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XXVIII.

and countesses, are not wholly unknown to them, but they CHAP. are seen only at a distance-much as in England the sovereign and royal circle are to the great bulk of those who 1800-48, attend levees or drawing-rooms. There are scarce any nobles authors in Germany; the sword, not the pen, is in general alone wielded by the magnates of the Teutonic

The art of war may sometimes, as in the case of the Archduke Charles or Frederick the Great, exercise the thoughts of the highest in rank-the first in genius; but these are the exceptions, not the rule. Hence the picture of elegant high-bred manners is a matter of impossibility in Germany, either on the stage or in romance, for this plain reason, that the persons who write both have never seen high life; and this is a want, especially in the delineation of women, for which no genius can compensate. Imagination can figure fairy tales, heroism can portray heroic characters, and elevation of mind will appear in elevation of language; but the delicate shades of refined society can be represented only by those to whom they are familiar; and Burns never said a truer thing than when he declared that he had never seen anything in men of high rank which he had not more than anticipated, but that an elegant woman was altogether beyond his conception.

Madame de Staël says that in comedy there is always something of the animal; either a man speaks like an animal, or an animal like a man. TIECK affords a proof

of the justice of this remark. He first introduced from the Animali Parlanti of Pulci the system of making animals speak, which has since been so much prosecuted in Germany, and in Andersen's Tales has been brought to such perfection. In this respect he much resembles, and has much of the merit of La Fontaine. Under the guise of the inferior animals, which, with the power of speech, are supposed to be endowed with human feelings and passions, is conveyed a delicate and often amusing satire on men and women. His Puss in Boots is an example of this. His melodramas are often skilfully constructed, in

31. Tieck.

CHAP. particular Octavian and Prince Zerbin, which are full of XXVIII. romantic incident and interesting situations, eminently 1800-48. attractive to a people so passionately fond of the marvellous as the Germans. Tieck's satire is delicate, and always conveyed in delicate language, and his knowledge of life is complete, as far as it goes; but when he leaves fairy tales and comes to real life, it is life in a small German town which alone is portrayed. As a lyric poet, he possesses far higher merits; and many of his smaller pieces contain lines of exquisite beauty, second to none in the German or any other language.

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Körner.

The German drama is the branch of its literature which is most remarkable, both from the splendid genius which has been exerted on it, the brilliant position-beyond all question the first in modern Europe-which it has taken, and from its being in a manner the reflex, and the only reflex, of the general mind. But it is not to be supposed from that circumstance that other branches of literature have been neglected; on the contrary, many have attained the very highest eminence. In the very front rank we must place lyric poetry, and at its head KÖRNER. This remarkable man, the Tyrtæus of the Fatherland, was gifted by nature with the true poetic temperament. An ardent mind, a lofty soul, a brilliant imagination, were in him united to an indomitable courage, an heroic disposition. These qualities would have made him remarkable at any time, and under any circumstances; but it was the time in which he lived, the circumstances in which he was placed, which rendered him great. intrepid spirit chafed against the chains of French oppression he stood forth with the strength of a giant in the war of liberation; his strains thrilled like the sound of a trumpet through the heart of the Fatherland. Several of them, in particular the Lyre and Sword, are among the finest lyrical pieces that ever were composed; and long after the contest had ceased, and the excitement of the moment had died away, they have, from the intense

His

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beauty of the expression, and noble feeling which they CHAP. display, taken a lasting place in the highest class of GerLike Chateaubriand's pamphlet on man literature. Buonaparte and the Bourbons, they had a powerful influence in bringing about the fall of the great oppressor; and it was not without reason that, when he was treacherously wounded by some French hussars, unworthy of the name, they exclaimed, when the Germans announced the armistice, "No armistice for Körner," and stabbed him.

