a
 
 LITEEATUKE
 
 STUDIES 
 
 IN 
 
 LOW GEKIAN AND HIGH GEKMAN 
 LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 M. W. MAcCALLUM 
 
 LONDON 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1884
 
 (The rights of translation and of reproduction are reterved.)
 
 p 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 ^ SANTA BARBARA 
 
 TO THE 
 
 MEMORY OF MY FATHER 
 
 THIS BOOK 
 IS DEDICATED.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE contents of this volume are on the surface 
 quite miscellaneous and disjointed, and what 
 connection they possess for me is apt to disap- 
 pear when they are separated from my regular 
 work. Perhaps they may be best described as 
 studies on the outskirts of English Literature : 
 first, in so far as it is English, dealing as 
 they do with kindred or contrasted phenomena 
 abroad ; and, again, in so far as it is Literature, 
 for the second and third essays are almost 
 technical in subject. But as these rambles from 
 my ordinary route have been to me full of 
 pleasure and suggestiveness, perhaps there are 
 others who may find in them something of 
 interest. 
 
 I must also say a word on my indebtedness,
 
 Till PREFACE. 
 
 which is great, to foreign scholars and critics. 
 Their utterances on the matters that I discuss 
 are little known in this country, and I have 
 not scrupled to make use of them, especially 
 in the case of those whose names I mention 
 at the beginnings of my essays. At the 
 same time my study of the authors generally 
 preceded my perusal of the commentators, and 
 I must be considered responsible for any state- 
 ments that I make. 
 
 My than'ks are due to Messrs. Smith and 
 Elder for their permission to reprint the last 
 three essays, which appeared in the Cornhill 
 Magazine in the years 1879 and 1880. 
 
 ABEBYSTWYTH, 
 
 December, 1883.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 FRITZ EEUTEB ... ... ... ... ... 1 
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSERIA ... ... ... ... 56 
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE... ... ... ... ... 87 
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE ... 131 
 
 THE MINNESONG ... ... ... ... ... 183 
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OF GERMANY ... ... ... 223 
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG ... ... ... 249 
 
 KLOPSTOCK 291
 
 STUDIES IN LOW GEKMAN AND 
 HIGH GEEMAN LITEEATURE. 
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 
 
 [In the " Sammtliche Werke von Fritz Keuter " are included his 
 more important productions, but none of his dramas and not all of 
 his miscellanies. For the development of Platt Deutsch literature 
 and for Keuter's relations with Groth, the " Quickborn" and " Brief e 
 iiber Plattdeutsch und Hochdeutsch " of the latter, and the " Abweis- 
 ung der nngerechten Angriffe " of the former (not reprinted in the 
 collected edition) should be read. Among the chief authorities for 
 Keuter's life are his autobiographic sketches, " Meine Vaterstadt 
 Stavenhagen" and " Ut Mine Festungstid ; " his selected letters; 
 and Adolf Wilbrandt's admirable memoir.] 
 
 THE present is the halcyon day of poets in dialect. 
 Critics pet them and premiers pension them ; and they 
 are patronized even by their dainty brethren of the 
 universities, who, disguising themselves as farmers 
 and cobblers, try to shape their mouths to the rustic 
 shibboleth. This success is due to the freshness of 
 thought and language in the provincial poems. The 
 experiences may be very old and elementary, yet on 
 
 7 B 
 
 V
 
 2 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 that very account may interest a rapidly ageing society 
 that has for long seldom heard, but never quite for- 
 gotten, the lessons of its childhood. And in the same 
 way the words, belonging for the most part to the 
 oldest vocabulary of the language, though since more 
 or less dropped by our " educated " classes, have, with 
 their strange youth-in-age, the feel and smell of the 
 fresh-turned sod, pleasant enough after the dusty 
 paving-stones of London journals. No doubt the 
 study of philology has had its share in this move- 
 ment. It has shown that there was a time when the 
 Queen's English did not reign alone, or reign at all, 
 and has pointed out that the patois of London society 
 differs from the many patois of the country only in 
 being somewhat staler and corrupter. The compilers 
 of country glossaries and investigators of local 
 grammar smile, therefore, on the local poet, and he 
 is the rarely fortunate artist who can nowadays boast 
 of the favours of science. Still, though such patronage 
 has helped the growth of dialectical poetry, the origin 
 of its influence and revival is to be sought, as we have 
 seen, in its own nature and its relation with modern 
 life. The simpler interests and experiences of man, 
 if expounded with feeling, appeal to all and are 
 necessary for all; and it is precisely these that are 
 apt to find no utterance from the authorized mouth- 
 pieces of an artificial age. It is characteristic that
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 3 
 
 modern dialectical poetry and modern realistic poetry 
 have almost the same point of departure, viz. the 
 songs of Burns. 
 
 The position of this author as first in order both of 
 time and merit among dialectical poets is instructive. 
 A priori it would have seemed a hard problem to find 
 access in the literary circles of the eighteenth century 
 for what was considered the vulgar idiom of the rustic. 
 The circumstances of Scotland, however, were alto- 
 gether exceptional. If now something less than a 
 kingdom, it was still more than a county; and its 
 speech, if no longer a European language, was even 
 less the dialect of a shire. The poet had literary 
 traditions behind him, and around him an audience 
 which, in character and patriotism, was still a nation. 
 He had, therefore, the self-confidence necessary for the 
 first step, and at the same time his art and horizon 
 rather transcended those of the ordinary county bard. 
 Hence the father of dialectic poets, alone among the 
 race, has exercised a European influence, and he alone 
 with one exception has become popular in other 
 countries than his own. That exception is Fritz 
 Keuter. 
 
 Now, the reasons for the pre-eminence of Burns 
 return with but little modification to account for the 
 pre-eminence of Renter, the circumstances of the 
 "Braid Scottis" of last century being strikingly
 
 4 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 analogous to those of Platt Deutsch in the present day. 
 Both are not properly dialects, but groups of dialects ; 
 both in the past had their classical literatures, for 
 " Reineke " is a Platt poem, and the Old Saxon of 
 the " Heliand " may be considered the original of 
 Platt; both, even when they lost an authoritative 
 standard, continued to be spoken as mother speech by 
 thousands of educated families, to whom High German 
 and English were respectively foreign tongues, which 
 had, as such, to be learned at school with grammars. 
 In the Plattlands of to-day, as in the Lowlands of 
 Burns, the idiom of ceremony, of business, and of the 
 Church has come from without, and has to be mastered 
 more or less completely by all the middle classes ; but 
 the language of home, of friendship, of master and 
 servant, continues to be their own old Low German 
 in its traditional forms. Of course the differences 
 between Scotch and Platt are also very great. In 
 some respects the latter is even more independent and 
 powerful. Its area, spreading from Konigsberg to the 
 confines of Holland, includes an immensely greater 
 population than Scotland ; and though the local varia- 
 tions in forms, pronunciations, and even words are 
 very great, these do not interfere with the general 
 intelligibility of any one of its dialects. The Platt 
 writer thus appeals to an even wider audience than 
 Burns. Again the difference between Scotch and
 
 FRITZ EEUTEE. 5 
 
 English is between members of the same group ; the 
 difference between Platt and High German, in so far 
 quite parallel with the difference of High German and 
 English in the United States, is the difference between 
 separate groups, and hence is much harder and faster 
 than the other and gives more scope for free treat- 
 ment. Those advantages, however, are more than 
 counterbalanced by other differences. Even if we 
 reckon the Old Saxon poems to the credit of the Platt 
 Deutsch, there had been, for centuries at least, no lite- 
 rature to speak of in any of its dialects, and hence 
 it had no literary tradition. And one reason for this 
 was that there had been, since the days of the great 
 Saxon dukes, no independent Platt Deutsch States of 
 importance. A few Hanse towns, like Hamburg, had 
 always been international, and had latterly sunk into 
 political insignificance. The little free community of 
 Ditmarch had long waged an heroic combat against 
 its encroaching Danish and Holstein neighbours, but 
 in the end it too had succumbed to numbers. Still 
 it is interesting to find that precisely here the new 
 Platt literature had its origin, and some of the Dit- 
 marcher Groth's * stirring songs of the struggles of his 
 
 * One or two writers precede him in date, but their efforts were 
 too sporadic or too feeble to found a school. The history of modern 
 Platt literature begins with Groth rather than with Voss, just as the 
 history of the modern English parliament begins with Edward I. 
 rather than with De Montfort.
 
 6 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 ancestors breathe a patriotism as of " Scots wha hae." 
 But he could not get over the want of a literary 
 tradition. The impulse came to him, not from the 
 fragments of old local songs, but from Robert Burns, 
 whose full notes from beyond the sea almost drowned 
 the last echoes that lingered round Groth's own home. 
 In this way he stands far behind his original. He is 
 an imitator and a learned author. His prose theo- 
 rizings on his Platt Deutsch poems exceed in bulk the 
 poems themselves, and this is characteristic of the 
 man and his position. A foreigner must be careful 
 in his criticisms ; but to me it seems that Groth in 
 his sentiments and measures is hardly more true to 
 the spirit of the dialect than Tennyson himself. A 
 local patriot of fine poetical feeling and wide culture, 
 he learned from the study of Burns that there ought 
 to be Platt Deutsch lyrics, and he set himself on con- 
 scious principles to produce them. But he is thus 
 rather a poet in Platt Deutsch than a Platt Deutsch 
 poet. Just as Lessing breaks ground for Goethe, so 
 he, introducing the popular literature in theory from 
 above, prepares the way for Reuter, whose stories 
 pulse direct from the heart of the people. It is quite 
 what we might expect, that there should at first be 
 collision between the two. Reut.er, crudely natural 
 in his early works, seemed in Groth's eyes merely to 
 be degrading the infant art that he had so carefully
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 7 
 
 tended. " Renter's muse," he wrote, " is a byre wench." 
 This attack was promptly resented by its object, and 
 Groth's own defects unsparingly exposed ; but in the 
 end both men recognized their mutual relations, and 
 learned to regard each other with gratitude and 
 admiration. Reuter fulfilled the purpose that Groth 
 set himself, and, but for Groth, he could not have 
 fulfilled it. It is the completeness of his success that 
 gives his life its climax of interest ; for, in view of it, 
 his already romantic career is elevated into the region 
 of principle as the equipment, perhaps the only 
 possible equipment, for his work. "Each nation 
 should be its own exponent, and the exposition should 
 be in its own words ; " and this saying, when they are 
 important enough, is equally true of districts. But 
 the difficulty was to find a man with the necessary 
 qualifications of thought and culture, who should not 
 be lost to the people, who should not devote himself 
 to a special calling, or be charmed within the magic 
 circle of High German letters. 
 
 There is little in Mecklenburg, the land of his birth, 
 that could have made one prophesy it a literary 
 leadership even in Platt Deutsch. Though the Meck- 
 lenburgers have erected a statue to their country, and 
 flatteringly personified it as Megalopolis, in the first 
 place it is not great, and in the second, is not, and 
 scarcely has, a city. Wismar and Rostock were
 
 8 STUDIES IN GEEMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Hanse towns, but their independence is a forgotten 
 story; and in Rostock University, to which Wallen- 
 stein, the fool of astrology, called Keppler, there is 
 now a professor or docent to every three students. 
 A stirring history it no doubt had as battle-ground of 
 Dane, Slave and German, but that history belongs to 
 the past, and never was of immediate concern to 
 Western Europe. For generations it has lain apart, a 
 mine of old usages, a land hedged in, its population 
 nearly stationary, its agricultural commerce passing 
 circuitously through the Baltic, its towns beaten by 
 their western neighbour, Liibeck, its political existence 
 checked by the enfant terrible Prussia. The two 
 Mecklenburgs, Schwerin and Strelitz, joined like a 
 two-headed nightingale in legislature, have their 
 heads in the almost absolute grand dukes, who built 
 palaces, neglected the people, and allowed serfdom to 
 continue even in the nineteenth century. Perhaps 
 only two facts about them are familiar to the English 
 reader, but these are typical. The first is that the 
 reigning family is the only one, even in Germany, 
 that belongs directly to an old Slavonic stock, and 
 this shows how little Mecklenburg has latterly been 
 a prey to change. The other is the unspeakable 
 episode of the unspeakable duchess, narrated by 
 Carlyle in his "Frederick the Great," which shows 
 how little the stranger dynasty was affected by 
 German popular opinion.
 
 FRITZ REUTEE. 9 
 
 The want of commerce in Mecklenburg has repelled 
 the commercial traveller, and its want of history has, 
 despite its statues of Bliicher and Moltke, guarded it 
 against the sentimental tourist ; while its long undu- 
 lating plains and slopes of cornland, its wastes of heath 
 or sand, its innumerable lakes and patches of woodland 
 have not been sufficient to draw the sight-seer. It has 
 thus been left to its own old fashions and local habits , 
 and these have given it a distinct character that 
 almost compensates for the absence of independent 
 nationality. " Mecklenburg," says Renter, " is a fair 
 land, and a rich land, and the farmer above all has 
 good reason to be pleased with it." Its real life is 
 agricultural, and though that is concentrated here 
 and there in the villages, and the village life in 
 turn is concentrated in the towns, in winter, before 
 the days of railroads, animation was suspended, and 
 existence was left uneventful and undisturbed. Meck- 
 lenburg is the .Sleepy Hollow of Europe, and only the 
 trumpets of the Napoleonic wars wakened the sleepers 
 for a time. Its grand dukes were the first to desert 
 the confederation of the Rhine, and its sons bore their 
 share in the expulsion of the foreigner from the 
 fatherland. 
 
 It was in these eventful days, in the year 1810, that 
 Fritz Reuter was born in the little town of Staven- 
 hagen. Something he remembered of the disorderly
 
 10 STUDIES IN GEEMAN LITEKATUEE. 
 
 French retreat in 1813, partly from the vivid im- 
 pressions of childhood, more perhaps from the 
 recurring stories to which it would give rise. For 
 the honest Stavenhagen citizens had little to interest 
 them beyond those stories in the quiet of the next 
 few years, when little Fritz was growing up to clearer 
 insight and observation. What a picture he has given 
 us of his father-town in its isolation and simplicity ! 
 It could be approached only by the two classes of 
 roads, the mended and the unmended, and the latter 
 were the less dangerous. Mid comments and queries, 
 the stray traveller was accompanied by all the juve- 
 nile population to his inn, where, while refreshing him- 
 self with Dutch cheese, he was appropriated by their 
 elders as a gift direct from heaven. When one of the 
 Stavenhageners was going to travel to Hamburg, he 
 took the sacrament the day before, and paid a round 
 of farewell visits, while the admiring tribute, " There's 
 a man for you ! " in his retreating ears, rewarded the 
 daring of his attempt. The only time of bustle was 
 the yearly fair, to Fritz chiefly memorable for its 
 paradise of confectioners' booths. Among these he 
 ranged, a penny in his hand, and his hand in his 
 pocket (" such," he says, " were my aunt's in- 
 junctions "), and unsuspicious of invisible steaks and 
 beer, found in the rosy bulk of the chief confectioner 
 an obvious refutation of his father's idea that sweet-
 
 FRITZ EEUTER. 11 
 
 meats were unwholesome. " I quite uphold," he con- 
 fesses, " the opinion of the Mecklenburg peasant, who, 
 when asked at confirmation what were the three chief 
 Christian festivals, answered, 'Christmas, Whitsun- 
 tide, and Autumn fair.' " When that was past, the 
 town was thrown back on itself, and on that com- 
 munity of interest which is only possible, or at least 
 only tolerable, in a very small place. Reuter grew up 
 more interested in his neighbour's dinner, at which, if 
 he liked it, he was an imaginary guest, and in street- 
 fights, than in political rumours and European crises. 
 Perhaps the gossip of nations is, after all, not so 
 much more nourishing than that of street corners, at 
 any rate it is not so good a training for the sort of 
 Netherlands painting in which Fritz was to excel. 
 And this mutual concern in other people's business, if 
 it had its lower and garrulous, had also its higher and 
 brotherly side. Renter's father was mayor of Staven- 
 hagen for forty years, and during that time was 
 unwearied in his efforts to protect and improve the 
 place. In the famine years after the war, his 
 prudence and care averted the danger of destitution, 
 and what industries Stavenhagen possessed were 
 restored and multiplied by his enterprise. From old 
 Reuter, Fritz learned the nobility of forethought, 
 firmness, and principle ; but no artistic influence, save 
 perhaps a certain conscientious regard for truth of
 
 12 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 fact, could work on him from that quarter. From 
 his sickly mother, with her gentle subdued humour, 
 and her love of poetical and religious books, he had 
 his poet's disposition by inheritance, and there were 
 several in his circle to develop it by their unconscious 
 training. Such, for instance, was the Amtshaupt- 
 mann Wewer who inhabited the castle that over- 
 looked the town, the one romantic feature in the 
 neighbourhood, and whose native overflowing kind- 
 liness led him to address every one, even his grim 
 worship the mayor, with the endearing diminutive of 
 " heart's childie." Sometimes, indeed, his benevolence 
 was taken ill, or could barely counterbalance his 
 terrible frankness ; as, for instance, in the delightful 
 episode of the Stavenhagen Masque Ball, in which 
 every one knew and pretended not to know every- 
 body else, and the Herr Amtmann making wilful 
 errors in identity, fully thought he was furthering 
 the general satisfaction, while really he left every 
 one indignant at being mistaken for that particular 
 neighbour, witness also that other scene with the 
 dancing-master, after which even good-humoured uncle 
 Herse is driven to declare him a " crusty old hedge- 
 hog." " My father admitted the adjectives with some 
 modification, but warmly denied the substantive," says 
 Fritz. It was indeed easy to offend uncle Herse's self- 
 importance, but it was not difficult to assuage his wrath.
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 13 
 
 No one who reads the sketches of this most un- 
 typical town councillor, this " genius in embryo," 
 as his assumed nephew calls him, can mistake the 
 influence he exercised on Fritz's development. An 
 overgrown child, but a gifted one, who when he 
 became a man did not put away childish things, 
 proud of his fine figure and portly person, he has a 
 boy's interest in birds, in gaudy paintings, in local 
 legends ; and Fritz turns unsatisfied from his father's 
 " perhaps " and " probably," to have his dreams about 
 the old castle certified and outdone by the unhesita- 
 ting assent of his uncle. Indeed, Fritz made his 
 first acquaintance with a work of imagination during 
 the private writing-lessons which uncle Herse was 
 so kind as to administer. 
 
 The solution of this paradox is simple though 
 unexpected. The amateur pedagogue hit on the 
 ingenious plan of dictating a romance of his own 
 invention, and thus converted the most tedious of 
 school hours into one of breathless suspense. Alas ! 
 from the suspense the pupil was never delivered. 
 One among the many excellences of the hero was his 
 capacity of becoming invisible at will, and uncle 
 Herse had tried to check the budding scepticism of 
 his pupil by revealing to him the secret. It was to 
 smoke toadstools. Unhappily Fritz would have had 
 a good flogging had he been caught with a pipe,
 
 14 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 whatever its contents, so he had to rest satisfied with 
 a scientific experiment in corpore vili. In other 
 words, he gave their old man-servant a pipe of what 
 purported to be the mayor's tobacco, and then sat 
 intently watching to see him vanish into thin air. 
 But no disappearance took place ; on the contrary, old 
 Friedrich, in alarm for his life, accused Fritz of trying 
 to poison him, and the investigator to clear himself 
 had to tell the whole story. Old Reuter perused the 
 copy-book with strong symptoms of disgust, and from 
 that day uncle Herse gave no more writing-lessons. 
 
 Fritz's private lessons were, no doubt, the result of 
 his father's well-grounded distrust of the Stavenhagen 
 schools. Of these there were three ; in the first, the 
 severest punishment was the disgrace of the dunce's 
 cap a disgrace coveted like an order of merit; in 
 the second, all were thrashed indiscriminately, or, as 
 Reuter says, the teacher charged per week a shilling 
 the back; in the third, the flogging was systematic, 
 in three grades, with three rods of increasing thick- 
 ness. Fritz went to none of these, but was subjected 
 to the apparently more genial discipline of a girls' 
 school. However, " to be the owl among crows," as he 
 says, is unpleasant, and he was often the victim of 
 " these accomplished little Megferas." After this, pri- 
 vate lessons were felt to be a deliverance, even when 
 those in geography were administered every evening by
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 15 
 
 his exacting father, still unwearied by a day of private 
 and public work. The record of this home instruction 
 in branches useful and ornamental, respectively patro- 
 nized and opposed by his father and his aunt; the 
 list of his numerous improvised teachers, including 
 a tailor journeyman, a refugee from Cagliostro, a 
 strolling player, a theological student, and uncle 
 Herse for painting, is too long for quotation. The 
 last named might have seduced Fritz to art, but his 
 father had determined to make a jurist of him. So 
 his pleasant home lessons end when he is fourteen, 
 and a year later his home life ends too. In. 1824 he 
 was sent to the gymnasium in Friedland, to study 
 there three years, and in 1825 he lost the mother he 
 so tenderly loved. This of itself would make the 
 time dismal, but here, and even later when he 
 continued his studies at Parchim, it is easy to see 
 that he thought the exchange unfortunate from genial 
 uncle Herse to school pedantry ; and he had the extra 
 discomfort of hating his juridical studies the more, 
 the better he got to know them. At this stage, 
 indeed, it seemed that his father's indomitable will 
 would only mould Fritz into one of those moderately 
 successful lawyers who grow everywhere luxuriantly, 
 and who do not have their lives written. Yet already 
 he had given evidence of literary ability, which we, 
 who can be wise after the event, find so striking as to
 
 16 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 be almost incredible. At the age of twelve he had 
 his first outing in the world, and his father, whom he 
 accompanied, made him write an account of it for his 
 godfather, old Amtmann Wewer. The close observa- 
 tion, fluent style, and, above all, racy humour which 
 Fritz displays in this somewhat forbidding task, 
 would be praised in one half again as old as he. A 
 later excursion to Riigen called forth his first poem 
 " a very remarkable one," says he, humorously, but it 
 was lost in the tragedy of his life, which was already 
 fast approaching. 
 
 For now his father sent him, in his twenty-first 
 year, to Rostock University, in the next stage appa- 
 rently of an average legal career, really to unknown 
 heights, which, if known, would have filled the youth 
 with more horror than desire, had the depths too 
 been known through which alone they should be 
 gained. 
 
 In those reactionary days the aspirations of Ger- 
 many for unity and freedom were almost confined 
 to her universities, but there they were warm and 
 eager, and the students of the great inter-university 
 Fellowship did much to nurse and spread them. The 
 aims of the Fellowship were poison to the petty 
 princelings, who wished to maintain their authority 
 uncurbed either by a national Government or by the 
 popular voice. After the murder of Kotzebue they
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 17 
 
 succeeded in suppressing its public gatherings, but it 
 never altogether died out, and in 1827 sprang again 
 into activity, nobly if naively avowing as its aim 
 " to prepare the way by moral, scientific, and athletic 
 education in the university, for a State ordered in 
 freedom and righteousness, and established in the 
 unity of the people." Could this day-dream at once 
 be realized ? No, said the moderate Arminian party 
 in the Fellowship. Yes, answered the more enterpris- 
 ing Germans, who, one need hardly add, had the 
 majority in so youthful a parliament. They carried 
 the resolution, " That every member shall be bound to 
 further their common aims by force, and hence to take 
 part in any popular risings that may be of service." 
 The Polish revolt of 1832, and the general sympathy 
 with the Polish refugees, greatly strengthened the 
 hands of the German faction, who again, for a time, 
 but only for a time, drew back the seceding Arminians ; 
 and, after the second schism, carried the most violent 
 motion in their record: "That the general German 
 Fellowship shall strive to promote the unity and 
 freedom of Germany by means of revolution." At 
 this stage, the Governments of the old Bund united 
 to suppress so frank-hearted a band of conspirators. 
 
 Fritz Reuter after one semester's initiation at 
 quiet old Rostock, in the mysteries of student de- 
 bating, student drinking and student fighting, was 
 
 C
 
 18 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 transplanted to the University of Jena, the centre of 
 the Fellowship and stronghold of the German party. 
 That he, hardy, muscular, inconsiderate, always ready 
 for a row with the constable or a bout with a rival 
 clubsman, should not be drawn to the peaceable 
 Arminians is very intelligible. But it is also clear 
 that he shone more among the humorists than among 
 the statesmen of the association. We know little of 
 his success in debate, but we do know something of 
 his skill in composing comic songs, one of which has 
 survived. Reuter, too, had left the Fellowship before 
 its dissolution, and so must be supposed but slightly 
 tinged even with the harmless red of the youthful 
 enthusiasts. But it soon appeared that neither youth 
 nor innocence, neither good intentions nor high 
 purpose could save Reuter or hundreds more from 
 crimination on the charge of what?. "Merciful 
 Heaven knows ! " answers Reuter, " unless that we 
 wore the German colours in broad day-light, and 
 spoke in whispers what is now shouted in the 
 streets." 
 
 For meanwhile, in 1833, when Fritz was quietly 
 enjoying the Easter holidays at his home in remote 
 Stavenhagen, a strange event was taking place in 
 Frankfort-on-the-Main. A handful of peasants, led by 
 a stray student or two, and an occasional revolutionary 
 from abroad, overpowered a few policemen and watch-
 
 FEITZ KEUTER. 19 
 
 men, and paraded the streets inviting the inhabitants 
 to follow their unknown leadership to an unknown 
 political Utopia. The citizens naturally refused, but 
 troops had to be called in, and blows given and taken 
 before " the rebels were put to flight ! " Such 
 disorders cannot of course be tolerated in any well 
 regulated State, and the ringleaders merited severe 
 castigation. But Germany was not a well-regulated 
 State, and this little scratch roused it to an agony 
 of terror and vengeance. The Bund established a 
 Central Board of Investigation, which proceeded to the 
 insanest frenzy of persecution, with the insanest arts 
 of inquisition and chicane. On account of the partici- 
 pation of a few university men, and the theoretical 
 revolutionism of the Fellowship, more than a thousand 
 students, many of them members of merely literary 
 clubs, were arrested and cross-examined, numbers 
 were declared accomplices and locked up for pro- 
 tracted trial and tardy sentence. The proceedings 
 were almost more infamous and hardly less cruel than 
 those of our own Bloody Assizes, if we remember that 
 on that occasion vengeance was exacted from actual 
 insurgents and their protectors, while on this the 
 victims were mere political dreamers, of whom few 
 were desirous and none were capable of endangering 
 the State by force. Tzchoppe, Kamptz, Kleist, and 
 Dambach, the four evangelists of the gospel of Judge
 
 20 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Jeffreys, made no allowances, but rather stooped to 
 extort from 'the youths the avowal of their ideals, 
 which they twisted into a confession of high treason. 
 Sentences of imprisonment for half a year, for ten 
 years, for thirty years, for life, fell thick ; and thirty- 
 seven, not the most guilty, were condemned to death. 
 Amongst these was Fritz Reuter. 
 
 When the storm broke out, he had waited quietly 
 at home, instead of returning to the university ; but 
 as the fury of prosecution seemed to abate, and the 
 Mecklenburg Government did not even inquire after 
 him, he thought he might safely, without the loss of 
 another semester, continue his studies in Prussia, 
 which had no legal control over him. Incautious in 
 his innocence, he arrived at the end of October, 1833, 
 in Berlin, and on the 31st was seized by the police. 
 His detention was a breach of international law, and 
 the Mecklenburg Government demanded his extradi- 
 tion. No notice was taken of this request in Berlin. 
 On the contrary, Fritz, though he was a foreigner, 
 and not yet found guilty even in the Prussian courts, 
 was treated as a criminal of the worst class. His 
 confinement in the Stadtvogtei was exchanged for 
 the harsher regime of the Hausvogtei, where even 
 ink and pens were refused him. He extemporized 
 substitutes for them from a splinter torn out of the 
 floor and a dye made with burnt walnut shells, and
 
 FRITZ EEUTER. 21 
 
 with these proceeded to write original Byronic poems, 
 " which," he says, "have happily been lost," and, from 
 memory, a copy of Byron's " Jepthah's Daughter," 
 which is happily extant as a memento of the time. 
 
