirring incidents and splendid phantasmagoria of the heroic ages. His noble drama of King Ottakar is a sufficient proof how completely he was master of that imagery. But he is more tinged with the imagery of the south he partakes more of Ariosto's imagination; his soul is more penetrated with the sunny isles of the Mediterranean. In Sappho this peculiarity clearly appears it unites the brilliant imagery of the Greeks with the chivalrous ideas of modern time: if it is less powerful than the dramas of Sophocles, it is more refined. The "Ahnfrau," the scene of which is laid in a feudal castle, and the incidents taken from modern manners, is perhaps the most perfect drama on the Greek model, though without XXVIII. CHAP. the chorus, which modern literature has produced; and Medea and Jason, constructed on the well-known tale, 1800-48. and on the example of antiquity, presents many of the 27. Kotzebue. beauties of the Greek stage. Their extreme beauty and interest raise a doubt whether the neglect of the unities, and especially the most important of all, the unity of emotion, in England since the time of Shakespeare, is not the chief cause of the decline of the drama in this island. Nor is still more modern genius awanting in the same career: "Uno avulso, nec deficit alter FREDERICH SALOM, the author of Der Sohn der Waldniss, if he continues as he has begun, may well claim a place in the august Walhalla of German genius. If celebrity on the stage and temporary theatrical success is to be taken as a test of real dramatic excellence, KOTZEBUE is to be placed at the very head of the literature of Europe in that department. His plays have been translated into every language, represented on every theatre, drawn thunders of applause from every audience. Rendered into English by the kindred genius of Sheridan, under the name of Pizarro, his Death of Rolla is one of the most popular pieces that ever appeared on the British stage. This reputation, however, is sensibly on the decline they keep their place in the theatre, but they are seldom the study of the library. The reason is obvious; their merit consists in what appears on the boards, not what is conveyed in the lines. He was a perfect master of stage effect, and was never exceeded in the ability with which he brought forward a succession of interesting scenes and thrilling coups de théatre, to entrance and keep up the excitement of his audience. Therein lay his real merit; as a dramatic poet he was very deficient. He had neither the heroic soul and ardent spirit of Schiller, nor the exquisite pathos and profound knowledge of mankind which captivate all in Goethe. His XXVIII. 1800-48. knowledge was immense, his mind eminently discursive, CHAP. his glance extended over the whole world and all ages. But his characters were all the same: there was great variety of incident, but little of ideas, in his pieces. His imagination for the construction of dramas was as prolific as that of Lope de Vega, his subjects as varied as those of Voltaire; but his thoughts were almost all those of civilised Europe in the nineteenth century. His dramas owe their immense celebrity to the pantomime and theatrical effect they would be nearly as interesting if it was all dumb show. Hence, they cannot be expected to keep their place as works of literary merit, or as the delightful companions of the fireside; but they will long amuse and delight the world, when exhibited with the charms of scenery and the magic of stage effect. 28. WERNER is in every respect the reverse of Kotzebue ; he is in a great measure ignorant of stage effect, is care- Werner. less of coups de théatre, and therefore his pieces are little calculated for dramatic success; but they possess a rare beauty if read at home, and regarded as lyrical effusions, or what the Germans call dramatic poems. It is not that he was ignorant of the principles of dramatic composition, and what is essential for success on the stage; but he was indifferent to it. He regarded his dramas, as Byron did his tragedies, as a convenient mode of pouring forth poetic oratory in a more abbreviated and less formal mode than in a regular epic poem. Accordingly, with a few brilliant exceptions, of which Luther is the most remarkable, his dramas have had no great success on the stage; but they form a collection second to few in German literature for study in the closet. The dignity of philosophic thought, the charm of lyrical versification, is nowhere more happily combined than in his lines. Unfortunately, he does not add to it the succession of brilliant images which forms so essential a part in dramatic and lyric poetry; therein lies his inferiority to Schiller and Goethe. Like Wordsworth, he is more XXVIII. 1800-48. CHAP. diffuse than loose, profound than imaginative; he deals in thoughts more than images, and consequently, like him, he is more likely to have devout worshippers for a season than steady admirers in all future times. His finest dramas, however, Luther, Attila, the Cross of the Baltic, and the Twenty-Fourth of February, are a great addition to German literature, and must always keep a respectable place even in the galaxy of genius which the German drama presents. 29. German comedy: its defects. 30. these de The comic muse of Germany has by no means attained the celebrity which its tragic has reached. Even in the hands of the greatest dramatic writers-Goethe, Schiller, and Kotzebue though it was by no means neglected, it is far from being so distinguished as the sister art. The characters are, in the estimation of a foreigner at least, too strongly drawn; they are grotesque and ridiculous rather than comic. They have neither the delicate satire of Molière, nor the playful wit of Sheridan, nor the inexhaustible invention of Lope de Vega, nor the ludicrous farce of Goldoni. They portray with graphic truth the mean and despicable qualities of human nature as they appear in ordinary or vulgar characters, but they are destitute of the fine perception of weaknesses, the secret workings of vanity, as they are revealed in the higher classes, which we see in Beaumarchais, Marivaux, and Molière. In truth, the German mind is too serious; it is strung on too high a key to grasp the nice distinctions, the delicate manners of character, which are requisite for the felicitous display on the stage of the manners of high life. Nor is this all. The structure and exclusive system of Causes of German society preclude the possibility of its peculiar feafects: structures becoming known to the rank from which the authors ture of its of the country are taken. With a very few brilliant exceptions, they all belong to the burgher class, with which they alone associate through life, and with whose manners and follies they are alone familiar. Princes and dukes, duchesses society. |