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Körner is chiefly known in foreign countries from the patriotic odes and songs, to which his genius and tragic Körner as fate have given immortal celebrity. But he has other poet. merits, less generally appreciated, but also of a very high

order. Long before the war of liberation broke out, he was celebrated as one of the most successful dramatic writers of the age, and his best pieces had been produced on the stage of Vienna with very great effect. Like Schiller and Goethe, he took in the whole world in the range of his conception, and sought to extract the grand and the pathetic from the events of all ages and climes. His Rosamond is taken from the legend of the loves of Henry II. in the forest of Woodstock; his Tony from a romantic tale of love and devotion in a Creole during the horrors of the St Domingo revolt; his Zriny from an incident in one of the memorable sieges which the Hungarians sustained against the Turks. It cannot be said that his pieces have the profound knowledge of the heart, and the secret springs of life, which characterise the works of Goethe, or the dramatic effect and condensed eloquence which have immortalised those of Schiller; but in all we see traces of the lofty and magnanimous soul which stirred the heart of Germany, as with the sound of a trumpet, in the war with Napoleon, and never fail to be charmed with the richness of a flowing and mellifluous eloquence. Perhaps the greatest defect of his theatrical pieces is, that they possess these qualities

a dramatic

CHAP. in too high a degree, and exhibit them too constantly. XXVIII. Compounded as man is of base and selfish, as well as 1800-48. noble and magnanimous feelings, we cannot long bear to

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Burger.

have the latter qualities constantly displayed: it strikes us as unnatural, and mortifies our self-love to have pictures before our eyes exhibiting qualities superior to what we are conscious of in ourselves. Hence it is that Sir Charles Grandison never has been a favourite hero of romance, and that Homer's characters, where the littleness as well as greatness of humanity are faithfully delineated, have stood the admiration of every age and country.

BURGER is a poet of a different class, but also of very high merit. It is from his ballads that the other nations of Europe for long took their idea of German literature; Leonora, or Death and the White Horse, and the Cruel Huntsman, rendered into the languages of the adjoining states, into English by the kindred genius of Sir Walter Scott, spread a universal charm, and awakened a high admiration, but gave in many respects a mistaken opinion of German literature. He first opened to the general mind the idea of the magic of feudal imagery, and of that blending of imagination with the events of the dark ages which has formed so interesting a field of subsequent fiction. His ideas are bold, his fancy vivid, his conceptions often terrific, his language heart-stirring; and none ever understood better the art, so important in romance as well as the drama, of keeping expectation awake, and the mind of the reader or spectator in anxious suspense down to the very close of the piece. Persons unacquainted with the German language, and taking their ideas of its literature from his ballads, supposed at the time, and may still suppose, that that is the universal character of a literature which, the better informed know, embraces all subjects, unfolds all ideas, and is fitted to captivate all understandings.

FREILIGRATH has cultivated the lyric muse with a success which seldom has been surpassed. He is not heart

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stirring and sublime like Körner, nor wild and romantic CHAP. as Burger. His odes are neither fitted to strike the XXVIII. heart of the patriot nor to rouse the terrors of the superstitious. The whole earth is embraced in his grasp; his Freiligrath. lines present pictures of every climate and of every land. In turning over his pages, we roam alternately with the camel-driver in the desert, dip our feet in the cool waves. of the Jordan, traverse the burning sands of the Sahara, or rejoice in the first burst of spring after the desolation of an arctic winter. The sun of Italy, the isles of Greece, the icebergs of Greenland, the waves of the Mississippi, the steppes of Buenos Ayres, the summits of the Andes, the plains of Tartary, are equally present to his vivid. imagination. No poet in any language has ever made more skilful use of the immensely varied imagery which modern information has brought to light, or given a more decisive refutation to the opinion, now so generally entertained, that the progress of knowledge is fatal to the influence of imagination. The poet may mournfully exclaim, in the well-known lines

"When Science from Creation's face

Enchantment's veil withdraws,

What lovely visions yield their place
To cold material laws!"

That opinion is formed only by the uninformed, unfortunately always the great majority of mankind more extended knowledge teaches us that the imagery of nature and occurrences of real life much exceed all that imagination has ever figured; and that the only secure foundation for the ideal is to be laid in the real.

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UHLAND shares in some degree the character of Freiligrath, but he differs from him in some important respects. Uhland. He is not less observant of nature, and felicitous in his description of it, but he is less discursive and more domestic in his objects. He does not roam over the world-he remains at home. It is there that his heart is fixedit is from thence that his imagery is drawn. His descrip

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