 Meanwhile the case dragged along, for to cruelty 
 and chicane the most shameless procrastination was 
 added. The accused were, indeed, at the mercy of 
 the accusers. They were not so much as allowed to 
 choose their own counsel, and the one appointed 
 to represent Fritz, so far from doing his duty in the 
 case, never troubled to answer his client's letters or to 
 go near him. More than a year had elapsed without 
 any judgment being pronounced, when Fritz was 
 haled across the country, in bitterly cold winter, to a 
 new imprisonment in the Silesian fortress of Silber- 
 berg. This, too, was in defiance of his rights ; but he 
 was strongly recommended by the Prussian officials, 
 among them Darnbach himself, to submit without 
 complaint. " You'll certainly be sent home to Meck- 
 lenburg," they said. And, indeed, the demand for his 
 extradition was thrice renewed, but as often refused. 
 And the Prussian Government was as arbitrary in 
 other respects. Two full years the second and third 
 since his arrest passed away, and still the court 
 pronounced no judgment on the youth whose life was 
 withering in the shadows of Silberberg. We know 
 little of these two years ; but one fact is certain, that
 
 22 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 his nervous system was undermined and his eyesight 
 ruined by the darkness of the casemates, before ever 
 he was condemned ; and one letter has survived that 
 shows how the iron had entered into his soul. It 
 is dated October 31st, exactly three years, there- 
 fore, from the time when he lost his liberty. " This 
 day," he tells his father, " has made me unspeakably 
 wretched. It has robbed me of health and happiness 
 and, what is worse, of self-reliance. So I beg you 
 from my heart try once more to have me set free, 
 and then stop wasting your time and powers over a 
 chimera as monstrous and incredible as any in my- 
 thology. ... If this effort fails, let things go as they 
 will. It would not be fair to yourself or my sisters 
 if you were to spend your strength in a hopeless 
 undertaking, which at the best would restore you only 
 the shadow of your former son. A week hence is my 
 birthday, my fourth in prison. I shall think fondly 
 of you and of the many little tokens of love you used to 
 give me as a child. Truly, they were more worth than 
 all the fine promises I used to make you on that day." 
 It is not often that a young man has to look forward 
 with such weariness and despair to his twenty-sixth 
 birthday, and the tidings of the next few days might 
 well suffice to crush a less exhausted spirit. Now at 
 last he heard that he was sentenced to death, but 
 that his majesty Frederick William III. was graciously
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 23 
 
 pleased to commute his punishment to incarceration 
 in a fortress for thirty years. This was bad enough ; 
 but Fritz was not even now delivered from that hope 
 deferred that makes the heart sick. Assurances flowed 
 in from all sides that the king would pardon him, and 
 it was long, very long, before he learned to abandon 
 this heartbreaking illusion. Meanwhile his rapid loss of 
 sight could not be overlooked, and for the sake of what 
 remained he was in February, 1837, transferred from 
 Silberberg to Glogau, a change that introduced some 
 variety into his monotonous existence. To us it is for 
 another reason important. With his arrival in Glogau 
 begin the recorded reminiscences of his imprisonment, 
 in the charming sketch, " My Fortress Time." This is 
 a happy compound of truth and fiction; but fortu- 
 nately he has enabled us roughly to distinguish the 
 ingredients. " After the lapse of five and twenty 
 years," he writes, " I can regard even this period from 
 its humorous side. But not all its moments can be 
 made bright ; some still remain clad in their horrible 
 grey, and, if I have freshened up the bright ones a 
 little with fictitious comedy, the grey ones I have 
 honestly left alone in their gloomy truth." 
 
 Over these experiences we must, however, pass 
 lightly, for in outline they are similar, and we have 
 no time to penetrate into the tragi-comic labyrinth 
 of detail. In Glogau his stay was, on the whole,
 
 24: STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 tolerable, for here he had a human governor and 
 gaolers ; but it lasted for only six weeks. Then he 
 had the pleasing break in his prison routine of a 
 journey to Magdeburg, whither he was transferred, 
 the good-natured Glogau commandant arranging that 
 he should not reach his destination too soon. Wher- 
 ever he and his guards put up, two citizens were 
 appointed, as it were, special constables, to sleep in 
 the same room with him, to prevent his flight. They 
 usually, while drinking beer and smoking tobacco at 
 his expense, catechised him as to his reasons for 
 wishing to "kill the king;" and on the whole the 
 population testified its loyalty by calling him names. 
 Occasionally, however, some little kindness was done 
 him that went to his heart. Thus at one inn he sat 
 down to supper with the family of the landlord ; at 
 another, his host would have helped him to make off; 
 at a third, a few schoolboys, who were drinking punch 
 in a corner, sent one of their number to invite him to 
 join them, and to confide to him in strict secret that 
 they had formed a branch-fellowship at their school. 
 " So much for Prussian repression ! There's not much 
 good in capital punishment or in the deterrent theory," 
 is Renter's sage remark on this occasion. If this 
 interlude was too pleasant for a criminal guilty of 
 high treason, the balance of justice was soon to be 
 more than readjusted.
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 25 
 
 Arrived in Magdeburg, Reuter was quartered, not 
 in the Citadel, but in the Inquisitoriat. "That was 
 bad," he says. "However miserable a fortress may 
 be, one has always room for the necessary exercise in 
 the old casemates ; now and then one sees another 
 man ; and, as a whole, it is not built with the express 
 purpose of tying down the prisoner in all directions : 
 but a prison, with its separate system, deprived us of 
 the little light, air, motion, and sight-seeing that were 
 ours by law. Confinement in a fortress was what we 
 were condemned to ; but what did the Prussian State 
 care about that, if it served its turn to confine us in 
 the cells of a gaol ! " This bad beginning was fittingly 
 followed up. The governor, Count Hacke, delighted 
 to aggravate the punishment of the "regicides" by 
 gratuitous insult and oppression. They were debarred 
 from all religious services, the food was barely eatable, 
 the water poisonous ; even a Government commission 
 reported and censured the almost total want of ventila- 
 tion, warmth, and light. Fritz had been removed from 
 the Silberberg on account of his eyes, but no direct 
 sunbeam ever penetrated into his Magdeburg cell. And 
 to these great grievances petty vexations were added ; 
 as, for example, when Hacke, regardless of their feelings 
 and their moustaches, insisted on his prisoners being 
 shaved twice a week at their own expense. He 
 addressed a note to one of them, " To the Demagogue
 
 26 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATUEE. 
 
 X," who refused the title, and, after an appeal to 
 Government, carried his point so far that Hacke's super- 
 scription was in future, " To the Political Criminal X ." 
 This was felt to be a triumph for all, and with a 
 humour only to be understood in that land of privy 
 councillors and privy officials of all kinds, they de- 
 bated together whether, since they had committed no 
 overt treasonous act, they should not rather be styled 
 " privy political criminals." It was possible for them 
 to meet and converse only through Reuter's finesse 
 and firmness. He defeated Hacke's efforts to enforce 
 solitary confinement by making presents to the gaolers, 
 and then threatening to report their receiving them 
 unless they permitted some mutual visits among the 
 prisoners. By-and-by, by a certain cleverness in 
 sketching, he succeeded in conciliating some of the 
 authorities; and, when the Government commission 
 made its report, the worst of his imprisonment was 
 already behind him. This report, however, and the 
 death of Hacke, who was one of their chief enemies, 
 and sometimes regretted he could not give them hard 
 labour, brought for Reuter and some of his fellows 
 removal to new prisons. On the way he and a friend, 
 whom they nicknamed the "Captain," had to pass 
 through Berlin, and now again had to experience the 
 tender mercies of Dambach. They were lodged in the 
 Hausvogtei, strangely enough in the very room which
 
 FKITZ KEUTER. 27 
 
 Reuter had formerly occupied. All was the same 
 the walls with the cracks, the guarded windows, the 
 planking from which he had torn his splinter. There 
 was only one change. Then there had been a bed- 
 stead in the corner, with a straw-sack thrown over it : 
 now both were away. It was freezing hard that 
 night, and the room was not at all warmed. Still 
 there was no help for it. They lay down in their 
 clothes on the bare boards, threw each his cloak over 
 him, and shivered the whole night through. 
 
 Next morning the inspector appeared, and mock- 
 ingly asked them how they had slept. Their only 
 answer was a request that they might have a bed 
 should they be detained there another night. The 
 inspector could not say, but would ask the director 
 Dambach. Meanwhile he told them they were cre- 
 dited with five groschen (sixpence) to spend on their 
 food for the day. Reuter was horrorstruck, and 
 urged that they were allowed twenty groschen when 
 travelling. " The director has restricted you to five," 
 was the reply, as the inspector walked off. Next 
 came the turnkey, asking what they would have. They 
 were freezing to the bone, rushing up and down the 
 cell like wild beasts, vainly trying to get warm, so 
 they asked for two cups of coffee. But this cost four 
 groschen each, so they could get nothing else but a 
 penny's worth of bread for the remaining four and
 
 28 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 twenty hours. As the evening closed a miserable day, 
 the inspector made his rounds again, and brought 
 with him insults, but no bed. Fritz in vain repre- 
 sented that, besides their allowance, they had both 
 some private money in the care of the gensdarmes who 
 had accompanied them ; let a bed be got, then, with 
 part of that. " No," said the inspector, " the director 
 has fixed that you are to save your bed-money from 
 your daily allowance." That was an impossibility, so 
 Reuter demanded to see the director. " The director 
 can't be spoken to at this time of night," was the 
 answer; and the two half-famished wretches had to 
 lie down on the boards again to freeze a second night. 
 The next morning the same thing happened again 
 a cup of coffee and a penny's-worth of bread had to 
 last them the whole day. Fritz again demanded to 
 see the director, whose official duty it was to hear 
 complaints. Once for all, was the reply, the director 
 would not speak to them. They sent him a note, 
 which remained unanswered, and the third night and 
 the third morning brought round again the same 
 rotation of miseries.. The third day a new one was 
 added. The Captain became ill. He would rush 
 backwards and forwards, restless and hurried, seize 
 the Bible which had shamelessly been left them, the 
 only furniture in their room, read a, few lines, throw 
 it away, and pick it up again. "Let the book lie,
 
 FKITZ KEUTER. 29 
 
 Captain," cried Renter at last. "Don't make yourself 
 an accomplice of the blasphemers who wantonly bring 
 us to despair and then offer to console us with God's 
 Word." He rattled at the door till it was opened, and 
 asked one of the porters, " How long must we remain 
 here ? " The man knew they were to be removed the 
 next day, but he answered, with a drawling laugh, 
 "You wait here always. Do you think the King 
 will let all these fine buildings stand empty ? No, 
 you are always to stay here, and your friends will 
 join you." " Three days such as we had had don't 
 screw up one's courage, and I won't deny that this 
 news completely overcame me. I was far more terror- 
 stricken than when I heard my sentence of death. 
 When we were locked in again we fell into each 
 other's arms, and remained so I know not how long. 
 I only know that at last the Captain was walking to 
 and fro, erect and determined, and that resistless 
 indignation was raging in my soul: the devil must 
 be driven out by the devil ! " He wrote a formal 
 complaint, which came to nothing. They lay down 
 in each other's arms, and the evening and the morning 
 were the fourth day. Their despairing waking 
 thought was, "And we are to be here five and 
 twenty years ! " when suddenly the door opened for 
 a gendarme. "Gentlemen, get ready; in half an 
 hour we must be on the road."
 
 30 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 During these very days old Renter was in Berlin, 
 inquiring of Dambach if anything could now be done 
 for the liberation of his only son. Dambach never 
 told him that only twenty paces off he might see and 
 hear, and console that son for himself. 
 
 I have narrated in detail this, perhaps the blackest 
 episode in Fritz Renter's prison life, because it is 
 important to remember that he suffered not only isola- 
 tion and confinement, but bodily pain and privation 
 enough to shatter any but the hardiest constitution. 
 Even that of " Charles Douze," as his comrades called 
 him, did not escape without incurable damage ; but 
 henceforward he was delivered from these extraneous 
 miseries, and passed into the care of commandants 
 who alleviated, so far as they could, the hard lot of a 
 prisoner. First he was lodged in the fortress of Grau- 
 denz, where he and the other political criminals formed 
 a little social world, which, like the great one, had its 
 factions and its quarrels, its romances and its feasts. 
 Fritz was its authority in matters of taste, and im- 
 provised the pleasures of both kinds of palates most 
 satisfied then with his pictorial but afterwards with 
 his culinary achievements. In these little occupations, 
 diversified by a little tutoring which he was allowed 
 to undertake, and a little versifying which came to 
 nothing, time slipped away, till in June, 1839, a new 
 and greater change improved his position still further.
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 31 
 
 His extradition at last took place, and he was sent back 
 to Mecklenburg ; not as a free man the condition of 
 his delivery was that the grand duke should keep 
 him in continued confinement. Still it was something 
 to be in the charge of a sympathetic countryman, and 
 Reuter found in the Domitz commandant a true friend, 
 who strained matters to give him every allowable 
 liberty ; and in the Domitz fortress a " nest full of the 
 commandant's daughters." A year passed here as 
 pleasantly as a year of confinement can, and in the 
 following June the death of the Prussian king was 
 followed by an amnesty for all political offenders. 
 Fritz read this in the newspaper, and waited four 
 weeks in daily expectation of the news of his own 
 release. But the Prussians had quite forgotten his 
 existence, and at last the grand duke took the matter 
 in his own hands, and presumed on his own responsi- 
 bility to set his own subject free. A week later, as 
 Fritz and his father were at dinner, an official an- 
 nouncement arrived from the Prussian minister of 
 justice, that young Reuter would soon regain his 
 liberty. 
 
 His liberty was indeed regained, but no power 
 could restore him the seven beautiful wasted years, 
 perhaps the most important in a man's life. Reuter 
 tells us that when he left his prison he had to pass 
 through a region of sand and thorns, traversed by
 
 32 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITEKATURE. 
 
 many paths that might lead nowhere, and this he 
 found emblematic of his own condition. He felt as 
 though he were playing hide-and-seek with the world ; 
 amidst the unaccustomed life and growth, like a tree 
 that had been stripped of its branches. Visiting his 
 schoolboy friends who had now wives and children of 
 their own, he " seemed like one with muddy boots 
 intruding in a drawing-room." The delight of return- 
 ing home was half sorrowful, " for over all the joy 
 lay, with the weight of lead, the question, ' What 
 now ? ' on my breast, and on my father's too, I could 
 read it in his face. Long years I stumbled up and 
 down under the burden of this question." Truly his 
 position was a heartbreaking one. He was willing to 
 work, but there was nothing that he could do. His 
 attempts at painting had been clever but not pro- 
 gressive, for in prison he could get no instruction. His 
 juridical studies he had neglected, for, as he himself 
 says, " in confinement prisoners may acquire manual 
 dexterity, but never scientific training" especially, 
 we may add, in a science they dislike. His father 
 indeed sent him, setatis 30, to begin again his law 
 course in Heidelberg, but he could not catch up 
 younger competitors or recover the capacity and 
 methods of study. He returned to Mecklenburg to 
 become agriculturist, and in this occupation, besides in 
 part re-establishing his health, soon showed himself
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 33 
 
 among the shrewdest and most enterprising; but 
 another sadder obstacle spoiled his success in this as 
 in everything else. 
 
 It is with a surprise approaching consternation that 
 the reader of Reuter's novels perhaps the manliest 
 and sanest in any literature hears that their author 
 was the victim of drink, and was frequently in a state 
 of delirium. Reuter, lavish of his other experiences, 
 maintained strict silence on this, and exacted it from 
 his friends, so it is only since his death that the publi- 
 cation of Wilbrandt's memoir has in a measure ex- 
 plained the circumstance to the public. The privations 
 of Reuter's prison life of which one specimen has 
 been given in this sketch induced a disorder in the 
 nerves of the stomach and alimentary canal which 
 was never completely cured. When this neurosis 
 became acute, Reuter found a remedy only in the 
 excessive comsumption of spirituous liquors, till the 
 agonies of disease and cure together culminated and 
 abated in nausea and vomiting, which left him weak as 
 a child. Sometimes these attacks lasted a couple of 
 days; sometimes it was five or six before he ceased 
 to drink, though he had arranged his potations arti- 
 ficially so as to be overcome as soon as possible. 
 
 It may be left to moralists with a system to estimate 
 and apportion the exact degrees of blame in this 
 matter. How much should be attributed to the 
 
 D
 
 34 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Prussian Government and how much to Fritz himself, 
 how much was avoidable and how much came as an 
 external fate, are questions that each censor will decide 
 in his own way. Fritz himself wavers in his answers. 
 Sometimes the evil is one that is to be overcome by 
 sacred resolve, sometimes it is a mere physical disease 
 to be treated like gout or rheumatism, and to be cured, 
 if at all, not by himself but by the doctor. But at any 
 rate he always acted on the first belief, and, whether 
 from improved health or strengthened determination, 
 with constantly increasing success ; the interval 
 between the attacks, at first rarely lasting more than 
 a week or two, grew to months, at length extending 
 over nine; and at the end of his life there was no 
 relapse. This fact, even more than the physical and 
 involuntary circumstances in which it began, seems to 
 me to mark off Reuter's calamity from ordinary cases 
 of drunkenness. 
 
 With these defects, the want of experience and the 
 apparent wlant of steadiness, it is no wonder that 
 Reuter's first attempts to earn a livelihood broke 
 down. "He'll come to no. good," was the universal 
 verdict, which was approved even by his stern, old 
 father, who had come to regard his son as a misfortune 
 and disgrace. " I was far, far more wretched," he 
 exclaims, quarter of a century later, "at this time than 
 when I was in prison." And yet it is easy for us
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 35 
 
 now to see that his very misfortunes were a prepar- 
 ation for his great and characteristic triumphs. He 
 was cut off from any career adequate to his talents, 
 and after the death of his father, who left him a very 
 small legacy, he had to give up even farming from 
 want of capital. For a moment he hoped to gain 
 some post in the rising of 1848, but the success of the 
 reactionary party left him out in the cold. Meanwhile 
 he had asked the hand of Louise Kunze, the lady who 
 afterwards became his wife ; and when she, moved by 
 the sight of his agonies in one of his attacks, had 
 overcome her natural objections to marriage with the 
 deeply afflicted man, he was doubly anxious to es- 
 tablish a home for himself. In 1850. when he was 
 forty years old, he found himself glad to accept the 
 trade of universal school-master, with subjects ranging 
 through mathematics, history, drawing, and swimming, 
 taught at the rate of two groschen a week. A year 
 later he married, and now another occupation became 
 necessary as a source of income, even more than as an 
 outlet for his powers. It was at this juncture that 
 Glaus Groth's Platt Deutsch poems appeared, and in 
 their sudden popularity revealed the literary possi- 
 bilities that lurked in the people's speech. And they 
 were the occasion of Fritz Reuter's becoming not an 
 author, but a Platt Deutsch author. Already he had 
 planned, written, and even published though cer-
 
 36 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 tainly his printed productions were mere trifles ; but 
 he had invariably employed High German, save in a 
 few almost extemporary verses intended for recitation 
 at marriage festivals. This is the more noticeable, as 
 
 O 
 
 the subjects of some of the works which then in High 
 German lay ready in his desk were the same as those 
 of his later Platt masterpieces ; and the subjects of 
 all of them were local and Platt. This bears out 
 Renter's own account of his poetical development. 
 In prison the only substitute for actual entertainment 
 was to be found in the play of fancy, and hence by 
 continual exercise this power was trained to picture 
 things with unusual clearness and precision. But with 
 what could his fancy busy itself ? Of all the twenty- 
 three years of his previous existence, he had spent 
 only six months out of Mecklenburg. Feeding on the 
 past, and deriving from it his whole emotional nourish- 
 ment, he had little choice but to digest and ruminate 
 his Mecklenburg experiences till he had assimilated 
 them as part of his consciousness. And as the 
 shadows of his past took form and substance before 
 him, it was almost a necessity that their lips should 
 speak their native Platt, and that in it his lips should 
 tell their story. The poetical style is only the finest, 
 most perfect, most adequate form that an idea can 
 assume ; and here the Platt Deutsch was not alone 
 most suited for the theme, it was also most suited for
 
 FRITZ EEUTER. 37 
 
 the author, who even in university and prison continued 
 to talk it, and who could by means of it snare and hold 
 the thought that in High German slipped from under 
 his hands and left him with its vestment. That he 
 should not at first have known where his strength lay 
 is no more than happens with every author who has 
 any strength at all ; and it was only natural that in his 
 first Platt attempts he should follow Groth's example, 
 and write short pieces, rather than at once set about 
 recasting his more important works. Yet there is one 
 characteristic difference between the two Platt poets 
 from the very beginning. Both had, as it were, to 
 originate a literary tradition ; but while Groth does so 
 by imitating the foreign lyric of Burns, Reuter does 
 so by adopting the little anecdotes that were in every- 
 body's mouth, and giving them literary and poetical 
 form. Gradually he put together a collection of such 
 stories, of varied worth, in his worst touching Joe 
 Miller, in his best, La Fontaine; of equally varied 
 origin, some being the common property of Europe, 
 some Mecklenburg household words, some incidents in 
 his own experience. This collection, which he calls 
 "Lauschen und Rimels" ("Gossip in Rhyme"), sug- 
 gests sometimes Boccaccio without the immorality, 
 sometimes a book of folklore, sometimes Ramsay's 
 " Scottish Life and Character." But better and worse, 
 native and foreign, all are Platt in colouring; and
 
 38 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 even in them Reuter is an original artist, precisely 
 for this that the Platt diction strikes the reader 
 as the very best for this particular version of the 
 story. It is this happy appropriation of the narra- 
 tive that shows Renter's genial instinct and that 
 constituted his success. In this department he had 
 not to work alone, his fellow Mecklenburgers past and 
 present helped him, and despite the earlier High 
 German drafts, it seems to me that his later and 
 more ambitious works may be regarded as more and 
 more artistic elaborations and combinations of simple 
 Lauschen, and that they may best be criticised from 
 this point of view. 
 
 The external success was proportionate to the in- 
 ternal. Reuter and his wife had embarked in the 
 undertaking with many misgivings; he had to borrow 
 money for it, and she had to fold and pack the copies 
 herself : but their doubts were soon removed ; Mecklen- 
 burgers and Pommeranians rushed to buy the book 
 that contained for the first time in print the old 
 familiar stories, only narrated with more humour 
 than ever before, and in six weeks the first edition 
 was exhausted. A second collection some years later 
 found the same reception. But meanwhile Reuter, now 
 a famous man within a narrow area, had produced 
 something far more considerable in his "Journey to 
 Belgium." This may almost be regarded as a series
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 39 
 
 of anecdotes strung together on the thread of a 
 tour which two old peasants undertake with their 
 two sons, for the education of the latter, one of 
 whom has left a sweetheart at home. The malad- 
 ventures of the travellers, who never get to their desti- 
 nation, are described with drastic humour. When the 
 two youths are seeing the " Freischutz " in the theatre 
 of a small town, the gallery on which they stand falls in 
 during the thunder and lightning of the goblin scene. 
 The whole party, in a Berlin theatre, are horrified by 
 the discovery that the same piece is being performed, 
 and they look forward excitedly to the accident, now 
 three storeys more dangerous, which they understand 
 as the crowning triumph of stage effect. They get 
 into a train for the first time, to travel to Belgium, 
 and by a series of accidents are dropped each at a 
 different wayside station. They soon resolve to return 
 to Berlin, where the sons meet by chance, but are 
 presently arrested for a disturbance they innocently 
 occasion. They are marched to the police office, and 
 there find their fathers, whose fate has been parallel. 
 How comical is the imprisoned father's indignant salu- 
 tation of the imprisoned son : " Sirrah, so you have been 
 shaming me in these foreign parts ! " And in contrast 
 with these farcical scenes, to prevent the fun from 
 becoming tiresome, we have the really idyllic picture of 
 the native village, and little Diirten, the village bride.
 
 40 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Such passages were enough to show that Reuter, 
 though his humour was sometimes broad and some- 
 times verbal, was nothing of a mountebank; but 
 perhaps even his friends may have been surprised 
 when his next work, " No House-room," appeared. " I 
 wrote the book," he says, " with my life blood, for the 
 sake of suffering mankind." It is a simple enough 
 tale in verse, of what might any day happen in patri- 
 archal Mecklenburg, where permission to settle had 
 to be got by the labourers from the lords of the 
 manor, and only those who had a "hiisung," were 
 allowed to marry. A workman and his bride have 
 been refused permission for long, and now it must be 
 gained, and gained soon, or the girl will be put to 
 shame. But their master hates them both, Mariken 
 for refusing his own advances, Jehann for being 
 preferred. His lady, whose help they ask, is pain- 
 fully shocked at their trespass, and feels it would be 
 wrong should they escape its consequences. Indeed, 
 that is the feeling of all her circle in such matters. 
 Pious pastor and profligate junker join in their wishes 
 that the stool of penitence might be reintroduced 
 that is, of course, for the lower orders. Meanwhile 
 there is no help, no escape for the unhappy pair, for 
 Mariken's old father is bedridden, and even to save 
 her fair fame she will not leave him. At last the old 
 man dies, and Jehann returns from the burial, his
 
 FRITZ REUTEB. 41 
 
 grief hardly quenching his wrath and joy wrath for 
 the way the carcase has been stowed away like a 
 dead dog, exultation at the thought that now they 
 can set out for America. Suddenly his master stands 
 before him, casts at him evil words, and raises his 
 whip to strike him. Jehann, in a transport of fury, 
 lets fly a farming fork ; it hits, and his enemy lies 
 dead at his feet. To his hiding, a fellow-servant, 
 old Daniel who typifies the submissive, as Jehann 
 typifies the rebellious labourer brings the hoard of 
 the miller's wife whose child Jehann has saved from 
 fire; but he tells the murderer that now Mariken 
 never can be his, and sees him rushing off to exile 
 with curses on his lips. The miller's wife has mean- 
 while taken pity on Mariken, too, and tries to fend for 
 her and the newly born babe. But the widow lady 
 of the manor is guilty of no such moral laxity. She 
 sends the deserted, one-day's mother word that she 
 must turn out of her father's cottage, and unless 
 she consents to part with the child, leave the service 
 altogether. Poor Mariken staggers through the snow, 
 to make one vain intercession, then rushes to the 
 wood, where she is found cold in a swoon, but with 
 her babe warm in her arms. Life, but not reason, 
 returns, and eventually she finds the burial of a 
 suicide. The poem closes with the momentary 
 return of the wild-eyed father to fetch his son, now
 
 42 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 a boy of ten, to grow up in America, at least in 
 liberty. 
 
 Even such a skeleton of the story will show to 
 some, what tragic stuff it contains. But it is the 
 detail that makes a poem live. The gathering fears, 
 the flickering hopes, the final ruin of the young pair, 
 must be followed from point to point before we gain 
 full sympathy with them. We must be taught by 
 Fritz's fine scorn who were their so-called betters, we 
 must see how the most patient and most managing of 
 their own class feel for them, we must accustom our- 
 selves to the destitution and darkness of their lives, 
 to the pettiness and unalterableness of their village 
 existence before we recognize in Jehann the Titan 
 struggling, like another Prometheus, against unworthy 
 gods, and feel the spasm that Mariken must have felt 
 at what was to her, not so much an act of blood, as 
 an act of sacrilege. In this poem it is hard to find a 
 flaw in the idea, or shortcoming in the solution. Each 
 touch is true to actual nature, and each is instinct with 
 higher symbolism. Even the peculiar double character 
 of Jehann's deed, which, on the one hand, ruins his 
 own life, and, on the other, we are led to understand, 
 procures the happiness of his child, is pace German 
 critics, clearly correct. His master, and all such, 
 deserve their fate, but it was inflicted by Jehann, not 
 as the righteous judgment of God for wrongs done to
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 43 
 
 man, but in a moment of passion as revenge for an 
 insult. 
 
 Still, despite these excellences, not to speak of the 
 music of the numbers and loveliness of the descrip- 
 tions, we hesitate to indorse Fritz's own opinion, 
 " This is my best work." He himself finely says else- 
 where, "Joy and grief are the warp and woof of 
 life," and in works of the most human art, if the 
 threads of the one were drawn out, the threads of the 
 other would not hold. This is the case with Fritz's 
 own later works, but hardly with the present. 
 Humour of a somewhat sarcastic kind is allowed to 
 season the pathos, as in the " Journey " pathos 
 flavoured the humour; but they still lie together 
 without being united at the same time in the same 
 person. On the whole, then, these two longer poems 
 should rank as companion but opposite monotones; 
 and in treatment, though not in subject, and not 
 with full success, Fritz essays a more complex, and 
 therefore higher form of art, in his next and last 
 verse tale, " Johnnie Snout." This poem celebrates 
 the love of Johnnie, a blacksmith 'prentice, and the 
 little Poodle, a maid-of-all-work, who have grown up 
 together from childhood, and almost at the same time 
 leave their little village for the hardships and tempta- 
 tions of the great world. In absence, they discover 
 their fondness, remain true to each other despite
 
 44 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 threats and enticements, and come back to be man 
 and wife in their old home. It is a sort of rustic 
 rendering into the circumstances of low life of 
 Milton's idea in Comus : 
 
 " So dear to heaven is saintly chastity, 
 That when a soul is found sincerely so, 
 A thousand liveried angels lacky her." 
 
 But in this story of birds and men, the heavenly 
 ministers wear liveries that belong to a lower, not to 
 a higher kingdom than that of man ; and starlings, 
 nightingales, and storks watch over and hasten and 
 modify the fates of the pair of sweethearts. That a 
 strong fantastic spice is here introduced is pretty 
 clear, and sometimes it does not go very well with the 
 other ingredients. Reuter pictures his world of birds 
 with such realism, that his world of men becomes 
 occasionally rather unreal; but sometimes he quite 
 transcends the difficulty, as in the tender and 
 humorous passage where Johnnie is taught by the 
 song of the birds what a sweet loving maid he has 
 left behind him. " That's a fine salad we've tossed up 
 for ourselves," cries the male starling, Jochen, as the 
 lad tramps off; " he has understood every word, we've 
 spoken." "Stuff and nonsense," says Lotte, his wife, 
 " no man understands our bird-speech." " My child," 
 returns Jochen, "I am pained by your remarkable 
 ignorance." And then, in the style of Chaucer's
 
 FRITZ REUTEB. 45 
 
 Chanticleer, he learnedly expounds the matter, how 
 men, before they were so stupid as to write and print, 
 used to know the language of star and bird, and how 
 even later sages, in India, retained something of the 
 art ; but such linguists are scarce, for the conditions of 
 the knowledge are manifold, and, indeed, range from 
 being loved unwittingly by a pure maiden, to having 
 eaten a stout sandwich, on the first of May, before 
 going to sleep under a thorn. 
 
 When Reuter published this book in 1860, he was 
 no longer the needy school-master, who eight years 
 before could scarcely screw up courage enough to face 
 the expense of his first modest venture. Each book 
 had been a treasure-ship for him : he was already 
 well-to-do, and was rapidly becoming wealthy. His 
 holiday trips, at first confined to a run to his true 
 and constant friends the Peters of Thalberg, gradually 
 extended in compass, and were soon to bring him to the 
 Golden Horn of Stamboul. His changes of residence, 
 almost as frequent as in his "fortress time," always 
 meant 'a more commodious house, a finer garden, and 
 a livelier neighbourhood. They were soon to end 
 with his settlement in the pretty villa near Eisenach, 
 with its picturesqueness of scene and wealth of roses, 
 where Reuter was to enjoy the fruits of his labours, 
 and, surrounded by friends, expect his end. His 
 circle of acquaintance had already grown in numbers
 
 46 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITEEATURE. 
 
 and distinction, and the time was near when the 
 ex-convict was to correspond with the grand duke in 
 terms of equality, and receive from Bismarck, chief 
 minister in the State which had so deeply injured 
 him, a letter of hearty recognition. He had not yet 
 reached the summit of his fame, but already in 1860 
 he had, not to speak of his dramatic, journalistic, and 
 miscellaneous essays in prose, produced one work that 
 had carried his name into the upper and High German 
 circles.! This was his " Story of the French Period," 
 the first of that series of semi-biographical prose 
 tales to which he brought his maturest powers, and 
 which, moreover, both in form and matter corresponded 
 most perfectly with his genius. Renter's writing is 
 emphatically based on facts, experiences, a wealth of 
 realistic detail. His verse is generally pleasing and 
 sometimes truly poetical, but it is not the obvious 
 channel for the flood of humorous particulars in which 
 he delights ; and in much of it we feel that he has 
 rather overcome a difficulty, than chosen the natural 
 way of prose, which at last he adopts. And again, his 
 excellence lies not so much in inventing fictitious 
 plots, incidents, and circumstances, as in working up, 
 by judicious selection and expansion, what he has 
 seen and heard and experienced for himself. For 
 example, the "French period" owes its peculiar in- 
 terest to the description of the plannings, doings, and
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 47 
 
 sufferings of his own native Stavenhagen during the 
 great French retreat of 1813. The dramatis personce, 
 the Amtmann Wewer, Town-councillor Herse, Fritz's 
 own father and mother, are for the most part real. 
 The Stavenhagen volunteer regiment, in which the 
 great difficulty is to get any one to march in the 
 second rank, is probably real too. The main plot is 
 very simple and has also every air of reality. A few 
 marauding French chasseurs arrive at the castle. The 
 Amtmann, afraid to use force, frightens away the rest, 
 and intoxicates their leader, who is carried off in a 
 miller's cart, and, in somewhat undress condition, 
 thrown out on the road. His disappearance leads to 
 a military investigation, held by the captain of a more 
 regular French force that passes by, and a few of the 
 chief townspeople are arrested. It might have gone 
 hard with them, had not the chasseur's booty been 
 restored by the miller, whose servant Friedrich found 
 it in the cart, and had not the same Friedrich 
 managed to trace the plunderer and deliver him up to 
 justice. Friedrich, of cast-iron countenance, infinite 
 composure and infinite contrivance, is, perhaps, the 
 hero of the book. He would have held it no crime to 
 kill the chasseur, but is scrupulous to give up to his 
 master all the booty, except eightpence, which sum 
 another chasseur had once stolen from him ; and his 
 cunning in detecting, beats even the female cunning
 
 48 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 that would conceal, the missing culprit. The other 
 incidents for example, where the honest housekeeper, 
 Madam Westphalen, is prevailed upon to hide herself 
 in the smoke hole, as a person specially objectionable 
 to the French government, or when Fritz's own father 
 profits by the bad roads to make his escape have the 
 vividness of witnessed scenes, which probably they 
 were. Fritz's own personal power, the rare power of 
 the good narrator, lies in knowing what to leave un- 
 said, what to say and how to say it which, after all, 
 permits as much scope to the imagination as to the 
 judgment, for the artist must improve and recast. 
 In this book the balance, is pretty evenly held be- 
 tween historical reality and poetical fiction ; the main 
 plot is sacred to the one, the subplot of the loves of 
 the miller's daughter and nephew to the other. Just 
 because of this balance, however, it seems to me that 
 the plan of the book is not quite perfect. When the 
 French catastrophe is past, the story should cease : the 
 extra episode of the miller's craze, that postpones 
 the young people's union, stands in no organic con- 
 nection with the rest. In the " French Time " we 
 have no thorough fusion, but only imaginative history, 
 plus realistic fiction ; while in the first of his next 
 works, " My Fortress Time," we have the one, and in 
 the second, " My Farmer Time," we have the other ; 
 and these rank higher, therefore, as works of art.
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 49 
 
 " My Fortress Time " is a biographical sketch, to 
 which a few invented jests have been added. " My 
 Farmer Time" is a novel into which a few real 
 persons and incidents have been introduced. Of the 
 former, I need speak no further here, as I have 
 already used it as an authority. Of the latter, it is 
 almost impossible to speak, its plot is so loose, its 
 incidents and characters so many and so true. It is 
 the work of Renter's that has been oftenest trans- 
 lated, and yet continues to defy translation. One 
 reason of this is, that it has never been rendered 
 into dialect; and a second is, that the diction and 
 manners are so truly Platt, that not even another 
 dialect could reproduce them. It marks the flood-tide 
 of Fritz's production. On the strong foundations of 
 reality, which his genius required, he has freely 
 shaped from personal observation, from the experience 
 of others, from the villagers' stories, a sort of district 
 biography in its humour and pathos, which only for 
 lack of a better name we call a novel. Its characters 
 are multitudinous, its area wide, its time extending 
 through three generations, so that those whom we 
 first meet as lisping infants we leave as middle-aged 
 mothers with children of their own. It is " Platt Life 
 and Character," woven into a connected whole, but a 
 whole whose limits are prescribed by no recognized 
 form of art. We may call it the memoirs of a whole 
 
 E
 
 50 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITERATURE 
 
 country side ; its unity is to be found in the gradual 
 success of deserving men and families, and in the 
 strong portraiture of certain typical characters, who 
 are the chief doers and sufferers throughout. One of 
 these is the honest capable farmer, Hawermann, who, 
 twice ruined by the arts of a pettifogging parvenu, 
 only in his old age gains his share of worldly good. 
 Another is his sister, the energetic Frau Niissler, 
 whose management maintains the farm, while her 
 well-meaning monosyllabic oaf of a husband can 
 hardly see it through the fumes of the pipe that 
 constantly dangles from his lips. But the chief 
 person in the book is, undoubtedly, the overseer 
 Zacharias Brasig, old friend of Hawermann, old 
 sweetheart of Frau Niissler, whose red face, stout 
 figure, and out-turned toes are as impossible to forget 
 as the strange mixture of Platt and Hoch Deutsch 
 called Messingsch, to which he has recourse in his 
 efforts at polite speaking. He is Renter's favourite 
 and the most: excellent of his creations. He appears 
 in a number of the. author's previous sketches, notably 
 in a series of letters and an autobiography; in the 
 latter, giving this account of his own origin : " I was 
 born, and of a truth in the season for killing geese, 
 sometime near Martinmas, year unknown, as the Frau 
 Pastor used the register leaves to wrap the geese in. 
 My aunts got a balance, and as they had just been
 
 FRITZ REUTER. 51 
 
 slaughtering, tied me to the one end and a fat goose 
 to the other, and would you believe it ? I was 
 parallel with the brute, weighing therefore thirteen or 
 fourteen pound roughly told." In these early essays, 
 however, Brasig is merely a comic figure; in the 
 " Stromtid " we learn to love the gentle heart, and to 
 respect the shrewd sense concealed beneath his 
 meddlesome laughable exterior. To the very end he 
 excites our mirth with his reminiscences of his three 
 sweethearts, his hydropathic experiences, his amateur 
 duennaship and the like. Who can peruse with 
 gravity the description of him in the pastor's coat, so 
 exceedingly scanty that he has to hold the coffee-cup 
 at arm's length, like an athlete poising an enormous 
 weight, and goes about as though he were a phi- 
 lanthropist, eager to embrace the whole world ? But 
 his indignation with all that is mean and cowardly 
 strikes a deeper chord, and his death scene may 
 almost be compared with Falstaff's, as he murmurs 
 his last words, of course in Messingsch, to his friend 
 Hawermann : " But I always was ahead of you in 
 composition." Bound these a host more are gathered, 
 figures grave and gay, worthy and despicable, but all 
 human. The full-bodied pastor's wife with her duster 
 ever ready for the cleanest places, and Hawermann's 
 fair daughter blossoming into womanhood like a lily 
 opening in the sun; Fritz Triddelwitz, prinee of all
 
 52 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATUEE. 
 
 calf lovers, and Moses, most Christian of Jewish 
 money-lenders ; Lining and Mining, the two maidens 
 like as two bunches of grapes, with their suitors, the 
 two theological candidates who respectively believe 
 and do not believe in the devil, these are characters, 
 that once known are never confounded or forgotten. 
 
 Renter's next longer work, " Dorchlauchten " the 
 familiar diminutive of " His Grace," or, as Carlyle 
 would render it, " His Translucency," and his last, 
 " The Journey to Constantinople," show increasingly 
 his genius on the wane. It is almost as though the 
 Mecklenburg of his own day were sacred to him, 
 within that circle none daring walk but he, while 
 change of time or change of scene broke his magic. 
 The change of time is the less fatal. "His Grace," 
 dated in the later half of the eighteenth century, 
 humorously contrasts the absurd, almost idiotic, 
 Gallicism of the petty German princeling, with the 
 healthy, if often trivial life of his Teutonic subjects. 
 That life not being very different from the present is 
 well depicted, the characters of the subrector and his 
 housekeeper are attractively drawn ; but we feel that 
 the comical relations of ^Epinus and the Duke of 
 Mecklenburg-Strelitz are not so typical of the time 
 ns the tragic relations, say of Schubert and the Duke 
 of Wiirtemberg. Even the last romance of all, founded 
 on Renter's own journey to Turkey, is not without
 
 FRITZ RECTEK. 53 
 
 its -merits. The characters at least, are, Mecklen- 
 burgers ; and the scenes in Mecklenburg notably the 
 panic produced in the school-master's house by the 
 reading of some of the horrors in Sue's " Mysteries of 
 Paris " are in the author's best vein. 
 
 But that vein was for him exhausted. His life had 
 been hard beyond that of most men. To the stagna- 
 tion of his prison years had succeeded the excitement 
 of his author years, and the alternate strain was too 
 much, even for his iron frame. A new romance that 
 he began seemed to him made up of repetitions, and 
 he abandoned it. A couple of ballads on the fallen 
 soldiers of 1870-71 closed his literary career, and in 
 1874 his many friends and admirers were lamenting 
 his own death. 
 
 So simple that he could see facts, so kindly that he 
 could judge them, so brave that he could proclaim 
 them, Reuter as a man is easily known, and when 
 known must be loved. This intimacy with what is 
 real, is the basis of his literary power. Without a 
 profusion of actual experiences to work on, his fancy 
 becomes fanciful and his invention is weak. The 
 most original of his works, the " Primeval History 
 of Mecklenburg," is also the least interesting. The 
 similes of this people's-poet are often as far-fetched 
 as the conceits of Donne and Cowley. The crisis of 
 an important episode in the " Farmer Time " is brought
 
 54 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 on by a misspelling, of the subplot in the " French 
 Time " by a slip in grammar, of the main plot in 
 " His Grace " by a mispronunciation. When his 
 imagination seeks a harvest from the Elysian fields, 
 it thrashes straw, but the broad acres of Mecklenburg 
 yield it golden grain. The life of his countrymen, 
 from his early exclusive acquaintance with it and his 
 later exclusive rumination of it, he was able to re- 
 produce almost perfectly, and he wisely availed him- 
 self of the language and form that experience offered 
 to his hands. This form, as we saw, was the anecdote, 
 and some of its features remain with Reuter to the 
 last. In his mature works the characters are so true 
 and vivid that they seem almost alive, but they are 
 hardly exhibited in their growth or interaction. They 
 are to make the story intelligible and interesting, not 
 by the story to be analyzed and explained ; they exist 
 for it, not it for them. In short, Fritz Reuter is a 
 great artist in truthful, pregnant story-telling, which 
 never becomes frivolous. " In prison," he says, " one 
 may not get to know men, but one does get to know 
 man ;" and this dearly bought knowledge of universal 
 human nature gives a certain depth to his slightest 
 sketches. In a word, his country, his history, his 
 character have made him the chief narrative, as Burns 
 is the chief lyrical, poet in dialect. 
 
 Perhaps a sentence may be added as to the language
 
 FKITZ REUTER. 55 
 
 of his works. Its uninflected character, its contact 
 with English, its regular letter-change as compared 
 with High German, make it simple reading to any 
 Englishman who is fairly acquainted with the latter, 
 and after a few pages he needs notes and vocabulary 
 only for individual words and phrases. If he treats, 
 it more thoroughly, he will be constantly interested 
 by its contrasts and resemblances with the history 
 of his mother tongue.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSERIA. 
 
 [The 'riddles of Symposius are edited . by Riese in his " Antho- 
 logia Latina." Those of Aldhelm, Boniface, and Alcnin may be 
 found in La Migne's " Corsas Completus." A few examples from 
 Tatwine are printed in Hook's " Lives of the Archbishops of Canter- 
 bury," and in Wright's " Biographia Literaria Britannica," but for 
 the collection as a whole, as well as for all those of Eusebius, we 
 must go to " M.S. Reg.," 12 c. 23. The Anglo-Saxon specimens are 
 included in Grein's " Bibliothek der Angelsachsischen Poesie," but 
 his readings are not always adopted. Ebert has some valuable 
 remarks on the subject in his " Geschichte der Literatur im Mittel- 
 alter," under the above names.] 
 
 IN the literature of untamed and aspiring nations we 
 are accustomed to expect, if something of art, little of 
 artifice. Elaborate oddities like anagrams or acrostics, 
 literary puzzles that rest on remote and fanciful ana- 
 logies, seem by their very nature to belong to later 
 times, when leisure is more plentiful, wit more prac- 
 tised, and the great demands of life less certain ; they, 
 far more than gorgeous or significant romance, are 
 what one would anticipate from the " idle singers 
 of an empty day." Experience, indeed, hardly con- 
 firms these expectations. In the spacious days of
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSERIA. 57 
 
 great Elizabeth we find a critical treatise laying 
 down laws for the manufacture of poems in the shape 
 of eggs, lozenges, and pillars ; and Cowley, the con- 
 temporary of the serious Milton, surpasses all his 
 brethren of the fantastic school in wire-drawn and 
 far-fetched ingenuities. An eager and earnest age 
 does not therefore exclude from all its range the 
 productions of a merely formal wit. Still, we should 
 have thought that in early Anglo-Saxon days the 
 struggle for existence was too pressing to leave 
 time or inclination for quips and quibbles; and it is 
 therefore with surprise that we- learn that our 
 countrymen were nationally notorious for their riddles, 
 and that the earliest and greatest of their vernacular 
 poets has left a collection of almost a hundred. Nor 
 is this all ; into his sublimest verses he weaves his 
 name by means of a kind of spelling puzzle, and 
 he is not above arithmetical catches. And the taste 
 for such conceits was no vulgar one, to be satisfied 
 merely by profane gleemen. Scholars like Aldhelm, 
 archbishops like Tatwine, missionary saints like 
 Boniface, educationists and philosophers like Alcuin 
 have all made their contributions to the Old English 
 miscellany of acrostics, riddles, and other whimsi- 
 calities. So this literature of trifles, as we are accus- 
 tomed to consider them, was the work, not of triflers, 
 but of the best and greatest men of their time. How did
 
 58 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 this come about ? Probably in two ways. First, the 
 examples and models existed in the later Latin litera- 
 ture, and in most other departments of civilization as 
 well as in religion, England was the humble pupil of 
 Rome. It would have been presumption to criticize 
 the utterances of the teacher : whatever was offered 
 in the almost sacred tongue must be accepted as 
 admirable, especially when, as in the case of acros- 
 tics, it had the sanction, not merely of the ignorant 
 heathens, but of the Christian apologists. 
 
 Still, this of itself would not explain why Anglo- 
 Saxon writers adopted and developed, often in quite 
 original directions, the Latin contrivances. Another 
 and deeper reason lay in their own mood and attitude. 
 They were waking to the mysteries of the universe, 
 the whole world to them was a collection of puzzles. 
 The strangeness and wonder of common things had 
 not been dulled in their eyes. They looked on earth 
 and sea, on their beliefs and legends, on their arts, 
 on their very tools, and recognized much in them 
 that they could not explain and that defied full 
 expression. By metaphors and analogy they strove 
 to penetrate to the inner meaning; they delighted 
 in experimenting with their new accomplishments ; 
 they were never weary of expatiating on the marvels, 
 the enigmas that daily life contains, or of reiterating 
 in strange figures their salient aspects. Thus conceit
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSEEIA. 59 
 
 and conundrum, play with letters and masquerade 
 of thought, things that before and since have been 
 but a pastime for the idle, were to them an intel- 
 lectual exercise in which head and heart had equal 
 share. 
 
 Perhaps this may be made somewhat clearer by 
 an instance from another class of literary oddities. 
 Macaronic verse, whether of the kind that mixes 
 different languages in the single words, or of the 
 kind that alternates expressions from one language 
 with those from another, has latterly been employed 
 merely for a comic purpose. Thus Dunbar in his 
 " Testament of Kennedy " writes 
 
 " I will na preistis for me sing, 
 
 Dies ilia, dies irae ; 
 Nor yet na bellis for me ring, 
 
 Sicut semper solet fieri ; 
 Bot a bag-pyp to play a spring, 
 
 Et unum ale whisp ante me ; 
 Insteid of torches for to bring, 
 
 Quatuor lagenas Cervisise. 
 
 And such verse, so used, is common in English litera- 
 ture, from the days of Skelton. Probably the earliest 
 macaronic of this description occurs in Cynewulf's 
 " Phoenix," freely rendered from a Latin poem falsely 
 attributed to Lactantius. This was the poem in 
 which previous stories of the phoenix first received 
 their typical and final modern form, in which the 
 phoenix first typifies the immortal human soul by
 
 60 
 
 STUDIES IX GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 rising from its ashes, and first typifies Christ, in so 
 far as all the birds follow it as their lord. This is 
 sufficient guarantee that nothing of levity intrudes 
 in the bilingual verses with which, in the Anglo- 
 Saxon version, the poem concludes : 
 
 Us released has 
 
 That we may here 
 
 By godly work, 
 
 And that we may 
 
 Seek and possess : 
 
 Live in delights 
 
 Own the abodes 
 
 And bide in bliss ; 
 
 The sender of victory see, 
 
 And loud sing his love 
 
 Happy with angels. 
 
 Or, entirely in English : 
 
 Us released has 
 That we may 
 By works of justice, 
 And that we may 
 Seek and possess : 
 Live in delights 
 Own the abodes 
 And bide in bliss ; 
 Victory sender see, 
 And loud sing his love 
 Happy with angels. 
 
 Lucis Auctor, 
 Merere, 
 
 Gaudia in Casio ; 
 Maxima Regna 
 Sedibus all is 
 Lucis et paois, 
 Almae Lselitise, 
 Blandem et mitein 
 Sine fine, 
 Laude perenni, 
 Halleluja ! 
 
 The Light-giver, 
 Merit on earth, 
 The joys of heaven ; 
 These mighty realms 
 Seated on high 
 Of light and peace, 
 Abounding in joy 
 The bland and gracious 
 Ceasing never, 
 With lauds eternal, 
 Halleluja! 
 
 Here it is obvious that the Latin is employed to give 
 a sublimity, a mystery of which the vulgar speech 
 was thought incapable, much as we have borrowed 
 the closing word, or the amen of our prayers. If
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSERIA. 61 
 
 we are to seek a later illustration of the same feeling 
 we must look, not to Dunbar's macaronics, but to the 
 solemn refrain of his lament for the makers ; Timor 
 Mortis conturbat me. Latin was thought to have, 
 and on account of its religious associations did have, 
 a majesty, a sacredness, which even more than its 
 sonorous harmonies, exalted it above the daily speech. 
 And just as Cynewulf's macaronic differs from our 
 ordinary conception of the macaronic, so the Anglo- 
 Saxon quirks and riddles differ from those that pre- 
 cede and succeed them. 
 
 This becomes very obvious when we consider the 
 history of the acrostic. This tasteless trick of a 
 wit not even verbal, but only orthographical, had 
 been much in vogue with the less important Chris- 
 tian writers. Sometimes it was worked out to the 
 last degree of pedantry the initial, the middle, and 
 the final letters, when read downward, forming some 
 apposite phrase. Sometimes the initial letters repeated 
 vertically the first line. Sometimes, when the poems 
 were also riddles, the acrostic formed the answer, 
 an expedient specially associated with the name of 
 St. Boniface. Very frequently the name of the author 
 or of the recipient of the verses was thus indicated ; 
 and it is this variety which claims our special atten- 
 tion. It was employed by Aldhelm, and before him 
 by St. Columba; and readers of Edgar Allan Poe
 
 62 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 will remember that it is not incompatible with a 
 certain flavour of grace and fancy. 
 
 But though Anglo-Saxon writers in Latin make 
 use of the acrostic, it is far less characteristic than 
 the riddle, and, in the vulgar tongue, though not 
 exactly obsolete, it is at least so changed that it 
 cannot at first be r.ecognized. The reason for this 
 is probably to be sought in the strangeness and 
 unfamiliarity of writing. In the first place, to ana- 
 lyse a word into its letters and entertain one's self 
 with them, needs probably greater experience and 
 skill in spelling them than the scops, or poets, possessed. 
 Even after an alphabet has come into use, in which 
 sounds, not ideas, are indicated, some time must 
 elapse ere the letter is so entirely divorced from the 
 word in which it stands that it can be isolated and 
 experimented on by itself. The writing with which 
 the German tribes before their conversion were ac- 
 quainted was the Runic, the mysterious, a knowledge 
 of which was assuredly not very wide-spread, and 
 which, by the very difficulty of reproducing it (by 
 incisions on wood or bone), was protected against 
 the playful impertinences of an acrostic. Perhaps 
 no better instance can be given of the orthographical 
 helplessness of the Anglo-Saxons, than the riddles in 
 which we find parallels to St. Boniface's practice of 
 giving the solution in acrostic form. That seems to
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSERIA. 63 
 
 make the puzzle simple enough, but what can the 
 modern reader, who perhaps has been present at a 
 spelling-bee, think of a conundrum like this ? " Hast- 
 ing hence, I beheld on the track D. N. U. O. H." 
 Another riddle commences, "W. O. B. is my name, 
 only reversed." And there are several examples of 
 the same kind, in which we have " R. E. E. P. S.," 
 " E. S. R O. H.," N. A. M.," in the question, to help 
 us in discovering the answer, 'speer, horse, and man. 
 
 Yet the chief reason for the collapse and reorgan- 
 ization of the acrostic lay in the marvel that was 
 felt to be in all writing. Not only the native, 
 but in a certain sense all letters were Runes or 
 secrets. Their phonetic value was a wonder. That 
 they should represent parts of a word, and there- 
 fore parts of an idea, was miraculous. They were 
 matters far too serious to jest with. English writers 
 in Latin might presume so far by the mere instinct 
 of imitation, but English writers in English were 
 too profoundly impressed, as well as too little 
 experienced, to do so, although one would have 
 thought that in their alliterative verse the temp- 
 tation lay very near. The letters of their native 
 alphabet were no mere orthographical signs, but 
 mystic symbols named from the products of art 
 and nature, and from man. Sometimes they were 
 personified as wonder-working agents; sometimes
 
 64 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 the name of the letter was explained, as though 
 it were the thing itself. In the drawing of lots, 
 the Runes were used, and those which chanced to 
 be seized were interpreted according to their desig- 
 nation. In one of the finest of the Anglo-Saxon 
 lyrics, " The Husband's Message," the man, who has 
 been driven by his enemies into exile, sends his wife 
 a staff with certain Runes inscribed on it ; and the 
 poem concludes by mentioning them ; 
 
 " United I set S and R together, 
 EA, W, and M, to maintain with an oath 
 That he the treaty and loving troth 
 Which ye in yester time used to swear, 
 In faith will fulfil for the time he lives." 
 
 It is now impossible to be quite sure of the connection 
 and significance of these Runes. But they were prob- 
 ably to be interpreted by some allegorical exposition 
 of their name-marks. And thanks to the dignity with 
 which spelling was invested, the names of the Runic, 
 or Futhark alphabet (so-called from its initial charac- 
 ters, as we talk of our A B C), are not as a rule 
 doubtful. The Latin alphabet was regarded with 
 far less awe, yet even it was chosen by St. Columba 
 as the subject for a poem, which in many ways 
 resembles our humble modern nursery series, " A 
 was an Apple-pie," etc. ; and a manuscript in the 
 British Museum contains a similar fragment " by a 
 certain Scot." Corresponding to them, and probably
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSERIA. 05 
 
 formed on their model, we have a remarkable Anglo- 
 Saxon poem, called the "Rune Song," in which the 
 letters are enumerated and described according to 
 the value of their names. But the fact that they 
 had names creates a great difference between the 
 Teutonic Futhark and the Roman Abecedarium, 
 and permits a certain depth and impressiveness 
 in the former to which the latter must always be 
 strange. For to the Anglo-Saxon, A was no mere 
 sign, but the Ash, the tall tree that furnished the 
 thegn with his lance ; and B was the graceful Birch, 
 lovely among its twigs. Let us take a few of the 
 characters and describe them by the explanatory 
 verses of the old poem. 
 
 K was styled Ken, the resinous wood which we 
 now call by its Latin name, pine, though in German 
 the old word kien is preserved. 
 
 " Ken shows its kind to men's ken in the fire. 
 Blazing bright it burns most often 
 Where children of chiefs their cheer are mending." 
 
 Y was denoted by yr, an obscure word which, 
 however, most likely meant either money or a bow. 
 
 " Yr is to earls and athelings all 
 Winsome and worthy, well. loved on horse-back, 
 In travels true among trappings of war." 
 
 Need stood for N : 
 
 " Need is narrow on the breast, oft none-the-less to children of men 
 It is both help and healing, when they hearken to its words." 
 
 F
 
 66 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 E was named Eh, a word for horse which has now 
 entirely disappeared, but which we may remember 
 from its connection with the Latin Equus : 
 
 " To an earl of athelings is Equus a joy, 
 The horse proud in hoof, when, the heroes together, 
 The choice ones on their chargers exchange their words ; 
 And ever is it easement to any that stay not." 
 
 Wen, the same as our weening, stood for W, but it 
 had the sense of hope : 
 
 " He wants not weening whom few woes have touched 
 With sorrow and sadness, and himself who hath 
 Bloom and bliss and buildings in store." 
 
 Ur for U, is another word which has been nearly 
 lost. It was the wild forest ox, or bison, now 
 generally called by the Germanized form of its name, 
 Aurochs, or by the Latinized Urus. The Rune is 
 sometimes used with special reference to its mighty 
 horns : 
 
 " Undaunted is Urus, and, armed with horns, 
 With his forehead fights this fearful beast, 
 High haunter of moors ; hardy is the wight." 
 
 Lake stood for L : 
 
 " Lakes are long looked on by men 
 Ere they dare go down to their dancing skiffs, 
 And the foam of the sea frights them much ; 
 And the horse of the sea heeds not its bridle." 
 
 F was named Fee, which originally meant cattle,
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSERIA. 67 
 
 and was at this time used, in a wider than the modern 
 sense, for wealth or fortune : 
 
 " Fortune seems fair to not few among men j 
 Yet shall each surely share it with many, 
 If, when God shall give doom, he guiltless would stand." 
 
 My reason for selecting these special Runes is that 
 together they form the name Cynewulf. We have 
 seen how St. Boniface's practice of indicating with 
 acrostics the answers of riddles is represented in 
 Anglo-Saxon. We may now see how much remains 
 of Aldhelm's practice of indicating the authorship of 
 poems by the same means. Two specimens will serve. 
 In the first, the Runes are simply personified without 
 reference to their meaning, much as we might per- 
 sonify X, Y, and Z. In the second, there is a very 
 obvious attempt to introduce them appropriately with 
 reference to their meaning. But in both there is no 
 mistaking the deadly earnest, the absence of every- 
 thing like idle and frivolous ingenuity. 
 
 The first occurs at the end of " Juliana," a poem 
 which describes the perils and sufferings of a Christian 
 martyr, for the sake of her faith and her chastity. 
 In vain worldly persecution, the rancour of demons, 
 and death itself have assailed her. She has endured 
 without fainting, till she has attained the heavenly 
 realms of peace and joy. And then the poet adds, 
 " I shall have need of her help when my soul leaves
 
 68 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 this body on its journey, even 1 know not whither, 
 to its unknown lodging." 
 
 " Sadly go about 
 
 Ken, Yr and Need ; the King is enraged 
 The victory-spender; and sin-stained await 
 Equus, Weening, and Urns, with anguish o'erladen, 
 What He will award as the wage of their life 
 In doom of their deeds. In dread, Lake and Fortune 
 Are sighing and shivering." 
 
 The other example occurs at the end of " Elene," a 
 poem on the legend of the discovery of the true cross. 
 Cynewulf tells how, till he was blessed with a vision 
 of the " wondrous tree," he lived in care and strife, 
 and then proceeds 
 
 " Aye, till then was the man 
 With care overcome his Ken fire burned ill ; 
 Though treasures were his, trinkets of gold, 
 Many in the mead hall. Mourning was Yr 
 Neighbour of Need ; gnawing cares did he dree, 
 Unknown ills where'er Equus might bear him, 
 Measuring the mile paths, mightily rushing 
 In wire-woven bravery. Weening is weakened, 
 Young joy with years and youth are fled far 
 Yon gladness of yore. In yestertime Urus 
 Was boast of the boy, bygone now, 
 When the due time is done, are the days of his years ; 
 Lost in his life-joy, as Lake streams glide past 
 Or floods flowing swiftly. Fortune to mortals 
 Is lent for a little, the land's adornment 
 Wends 'neath the welkin like wind from us here, 
 When high on the heaven it howleth aloft, 
 Climbs with the clouds, clamorously passing, 
 And soon of a sudden is silent again."
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSEBIA. 69 
 
 These are the typical representatives of the acrostic 
 in Anglo-Saxon. What a change is here ! The neat- 
 ness and regularity of art are gone. Little remains 
 but wonder at the strange magic in those cuttings 
 that communicate thought, and the feeling that the 
 introduction of them will not degrade any theme, 
 but rather add to its solemn mystery. From this 
 oracular enigmatical use of them we may fittingly 
 pass to the consideration of the riddle. 
 
 This, like the acrostic, though by no means un- 
 known in earlier times, as we may remember from 
 the stories of Samson and of the Sphynx, seems to 
 have been especially cultivated in the later ages of 
 Rome. A certain Symposius of place and period so 
 doubtful that some commentators have arbitrarily 
 transformed him into a symposium, and ascribed it or 
 him to Lactantius has left a collection of a hundred, 
 which are in their kind, perhaps, the happiest and 
 most entertaining that have survived. With a 
 well-trained, acute understanding, he plays with his 
 subjects, makes them describe their salient features in 
 a few witty touches, so that the solution is always 
 more or less of a surprise, and yet at once we feel its 
 aptness. In many cases they are hardly to be dis- 
 tinguished from epigrams, except in so far as we are 
 left to find out the reference for ourselves. The follow- 
 ing is on the nail of a boot :
 
 70 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 " With sole foot above me clutching, onward on my head I pace, 
 With my crown the pavement touching, while behind it leaves its 
 
 trace ; 
 
 Yet at least there lack not comrades who endure the same sad 
 case." 
 
 Another, on sleep, is rather subtler, and later writers 
 have praised by plagiarizing it : 
 
 " Coming only at my pleasure, shapes I fashion manifold ; 
 Terrors without truth or measure, vain imaginings I mould : 
 Bat unless he close his eyes, myself no mortal shall behold." 
 
 Symposius was the acknowledged starting-point, 
 and continued the model, often without acknowledg- 
 ment, of the earlier mediaeval riddle till the days of 
 Alcuin and Cynewulf ; and despite the very different 
 style of these writers, we shall have occasion to 
 remark in them a transmission of the Symposian 
 influence. From him, however, at an earlier date, 
 Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherbourne, Abbot of Malmsbury, 
 and famous teacher in the Malmsbury Cloister School, 
 learned the art; and in the preface to his collection 
 of riddles, appeals to Symposius and Aristotle, as well 
 as to the Bible, in justification of his method and 
 work. In choice of subject and general style he is a 
 close imitator of his immediate predecessor. The 
 natural history, especially, of the animal world real or 
 fabulous, but also the workshop, the landscape, and 
 the house supply him with his topics. Some of his 
 best verses are on a shell-fish, on a bee, on the load-
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSERIA. 71 
 
 stone, on a mill, on the unicorn. The one on " Salt " 
 is perhaps the neatest and compactest : 
 
 " With slimy fish my wave was stored of late ; 
 
 But while I bore the hot flame's fervent throes 
 My nature changed by new decree of fate, 
 And now I gleam like ash or like the snows." 
 
 This is written almost in the spirit of Symposius ; but 
 even here there is a difference between the two which 
 elsewhere becomes much more striking. Aldhelm's 
 riddles sometimes reach the length of fifteen or six- 
 teen lines, and never fall below the number of four, 
 while those of his original never rise above the 
 number of three. Now this means that the Latin is 
 more expert with his tools than the Englishman ; for 
 when the riddle is a mere jeu d'esprit, it cannot 
 dispense with the " soul of wit." But it also means 
 that Aldhelm's riddle is not generally a mere jeu 
 d'esprit : the personified object sets forth its traits 
 with a certain poetic pomp, and often with a touch of 
 pathos ; and the converse of this is that the descrip- 
 tions rather lose in brevity and pith. Wright calls 
 attention to the immense number of glossarial expla- 
 nations with which in the manuscript Aldhelm's 
 riddles are accompanied, and adds, " There needs no 
 greater proof how complicated and far-fetched they 
 are." But this shows not so much a deterioration, as 
 the change of attitude from the polite and dexterous
 
 72 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 jesting of Eome to the wondering but somewhat 
 awkward reverence of the Northern barbarians. The 
 riddle on that characteristic subject of contemplation, 
 the alphabet, will illustrate the tendency in both its 
 aspects : 
 
 " Sisters seven and ten are we, powerless born for speech. 
 Other six we reckon not : they are bastards each. 
 We from iron spring (yet soon must by iron die), 
 Or from plumage of some bird flying to the sky ; 
 Us three brothers got, who bore, still in doubt must lie. 
 Whatso suitor eagerly to learn our lore hath will, 
 Him we swiftly give swift words, and yet are silent still." 
 
 Many expressions here would certainly puzzle a 
 modern were he not helped by the copious glosses. 
 One of these explains that the six bastards are the 
 letters x, y, 2, k, q, h; the first three objectionable as 
 being Greek or post- Augustan ; k and q as being 
 redundant, and li as being merely the rough breathing. 
 Was Aldhelm the first English spelling reformer? 
 The production and destruction by iron refers to 
 the opposite uses to which the two ends of the 
 style were put, in forming and erasing the letters. 
 Another gloss declares the three brothers to be the 
 three fingers used in writing; but the phrase about 
 the doubtful motherhood has bred a swarm of exposi- 
 tions, and is in turn referred to the wandering mind 
 or the uncertain hand of the writer, or to his pen, 
 which may be crow-quill, or goose-quill, or a reed.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSERIA. 73 
 
 Next in the series of riddle-writers come Arch- 
 bishop Tatwine and a certain Eusebius,* neither of 
 whom has hitherto found a printer, though certainly 
 they are not inferior to most of their class. In them 
 their Latin and their English predecessor are both 
 imitated, but especially the latter; for while only 
 particular subjects and ideas are borrowed from Sym- 
 posius, Aldhelm has prescribed the treatment as 
 well. But they divert the riddle still further from its 
 original scope by introducing what, for lack of a 
 better name, we may call the ecclesiastical element. 
 This is seen, partly, in their treatment of ordinary 
 topics, as when Tatwine in his riddle on the " Sower " 
 directly suggests St. Paul's metaphor for resurrection ; 
 partly, in their choosing as subjects details of Christian 
 theory like the virtues and the graces, or items of 
 Church furniture like the crucifix or the altar ; and of 
 course the description is invariably deeply serious. Of 
 the three following, the first and second will serve to 
 illustrate their secular, and the third their ecclesiastical 
 
 style : 
 
 I. AN Ox, BY EUSEBIUS. 
 
 " Now plough, now work I, am devoured each year ; 
 Loaves fail me ever not for lack of grain ; 
 The crops I tend, no drunkard's draughts I drain ; 
 My voice is sign to fill the town with fear." 
 
 * Who this Eusebius is I know not, but, from the style of the 
 riddle, conjecture that he was an Englishman of the eighth century, 
 who assumed the classical name, as Winfrith became Bonifacius.
 
 74 STUDIES IN GEEMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 The last references are to the use of the ox's horn in 
 drinking, or in sounding the alarm. 
 
 II. A TABLE, BY TATWINE. 
 
 " I to all men various rations for their food am wont to share, 
 Hence the happy generations have ordained that I shall be 
 Fourfold in my feet, and garments of abundant beauty wear ; 
 Yet do robbers oft lay hand on me in greed to plunder me 
 Snatch my spoils, and then abandon me with all my limbs laid 
 bare." * 
 
 III. LECTERN IN EAGLE SHAPE, BY TATWINE. 
 " Many a time to the surrounding folk I serve celestial cheer, 
 While the hollow throat with sounding words of wisdom fills their 
 
 ear; 
 
 Yet no voice to me is given, nor any tongue for speaking clear. 
 And on poise of double pinion am I staid in all men's sight ; 
 Yet therein is no dominion that they should be used in flight, 
 Nor for walking has the single foot I stand on any might." 
 
 The first letters of Tatwine's forty riddles make up 
 a descriptive phrase ; and in this, as in his moral and 
 
 * As most of Tatwine's riddles, with all those by Eusebius, exist 
 only in manuscript, I may take the opportunity of quoting the text 
 of Nos. I. and II. 
 
 " DE BOVE. 
 
 " Nunc aro, nunc operor, consumer in omnibus annis, 
 Multae sunt cereres semperque desunt mihi panes ; 
 Et segetes colui nee potus ebrius hausi ; 
 Tota urbs pallebat signum quo verba sonabam." 
 
 " DE MENSA. 
 
 " Multiferis omnes dapibus saturare solesco, 
 Qnadrupidem hinc felix me sanxerat setas 
 Esse tamen pulchris fatim dum vestibus orner ; 
 Certatim me predones spoliare solescunt, 
 Raptis nudata exuviis mox membra relinquunt. "
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSER1A. 75 
 
 theological leanings, he may have given an example to 
 St. Boniface, whose twenty cenigmata form a double 
 series ten on the chief virtues, ten on the chief vices 
 of the Christian code, with the answer to each riddle 
 concealed in the initial letters of the lines. This is 
 the least interesting of all the collections, the charac- 
 terization is both artificial and slipshod, and indeed 
 could hardly be otherwise, when the author elected to 
 tie his hands for so difficult a feat of metrical leger- 
 demain. Precisely on that account, however, his 
 riddles are of some importance ; for in the discrepancy 
 between their substance and their form they illustrate 
 the conflict between the traditional artificialism of 
 such devices, and the new wine of seriousness which 
 was being poured into them. 
 
 We next stop to report progress at the court of 
 Charles the Great, and find there that the tendency 
 towards earnestness has gone even further. To begin 
 with, we may notice the wonderful prevalence of the 
 riddle in this centre of power and studiousness. 
 Historians like Paulus Diaconus, litterateurs like Peter 
 of Pisa, exchange enigmas in their correspondence ; 
 and Alcuin, the Englishman, from whom probably 
 they caught this Anglo-mania, has left specimens of 
 more kinds than one.* The most interesting collection 
 
 * E.g. Virtus is treated as a combination of charade and spelling 
 puzzle : vir, the man, is contrasted with the tus, or incense for the
 
 76 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 is contained in his educational handbook or catechism 
 called, " Disputation of Pippin with Alcuin the 
 Scholar." Pippin is Charles's son, with whose in- 
 struction Alcuin was entrusted, and the little manual 
 was compiled by the tutor, with a view to training 
 his pupil's thought and exercising his acumen. It is 
 divided into two parts. In the first, Alcuin asks 
 direct questions and receives descriptive answers, 
 which are to all intents and purposes the theses of 
 riddles. A few of them will serve for illustration : 
 
 " A. What is the day ? P. The stimulus to work. 
 
 " A. What is mist? P. Night in day-time, the 
 vexation of the eyes. 
 
 "A. What is sleep ? P. The image of death. 
 
 "A. What are the hands ? P. The artisans of the 
 body. 
 
 " A. What is the moon ? P. The eye of the night, 
 abounding in dew, prophetic of storms. 
 
 "A. What is autumn? P. The storehouse of the 
 year. 
 
 "A. What is the year? P. The chariot of the 
 world." 
 
 worship of God ; and the disastrous effects are noticed of dropping 
 the fourth letter from the word. 
 
 The following clever play on malum, malum, and mulam can hardly 
 be preserved in translation : 
 
 " Causa necis fueram, tamen et nil nuncnpor esse, 
 Ordine quisque legat recto me, comedet et me, 
 Me super ille equitet, transverse qui legat ore."
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSERIA. 77 
 
 In this way many common subjects of knowledge, 
 the body and its limbs, life and death, the stars, the 
 seasons, the elements are characterized in picture or 
 metaphor. In the second part, an acquaintance with 
 this method of enigmatical explanation is presupposed 
 in the pupil, and the character of question and 
 answer is reversed, the teacher now propounding 
 riddles for Pippin to answer. Sometimes he does 
 this, not by directly naming the object, but by 
 reciting another parallel description of it, i.e. he 
 answers one puzzle by another. For example, to 
 Alcuin's problem, " I saw the dead generate the living, 
 and the dead were consumed by the breath of the 
 living," he answers, " From the friction of wood is born 
 the fire that consumes wood." Elsewhere Alcuin adopts 
 a riddle of Symposius, quoted by Wright, to which one 
 would hope the answer is not quite so obvious in this 
 cleanly age as it used to be, but at any rate it is an odd 
 question for a clerical tutor to ask an imperial pupil. 
 
 " A. I was with others on a hunt in which we took 
 nothing back, if we caught anything; but what we 
 could not catch, that we took home with us. P. This 
 is the hunt on which peasants go." 
 
 Or again, borrowing from Symposius, he asks in 
 regard to sleep, or Somnus : " Who is it that we can 
 only see when we close our eyes ? " And Pippin 
 replies, " Whoever snores shows him to you."
 
 78 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 This pedagogic use of the riddle will seem less 
 surprising when we remember that modern school 
 exercises are hardly different in character, save in 
 their sacrifice of the literary element, and that a 
 collection of mathematical problems has been irre- 
 verently styled a book of conundrums. Besides their 
 application to the practical business of life, there are 
 two other points in these riddles one formal, the other 
 very essential which illustrate the continued inroads of 
 the Anglo-Saxon spirit. This we see in passing from 
 the Latin of Alcuin to the English of his somewhat 
 younger contemporary and countryman, the famous 
 poet Cynewulf. The first is that fashion of replying 
 to the question, not categorically, but by a new state- 
 ment of the case. Of course, in some sense, this 
 practice is as ancient as it is natural ; and we all 
 remember how Samson's thesis, " Out of the eater 
 came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth 
 sweetness," was answered by the query, " What is 
 sweeter than honey ? and what is stronger than a 
 lion ? " But there are several indications that the 
 Anglo-Saxons specially insisted on this, and we find 
 Cynewulf constantly laying stress, not only on the 
 acuteness, but on the eloquence and literary skill re- 
 quired to answer him. He often concludes with such 
 turns as these : " Guess, if thou canst, Sage practised in 
 words, what this creature may be ; " " Answer, prudent
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSERIA. 79 
 
 in heart, with sure speech, master of words ; " " If thou 
 canst rede a riddle swiftly with certain words, then 
 speak ; " " Whosoever will, let him proclaim with 
 noble words what it is that I speak of." That these 
 answers have not survived, is easily explicable. In 
 the first place, they must have been of a much more 
 extempore character than the riddle itself; and in the 
 second, the authors probably stood far below Cynewulf 
 in poetical talent ; so that generally they would not be 
 worth preserving. But the custom would be peculiarly 
 congenial to the Anglo-Saxons, as they sent round the 
 harp after meat in the hall. And it is just what we 
 might expect from their use of the riddle, to stimulate 
 a poetical appreciation of things, not to amuse by a 
 momentary jerk of surprise. 
 
 The other point is more important. In many of 
 Alcuin's delineations, e.g. of the mist as night in 
 day-time, we feel that we are among the metaphors 
 of Anglo-Saxon poetry, which constantly describes the 
 sea as a swan-bath, a battle as the ash-play, an arrow 
 as a war-adder, a ship as a sea-horse, and so on. This 
 fondness for figurative paraphrase is a racial trait, 
 shared by the Scandinavians, whose skalds talk in 
 riddles as M. Jourdain in prose, without knowing it, 
 and puzzle their readers with phrases like " wolf-rill " 
 for blood, or " sea's bright sunbeams " for gold. Now, 
 it is clear that this habit of mind could not but exert
 
 80 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 enormous influence on the production of intentional 
 riddles ; and this is one cause of, in both senses of the 
 word, their tropical luxuriance in England. It shifts 
 them still further from the sphere of wit into that of 
 fancy and imagination, and Cynewulf runs riot in dis- 
 covering analogies, not only with his subjects as a 
 whole, but with their parts, their functions, and their 
 origin. Sometimes this becomes the midsummer 
 madness of metaphor, but more frequently he is pro- 
 tected from such a lapse by the depth and strength of 
 his emotion. If he often bewilders by his profusion of 
 imagery, it is nob because he wishes to show off" his 
 own abundance, but because he is determined to bring 
 home to himself and his audience all the aspects of 
 that strange existence which he is trying to describe ; 
 and his sketches are always steeped in feeling. It 
 may help us to realize the interval between him and 
 Symposius in spirit, when we notice the difference in 
 the size of their riddles. Cynewulf s longest contains 
 more than a hundred lines, and only a couple are 
 confined within the original number of three. One of 
 these I have already given : it is the spelling puzzle 
 on a hound : the other is on frost. 
 
 " I watched a wight wend on his path ; 
 Many the marvels his might performed. 
 A wonder happed on his way the water became bone." 
 
 But precisely these short ones seem to be the worst in
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSEEIA. 81 
 
 the whole quarry ; the poet needs room to move before 
 he can show his power. He sometimes borrows from 
 Symposius, and when he keeps near the limits of his 
 original, is at a great distance in all other respects, for 
 he fails completely in point and brevity of wit; but 
 when he expands and recasts, he makes ample amends 
 by his emotional power and his feeling for the pic- 
 turesque. To illustrate this we may place together 
 two pairs of riddles by the two poets. The subject 
 of the first is a book worm, which in Symposius 
 thus concisely describes itself : 
 
 " What a letter is I know not, yet of letters is my food, 
 And in studious zeal I grow not, yet are books my livelihood. 
 And though I devour the muses, it has done myself no good." 
 
 Very long-winded and obvious in comparison is 
 Cynewulf's statement : 
 
 " A moth ate words. To me it seemed 
 Matter of marvel when I marked this wonder, 
 That a warrior's words a worm should devour, 
 Like a thief in the night, with the noble speech, 
 The stay of the strong. Yet the stealthy guest 
 Was none the wiser for the words that he swallowed." 
 
 Here we feel and like the Anglo-Saxon's honest sense 
 of wonder, and notice his added simile, " like a thief in 
 the night ; " but this is all we can say for him. But 
 take another pair of contrasts, this time on an anchor. 
 Symposius writes cleverly and happily as usual : 
 
 " On my crooked iron tressle bear I prongs to left and right. 
 With the hurricane I wrestle, with the whirlpool's depths I fight ; 
 I explore the midmost waters, and the earth itself I bite." 
 
 G
 
 82 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Cynewulf is less neat but more poetical, for the 
 mysterious uses of the anchor rouse his full enthusiasm. 
 He belonged to a seafaring stock, and his soul was 
 stirred when he sang of the safeguard of the dragon- 
 bowed ship in the storm, as it hugged a dangerous 
 coast, to be laid by again when the sky was clear, 
 and the ship was scudding before the breeze, or 
 beached on some hostile coast. 
 
 " Where no one would ween I wander oft 
 Through bellowing billows to the bottom earth, 
 To the soil of the sea. In surge is the ocean, 
 In fury the flood, the foam whirls round ; 
 The whale-realm is roaring, wrathf ally raging ; 
 Billows break shoreward, and batter the cliffs,' 
 The steep rocks with stones, strew them with sand, 
 With weeds and with waves, while the wide sea-floor, 
 The bosom of earth, I bite in strife, 
 
 Weighed down with the waters. The waves that enshroud me 
 I fling not from me till freed by the guide 
 That wills all my ways. Oh, wise one ! say, 
 From the depths of the deep who draweth me forth, 
 When ocean again has its anger stilled, 
 And the currents are calm that covered me once." 
 
 But this race had latterly settled down to subdue 
 the soil ; and the same instinct of wonder, the same 
 feeling of mystery that led heathen husbandmen to 
 imagine a god of agriculture, led Cynewulf to cele- 
 brate its implements. This is how he describes a 
 rake: 
 
 " Something saw I in resorts of nlen 
 That feeds the farm-stock ; its face is its help,
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSERIA. 83 
 
 With treasure of teeth it travels face down. 
 It harries but hurts not, and homeward speeding, 
 Gripping the wall. grass, gropes after herbs, 
 Finds without fail the unfastened ones, 
 Leaves the lovely ones alone if well-rooted, 
 To flicker and flash, to flower and green." 
 
 Or, to take another instance : in those days of war, 
 of the battles of the kites and the crows, as Milton 
 puts it, would not men be impressed with the secret 
 craft that lurks in a bow ; when it is strung and its 
 arrow placed, an instrument of death, but Without its 
 twine as worthless as a willow wand ? 
 
 " I, creature of cunning, to conflict am framed ! 
 When bowing my back, from my bosom there flies 
 A venomous viper, I verily drive 
 The murderous mischief with might from me hence. 
 When the warrior who wields me, and worked me this woe, 
 Loosens my limbs, I am longer than erewhile, 
 Till he gives me again the grievous drug 
 And the venom vile I vomit anew. 
 From this harm that I hint of, hard matter is it 
 For man of the march to mend hereafter, 
 If what flies from me forth he feel in such wise 
 That the fighter forfeits force or life, 
 For that drink of death, that draught I pour full. 
 If I bide unbound, obey I none, 
 So tie me tightly : and tell my name." 
 
 Or, again, how manifold were the uses of the horn ! 
 With it the oxen fought; from it the wassailers 
 drank ; in it the gleeman received his wage ; through 
 it sounded the summons to the fight or to the hunt, 
 
 " Once fought I weaponed ; a youthful wight 
 Now gives me garb of gold and silver
 
 84 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 A wire-drawn woof. Now warriors kiss me ; 
 
 Summoning to slaughter now sounds my voice 
 
 And calls the keen thegns. The courser now bears me 
 
 Far to the forest, or fair with adornment 
 
 I bound o'er the billows on back of the sea-horse.* 
 
 My lap, some lady laden with rings 
 
 Fills now for me ; or fallen I lie, 
 
 Hard and headless, my hangings stolen. 
 
 Once more on the wall where warriors drink 
 
 Gilded and garnished with gawds I hang. 
 
 Striding their steeds, as stately war-badge 
 
 The warriors wear me ; the wind then drink I, 
 
 Burnished bright, from bosoms of men. 
 
 Sometimes my voice sounds, the soldiers bidding 
 
 To wine and wassail ; it wakeneth sometimes 
 
 To reave from robbers their wrong-got spoil 
 
 And fright the foe. Speak forth my name." 
 
 Or, once more, what ineffable mystery wrapped 
 round a manuscript of the Bible ! The mere writing 
 would, for the half-savage, be invested with its 
 customary awe, while all the processes through 
 which the parchment had to pass would doubly im- 
 press the new convert in view of their wonderful 
 result, the rescue of souls from the "ungentle ones/' 
 and their restoration to the fellowship of saints and 
 angels. 
 
 " From me my foeman niched my life, 
 Stole my world-strength, wet me then, 
 Dipped in water, drew me thence, 
 Set in the sunlight ; and there soon lost I 
 The hairs I had. The hard-edged knife, 
 
 * Merehengest, ocean- stallion, here for ship, as fugles wynn, the 
 pride of the bird, in the next riddle, line 8, for feather.
 
 ANGLO-SAXON JOCOSEKIA. 85 
 
 Cinder-sharpened, shore me then, 
 
 And fingers folded. Freely bedewed me 
 
 The Quills of birds with drops of blessing, 
 
 Flecked my brown face with frequent traces, 
 
 Deeply drank the draughts of tree-dye, 
 
 Anon stepped on me, strod across me, 
 
 Travelling dark-tracked. Me next a trusty one 
 
 Sheathed within shields, sheltered in hides, 
 
 Girt me with gold, and gladdened me 
 
 With wondrous smith-work wire encompassed. 
 
 Now far be famed by fairness of mine 
 
 My dazzling dwelling and dye of red 
 
 The Prince of Peoples, not pines of Hell. 
 
 If mortal man has mind to use me, 
 
 In soul he is sounder, certain of victory, 
 
 Higher in heart, happier in mood, 
 
 Mightier in mind, with more of friends, 
 
 Lief ones and loving, loyal and good, 
 
 Trusty and true ones, who tenderly nourish 
 
 His fame and fortune and fold him round 
 
 With beauty and benisons, in love's embraces 
 
 Who compass him closely. How do men call me ? 
 
 Search for man's sake ! Sacred my name, 
 
 High-famed 'mongst heroes, holy itself." 
 
 Such riddles are so edifying, that one is almost 
 tempted to speculate on their purpose and audience, 
 and to conjecture that they were, like Alcuin's, used 
 for educational aims. But this is not the case : the 
 allusions to the wassailers and the mead-hall, and the 
 board where warriors drink, are too frequent to be 
 ambiguous. Yet we are left with a feeling of amaze- 
 ment. The old Anglo-Saxons can hardly have been 
 the barbarians of common imagination if at their 
 revels they were so entertained.
 
 86 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 About a tithe of Cynewulfs riddles are on subjects 
 now generally tabooed, but they express merely naif 
 wonder, not, I think, wanton indelicacy, or even 
 marked jocularity. The rest take up natural pheno- 
 mena, or the inventions of man ; old myths, as of the 
 dragon flying to its cavern of treasure; or new beliefs, 
 as of the infinitude of the human soul. And in form 
 the old conundrum character is so far transcended, 
 that the riddle ranks among the best songs of the 
 time, and we can only here and there prefer the pro- 
 fessed lyric before it. Perhaps a civilian may be per- 
 mitted to doubt whether the entertainment in the 
 " hall where " our modern " warriors drink " is always 
 much more exalted in character. 
 
 To sum up our history and characterization of these 
 Anglo-Saxon curiosities: The old English sc6p ac- 
 cepted the elaborate contrivances of Roman wit which 
 he inherited, because he felt, perhaps too keenly and 
 tremulously, the wonders of the world; but in 
 accepting he transformed them, till, by adding weight 
 and fire, he gradually converted the epigrams of Sym- 
 posius into perfervid little lyric allegories.
 
 SOLOMON IN EUEOPE. 
 
 [Most of the materials for the history of these legends of Solomon 
 are contained in Kemble's " Salomon and Satnrnns " (^Elfric Society); 
 in Hoffmann's paper in the Sitzungsberichte of the Munich Academy, 
 1871 ; in Jagic's paper in the " Archiv fiir Slavische Philologie," 
 bd. i. ; and, for the story of the elopement, above all in Vogt's 
 " Deutsche Dichtungen von Salomon und Markolf," bd. i.] 
 
 HAMLET, moralizing on the skull of Yorick, exclaims 
 " May not the imagination trace the noble dust of 
 Alexander till he finds it stopping a bung-hole ? " 
 Yet if the bodily change proclaims the hollowness of 
 all earthly fame, perhaps the lesson is more clearly 
 taught by the popular corruptions of that fame itself. 
 Alexander the Great might overlook the desecration 
 of his ashes. It would be harder for him to bear with 
 the mediaeval stories that accuse him of an expedition 
 against Paradise to levy tribute from the angels, and 
 of an inglorious retreat from before the walls. And 
 he is no solitary victim. Virgil was for generations 
 better known as a necromancer than as a poet. The 
 politic Emperor Charlemagne appears in stoiy as a 
 fighting saint, angels and prophecies directing his
 
 88 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 wars, his followers forming as it were a noble army 
 of martyrs. And the subject of the present sketch 
 is the checkered literary career of Solomon, in his 
 wanderings from age to age and from place to place, 
 with the wonderful adventures that have befallen him 
 on the way. We, as a nation, have borne a hand in 
 transforming and distorting his original likeness, so it 
 is only fair that we should grant him a little tardy 
 sympathy. 
 
 But before proceeding to the Solomon of legend, we 
 must recall the Solomon of history. For no matter 
 what mad pranks tradition may play with men and 
 events, one thing must never be forgotten it is 
 always founded on fact. It does not originate quite by 
 chance. There is some feature in the authenticated 
 stories, some action or quality of the men, which 
 gives rise to the later inventions, and round which 
 they gather. This may be seen from our previous 
 examples. Alexander, who is said to have wept 
 because there were no more worlds to conquer, finds 
 in the later romance a new field for his ambition. 
 Charlemagne, the champion of Catholic against Aryan 
 Christianity, who, moreover, repelled the heathens in 
 the North and the Mohammedans in the South, 
 becomes quite naturally the invincible hero of the 
 Church, fighting for the faith, and miraculously 
 inspired. Virgil is credited with knowledge of the
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 89 
 
 black art, perhaps from vague reminiscences of his 
 story of the Descent to the Infernal Regions, just 
 as this is one of Dante's reasons for making him his 
 guide through hell. What, then, are the salient fea- 
 tures of Solomon's true life and character ? 
 
 He became king when the Hebrews were entering 
 on a new phase of their history. The days were past 
 when their religious exclusiveness could be rigidly 
 maintained. That might suit a loose federation of 
 tribes held together chiefly by their religious con- 
 sciousness, which, when maintained, led them to 
 harass the nations around, and, when lost, made it 
 easy for the nations to harass them. But with the 
 closer union under the kings, especially under David, 
 came increased strength and wealth. When Israel 
 became a great State it could not always war with 
 the heathen; and with the growth of its riches the 
 need arose to cultivate the graces of life. Solomon, 
 succeeding in his youth to the supreme power, had 
 the insight and sagacity to become exponent of these 
 tendencies. He raised the royal authority, but took 
 care also to raise the respect for it by justice and 
 munificence. .Himself a man of literary tastes, his 
 knowledge or feeling uttered itself in shrewd sayings, 
 songs, and parables ; and in his court there was a 
 patronage of art which had hitherto been strange 
 among the Jews. The political side of this was that
 
 90 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 he lived in amity and commercial alliance with his 
 heathen neighbours. He " made affinity " with Pha- 
 raoh ; he cemented David's connection with Tyre ; he 
 had dealings with the surrounding kings, and inter- 
 married with their daughters. The effect of all this 
 on a nation hitherto either harrying or being harried 
 was immediate. The country enjoyed unexampled 
 tranquillity ; stately buildings arose in Jerusalem ; 
 planting was encouraged ; the precious metals flowed 
 in. Nevertheless this prosperity had its dark side. 
 The concessions to the heathen were in the spirit of 
 compromise with far inferior views. The system of 
 concurrent endowment, by which Milcom and Ash- 
 toreth were subsidized along with Jehovah, was not 
 calculated to satisfy the most earnest minds ; and the 
 expenses of the court, especially of the seraglio, would 
 be apt to raise a party of malcontents. Solomon him- 
 self, like a kindred mediaeval figure, Frederick II., the 
 Wonder of the World, broke down in his plans, not 
 only because they were above, but because they were 
 below the sentiment of the age. Their over-catho- 
 licity alienated common religious feeling, which the 
 harems of both, for different reasons, naturally failed 
 to conciliate ; and we are not surprised to find the 
 popular revulsion expressing itself in Ahijah's an- 
 nouncement of the fall of Solomon's house, and in 
 the subsequent disruption of the kingdom.
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 91 
 
 There are here three grand traits that riveted the 
 attention of contemporaries, soon became in a manner 
 proverbial, and formed the nucleus of later myths : 
 Solomon's wisdom, his glory, and his fall. To these 
 we must give some attention as they appear in the 
 original scriptural narratives, selecting such details 
 as are important for the development of our special 
 series of legends. 
 
 The references to his wisdom crowd upon us, from 
 the first account of his choosing it before other 
 blessings. In the Second Book of Chronicles it is 
 stated that he " passed all the kings of the earth 
 in wisdom," which perhaps is no great compliment ; 
 but in the First Book of Kings it runs less ambig- 
 uously : " He was wiser than all men ; than Ethan 
 the Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, 
 the sons of MAHOL " (the last an important name 
 for us). " He spake three thousand proverbs : and 
 his songs were a thousand and five." He spake of 
 trees, of beasts, of fowls, of creeping things and of 
 fishes. " And there came of all people to hear the 
 wisdom of Solomon, from all kings of the earth, 
 which heard of his wisdom." Such visits for in- 
 struction almost imply that the teacher would have 
 to satisfy his guests of his pre-eminence imply, that 
 is, visits for debate. Accordingly, we hear that " when 
 the Queen of Shebah heard of the fame of Solomon
 
 92 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 [" concerning the name of the Lord," adds the Book 
 of Kings] she came to prove him with hard questions." 
 " And Solomon told her all her questions," so that 
 she exclaims : " Behold, the one half of the greatness 
 of thy wisdom was not told me ! " The story of 
 this visit was not forgotten. Not only did it give rise 
 to a separate group of Eastern legends, but, in the 
 first and third Gospels, it furnishes Christ, whose 
 images are never unfamiliar, with a comparison and 
 contrast. Nor should we overlook the vanquished 
 Queen's offering of gold, jewels, and spice, to swell 
 the victor's wealth, nor his responsive liberality. 
 
 This leads us to a consideration of the King's 
 magnificence, but we need not cite the innumerable 
 instances of this trait; a few of the most noticeable 
 will suffice. And not many are more noticeable 
 among all the references to his servants and officers 
 and their equipment, than his retinue of horsemen 
 with their horses. Their number of twelve thousand, 
 their four thousand stalls, the cities he appointed 
 them, their rations, their maintenance, the traffic 
 in them, are all items which are enumerated and 
 referred to as of the first moment. But more 
 important were his building operations. His own 
 royal house that occupied thirteen, and the far more 
 glorious temple that occupied only seven years in 
 building, gave the Hebrews the splendour of a court
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 93 
 
 and a capital. And Solomon's great way of doing 
 things was seen as much in his methods as in his 
 results. No unseemly bustle, says the story, disturbed 
 the erection of the great national and religious fane. 
 " The house, when it was in building, was built of 
 stone made ready before it was brought thither, so 
 that there was neither hammer, nor axe, nor any 
 tool of iron heard in the house while it was in 
 building." And the decorations were in the same 
 grand style. Solomon, distrusting untrained Hebrew 
 taste and skill, borrowed from his ally, the King of 
 Tyre, a namesake and half-countryman of the 
 Tyrian king, Hiram, or Hiram Abi, as the Hebrew 
 chronicles style him, a worker in brass who " was 
 filled with wisdom and understanding, and cunning 
 to work all works in brass." He moulded all the 
 metal utensils and ornaments ; and here are especially 
 noteworthy the lions about the throne, the oxen 
 under the sea in the temple, the lions, bulls, and 
 cherubim on the borders ; above all, the two cheru- 
 bim that stretched their wings over the ark. These 
 cherubim we must bear in mind, and though Josephus 
 says that in his time their shape was " unknown and 
 not even to be conjectured," we must try to form 
 some idea of what they were like. Without dis- 
 cussing the philology of the word, we may be sure 
 that they had wings, and may suspect that they
 
 94 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 were quadrupeds, since in the eighteenth Psalm it 
 is said of the Deity. "He rode upon a cherub." 
 Perhaps we shall not be far wrong, then, when we 
 remember their half-Punic designer, in imagining 
 them like some of those winged centaurs of Oriental 
 sculpture that are still to be seen in the British 
 Museum. 
 
 But perhaps the chief instance of Solomon's 
 Eastern state was his huge harem with its thousand 
 inmates, from which we may at once pass to the 
 story of the fall with which it was so intimately 
 connected. Here, however, we must guard against 
 a misapprehension to which our modern Western 
 feeling exposes us. Solomon is blamed nowhere for 
 the number, but always for the creed and kin, of his 
 wives. In Kings (for in the more courtly Chronicles 
 the whole episode is omitted) the writer laments 
 Solomon's love, not for many women, but " for many 
 strange women ; " and Nehemiah, in the only other Old 
 Testament reference to it, uses the story to point a 
 moral, not against polygamy, but against marriages 
 with the heathen : " Even Solomon did outlandish 
 women cause to sin." And with the ensuing worship 
 of his wives' gods, Moloch and the rest, is connected the 
 opposition he encountered from Edom and Damascus, 
 and especially from Jeroboam, who received his first 
 impulse to revolt from the announcement of the offended
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 95 
 
 prophet Ahijah. And this prophecy foretold more 
 terrible things, the loss of the kingdom mitigated only 
 by delay, limited only by the loyalty of the southern 
 tribes. 
 
 We may now see how these hints have been 
 worked out and added to by Josephus, who comes 
 next in date among the more serious historians. 
 
 Fewest alterations have been made under the 
 third head, but even here there are one or two 
 worth noticing. For example, in the narrative of 
 Kings we are given to understand rather that 
 Jeroboam fled from the king as a precautionary 
 measure, than that he had been guilty of an overt 
 offence ; but Josephus states that the youth already 
 in Solomon's lifetime tried to make use of his 
 position to stir up the people and seize the throne. 
 Moreover, he takes up Solomon's polygamy in its 
 moral as well as in its religious side, and while still 
 most severe on the recognition of heathen charms, 
 also accuses the king of sensuality and of uxorious- 
 ness the last an inevitable but suggestive gloss : 
 "he was governed by his wives." Perhaps more 
 striking is his ingenuity in discovering an earlier 
 backsliding of the king's. This was the transgression 
 of the command to make no graven image, through 
 the sculptures in palace and temple. 
 
 But for the temple itself he has only praise. The
 
 96 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 difference of time in the erection of it and the palace 
 is made the subject of another interesting comment. 
 The former, though grander, was ready sooner, 
 because in it " God co-operated ; " that is, in it 
 Solomon had supernatural help. And in describing 
 its splendours he varies from the account of its 
 erection without the noise of tools. "The whole 
 structure of the temple was made with great skill 
 of polished stones, and those laid together so very 
 harmoniously and smoothly, that there appeared to 
 the spectators no sign of any hammer or other 
 instrument of architecture, but as if without use 
 of them the entire materials had naturally united 
 themselves together, so that the agreement of one part 
 with another seemed rather to have been natural, 
 than to have arisen from the force of tools upon 
 them." Thus, to combine the two accounts, the 
 temple, both in process and completion, would seem 
 to be erected without tools. 
 
 Nor in treating of Solomon's other glories is 
 Josephus at all lacking in enthusiasm or minuteness. 
 Thus, in regard to the horsemen, he tells us that they 
 were the king's attendants on steeds the swiftest and 
 finest in the world, that they were in the flower of 
 their years, larger than most men, with long flowing 
 locks, which were daily sprinkled with dust of gold to 
 make them brighter.
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 97 
 
 But the weightiest additions are certainly those 
 that refer to the king's wisdom, and of these the 
 bulkiest and most emphatic deal with those contests 
 of question and answer of which we have seen the 
 germ in the episode of the Queen of Shebah. Now, 
 however, Solomon's antagonist is Hiram, king of 
 Tyre. Josephus seems to have been much occupied 
 with the story, for he narrates it as well in his 
 " Antiquities" as in his treatise "Against Apion," and 
 in both cases quotes two versions. The passage in 
 the " Antiquities " runs : ' The King of Tyre sent 
 sophisms and enigmatical sayings to Solomon, and 
 desired that he would solve them, and free them from 
 the ambiguity that was in them. Now, so sagacious 
 was Solomon that none of these problems were too 
 hard for him, but that he conquered them all by his 
 reasonings, and discovered their hidden meaning and 
 brought it to light. Menander also, who translated the 
 ' Tyrian Archives ' out of the dialect of the Phenicians 
 into the language of the Greeks, thus makes mention 
 of these two kings when he says thus : ' When 
 Abibalus was dead, his son Hiram received the king- 
 dom from him. Under this king was Abdemon, a 
 very youth in age, who always conquered the difficult 
 problems which Solomon, king of Jerusalem, com- 
 manded him to explain.' Dius, also makes mention of 
 him : ' When Abibalus was dead, his son Hiram 
 
 H
 
 98 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 reigned. Solomon, who was then king of Jerusalem, 
 sent riddles to Hiram, and desired to receive the like 
 from him ; but that he who could not solve them 
 should pay money to him that did solve them. And 
 Hiram accepted the conditions, and when he could not 
 solve the riddles he paid a great deal of money for 
 his fine ; but afterwards, he did solve the proposed 
 riddles by means of Abdemon, a man of Tyre ; and 
 Hiram proposed other riddles, which, when Solomon 
 could not solve, he paid back a great deal of money to 
 Hiram.'" The statements in the treatise "Against 
 Apion " are to the same effect, with the following 
 introduction, which implies that the tournament was 
 between friends. " There was another passion, a 
 philosophical inclination of theirs, which cemented the 
 friendship that was between them, for they sent 
 mutual problems to one another, with a desire to have 
 them unriddled by each other." 
 
 In these accounts we have to notice the agency of 
 Abdemon. For the rest there may be a basis of truth 
 in the story, yet it is exactly the sort of development 
 that w might expect in legend. For the Biblical 
 records quote a correspondence between the two kings, 
 and mention their singularly intimate relations, which 
 seem only once to have been disturbed. Then Hiram 
 was in some sort famous for his temple-building 
 among the heathen, as Solomon for his temple-
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 99 
 
 building among the Jews ; and this, which made each 
 a representative of his racial religion, would invite 
 tradition to confront them with each other. For we 
 must remember that while such a pictorial opposition 
 of rival sages has many parallels both before and 
 since, from the story of Moses and Pharaoh's 
 magicians, to that of Friar Bacon and Jacques Van- 
 dermast, the contrast, whenever Solomon was involved, 
 would be far deeper than between this man and that. 
 When Bacon closes the contest by having Vandermast 
 carried off bodily by a demon, we have simply the 
 victory of one magician over another, coloured a little 
 perhaps by national feeling. But Solomon's victories 
 (and Josephus, when speaking in his own person, 
 mentions only victories) would always mean the 
 triumph of the Jewish wisdom over the Gentile, of 
 the sacred wisdom over the profane. Hence he could 
 not have a more fitting antagonist than one who 
 laboured for the cult of Tyrian deities, whose names 
 Josephus renders by Jupiter, Hercules, and Astarte. 
 And that the contest should be in enigmas need not 
 surprise us, when we remember the narrow line that 
 separates the parable from the riddle. In Proverbs, 
 the king insists on the wisdom of being able to 
 "understand a proverb and the interpretation, the 
 words of the wise and their dark sayings." And 
 Jesus, son of Sirach, apostrophizes him in Ecclesi-
 
 100 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITEEATURE. 
 
 asticus : "Thou filledst the earth with parables and 
 with enigmas. Thou wast in the admiration of all 
 lands by thy songs, thy proverbs, parables, and 
 interpretations." Even the wager that accompanied 
 Hiram and Solomon's match would have its precedent 
 in the Queen of Shebah's tribute ; and from the stake 
 that Samson laid on his riddle, we may see how this 
 feature, too, could be a natural popular expansion. 
 
 Hitherto we have seen Solomon, according to 
 Hebrew narrators, chief among mortals in wisdom ; 
 but now, by another addition, he is made master of 
 unseen intelligences. "God gave him skill to expel 
 demons," says Josephus, and goes on to relate that he 
 himself witnessed such exorcisms effected before Ves- 
 pasian and his troops, by a Jew, who made use of 
 Solomon's incantations and of a ring containing one 
 of the roots Solomon had described. 
 
 Now, supposing these two traditions of Solomon's 
 disputes and of his relations with the spirit world 
 were brought into connection, the central idea of the 
 former might obviously be strengthened and relieved. 
 For the contest would be even more glaringly between 
 religious wisdom and questionable demonic power. 
 In point of fact, the dealings of the great king with 
 those intermediate spirits, the Hebrew Shedim, the 
 Mohammedan Djins, are recounted in a multitude of 
 Eastern legends. Perhaps the best known in England
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 101 
 
 are those tales of the " Arabian Nights," one of which, 
 e.g., describes a Genie imprisoned in a jar by the 
 impress of Solomon's seal on the lid. In regard to 
 the building of the temple, indeed, it was hardly 
 possible that such stories could fail to arise among a 
 people who held these beliefs. In Josephus we have 
 the supernatural acceleration and the toolless appear- 
 ance of the work ; and a Rabbinical legend, to which 
 we now pass, accounts for these features by the 
 assumption of demonic help. Nor is this all; the 
 same story assists us in the history of the two other 
 Solomon characteristics, his wisdom as shown in his 
 contests, and his fall. 
 
 Solomon, we are told in the Talmud, after subduing 
 the other Shedim, or demons, to his will, is still 
 thwarted by their prince, Ashmedai, or Asmodeus. 
 But his help is specially required by Solomon for 
 procuring the serpent Shamir to cut the stones for the 
 temple. Now the demon every day soared to the 
 firmament to examine the laws of heaven, then dived 
 down to examine the laws of the earth, and then 
 refreshed himself by drinking from a cistern of water. 
 This Solomon drains, and fills with wine. Ashmedai, 
 compelled by his thirst to partake, is overcome by 
 slumber, and fettered with a chain which bears on it 
 the name of God. He now has to do Solomon's 
 bidding, and answer in colloquy all his questions.
 
 102 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 But the king, anxious to see the demon's power, un- 
 warily sets him free, and lends him his own ring, 
 when Ashmedai hurls him away, a distance of four 
 hundred parasangs, and, -assuming his shape, occupies 
 the throne. Ashmedai now reigns at Jerusalem, 
 master of the kingdom and of the harem, while 
 Solomon wanders about as a beggar, crying, "I, the 
 preacher, was king at Jerusalem." The Sanhedrim, 
 surprised at his persistence, investigate and discover 
 the facts of the case, and restore him his ring. Then 
 the demon flies in fright, and the king enjoys his 
 own again. 
 
 There are many legends of this kind, Hebrew, 
 Mohammedan, and Hebrseo-Greek. In one of these 
 the fatal ring is described as giving Solomon power, 
 not only over the creatures of air and earth and 
 sea, perhaps a reminiscence of the natural-history 
 parables ascribed to him, but over the demon-world 
 as well. Some of the demons, however, were not very 
 submissive : and Solomon had constantly to struggle 
 with the worse ones, who are pictured as of monstrous 
 shape, half bestial, half human ; some of them with 
 bodies of horses and heads of men. One story tells 
 how, with an army of these demons and birds and 
 men, he goes against the most truculent of their 
 number. Generally speaking, these apocryphal tra- 
 ditions describe Solomon's relations with the inter-
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 103 
 
 mediate powers, whether in the way of supremacy, 
 colloquy, or strife. For the Western cycle of tales 
 the first of these points concerns us no farther; in 
 other words, we need not follow at greater length 
 Solomon's legendary magnificence. The two other 
 points we must notice more closely, at least in so 
 far as the legend of Ashmedai illustrates them. 
 
 First, then, in regard to the dialogue, we should 
 observe that, according to the early Christian practice 
 of identifying evil spirits with pagan deities, the way 
 was paved for representing Solomon in dispute with 
 a heathen god, a fitter antagonist even than Hiram, 
 because the very head and impersonification of 
 heathenism. Second, however, the legend represents 
 Solomon as the questioner, and the demon as com- 
 pelled to reply. This differs from the early types, in 
 which Solomon's victory rather lies in his readiness 
 and his antagonist's inability to answer, and the same 
 change has taken place in all the apocryphal dialogues 
 between him and the spirits, especially in the cosmo- 
 logical discussions between him and Ashmedai. But 
 the alteration is due to Solomon's new role of master 
 forcing secrets from sometimes reluctant servants. If 
 the story changed back to a trial of skill, the form 
 would change back with it. 
 
 Turning to the other form of the legend, we find 
 that the story of Solomon's fall has undergone a very
 
 104 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITERATUKE. 
 
 important modification. In the Bible the mitigation 
 of his doom lay in its being postponed and partial, 
 here, however, in its being temporary. And the 
 occasion for the change was furnished by the expres- 
 sion in Ecclesiastes : " I, the preacher, was King of 
 Jerusalem," whence it was inferred that at one time 
 he had lost sovereignty ; and Jeroboam's unsuccessful 
 attempt at revolt, which Josephus mentions, may have 
 given a point d'appui to the invention. 
 
 On the other hand, the legendary fall in this version 
 is not attributed to the king's wives, though it is 
 expressly stated that his enemy gains possession of 
 them. But elsewhere this gap is supplied. Indeed, 
 in a Mohammedan story, it is one of the wives that 
 procures the ring for the demon, whose ensuing 
 triumph punishes Solomon for worshipping, to please 
 his Indian queen, the statue of her father. 
 
 To sum up, we find that the account of Solomon's 
 wisdom has given rise to stories of wit-combats in 
 which he joins with heathen sages, and of conversa- 
 tions that he holds with a demon-prince who, perhaps, 
 may be transformed to a heathen god. The account 
 of his fall has given rise to stories which represent him 
 as vanquished through his uxoriousness by the same 
 demon-prince, who seizes his wives; while Solomon 
 goes about in beggary, till, recovering his magic ring, 
 he also recovers his State.
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 105 
 
 Now, tradition continued to run on independently 
 along each of these lines, the story of the debate 
 chiefly from east to west, the story of the fall chiefly 
 from south to north, till, strangely enough, they are 
 found in some sort of combination or, at least, contact 
 in Germany. 
 
 We shall proceed on one line till we reach the 
 junction, and then return to our starting-point by the 
 other. 
 
 In the history of the dialogue, not the earliest (for 
 it belongs to the twelfth century), but the most con- 
 venient transition link is a notice by William, Bishop 
 of Tyre. He mentions tales of a certain Abdimus 
 who, in chains, solved Hiram's riddles for Solomon, 
 and then proceeds: "This, perhaps, is he that the 
 fabulous stories of the vulgar name Marcolf ; of whom 
 it is told that he solved Solomon's riddles, and replied, 
 propounding in like manner riddles to be solved in 
 their turn." Abdimus is thus identified with Marcolf, 
 but how are these names related ? and why were they 
 selected ? 
 
 For the first, we can hardly fail to seek an origin in 
 the Abdemon of Josephus. But how did Abdemon, 
 who interpreted for Hiram, come in legend to inter- 
 pret for Solomon ? It has been suggested that he 
 was confounded with Hiram's other cunning servant, 
 the Hiram Abi of Chronicles, who was sent to help
 
 106 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITEKATUEE. 
 
 the Hebrew King in his brazen works. But the de- 
 scription of him obeying the king's behests in chains, 
 suggests, besides, an additional confusion, viz. with 
 Ashmedai himself, who was forced in chains to assist 
 and answer Solomon. Both were engaged in the 
 structure of the temple, and if we remember that 
 Hiram Abi shaped those figures by which Solomon 
 transgressed, he may well correspond with the 
 mythical assistant and assailant of Solomon's glory. 
 
 This, however, becomes more probable when we 
 consider the second designation, Marcolf. This (in 
 its various forms Marcholfus, Marcoul, Marcon, Marolf, 
 Morolf) was the usual name for Solomon's disputant 
 in the West, and, since traceable as far back as Notker 
 in the tenth century, must have been in use at a still 
 earlier date. But though Western in sound it is really 
 Eastern in origin, and possibly, like Abdimus, contains 
 a reference to more Eastern personages than one. It 
 may have been confounded with Mahol, that sage 
 Hebrew whose sons Solomon surpassed in wisdom. 
 But at any rate it implies an earlier form, Marcolis, 
 corrupted from Malchol, Moloch, or Milcom. To this 
 god, Solomon sacrificed to his ruin, and to such a god, 
 as we saw, Ashmedai might easily be converted. 
 
 But the proof becomes stronger if we turn to a 
 third name by which, in Europe, Solomon's antagonist 
 is known; and this the one which, though quite
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 107 
 
 singular and isolated, is also the earliest on record. In 
 the fifth century we have mention of a Contradictio 
 Salo-monis, but the contradictor is not named ; in the 
 tenth, the more widely spread Markolf comes to the 
 surface; but we still have two fragmentary Anglo- 
 Saxon dialogues written in the ninth, which repre- 
 sent Solomon in dispute with Saturn. Here, at any 
 rate, there can be no question about the personality of 
 the heathen god, and it need not surprise us that the 
 appearance of the Syrian deity in the West should 
 be ambiguous, now with his name translated into a 
 classical form, now with his person rendered by a 
 classical proxy. And that Saturn is after all no other 
 than Ashmedai is also apparent. In the poem he calls 
 himself Earl of the Chaldeans, but the country he 
 describes, to which no flesh may come, is not Chaldea, 
 but a magic realm. He is sprung of dreadful race that 
 has fought against God. And in the one poem, the 
 cosmological argument is a modification of Solomon's 
 cosmological instruction by Ashmedai ; while the other, 
 as frequently happens in the Eastern apocrypha of 
 Solomon, treats of the subjugation of demons. 
 
 In the older fragment Saturnus, who enumerates 
 all the countries through which he has wandered, 
 engages Solomon in a conversation on such subjects 
 as death, fate, the fall of the angels, and the conflict 
 of the good and evil genii of men. In the later
 
 108 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 dialogue, Saturn, after studying the books of all 
 Islands, the history of India, the science of Lybia and 
 Greece, comes to Solomon for an explanation of the 
 Paternoster. Solomon solves his difficulties in a 
 mystical and cabalistic exposition, which fills Saturn 
 with admiration and delight, but which, to a modern 
 reader, is a good deal more puzzling than the original 
 subject of discussion. Thus, for example, he separates 
 and personifies the letters that make up the Pater- 
 noster, with them, as with a charm of Runes, to subdue 
 the powers of darkness. 
 
 The eccentric description of Saturn, as Earl of the 
 Chaldeans, need not detain us. His subjects have been 
 selected for him on account of the fame and antiquity 
 of their speculations ; and his brevet of rank is no 
 more extraordinary than that of Duke Eneas, or Darne 
 Venus, or Jupiter the Great Enchanter, as they appeal- 
 three hundred years later, in the romances of chivalry. 
 It is a more abrupt transformation that makes of 
 Solomon a Christian expositor, whose inspired insight 
 renders him wise beyond the stores of unregenerate 
 culture, and who vanquishes the demons by the might 
 of Christian prayer. Yet there still remains the 
 essential idea of the legend, the contrast between the 
 sacred and the unhallowed, the higher and the lower 
 wisdom ; only change of time and clime has brought 
 consecration to the tenets of a new creed.
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 109 
 
 Another change, far less obvious, contained in it 
 germs of more important consequences. In occasional 
 details, e.g. in the description of the demons, who 
 here and there approximate to our English elves, 
 the Oriental ideas of the poem take a certain local 
 colouring from the Teutonic West. When this pro- 
 cess once began, it was bound to go on. Indeed, 
 the mere form of the story made it peculiarly sus- 
 ceptible to such influences. The dialogue, with its 
 sharp interchange of question and answer, of thesis 
 and antithesis, of problem and counter-problem, was 
 a favourite form for poems of moral and religious 
 content among the Teutonic tribes, and goes back 
 to heathen times. Perhaps its classical example is 
 the " Vafthrudnismal " of the verse " Edda," in which 
 Odin seeks out the giant Vafthrudnir, and agreeing 
 that the vanquished shall pay forfeit with his life, 
 they try to pose each other with hard questions on 
 the fates of heaven and earth. Despite a partial 
 similarity of tone, it would be wrong to think that 
 this poem had any connection with the story of 
 Solomon and Saturn, which, as we have seen, is of 
 undoubtedly Jewish origin. But the latter may have 
 gravitated towards a native myth, a process which 
 the dialogue form and the attitude of the speakers 
 would render easy, and which would account for the 
 Teutonic leaven in some parts of the discussion. At
 
 110 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 any rate, in the next version we have to consider, the 
 Teutonic element has displaced the rabbinical. The 
 Anglo-Saxon " Salomon and Saturnus" is still Oriental, 
 with a flavour of English ideas. There may be 
 Eastern traits in the German " Salomon and Markolf," 
 but in the main it is a product of Germany. 
 
 For we must now skip over more than three 
 hundred years, and cross to the Continent. The 
 changes the poem has undergone in the interval are 
 so great that it can scarcely be recognized. Of course 
 the continuity is not broken. Through all the ac- 
 cumulations and debris, the main lines of the legend 
 may still be traced. But the action of the Teutonic 
 element is now undisguised, and the mysticism of 
 the poem has been rejected for broad popular humour. 
 
 This change seems to have begun in Flanders to- 
 wards the close of the twelfth century, and one reason 
 for it may have been that the name Marcolis, in its 
 corrupted form Markolf, was dangerously German in 
 sound, and no longer suggested any very mysterious 
 or superhuman personality, but rather the slow, sly 
 peasant, who was everywhere around. But if Solomon 
 were confronted with an antagonist of rustic name, 
 the contrast between the higher and lower wisdom 
 would cease to be between the sacred and the pro- 
 fane, and could only come to mean a contrast be- 
 tween theory and practice, between learning and
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. Ill 
 
 shrewd mother wit. We have a saying that star- 
 gazers are apt to break their shins. Solomon's 
 mind is here of the star-gazing order, so he may 
 still be taken to represent the nobler wisdom in 
 opposition to the baser-souled Markolf, who is fully 
 alive to the advantages of keeping his shins whole. 
 This character he everywhere preserves. The French 
 versions of the dialogue, e.g. " Les Dictz de Salomon 
 avecque les Responses de Marcon" (1530), soon take 
 an original direction by transgressing all limits of 
 decency, but do not essentially change the cynical 
 cunning of Markolf's character. And in the English 
 collection that belongs to the end of the thirteenth 
 century, known as the " Proverbs of Hendyng," the 
 speaker, who is worldly wisdom incarnate, calls him- 
 self " Marcolves Sone." But the classical example of 
 the opposition between Solomon and Markolf is the 
 German dialogue of the fifteenth century, with the 
 Latin dialogues on which it was based, and which 
 in their turn probably render a lost Low German 
 original. 
 
 The German version contains three divisions. In 
 the first, which introduces Markolf as a slovenly and 
 deformed boor before the magnificent king, the an- 
 tagonism is worked out with considerable humour, 
 and in great detail. Solomon, with frequent use of 
 scriptural phrase, makes some highflown declara-
 
 112 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 tion about himself, or virtue, or woman, which 
 Markolf contradicts or parodies or caps with some 
 shrewd homely proverb. Thus the king begins by 
 announcing, " God has given me wisdom more than 
 all men." "Praise yourself if you have ill neigh- 
 bours," answers Markolf. When Solomon goes on to 
 boast that he is the chosen monarch of Israel, Markolf, 
 nothing daunted, rejoins, " In the land of the blind of 
 course the one-eyed is king." Solomon quotes, "To 
 him that hath shall be given;" Markolf infers, "There- 
 fore let us pluck and rob the poor to enrich the man 
 of means." And so on, through a series of statements 
 and contradictions, Markolf lavishing special contempt 
 on Solomon's gallant praise of women. In the end he 
 is dismissed with gifts. 
 
 In the second part, the opposition between Solomon's 
 theorems and Markolf's knavery is even more drasti- 
 cally exhibited, but now rather in narrative than in 
 dialogue. Solomon, when hunting, finds Markolf in 
 his hut, is greeted with riddling answers to the 
 questions he puts, and summons the peasant to 
 court. But Markolf misconducts himself so impu- 
 dently that the king condemns him to death, unless 
 he can watch with him the whole night through 
 without giving way to sleep. Markolf, however, 
 continually falls overhand always excuses himself with 
 the plea that he has been meditating. The king tells
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 113 
 
 him that if he will escape execution he must prove 
 the results of his meditations, among others that a 
 woman cannot keep a secret, and that nature is 
 stronger than habit, the next day. 
 
 Now, to his sister Markolf confides, under the 
 solemnest pledges of silence, that he is plotting to 
 kill the king. He then goes off to Solomon and 
 brings a charge against this sister's good fame. Of 
 course she is indignant, and retaliates by disclosing 
 his treason; and the sham conspirator has proved 
 his first point. Again, Solomon has a favourite cat, 
 which he has trained to his will, and which every 
 night at supper sits on the table supporting his silver 
 candlestick. But Markolf brings in three mice in his 
 sleeve. He lets the first escape : the cat sits steady. 
 The second runs across the table : the candlestick 
 sways to and fro, but the cat, admonished by 
 Solomon, manages to control herself. Then Markolf 
 despatches his last mouse. This is too much for the 
 virtue of the cat ; nature triumphs over habit ; off 
 she goes, dragging in her wake a chaos of goblets, 
 candles, and plates. 
 
 Solomon, cheated of his revenge, but still indignant, 
 now forbids Markolf the court, and threatens that if 
 he ventures to return he will set the dogs on him. 
 Markolf is not disconcerted, and when the dogs are 
 about to tear him in pieces, lets a hare slip from his 
 
 I
 
 114 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 pocket, which immediately diverts the attention of 
 the kennel from himself. In the presence-chamber 
 he makes himself offensive by spitting, and is told (a 
 curious hint as to the manners of the age) to spit on 
 a bare place, whereupon he selects the bald pate of 
 an old courtier. He is present at the judgment of 
 Solomon, which he makes light of; and when Solomon 
 follows it with a panegyric on women, Markolf dis- 
 sents, not respectfully, and foretells a day when the 
 king will change his mind. This, too, he is set to 
 prove, and does it by spreading a report that Solomon 
 has ordained that every man is to have seven wives. 
 The next time his majesty shows himself abroad he is 
 greeted with a storm of abuse from every female he 
 meets. At first he tries with a soft answer to turn 
 away the wrath, but at length loses patience, and 
 renders railing for railing in a way that rejoices 
 Markolf s heart. But this trick is not to be for- 
 given, and Markolf is forbidden to show his face to 
 the king again on pain of certain death; and when 
 he breaks the spirit of this command while observing 
 the letter, Solomon is inexorable Markolf must die ; 
 only, when the guards lead him off to be hanged, as 
 a last favour he may choose his own tree. After a 
 while the culprit returns and complains that he can't 
 find a tree to his mind. Solomon is duped, and in 
 the end has to grant him a free pardon.
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 115 
 
 There are some points here that call for notice ere 
 we proceed to a consideration of the third part, or 
 appendix. The Teutonic conquest of the Eastern 
 legend is now complete. The answers are forced 
 on Markolf at hazard of his life, like those of 
 the mythical contests. Some of the incidents are 
 common German heritage, and are found elsewhere 
 in no connection with the Solomon legend. The final 
 incident, for example, is told of James I.'s fool, Archie 
 Armstrong, though the threat of summary justice 
 shows, as Kemble says, that it arose in a more 
 primitive stage of society. 
 
 Again, the dialogue form is at last abandoned, and 
 we have instead a narrative of helpless inefficiency 
 contrasted with thorough experience of affairs; the 
 man of wiles fulfilling the behests of the royal woman- 
 worshipper, who in wisdom can now at most claim 
 to be, like his British namesake, the wisest fool in 
 Christendom. Now, in the third part this is carried 
 further and worked out in a sort of romance, in which 
 Markolf, instead of obeying Solomon in malice and 
 guile, helps him as his brother and general factotum. 
 There is, however, a fuller and independent version of 
 this story in a German poem, " Salman and Morolf," 
 to which we must first turn. 
 
 It exists in texts of the fifteenth century, but 
 evidence internal and external assigns it a much
 
 116 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 earlier date. It belongs to the large class of glee- 
 men's poems which were most in vogue at the 
 end of the twelfth century, and originated, perhaps, 
 in the crusaders' camps for the delectation of rank 
 and file. All these poems have a striking family 
 likeness in form and matter. They show equal fond- 
 ness for jest and earnest, equal respect for cunning 
 and valour, and they love to introduce some chief 
 actor under the person of a gleeman. They all deal 
 with an expedition to the East for an Eastern bride. 
 Above all, they delight in the repetition and multipli- 
 cation, with only slight variations, of the main story 
 as well as of subordinate episodes. 
 
 It used to be thought that the present poem was a 
 further development of the dialogue, occasioned by the 
 transference of its personages to the legend of an 
 old Frankish king, whose name, Salman, might give 
 opportunity for the confusion. This is not so. It is r 
 rather, the most corrupt and far-fetched version of the 
 other branch of the Solomon tradition, the story of 
 his fall, or his overthrow by Ashmedai ; and its final 
 corruptions are due partly to the gleemen's habit of 
 variation, partly to the absorption of independent 
 tales, partly to that view of the chief characters 
 which the comic debate had introduced. But the 
 essential origin of the poem in the Oriental myths 
 will appear if we examine its contents and, with the
 
 SOLOMON IN EUKOPE. 117 
 
 help of earlier versions, gradually reject the inter- 
 polated elements. 
 
 Its substance is as follows. Salman, head of 
 Christendom, and king of Jerusalem, carries away 
 by force Salme, the heathen princess of India, bap- 
 tizes, and weds her. Meanwhile, the great heathen 
 King Fore (Pharaoh) consults with his lords where 
 he can find a fitting match, and is advised to seize 
 Salme for himself. He agrees, and comes against 
 Jerusalem with a huge host. But Salman and his 
 brother, the wily Morolf, beat the heathen with a 
 smaller force, and take Fore captive. Morolf now 
 counsels the death of the prisoner, but Salman deter- 
 mines not only to spare him, but to hand him over to 
 the custody of Salme ; despite Morolf's remonstrance, 
 "Whoso puts fire near straw, kindles himself a big- 
 flame." Morolf, nevertheless, is right. Fore presents 
 his gaoleress with a magic ring, which immediately 
 rouses in her a passion for the giver. They agree that 
 in six months a gleeman is to fetch her ; and, mean- 
 while, she helps her prisoner to escape. Morolf taxes her 
 with this, but the gallant Salman refuses to believe. 
 After half a year the gleeman comes, and gives her a 
 magic herb, on tasting which she falls to the ground 
 as though dead. Morolf suspects a trick, and pours 
 molten gold through her hand ; but when this does 
 not wake her, he is driven from court, and she is
 
 118 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITEKATUEE. 
 
 magnificently buried. When, however, the coffin is 
 found broken and empty, the distressed king turns to 
 his brother, and begs him to seek the fugitive. 
 Morolf consents, and sets out, personating a Jewish 
 beggar, in which disguise he obtains alms from 
 Salman himself. After seven years, he comes as a 
 pilgrim to Fore's capital, and recognizes Salme with- 
 out himself at first being recognized. Strangely 
 enough, however, after having found the queen's 
 whereabouts, he does not leave at once, but waits and 
 interviews her. On one such occasion, while playing 
 chess with her, he observes the burn on her hand, and 
 is now, for the first time, quite sure that this is she. 
 A song that he sings betrays him, and his death is at 
 once determined. Twice he escapes by drugging the 
 guards, the first time to be caught again, but the 
 second with more success. Returning to Jerusalem, he 
 again, as a pilgrim, escapes recognition by the king 
 (an incident which, with slight variation, is repeated 
 a third time), and at length disclosing himself, they 
 plan the recovery of Salme. They cross the sea with 
 an array of ten thousand chosen heroes ; and while these 
 are concealed in a firwood, Salman (such is Morolf's 
 scheme to prevent the escape of Fore or Salme) sets 
 out with some reluctance for Fore's castle, clad in 
 palmer's weeds, which conceal his weapons and a 
 horn. Salme, informed of his arrival by Fore's sister,
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 119 
 
 suspects who it is. Finding her surmises correct, she 
 rejects his prayers to return, and declares her pre- 
 ference for Fore, who shall himself condemn Salman 
 to the gallows. Salman, now confined to an ante- 
 room, sees through the curtain how Salme welcomes 
 her heathen husband home, and hears how she exhorts 
 him to treat his rival without ruth. It is, therefore, 
 rather needless for Fore's sister, who is always friendly 
 to him, specially to come to Salman with these tidings. 
 He is now asked by Fore, how he would act, were 
 their positions reversed. This is what the wily 
 Morolf has foreseen, and Salman replies, he would 
 keep him captive for the night and publicly hang 
 him the next morning. Fore, to Saline's delight, ex- 
 claims that this shall be Salman's own sentence, and 
 rather inconsistently commands that his captive be 
 fettered, in the very breath with which he bids the 
 sister tend him courteously. The maiden throws 
 away the fetters, and Salman tells her that his angels 
 in the forest will save him. Next morning, the 
 Christian king is again condemned to death, this time 
 in open court, and the procession sets out for the 
 wood, Fore's sister wiping the sweat from Salman's 
 brow. Arrived at the gallows, the condemned is 
 allowed, as a last favour, to blow three blasts on his 
 horn, that St. Michael may come to rescue his soul. 
 At the first blast, his army, in three divisions, hastens
 
 120 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 forward, and already at the second, is on the spot, and 
 the fight begins. The Christians are victorious ; Fore 
 is hanged on his own gallows ; Salme, against Morolf s 
 advice, forgiven and restored ; Fore's sister conveyed 
 to Jerusalem, and baptized. 
 
 But soon the queen breaks faith again; this time 
 with the heathen King Princian, who gains her love 
 with a magic ring, and carries her off. Again Morolf 
 sets out to find her, and meets with many comic ad- 
 ventures, when disguised in succession as cripple, 
 pilgrim, gleeman, butcher, and pedlar. He finds the 
 queen, and, returning at the head of an army, slays 
 Princian and regains Salme, whom he bleeds to death 
 in Jerusalem, while Salman weds Fore's sister. 
 
 Perhaps one's first thought, on reading the poem, 
 is given to the sad deterioration of Solomon. It is 
 hard to recognize in this handsome nullity, the great 
 king " who was wiser than all men." Still, there is 
 no change without its good side, and in some respects 
 he has benefited by his tour in Europe. At least he 
 has lost his taste for polygamy, and shows wonderful 
 fidelity to his wife in somewhat trying circumstances. 
 Indeed, almost the only original trait he has preserved 
 is precisely this, that he is woman-ruled. On the 
 other hand, Morolf is a decided improvement on the 
 Markolf of the dialogue. He is no longer a boor, but 
 an accomplished man of the world, still a little sly
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 121 
 
 and tricky, but valiant, practical, and quite a 
 mechanical genius. No doubt even anointed kings 
 are the victims of his horseplay. No doubt he steals 
 and assassinates without turning a hair. He is even 
 a common sharper when he plays chess with Salme, 
 and by ostentatiously displaying his ring diverts her 
 attention, and purloins two pawns and a knight. 
 But his boat would excite the envy of modern 
 engineers, for it goes equally well above water and 
 below ; his accomplishments are beyond count, and 
 his readiness of resource inexhaustible. He, indeed, 
 is an embodiment of the gleeman type. The writer 
 feels this, and spares no pains in describing the 
 qualities he and his class possessed: wit and im- 
 pudence, courage and coarseness, varied skill, and 
 unscrupulous cunning. But all the personages in the 
 poem, not Salman and Morolf alone, are well con- 
 structed and consistent; the scenes are vivid, some 
 passages even rise to beauty, and the melody of the 
 verse is always pleasing. In these respects, and in 
 general tone, this is perhaps the best extant of the 
 gleemen's poems. 
 
 But such merits cannot appear in an analysis, 
 which indeed displays only the great and obvious 
 defect of the whole. This is its " damnable iteration." 
 That repetition in which the gleemen delighted per- 
 vades the entire poem, equally as regards the main
 
 122 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITER ATUEE. 
 
 plot and the most trivial parenthesis. At the end 
 of the first part, when the business is happily wound 
 up and Salme restored, the whole embroglio begins 
 once more : again there is a magic ring to win her 
 love, again an elopement with a heathen king, again 
 the detective expedition of Morolf incognito, again 
 his return at the head of an army. And so, too, 
 with the details : Salman's disguise, Morolf s dis- 
 guises, his druggings arid escapings, his warnings and 
 the neglect of them, give us the feeling that with all 
 the progress of the story, we never stir from the 
 spot. But even the exasperated reader does not, at 
 first, guess how deeply this repetition is imbedded in 
 the stuff of the story. It contains some contra- 
 dictions, two of which I have noticed Morolf s need 
 of seven years to find out Salme's residence, despite 
 his foreknowledge that she would make off with Fore, 
 and the useless interposition of Fore's sister ; and 
 these are due to this same minstrel crotchet. For 
 there were two other popular stories somewhat like 
 that of Salme's elopement, and parts of these our 
 author incorporated in his own work without pausing 
 to see if they were exactly suitable. One of them 
 tells how a lady absconds with a heathen prisoner 
 entrusted to her care ; the husband follows for 
 revenge, is recognized, and would be executed but 
 that his son and followers come to the rescue. From
 
 SOLOMON IN EUKOPE. 123 
 
 this quarter the story of Fore's expedition and 
 captivity has crept in. Were it omitted, the wily 
 Morolf would have some excuse for his delay in 
 finding the queen, who would then have made off 
 with an unknown admirer. The other story describes 
 a similar elopement, but in it the avenging husband 
 when captured is tied to a pillar in the hall, and 
 forced to witness his wife's fondness for his rival. 
 But that rival's sister cuts his bonds, and returns 
 him his sword with which to right himself. Here 
 we have the episode of Fore's sister, and her throwing 
 away the fetters, which becomes unmeaning when 
 combined with the original denoument of the rescue 
 at the execution. 
 
 Now, it is obvious that if we eliminate such 
 reduplication and superfoetation of motives, we shall 
 restore the story to a less corrupted form. And such 
 a form it wears in the third part of " Salomon and 
 Markolf." This appendix seems to be a resume or 
 synopsis of an earlier version of the romance, but 
 either that version was faulty, or the analysis has 
 omitted some of the most important traits. In it 
 the story runs as follows : 
 
 Solomon's wife secretly loves a heathen. To pro- 
 cure her he sends two gleemen, who place in her 
 mouth a magic root, that immediately stupefies her. 
 All believe her to be dead except Marolf, and his
 
 124 STUDIES IX GERMAN LITEEATUEE. 
 
 attempt to expose her by pouring molten lead upon 
 her hand fails through the potency of the magic ; so 
 the queen is carried off. Marolf, disguised as a pedlar 
 with a number of nick-nacks, sets out to discover her, 
 and at length, before the gate of her new lord's palace, 
 identifies the runaway by her burned hand as she 
 buys of him a pair of gloves. He hastens home to 
 report, and by his advice Solomon, in palmer's weeds, 
 enters the castle of the heathen, while Marolf waits 
 with the troops to rescue the king at the sound of the 
 horn. Meanwhile the faithless wife sees through her 
 husband's disguise and delivers him to her paramour. 
 Asked what he would do were their positions reversed, 
 Solomon replies that he would hang his rival on any 
 tree he liked to choose. When this sentence is about 
 to be executed, he begs leave to blow three blasts 
 with his horn. At the third, Marolf appears on the 
 scene, the heathen is hanged, and the queen bled to 
 death. 
 
 There can be no doubt that this compact, concise, 
 prose narrative is earlier than the complicated lumber- 
 ing poem, though the latter, as we shall see, has pre- 
 served some original traits that are here omitted. 
 
 But meanwhile there is another simplification to be 
 made ere we can trace back its growth any further. 
 Morolf, Marolf, Marcolf, or Marcolis probably repre- 
 sents, it will be remembered, Solomon's antagonist
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 125 
 
 Ashmedai. Now, in these tales he appears in the 
 role of Solomon's friend and brother, but at first we 
 may be sure this would not be so ; if mentioned at all 
 it would be as foe and seducer, while Solomon would 
 have to do all the discovering and recovering of his 
 wife for himself. We cannot follow up the story to- 
 this earlier stage in Germany, but now the Russian 
 legends come to our assistance. A high authority 
 remarks that a striking feature in the folk-lore of 
 "Holy Russia" is the great abundance and com- 
 parative purity of the " Christian mythology " which 
 it contains; and under this designation he includes 
 stories from the Old and New Testaments, and legends 
 apocryphal or non-apocryphal. It is therefore what 
 we might expect, that the Solomon tradition should 
 retain in the Russian versions a maximum of its 
 Oriental character ; and the relationship of the ballad, 
 analyzed as follows, will not be dubious. 
 
 The Emperor Vasilj Okuljivic drinks with his lords, 
 and bids them suggest a bride worthy of his hand. 
 A certain Ivaska offers to procure Solomon's wife 
 Salamanija, and sails to Jerusalem in a magic ship. 
 Solomon is not at home, and his wife coming on board 
 to inspect the treasure, is drugged and carried away to 
 Vasilj, with whom she lives three years. Meanwhile 
 Solomon collects an army of winged horse-bodied men, 
 and instructs them at the first blast of his horn to
 
 126 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 saddle, at the second to mount, at the third to hasten 
 to his aid. He himself, disguised as a pilgrim, reaches 
 his wife's new home, is recognized by her, and confined 
 in a chest. On Vasilj's entrance she advises the exe- 
 cution of the captive. Solomon begs, as a last boon, 
 that he may blow three blasts of his horn, as he used 
 to do in his youth when he fed cows. At the first 
 blast, while he is on the first step of the ladder, all 
 beasts and birds approach and his men saddle their 
 steeds. On the second step he blows again, the trees 
 tremble, the sea is stirred, the horsemen mount so 
 that the earth quakes. At the third blast they arrive ; 
 Salamanija, Yasilj, and Ivaska are hanged. 
 
 Here, besides the simplification before noticed, we 
 remark that some traits which in the prose appendix 
 were lost are as distinct as in the German poem. 
 Such are the project of the abduction ; the queen's 
 relation to that event at first, under the compulsion 
 of drugs or magic, quite involuntary, but afterwards 
 enthusiastically favourable ; the separate purport of 
 three horn-blasts. We have also to notice that there 
 are supernatural traits which, in both German ver- 
 sions, have been rationalized away. Such is the 
 sympathy of earth, air, and sea with Solomon in his 
 need ; such, too, those winged centaurs whose signifi- 
 cance has, even in Russia, been so nearly lost that 
 they are bid saddle and mount. On the other hand,
 
 SOLOMON IN EUKOPE. 127 
 
 one trait which the German poem preserves, the 
 heathenism of Solomon's wife and her lover, is not 
 found here ; and while in the German the latter is 
 suggestively called Fore, or Pharaoh, the father of 
 the woman who led Solomon astray, in the Russian 
 his name has no particular importance. But in 
 another older Russian version, in Latin prose, we 
 find this want supplied. Here it is Solomon's brother 
 Cetovrasus, or Kitovras, king of men by day and 
 of beasts by night, who steals Salarnanija. Now 
 Kitovras is a regular corruption of the Greek 
 Ktvravpog, and that Solomon's weird rival should be 
 named Centaur clears up many things. In the first 
 place, we remember Solomon's sculptures, so offensive 
 to Josephus, and the mixed shapes of the Shedim, 
 some of them too with bodies of horses. Again, not 
 only is the prominence given to his horsemen true 
 to the first notices of Solomon, but the description 
 of them as winged centaurs that is, of the same race 
 from which his enemy is named suggests the Eastern 
 legend of his going to battle against one demon with 
 an army of others. This of itself would justify the 
 conjecture that Kitovras was a fourth alias for 
 Ashmedai, and in a Russian version of the old Tal- 
 mudic sto'ry of the temple building, we actually find 
 Kitovras in that demon's place. 
 
 If the robber is really Ashmedai, many difficulties
 
 128 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATUEE. 
 
 are made smooth. In the first place, we see how the 
 story can have risen from the distorted tradition of 
 Solomon's fall. Then the attitude of the wife is 
 explained, for Solomon's heathen consorts did not 
 knowingly ruin him, and yet were in the interests 
 of the > false gods, or demons. Again, the German 
 version, which humanizes throughout, has substi- 
 tuted for the superhuman rival a heathen king r 
 but it calls him Pharaoh, with a vague memory 
 that Pharaoh, through his daughter, was concerned 
 in the disaster. Solomon's pilgrim disguise recalls 
 his mendicancy, when he went about crying, " I, the 
 preacher, was king at Jerusalem." And the horn 
 that roused the inhabitants of earth, air, and sea, 
 besides summoning the demon hosts, may be a 
 Western version of that ring, of the same fourfold 
 power, with which, in like manner, he regained his 
 sovereignty. 
 
 The common story, perhaps of Byzantine author- 
 ship, which must have lain at the root of both Ger- 
 man and Russian versions, probably contained the 
 following as its chief episodes. The demon prince 
 steals away the heathen wife of Solomon. Solomon, 
 disguised as a beggar, sets out to search for her. At 
 length, after being nearly murdered by the demon 
 and his bride, he summons with his talisman his 
 natural and supernatural allies, and obtains victory
 
 SOLOMON IN EUROPE. 129 
 
 and revenge. This does not seem very unlike those 
 tales from which we set out. Indeed it merely 
 digests and combines their various elements; the 
 disastrous heathen marriage, the usurpation of the 
 evil power, Solomon's vagrancy, his expedition against 
 the djin, and final triumph. 
 
 We have seen how Solomon, great in his wisdom, 
 great in his fall, gradually sinks to an effeminate 
 carpet knight. We have seen how Ashmedai, subtlest 
 of his traditional foes, splits in two, and, in so far as 
 he is subtle, does yeoman's service against himself in 
 so far as he is hostile. All this is very strange ; and 
 in conclusion, since we have been discussing the fates 
 of Ecclesiastes, the preacher, it may be permissible, 
 if not to preach, at least to draw a moral. After 
 tracking the Solomon story through the centuries 
 and across the Continent, and seeing what shapes it 
 has assumed, we should be prepared for other dis- 
 coveries of the same kind. There are traces of 
 ancient belief and stories and customs in many 
 corners of our modern life. Tradition carries them 
 down, as birds in their flight bear with them un- 
 digested seeds, from country to country, from clime 
 to clime. This is no isolated case. We need not 
 wonder if we find traces of old heathen observances 
 in the festivals of the Church, bits of primeval myths 
 in the legends of the saints, fragments of old religion 
 
 K
 
 130 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 in lingering superstitions and nursery rhymes. Our 
 present life is joined with the past by hundreds of 
 such little unseen threads, which become visible 
 through the lenses of philology, literary history, 
 and comparative mythology. The present develop- 
 ment is one of the most amusing and convenient 
 as an illustration. But it is not important in it- 
 self, and it leads to no important results. There 
 are other stories of wider scope and with wider 
 issues that bring us face to face with great problems.
 
 THE THREE 
 CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE. 
 
 [The authorities in this subject arc too numerous to be mentioned, 
 yet many romances remain unedited, and few critical questions are 
 as yet finally decided. We are still waiting for some one to do for 
 the Arthurian and Carlovingian legends what Weissmann did for 
 those of Alexander, even with imperfect materials, in his "Alex- 
 anderlied." 
 
 IN mediaeval times we have an international language 
 descended from classical Latin, with an international 
 religion supplied by the Western Church ; and, from 
 the middle of the eleventh century, we have some 
 approach to an international literature radiating out 
 from France. 
 
 This, its point of departure, is interesting and sig- 
 nificant. The raw materials are contributed by 
 German and by Celtic tribes, by the new and by the 
 antique world ; but they obtain completion and 
 currency only when transfused in the crucible of 
 Romance thought. Their recognition is quite local 
 till they receive the stamp of the French spirit ; there-
 
 132 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 after they pass at once into European circulation. 
 Something of the same kind has happened more than 
 once since then. Again and again, and in every 
 sphere, has France been the instructor and lawgiver of 
 the West : but not last century, when its " illuminated " 
 led the fashions in philosophy, not a hundred years 
 earlier, when its dramatists invaded every stage, had 
 its literature so universal a sway as at the zenith of 
 the Middle Ages. For then it penetrated into every 
 neighbouring land, and was adopted by every neigh- 
 bouring people ; and though modified by the genius 
 and language of each individual nation, kept the dis- 
 tinctive marks of its origin to the last, and remained 
 emphatically a Romance literature. 
 
 And this designation is important on another 
 account. It is not unparalleled to have an inter- 
 national scientific literature, and, in so far as this 
 genus existed at all in the Middle Ages, it belonged 
 to all Western Europe. But these times possessed as. 
 well, and this is what seems strange, a common stock 
 of imaginative work, of poetry and fiction, which, in 
 its great narrative type, always elaborated on the lines 
 laid down in France, was rightly called the Romance. 
 This, of course, was only possible when the literary 
 classes of all Europe were impelled by a common 
 spirit towards a common ideal, when this ideal was 
 more clearly realized in France than elsewhere, and
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE. 133 
 
 when certain stories were found to express it in special 
 perfection. 
 
 Now, the ideals of those days were almost all 
 summed up in what we style chivalry. It would be 
 wrong to call all the romances chivalrous, for, as we 
 shall see, only the latest group fully answers this 
 description. But at least they are all of chivalrous 
 tendency, and aim at embodying its conceptions. And 
 those conceptions were essentially ideals. It has once 
 and again been shown that there never was an actual 
 age of chivalry, and that when in the fourteenth 
 century people tried, as they thought, to restore it, 
 they were attempting to import into practical life 
 what was in truth a minstrel's dream. Nevertheless, 
 since it was a dream that flitted before the eyes of 
 many generations, it was in its way a very substan- 
 tial reality. There never was a time when the feudal 
 knights were exactly knights errant, but there was a 
 time when the best of them wished they might be 
 such ; and that time was nearly dead when the third 
 Edward became patron of its semblances and outward 
 trappings in his Orders of the Garter and Feasts of 
 the Round Table. 
 
 The real meaning of chivalry was something 
 deeper. It had arisen as a compromise between the 
 ascetic theology of the mediaeval Church and the 
 unsanctified life of the world, which that Church con-
 
 134 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 demned as wholly bad. It is sometimes described as^ 
 the projected shadow of feudalism, and so it is, but 
 only because in the upper feudal ranks there was most 
 need felt of a modus vivendi between practice and 
 belief. The masses of the people are never much 
 swayed by airy doctrines. The exigencies of their 
 position keep them near a course of life that may be 
 rude but is not unnatural. In the present case, with a 
 certain varnish of Christian theology, and some real 
 education by the spirit of the Christian faith, on the 
 main they acted on traditions of conduct, the heritage 
 of the race from heathen times. But this stubborn 
 placidity was not within the reach of the upper 
 classes. They had the same heritage, but could not 
 have the same rest in it. They were taught to con- 
 sider the religious life the highest, yet what could be 
 more opposed to their ancestral habits and lawless 
 passions than the three monastic vows of poverty, 
 chastity, and obedience ? To poverty they preferred 
 plunder, like their fathers who ravaged Britain and 
 the Empire. Their traffic in female slaves shows 
 their rude disregard for the second vow. As for 
 obedience, that must have existed within the narrowest 
 limits, when each little mark was jealous of its inde- 
 pendence, or when a great exodus from Norway fol- 
 lowed its union under one king, or when every petty 
 lord strove to be a petty sovereign. The literature of
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE. 135 
 
 the unsubdued Teutons illustrates these traits. Our 
 own Beowulf and the German Hildebrandslied show 
 their greed for gain and fierce self-assertion, and the 
 older story of Brunhilde's wooing lets us take the 
 measure of their delicacy. 
 
 No doubt this society, even in its wildest phase, 
 contained the germs of a higher life. Roman ob- 
 servers remarked among those barbarians profound 
 feeling for the sanctity of wedded and family life, and 
 unshrinking loyalty among the pledged companions of 
 a prince ; nor was wealth coveted at the expense of 
 feelings like these. And when the popular mind was 
 enlightened and elevated, however gradually, by the 
 new faith, its nobler principles received new stimulus, 
 and shone forth in poems, which grew up scarce 
 brushed by a dogma of the school, but not therefore 
 quite destitute of Christian sentiment. Thus, in the 
 popular story of " Havelok," the loyalty of Grim, the 
 honest fisherman, is contrasted with the treason of the 
 usurping Godard; in the " Kutrun," the heroine's chaste 
 constancy in love receives a foil from the fickleness of 
 the duchess ; in the " Niebelungen," Siegfried wins by 
 valour and virtue the treasure which Hagen filches 
 with force and fraud. All these poems are more modern, 
 though more rude in feeling, than the international 
 romances, but for that very reason are less represen- 
 tatively mediaeval. Characteristically they achieved
 
 136 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATUEE. 
 
 only a local success, and not till our own day have 
 they begun to enjoy an European reputation. The 
 truth is, the healthy ethics of lay life which they ex- 
 pressed, lacked all basis in and reference to the received 
 theological standards. They could obtain the sanc- 
 tion of religion only if they were baptized into it, and 
 modified hi the direction of its code : since they lack 
 such sanction, they fail to express the spirit of the age ; 
 but had they obtained it, they would have ceased to 
 be what they are, and would have lost much of their 
 vigorous truth. But the adaptation of lay ethics to 
 clerical ethics is the problem of the higher ranks, and 
 its solution is chivalry. 
 
 The transition is marked above all by this 
 picturesque trait, that the hero becomes a knight. 
 This short statement implies a very important change, 
 which is symbolized in the complicated ceremonies of 
 knightly investiture, very different from the few 
 simple rites that used to accompany the Teutonic 
 youth's assumption of arms. The young candidate 
 spends the time with priests, and receives the sacra- 
 ment ; he is led to the bath and endued with a white 
 robe, to signify his change of life ; his sword is blessed 
 and his vows are taken. Thus the knight, if belonging 
 to lay life, partakes in the character of a monk, as 
 mediaeval writers clearly saw and frequently explained. 
 His admission to the order is a religious service, and
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIEVAL ROMANCE. 137 
 
 brings with it duties which, though differing from 
 those inculcated by the three monastic vows, are 
 analogous, and almost as fanciful. Thus, if he be not 
 pledged to poverty, and is allowed his share in the 
 world's goods, it is on the understanding that he may 
 be called at any moment to surrender them. He is 
 required to swear that he will always be ready to fight 
 for the Church against the infidel ; at mass, when the 
 gospel is read, he must point his sword to the book 
 to show that he is its sworn soldier ; and especially he 
 must give up all for the defence or recovery of the 
 Holy City. Lands and goods must be left when the 
 Church has a crusade on foot, kingdoms abandoned 
 in quest of dreams. Again, it would have been im- 
 possible to exact complete obedience from men of 
 such strong self-consciousness as the feudal knights, 
 but neither are they left to their isolated and un- 
 controlled self-will. The principle of honour is intro- 
 duced, which appeals to the individual's desire for 
 preeminence and mastery, but which gratifies it only 
 if he submit to a certain code of conditions. His 
 valour must be carried to an extravagant pitch he 
 must seek out adventures, and face the greatest odds ; 
 he must refuse advantages, and show mercy to the 
 suppliant and courtesy to all; his quarrel must be 
 just, and he must succour the poor and distressed. 
 Far removed is the knight from the old heathen, who
 
 138 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 fought and fled, waylaid and slew, precisely as it 
 pleased himself. And in the third place, while only 
 some of the knightly orders were pledged to celibacy, 
 all knights were bound to uphold the honour of 
 women; and gradually without oath they submitted 
 themselves to that strange kind of gallantry known 
 as the Service of Love, which at this distance of time 
 strikes one as the most obvious feature of the chivalrous 
 character. This fantastic fashion, in which the love 
 par amour usurped the place of marriage, at once 
 gave scope for the devotion of the knight, and suited 
 a society in which marriage was regarded as at best 
 a necessary evil. 
 
 If the attempt to harmonize the demands of lay 
 Teutonic life and Latin ecclesiastical theory origi- 
 nated these ideas, it is easy to see why they were 
 specially developed in a nation to which Teutonic and 
 Latinized races have given its mingled blood. In 
 France we find the prerogative phases of medievalism 
 the feudal, the scholastic, and, among others, the 
 chivalrous ; and there the first, the most persevering, 
 and the most successful attempts were made to express 
 the last in successive cycles of romance. Three such 
 groups, French in fabrication, but European in circu- 
 lation and development, progressively advance in 
 expressing the life of chivalry the romances of 
 Charlemagne, of Alexander, and of Arthur. If we
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE. 139 
 
 remember that chivalry sprang from the union of 
 mediaeval religion and secular morality, we may thus 
 describe their relations. In the lays of Charlemagne 
 the ecclesiastical predominates, in the lays of Alex- 
 ander the secular; only in the Arthurian stories do 
 both sides, as it were, come to their rights. 
 
 The earliest poems of the earliest cycle, the epics of 
 the great German emperor, give the knightly ideal 
 on its monastic side. From the first, Charlemagne 
 is emphatically the hero of the Church. His historical 
 career, indeed, made this almost necessary. He owed 
 a great part of his success to his championship of the 
 Catholic faith, against Arian heretics on the one hand, 
 against heathens and Mohammedans on the other. 
 In the old poems he is notably a religious personage, 
 a soldier of the cross, a crusader in the best sense of 
 the words. Nowadays we are apt to look for the 
 Charlemagne of poetry in such love romances as 
 "Amis and Amiles," or even "Huon of Bordeaux." 
 But these are of a later growth. In them he is 
 no longer the chief person ; when introduced at 
 all, he figures as a wilful tyrant. Such tales arose 
 when chivalry was finding other channels of expres- 
 sion; they took his great name as a sort of centre, 
 but he himself no longer suited their wants ; and 
 he was thrown into the background or criticised. 
 But in the early romances he is the proper hero,
 
 140 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 and, whenever hero at all, he is an ecclesiastical 
 one. 
 
 Of all his wars none was so famous in song as his 
 expedition into Spain. By request of the citizens 
 of Saragossa, he marched thither against the Arabs, 
 and was winning his usual victories, when a new 
 eruption of Saxons compelled his return to the North. 
 On his passage through the Pyrenees, the marauding 
 Gascons surprised and destroyed his rear-guard, only 
 one of whom escaped. This massacre took place on 
 the loth of August, 778 it is not often we can 
 give so precise a date for an event so mythical, and 
 in one version Einhard, Charlemagne's biographer, 
 commemorates among the slain, " Ruodlandus limitis 
 Brittanici prefectus." This is the first mention of 
 the famous Roland, and as yet there is nothing very 
 remarkable about him ; he has no magic horn, he is, 
 not nephew to the emperor, he is not so much as 
 commander of the force. But the bald narrative soon 
 becomes legend, the theme of poems, the delight of 
 warriors. Already, on the battle-field of Hastings, 
 Taillefer sang a song of Roland ; and probably before 
 then the story had undergone a change, in conformity 
 with the ecclesiastical character of the cycle, which 
 made it more specifically Christian, and increased its 
 artistic unity. This was the substitution of un- 
 believing Saracens for the Gascon robbers who sur-
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE. 141 
 
 prised the Franks. Thus Charlemagne was shown at 
 war with the infidel, Eoland and his comrades became 
 martyrs of the faith. 
 
 This is the case in the " Chanson de Roland," which 
 is the oldest extant epic in the series, and cannot 
 be dated later than the end of the eleventh century. 
 It comes to us from the obscure dawn of the Middle 
 Ages, its sources are unknown, its authorship uncer- 
 tain ; but despite all inequalities and repetitions, in 
 its existing form it bears the impress of one man's 
 mind. It is written in tirades, or stanzas of varying 
 length, composed of twelve-syllable or ten-syllable 
 lines, bound together by assonance, or a common 
 vowel rhyme in the last syllable; and this metre, 
 though not very polished, is perhaps, by its freedom 
 and continuity, better suited to a narrative poem 
 than rhymed couplets of any description. To the 
 verse the matter of the lay corresponds in its unfil- 
 tered unity and strength. 
 
 For seven years Charlemagne has been busied 
 with the subjugation and conversion of Spain, and all 
 the kingdom has yielded to his will, save Saragossa, 
 where King Marsile still holds out. And even Marsile 
 is sorely pressed, and in his extremity sends an 
 embassy to Charles with offers of submission to 
 be thrown off when the time comes. Roland and 
 others mistrust the proposals but are overruled, and
 
 142 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 now it is debated which of them shall bear the 
 conditions to the Saracen king. First Roland offers 
 himself, but the emperor thinks him too fiery and 
 incautious: then he suggests Ganelon, who, to his 
 great wrath, is accepted, and who henceforth sus- 
 pects Roland's motives and determines his death. 
 At first doughty and faithful, after a while he falls 
 in with Marsile's designs, and hastening the return 
 of the Christians to France, contrives that Roland 
 shall be left at Roncevaux, in command of a small 
 rear-guard. Soon the little detachment espies the 
 approach of a huge Saracen army. In vain Oliver 
 prays Roland to summon help with a blast of his 
 wondrous horn, they must fight the fight alone, in 
 their own strength and the strength of God. Arch- 
 bishop Turpin blesses and exhorts them, and they 
 quit themselves like men in the battle, yet all their 
 valour is of no avail. Host after host of the heathen 
 is annihilated, but ever new supplies pour in, and 
 the peers begin to fall At last, Roland consents 
 to blow his horn, but long ere succour can arrive 
 he lies dead beside his fellows, concealing his sword, 
 since he cannot break it, beneath his own corpse. 
 There needed not the precaution, all his enemies 
 were slain or fled. 
 
 Meanwhile Charlemagne, thirty leagues away, has 
 heard the note, and is filled with forebodings. Ganelon
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDL3EVAL ROMANCE. 143 
 
 tries to reassure him. " Koland is hunting," he sug- 
 gests ; but the emperor only commands to bind him 
 hand and foot, and begins his countermarch into 
 Spain. Yet all his haste is vain ; he can do nothing 
 but take double vengeance, short and swift, on the 
 authors of the wrong. The heathen are wasted with 
 fire and sword, and Ganelon, worsted in the appeal 
 to Heaven, is tied to the tails of wild horses and 
 dragged, back and breast, through thorns and stones 
 and briars. 
 
 The chanson, with all its bareness, has some of the 
 best qualities of a good epic. It possesses wonderful 
 unity of purpose, for its action is united, its feeling 
 even too uniform, and in presence of its great, strong- 
 definite characters, there is no fear that our attention 
 will lose itself among the details. First and greatest 
 is the figure of the emperor in its inviolable repose, 
 " a little stiff," says W. Grimm, when discussing the 
 German version of the story, "like the earliest 
 statues, which sit but do not walk;" yet always 
 majestic with the consciousness of a Divine mission. 
 He is always still and deliberate ; when others offer 
 their counsels he sits silent ; his words, when they 
 do come, have the weight of Divine commands. 
 For he is in constant communion with God; his 
 prayers can change the course of nature ; like another 
 Joshua, he commands the sun to stay. If this
 
 144 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 character be translated from the gravity of age into 
 the impetuous ardour of youth, it is that of Roland. 
 Otherwise, uncle and nephew are much alike. 
 Roland, too, is the favourite of Heaven ; he, too, has. 
 miraculous gifts and enjoys the intercourse of angels ; 
 signs and wonders accompany his death, such as 
 happened at the crucifixion. He, like the emperor, 
 is soldier of the faith, but his championship is 
 all fire and motion. These and the remaining 
 characters have their foil in Ganelon. God is not 
 in all his thoughts : he is not imbued with the 
 Divine enthusiasm of his comrades, he gives room 
 to personal interests, he has leisure to be suspicious. 
 And though interests and suspicions are not un- 
 natural, this does not save him from ruin. There 
 is no middle place for these men between the 
 highest and the lowest. Ganelon suspects, betrays,, 
 and dies a traitor's death. 
 
 We have here, then, bold impressive types, but do 
 they conform to the ideas of chivalry ? This question 
 must be answered chiefly in the negative. They 
 are not knights, but mere soldiers of the Church, 
 mere fighting monks. They are strong, absolutely 
 fearless, they slay their thousands. But they da 
 not joust for the pleasure of it, they do not crave 
 adventures for the honour to be gained, they want 
 the splendid courtesy of the chevalier ; and, above
 
 THE THKEE CYCLES OF MEDIEVAL KOMANCE. 145 
 
 .all, they have no sense for the service of ladies. 
 Only two women catch our eye in the whole poeni ; 
 the heathen queen who welcomes the Christian faith, 
 and Aude, the betrothed of Koland, who falls dead 
 without a word when she hears that he is slain. 
 But he never spares her one thought. At Roncevaux 
 Oliver urges him for her sake to blow the horn, 
 but the appeal has no effect. And at his death 
 he thinks of God and country, he blesses the 
 emperor, and bids his sword a tender farewell, but 
 the name of Aude does not cross his lips. We have 
 here to do with men like Cromwell's Ironsides. 
 When not in the fight they are on their knees; 
 they have no time for ordinary human emotions. 
 They are constant in their prayers and exhortations,, 
 and have a tendency to preach. In conscious anta- 
 gonism with the infidel, they are prophets in his 
 presence and impress him with awe. Ganelon may 
 blench before the peers, but even he compels the 
 respect of the Saracens. These men do not know 
 the meaning of earthly love. Only in a later age 
 does Roland the Christian warrior become Orlando 
 Innamorato, under the hands of an Italian who no 
 longer believes in his story, but mocks at it. 
 
 Here the chivalrous ideal is very far from being- 
 realized, but still we are on the way to it. With 
 soldiers it is impossible entirely to exclude the prin- 
 
 L
 
 146 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITEEATURE. 
 
 ciple of honour. Here it appears in Roland's affection 
 for his sword, in his refusal to summon aid, in the 
 rather carnal desire he and his friends disclose to pay 
 their death-stroke with interest, in his words when 
 Oliver rails at the treason of Ganelon : " Hush ! he is 
 father of my wife." Again, though love is absent 
 from the men, it is sketched with depth and pathos 
 in Roland's bride, whom no ambitious lures can 
 restrain from death. And, lastly, despite all opposi- 
 tion, the heathen are regarded with no polemical 
 hatred. They receive full credit for their valour; 
 their chief faults are rashness and presumption points 
 which it would not in those days be hard to forgive. 
 Ganelon's doom is recorded without pity ; but one of 
 the Saracens provokes the exclamation, u What a man 
 would he be were he only a Christian ! " Thus the 
 orthodox profession does not shield a man from con- 
 tempt, nor does heathenism make admiration im- 
 possible. We are here on the threshold of an ideal 
 very different from the military monasticism of the 
 chanson, and need not wonder that to the epic of 
 Charlemagne succeeds the epic of Alexander. 
 
 The hero of the antique world, the pupil of Aristotle, 
 the imitator of Achilles, the enthusiast for Homer, in 
 his own age remained to all intents and purposes 
 unsung. Though the completer of Hellenic life, no 
 great epic of Hellas celebrated his prowess. Never-
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIEVAL ROMANCE. 147 
 
 theless there, and wherever else he penetrated, tales of 
 him remained and grew. Egypt especially strove to 
 claim a share in his glory, and in Alexandria, perhaps 
 under the Ptolemies, Egyptian legends of his origin 
 ran together with others from Judea, and possibly 
 from further Asia. Nor did the Greeks forget him. 
 They seem to have invented for him, as for Phalaris, 
 epistles and rhetorical disquisitions ; and even in the 
 Western world one of these apocryphal letters, on the 
 wonders of the East, survives in an Anglo-Saxon 
 version. These and other materials were collected 
 and digested at Byzantium, not later than the end of 
 the fourth century, in a work that falsely bears the 
 name of the historian Callisthenes. They soon spread 
 to Western Europe in the Latin translations of 
 Valerius and Leo; and in the second half of the 
 eleventh century passed into a Romance vernacular in 
 the version of Auberi of Besanc.on. This has, un- 
 fortunately, been almost entirely lost ; but about the 
 year 1125 it was rendered into German, probably by 
 a priest named Lamprecht, and to him we must go for 
 the story in its earliest as well as its best romantic 
 form. The other versions in Germany, France, Eng- 
 land, and Scotland are too numerous, and, for our 
 purpose, too unimportant to mention. 
 
 Thus Alexander was seized on to embody the con- 
 ceptions of mediaeval chivalry, but in many ways he
 
 148 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 was an unsuitable subject. His character was essen- 
 tially Greek, yet here it is interpreted, not even by 
 a knight, but by a priest ; and the discrepancy of the 
 title-page is the discrepancy of the book. The verse, 
 still very unpolished, is the octosyllabic couplet usually 
 employed in the later romances of chivalry, which, 
 despite its " fatal fluency," is rather apt to break up 
 the flow of a narrative. And in accordance with this, 
 the poem is merely a chronological life of Alexander 
 a disjointed series of episodes held together by the 
 strong personality of the hero. It contains three 
 parts, each with its distinct class of adventures. The 
 first of them is historical, or at least is based on history. 
 It rejects the story, which appears in other versions, 
 of Alexander's generation through the magic wiles of 
 Nectanabus, but mentions the prophetic portents 
 of greatness that accompanied his birth. Then it 
 describes his early exploits and, in greater detail, his 
 refusal of tribute to Persia and his ensuing invasion 
 of Asia. He routs the generals of Darius ; Tyre falls 
 before him ; he avenges his adversary's gift of a play- 
 ball, as, in later tales, Henry V. requites a similar 
 insult from the Dauphin. Soon Darius is over- 
 thrown, his kingdom shattered, his wife and daughter 
 made captive. Yet still he defies Alexander in his 
 despair, till, defeated anew, his spirit is broken, 
 and he dies by treason ere his ally, Porus of India,
 
 THE THEEE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL EOMANCE. 149 
 
 can arrive. With the defeat of this new comer in 
 single combat, and the expedition to Scythia, this 
 section concludes. 
 
 The second part is quite legendary. Alexander 
 marches to the end of the world, where nought 
 remains but the abyss, and where the heaven revolves 
 like a wheel round its axle. There he is seized with 
 a longing for his home, and writes to his mother, 
 Olympias, and his teacher, Aristotle, an account of his 
 adventures on the road. His letter tells of giant men 
 and fabulous beasts, of magic waters and wonderful 
 woods, of his visits to the voluptuous Candace and to 
 the warlike Amazons. 
 
 The third part is allegorical. Victorious to the 
 nds of the earth, he is still unsatisfied, and marches 
 against Paradise to take tribute of the angels. He 
 perseveres through many mishaps till he reaches his 
 goal, but fails to gain admission. At length an old 
 man opens the door, teaches him that only meekness 
 finds entry there, and dismisses him with a magic 
 stone. He vainly seeks to learn its secret from his 
 wise men, till an ancient Jew shows him how its 
 little bulk outweighs any load of gold, but a handful 
 of dust and a tuft of down turn the scale. " Such, 1 ' 
 declares the sage, "is the human eye: the wealth cf 
 the world cannot appease it, but add a sprinkling 
 of ashes, and it is not worth a feather." Alexander
 
 150 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 lays the warning to heart. He becomes humble and 
 devout; and when he dies, and of all his conquests 
 retains nothing more than the meanest hind, then his 
 sins are forgiven him. 
 
 A poem of this kind with so rambling a plot 
 depends for interest on the vividness of its episodes 
 and the truth of its central character. In both respects 
 the Alexanderlied stands high. All the scenes are 
 graphic and strong. In battle the two armies face 
 each other and roar like the sea ; they leap together 
 like wild swine ; no helmet holds out, the green fields 
 grow red, the furrows are manured with corpses. So 
 at news of the defeat the sister bewails her brother, 
 the mother her son ; the infants weep in their cradles ; 
 the boys leave their playing in the streets. But the 
 best-known and by far the finest passage in the 
 poem is the unique adventure of the fairy forest. 
 Alexander writes home : 
 
 "After a while we saw standing there a noble 
 wood of manifold marvels. As we went by, we heard 
 from within many clear voices, and the noise of the 
 lyre and harp, and the sweetest song that ever was 
 found of men. Right gladsome was the shadow of the 
 trees : there sprang flowers and grass and divers herbs ; 
 I ween never wood was so adorned. It was long and 
 broad, as I tell you, and lay in a fair meadow. From 
 out of it ran many streams, clear and very cool. I and
 
 THE THEEE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE. 151 
 
 my swift heroes had there wondrous pleasance ; I will 
 conceal no whit but diligently tell you all. 
 
 " The trees were high, the branches thick and broad, 
 never might the sun shine through.- We left our 
 steeds and went to the wood, the time seemed long till 
 we reached it. And there we saw wonders. Troops 
 of fair maidens were playing on the green clover, a 
 hundred thousand and more. They sprang and played 
 and sang so sweetly that we all, small and great, for 
 the sweet clamour of the wood, forgot our pain of 
 heart and our great labours, and all trouble and all 
 the anguish we ever had known. Methought I had 
 never been sick, and was whole from all sorrow, and 
 would fear death no more. 
 
 " Would you understand the nature of these women 
 you will greatly marvel. Soon as winter passed and 
 the summer came and the leaves grew green, many 
 fair and stately flowers sprang up in the wood. They 
 glistened as the light, and shone far off in their white 
 and red. They were round like a ball, fast shut and 
 wondrous large. When they opened from above, mark 
 this well, perfect maidens lay therein, I tell you what 
 I saw. They lived and walked and had the senses of 
 men ; they spoke and asked questions as were their 
 age about twelve years. They were shapely in their 
 bodies, never saw I women of fairer aspect nor eyes 
 so well placed. Hand and arm was white as ermine,
 
 152 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITEKATUEE. 
 
 with leg and foot. They were well nurtured and 
 merry, and laughed and sung with voices sweeter than 
 human. 
 
 l ' And, would you trust me ; these women had their 
 health in the shade ; if the sun shone on them they 
 died. The wood echoed with sweet noise, for birds 
 and maidens sang therein ; how might it be blyther 
 early or late ? Their raiment grew on their body, and 
 was red like the flowers and white as snow. We 
 pitched our tents in the wood, I and my men, and lay 
 amid the music, and were glad for our strange brides. 
 We loved them and abode there, and had never such 
 joy since we were born. Alas, that we so soon must 
 lose our great joyance ! Three months and twelve 
 days I and my heroes dwelt in the green wood and 
 its pleasant glades by the fair women, and lived in 
 ease and delights. Then came ill worse than I can 
 mourn. When the time was full, our joy fled; the 
 flowers rotted and the fair women died ; the trees left 
 their greening, and the brooks their running, and the 
 birds their singing. Then my heart was stricken with 
 grief for the plight of the fair women. Oh, but it was 
 woeful each day to see them die, and the flowers 
 wither ! Then I parted thence in sorrow, I and all my 
 men." 
 
 Alexander's personality is brought before us with 
 no less vividness. His hair is red and shaggy, his one
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE. 153 
 
 eye blue, his other black. In his earliest weeks, if 
 roused, he is like a wolf standing over its prey. When 
 a man, he mows down an army like grass, and fights 
 like an angry bear baited by dogs : " what thing it can 
 reach with its claws, on that it wreaks its rage." But 
 brute valour is not his only or his chief excellence. 
 He is truthful and high-souled, and studies the law of 
 the land that he may deal justly. Darius is thankless 
 for his courtesy to the captive queen, and this is Alex- 
 ander's reply : " What kindness I have shown thy 
 wife, that she owes to my mother, for whose sake I 
 gladly serve all women, not for thine : thy talk of 
 rewards is idle." This is just the man who at the 
 world's end turns home-sick, and writes to mother and 
 teacher. His self-respect and genial wisdom appear in 
 another incident. Pleased with the frugal simplicity 
 of the Scythian shepherds, he bids them ask a boon. 
 The only thing they want is immortality. " How can 
 I give you that," he asks, "when I myself am 
 mortal ? " The petitioner retorts, " Then why turn 
 the world upside down, when soon you must die and 
 leave it all ? " " God has shaped men variously," 
 answers Alexander: "while I live, I must still be 
 doing something. What were the good of life, if all 
 thought like you ? " 
 
 The question remains whether this vigorous charac- 
 ter corresponds to the chivalrous conceptions, and the
 
 154 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 answer cannot be wholly in the affirmative. On the 
 one hand, it is too healthy and human, on the other, 
 too little religious, for a knight of the Middle Ages. 
 During the whole poem the ecclesiastical side is 
 neglected ; then, at the last, it is recognized and all 
 that precedes is condemned. The old Jew admonishes 
 Alexander that his mind is greedy as the gulf of hell, 
 and Alexander owns it and repents. 
 
 Nevertheless, we are in the Gentiles' court of the 
 romance of chivalry. Alexander is rather ambitious, 
 than adventurous, yet he has a store of adventures in 
 love and war. He respects women for the sake of his 
 mother, not of the Virgin ; and there is, perhaps, a 
 want of etiquette in his treatment of the forest 
 maidens en masse, without specializing their names, 
 their lovers, and their several fates ; yet courtesy to 
 women is one of his chief traits. The march on 
 paradise he undertakes in no spirit of devotion, but 
 none the less it procures him heavenly lore, and is 
 not altogether unlike the great mystical quest of 
 chivalry. These points only needed further elabora- 
 tion to give mediaeval knighthood what it required. 
 And they are more fully worked out in some other of 
 the antique romances, but in general merit these 
 remain far behind the lay of Alexander. 
 
 Chivalry, therefore, whether seeking its ideal in 
 German or in classic story, had failed to express itself
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE. 155 
 
 in its purity. In each case the hero had a character 
 too obstinately historical to be merely chivalrous, 
 neither more nor less. But a warrior at length 
 became known whose name and deeds belonged by 
 invention or tradition to obscure and sequestered 
 tribes, and whose figure was vague and formless as 
 the mists on their own hills. This hero was the 
 British Arthur. 
 
 Two things strike us about the new competitor as 
 in curious contrast with those who preceded him. No 
 one doubts or thinks it necessary to maintain the 
 historical existence of Alexander and Charlemagne, 
 and we know the exact day of the battle which gave 
 rise to the great romance about the latter ; but who is 
 bold enough to assert or deny that the Briton was 
 once a man among men ? Again, there is little ques- 
 tion as to the general growth of the Karlovingian and 
 Alexandrine legends, but it is by no means undisputed 
 whether there were even popular Celtic traditions of 
 Arthur long before the twelfth century. Probably 
 in this the mania of Teutonic scepticism has been 
 carried too far, as in its denial of Celtic mixture in 
 modern English blood. Many characteristic traits 
 in the Arthurian romances the agency of fays, the 
 enchanted forests and lakes, perhaps the Round Table 
 itself are authenticated as genuine by classical 
 writers : some touches, like the increase of Gawain's
 
 156 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 strength till noon * and its decrease thereafter, are not 
 of the kind that mediaeval writers add : and the preva- 
 lence of Arthurian place-names on Brythonic territory 
 is hard to explain, were the legends of Arthur merely 
 a late invention. And if they contain a mythical 
 element, it is easy to see how it should be transferred 
 to some leader in the Saxon wars ; just as we see, in 
 the case of Beowulf, the historical hero absorb the 
 myth of Beowa. If something of this kind be true, 
 the Celtic stories must have been very pliant and 
 undecided, or else strongly predisposed to the chival- 
 rous ideal, for in any case they express it perfectly. 
 And this makes our task easier. Whatever their 
 remote origin may have been, it justifies us in treating 
 the Arthurian romances as the inventions of chival- 
 rous writers, and in neglecting the north-west passage 
 of Welsh antiquities for the safer overland route of 
 Latin and French authorities. 
 
 Among these, the first mention of Arthur's name 
 occurs in Nennius, whose account must not be dated 
 earlier than the ninth century. Although many are 
 more noble than he, the magnanimous Arthur is 
 twelve times chosen leader of the Britons against the 
 Saxons, and is as often conqueror. At the battle of 
 
 * This trait recurs in the description of other knights, especially of 
 him of the Red Lawns, whose connection with the sun has been 
 preserved as a "fool's allegory" even in Tennyson's idyll.
 
 THE THEEE CYCLES OF MEDIEVAL ROMANCE. 157 
 
 Gurnion, he bears the image of the Virgin on his 
 shoulder ; in one interval of quiet, he has time for a 
 pilgrimage to the Holy Land ; at Mount Badon, nine 
 hundred and forty fall by his hand, none but the Lord 
 assisting him. " In all these engagements the Britons 
 were victorious, for no strength can avail against the 
 will of the Almighty." This is the whole story ; for 
 the prophecy of Merlin, or, as Nennius calls him, 
 Ambrose, the youth reputed fatherless, refers rather to 
 the future total expulsion of the Saxon white dragon, 
 than to actual achievements of the red dragon of 
 Britain in the days of Arthur. 
 
 There is here little to distinguish the new hero in 
 character from the great Frank emperor. Both are 
 quite ecclesiastical, fighting for faith and fatherland, 
 bearing sacred armour in the sacred cause, performing 
 prodigies of valour through miraculous help. Indeed 
 one touch, the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, seems ^directly 
 borrowed from the legends that gathered round 
 Charlemagne, as Nennius' derivation of the Britons 
 from ancient Troy repeats the fictitious pedigree of 
 the Franks. 
 
 This tendency is carried still further by the next 
 writer in the series, Geoffrey of Monmouth, the patron 
 and sponsor, if not the father, of Arthurian romance. 
 In his " History of the Britons," completed in the year 
 1135, Arthur wages not only a defensive but an offen-
 
 158 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITER ATUEE. 
 
 sive religious war. He is not alone, but is surrounded 
 by worthies, like Kai and Bedver, Gawain and Pere- 
 dur, to whom Owen was soon to be added, names 
 not less famous in later story than those of the peers 
 themselves. His exploits extend from the island to 
 the mainland, he breaks the power of Rome and 
 grasps at the crown of the world. 
 
 Yet, on the whole, Geoffrey's additions are more 
 suggestive of Alexander than of Charlemagne. The 
 mighty continental empire is common to both. But 
 Nennius's hint of Arthur's disadvantage in birth 
 Geoffrey explains away with a tale of magic like that 
 of Nectanabus ; * Merlin's craft endues Uther with the 
 shape of Gorlois. Further, Merlin's prophecies are 
 pressed into service, and Arthur's greatness is not less 
 clearly foreshadowed than that of Alexander. Again, 
 Nennius has told of Arthur's superhuman prowess ; 
 but Geoffrey makes him win kingdoms, like Alex- 
 ander, in single fight. And as Alexander refuses 
 Darius's claim to tribute, and retorts it on its author, 
 so Arthur treats the Roman demand, not without 
 reference to the capture of Rome by Brennus and 
 Constantine. 
 
 But Geoffrey also contributes material that we do 
 not find in either of the earlier romances ; and all of 
 
 * It is perhaps no accident that we find this talc adopted in the 
 best English Alexandrine romance.
 
 THE THKEE CYCLES OF MEDIEVAL KOMANCE, 159 
 
 it has the genuine chivalrous stamp. Arthur engages 
 not only a champion but a giant in duel ; and looking 
 at the carcase, exclaims, " I have found none of so 
 great strength " (as though this sport were matter of 
 his daily experience) " since that Ketho who challenged 
 me to fight on Mount Aravius," and who made himself 
 furs with the beards of the kings he had killed. Arthur 
 was bound to punish this unknightly foible ; and so, 
 too, in the present case he has sought out the monster 
 at his feet to avenge an injured damsel. To encounter 
 giants, to put down ill customs, to maintain the cause 
 of women were all chivalrous traits, and in the court 
 at Caerleon, there is even some approach to the 
 usages of mediaeval gallantry. The ladies give their 
 love only to those who have approved themselves in 
 three combats. 
 
 And Arthur's final doom fits in with the story 
 of his life. Perhaps no man ever lived in less fear of 
 historians than Geoffrey, but even he may have 
 shrunk from making his British parvenu conquer 
 and keep the empire of Rome. Yet he must be 
 pictured too great for overthrow by any foreign 
 power. And since he is the champion of the Chris- 
 tian faith, the dignity of knights, and the honour of 
 women, what instruments so fitting for his destruction 
 as those who betray his religion, his love, and his vows. 
 His enemies are those of his own house, his wife and
 
 160 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 nephew, who unite in guilty love and call back the 
 heathen foe from over sea. 
 
 About the year 1155 Geoffrey's Latin passed into 
 the Norman-French of Wace, who adds a few details, 
 of which the most important refers to the Round 
 Table and its origin, and generally vivifies the narra- 
 tive, but in all essentials closely follows his authority. 
 The successive titles by which his work has been 
 known are rather significant. First, it is the " Geste 
 des Bretons," which cannot fail to suggest the " Chan- 
 sons de Gestes," as the Karlovingian poems were 
 called. Then, with an acknowledgment of its Celtic 
 connection, it becomes the "Brut [Brittanice, Chro- 
 nicle] d'Angleterre." Lastly, " Brut " was misunder- 
 stood as Brutus, the mythical Trojan who colonized 
 Britain, and the name arose " Roman de Brut," which 
 recognizes both its classical point d'appui and its really 
 romantic character. Romance it is, in language, sub- 
 stance, and metre, and has a right to be regarded as 
 the first in the Arthurian cycle. 
 
 To Uther, the great king of Britain, Merlin pro- 
 phesies the future greatness of his house. Now Uther 
 loves Igraine, the wife of Gorlois, and Merlin, to fulfil 
 his word, lends him the semblance of her lord. Later, 
 on the death of her first husband, Igraine becomes 
 "Other's queen, and thus Arthur, despite his doubtful 
 birth, succeeds to the throne as rightful heir. He at
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE. 161 
 
 once makes war on the heathen Germans and Scots, 
 and with the aid of Hoel of Brittany smites them from 
 shore to shore. He distributes the conquered lands, 
 and makes his brother-in-law Lot, father of Gawain 
 and Modred, King of Lothian, and marries Guine- 
 vere. But he does not rest on his laurels. He speedily 
 carries his arms into Europe, and subdues it from 
 Norway to Aquitaine. Gaul is the spoil of his own 
 hand, for he wins it in single combat with Frolle, 
 the hostile armies looking on from opposite banks, as 
 they fight it out alone on the island of the Seine. 
 The conquered lands are distributed anew, and Arthur 
 holds high feast at Caerleon in celebration of his 
 victories, summons round him his most famous 
 knights, and, to avoid the danger of dispute, insti- 
 tutes the Round Table, at which all the places are 
 equal. The feasting is broken by the arrival of 
 ambassadors from Rome, who demand the intermitted 
 tribute. In full assembly it is refused ; and Arthur, 
 leaving Modred in care of queen and kingdom, sets 
 out with his knights and vassal kings to enforce his 
 counter-claim. On the way a dream prefigures his 
 victory over a lustful giant, which he achieves alone. 
 Resuming his march he carries all before him, for 
 the emperor's Grecian and Eastern allies avail little 
 when confronted with the chivalry of the West. In 
 its ranks Gawain takes the first place, and next to 
 
 M
 
 162 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITER ATUEE. 
 
 Arthur becomes henceforth the hero of the tale. But 
 the Britons are checked in mid-career. News comes 
 that Modred has married Guinevere, usurped the 
 kingdom, and strengthened himself with heathen 
 troops. When Arthur arrives a great battle ensues ; 
 Gawain is killed, but the rebels are routed. Guine- 
 vere flies to a convent, Modred retreats to the West, 
 whither Arthur follows him in grief and wrath. In 
 another battle the chivalry on both sides is annihi- 
 lated ; Modred is slain, Arthur mortally wounded, but 
 not, as in later versions, by each other's hands. Arthur 
 bequeaths the crown to Constantine, and is carried 
 to Avallon to be healed ; but there is as yet no word 
 of his return, which first appears in Layamon. 
 
 This account, eked out with more or less pictur- 
 esque additions, sometimes with, sometimes without 
 the prophecy of the second coming, became source 
 and model for all the more primitive romances that 
 look on Arthur as the blameless king, the type of all 
 that is good in knighthood. This view still prevails 
 in the English alliterative " Morte Arthure," of the 
 beginning of the fifteenth century, and has been 
 revived with a difference by Mr. Tennyson in our own 
 day. 
 
 His wonderful fulfilment of the requirements of 
 chivalry and of the wants of the day, is shown by 
 one fact. British romance was practically unknown
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIEVAL ROMANCE. 163 
 
 on the Continent before 1145, and can scarcely have 
 been widely known for ten years later, for Gaimar's 
 lost work was probably not equal to that of Wace. 
 Yet at once it was seized on by the best writers, and 
 it became as customary in those days to tell and retell 
 Arthurian stories, as it was a few years ago for 
 young Englishmen to translate " Faust," or as it now 
 is to write constitutional histories. 
 
 But these other romances contain a great deal of 
 new material, and illustrate the knightly life with far 
 more fulness and richness than the original biography 
 of Arthur. No one person could completely exhaust 
 the possibilities of chivalry, and the idea must have 
 lain near to supplement the career and character of 
 Arthur with those of his favourite followers. We 
 have seen, indeed, how prominently Gawain has 
 already come to the front, and in some respects he and 
 his fellows were even more suitable for this treatment 
 than their chief; for they were knights, while he 
 was king ; his exploits were necessarily on the large 
 public scale, while they had more leisure for the 
 private individual adventures of errantry. They lent 
 themselves to the representation of the chivalrous life 
 in its various aspects, and are thus treated in the 
 first great group of additions to the Arthurian story. 
 
 In describing them as the first there is no intention 
 of dogmatizing as to date ; the connection indicated
 
 164 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITEEATURE. 
 
 is rather one of thought than of chronology. Yet it 
 must be borne in mind that the two chief of the class, 
 " Eric " and the " Chevalier au Lyon," have not been 
 traced further back than Chrestien de Troyes ; and 
 though Chrestien's works come later than the prose 
 Arthurian romances, yet he seems never to write 
 without authorities ; and as the sources for this pair 
 of legends have not yet been discovered, they may turn 
 out to be of very early date. 
 
 As Chrestien treats them they are two companion 
 pictures, portraying respectively the knightly duties 
 of love and honour, setting them in mutual opposition, 
 and showing that neither can be neglected without 
 danger to the other. 
 
 The story of Eric Mr. Tennyson has adopted for 
 his Geraint. While riding to avenge an insult of the 
 queen, the knight chances on Enid, clad in mean 
 attire, and winning her love with his own, weds her 
 and sets her amid the glories of the court. But in 
 its round of distractions and duties he has no leisure 
 to indulge his fondness. He takes leave for his own 
 land, and there forgets all knightly prowess at the side 
 of his bride, till the people cry out against him, and 
 Enid herself is bitterly ashamed. Her remonstrance 
 is misunderstood by her husband, and he drives her 
 forth before him when he rides out once more in 
 quest of strange adventures. On the way she is
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE. 165 
 
 his guardian angel, still warning him of attack and 
 ambuscade, though he threatens her with the whole 
 weight of his wrath if she open her lips. At length 
 he is wounded, and they are both borne to a castle, 
 where Eric awakes from his swoon at the right 
 moment to save Enid from the insults of their un- 
 knightly host. In new adventures he is more 
 courteous, and on their return to the court is 
 greeted with the plaudits of all. 
 
 As we are apt to fill in this sketch from Mr. 
 Tennyson's poem, it may be worth while to point 
 out that the modern idyll is subtler and truer than 
 the mediaeval romance. Chrestien does not clothe 
 Enid for her rough journey in the faded silks of 
 their first interview. Eric leaves the court merely 
 in quest of a tranquil retreat, not in suspicion of an 
 atmosphere grown foul ; he takes the road in resent- 
 ment of his wife's criticism, rather than in mistrust 
 of her faith ; and with less motive for estrangement 
 than Geraint, he has also fewer moments of remorse. 
 But the main idea of the poems is the same ; the 
 knight leaves the world for his lady's love, and ends 
 by treating her like a stable-boy. 
 
 The story of Owen is just the reverse. He has 
 undertaken the adventure of the enchanted fountain, 
 splashed the water about it, till, as foretold, a 
 storm beat on him and a warrior spurred against
 
 166 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 him. He has slain the champion and won his lady. 
 But her love cannot keep him from his knightly work, 
 and at most he plights himself to return to her side 
 with the year. But in the excitement of action he 
 lets the time slip by, and finds, to his agony, that he 
 has missed his day. His lady, too, denounces him as 
 traitor ; his misery is not to be borne and he loses 
 his reason. On his recovery he goes about, in com- 
 pany with a lion that he has saved, redressing human 
 wrongs and slaying monsters, till his broken faith is 
 expiated, and it is ordered in the train of events that 
 he regains his lady's favour. 
 
 Thus Owen by zeal for honour soils his honour, as 
 Eric in following love betrays it. But the second 
 romance is far deeper than its neighbour. Eric 
 jauntily overlooks his offence, but Owen realizes the 
 sacred duties of a knight, and cannot easily forgive 
 himself for failing in their observance. And their 
 difference in character leads us to the two next great 
 branches of Arthurian romance. 
 
 We saw that chivalry was a compound of the 
 code of the Church and the code of the world ; but 
 this did not exactly settle the question. It was still 
 possible to fulfil its obligations in a carnal or a spiritual 
 way, to a profane or a religious end. And so there was 
 room within it for knights of the , Holy Virgin and 
 knights of a lady's garter. And this divergence is
 
 THE THEEE CYCLES OF MEDLEVAL ROMANCE. 167 
 
 expressed by two stories which had originally nothing 
 to do with Arthur or his Table Round, the legend 
 of the " Holy Grale," and the romance of " Tristram 
 and Iseult." 
 
 The grale was properly the cup from which Christ 
 partook of the Last Supper, and symbolized the sacra- 
 ment of the Eucharist. Hence the further expansions 
 of the story. In it some drops of Christ's blood were 
 caught as he hung on the cross a clear reference to 
 the doctrine of transubstantiation. And since by 
 this process man was united with God and fitted 
 for a celestial throne, the chalice was said to be 
 made from a stone that dropped from the crown of 
 the falling Lucifer, to supply whose place man was 
 created. 
 
 The earliest extant legend on this subject is the 
 " Petit Saint Graal," of Robert de Borron, written some 
 time between 1160 and 1170. It recounts how the 
 Arimathean Joseph, in his captivity, was miraculously 
 fed from the mystic vessel, and how it was brought 
 to the West by Bron and his children. Neither in 
 this nor in the " Grand St. Graal " is there an actual 
 connection established with the chivalrous romances, 
 but in the latter progress is made in this direction. 
 The cup is brought to Britain by Joseph and his son, 
 who turn the land to the faith, and in a manner be- 
 queath it the holy treasure. Here there wants but a
 
 168 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 step to introduce the grale into the career of Arthur, 
 and it is taken in the prose story of " Percivale," whose 
 name corresponds with Geoffrey's Peredur. In this form 
 Chrestien got hold of it, and set himself to his usual 
 work of versification and reconstruction. But he left 
 his poem unfinished, and we shall get the best idea of 
 its spirit, not from his French continuators, but from 
 his genial German translator, Wolfram von Eschen- 
 bach. Something of definiteness, indeed, it loses by 
 crossing the Rhine. Chrestien, from artistic motives, 
 had reserved his explanation of the grale for the 
 climax of his story, and meanwhile merely described 
 it as a miracle and mystery. But he never got the 
 length of the denoument. and Wolfram has the vaguest 
 ideas as to the precise nature of what he always calls 
 the " wondrous thing." He knows its strange quali- 
 ties, how the sight of it can keep men in life, how its 
 presence brings each man his wish, but he does not 
 know exactly what it is or what it is like ; and per- 
 haps his ignorance increases his reverent awe. It is 
 strange to find that just as the German mystics arose 
 in opposition to the dogmatism of the Church, so the 
 great mystical poet of chivalry does not recognize the 
 dogmatic basis of his theme. With him the grale 
 stands for something like the Divine presence, but not 
 in any narrower ecclesiastical sense; and while this 
 circumstance somewhat changes the direction of the
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIEVAL ROMANCE. 169 
 
 story, it does not make it less fit to illustrate the 
 religious side of knighthood. 
 
 The grale is tended on the Savage Mountain by an 
 order of spiritual knights who are vowed to the 
 monastic life. Only their king is allowed to wed, 
 and even he must give love the lower place in his 
 heart. The last of them cried " Amour " in battle, 
 and for this was wounded well-nigh to death. He 
 lingers on from year to year, kept in life by the 
 might of the grale, and often wishing he were dead. 
 But when a wandering knight shall be his guest, and 
 ask the meaning of what he sees, Anfortas shall be 
 healed, and the stranger made king in his stead. It 
 is Percivale who is predestined to the quest. 
 
 In his boyish years there is little promise of his 
 future achievement, for his mother, widowed of her 
 lord, has fled to a lonely wood, and there brings up 
 her son in solitude, determined that he at least shall 
 be kept far from the perils of knighthood. He knows 
 nothing of arms and war ; he can only make himself 
 rough weapons for killing birds, but their woodland 
 melody makes him leave even this. His mother tells 
 him their song is the gift of God. " What is God ? " 
 asks the child. " Son," she replies, " I tell you true, 
 He is brighter than the day, who took on Him the 
 shape of man : son, pray to Him at need ; His truth 
 is still the succour of the world. . And one is called
 
 170 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 the Lord of Hell, who is black and full of guile ; from 
 him turn thy thoughts, and from the fickleness of 
 doubt." In later years, in his time of trial, Percivale 
 forgets this counsel, but now his heart is full of the 
 brightness of God. One day he sees a company of 
 knights in shining armour ride through the forest 
 glades ; he falls on his knees, and cries to their 
 leader, " Help, God, for Thou art rich in help ; " but 
 they mock him, and pass on. Another, in shirt of 
 flashing mail, surprised at the greeting, disclaims the 
 honour, and explains that he is a knight. Percivale 
 thinks he has not been respectful enough, and hastens 
 to correct his familiarity. " Sir God," he begins 
 again, " why is your body covered with these small 
 rings ? " The boy's fancy is now fired with what 
 he hears of armour and chivalry, and the life at 
 Arthur's court. He runs to his mother, and demands 
 leave to go. She gives a distracted denial, and at 
 last will send him forth only in the livery of a fool, 
 thinking that by ridicule he will be driven back to 
 her side. She understands his sensitive pride, but 
 has not measured his unblenching resolve. His fool's 
 dress suits well with his awkwardness and inex- 
 perience, and he makes many blunders rich in comedy 
 and pathos. The jeunesse doree of the court can only 
 scoff at him, but Arthur and Gawain see the greatness 
 of his soul. He puts us in mind of those other knights
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL EOMANCE. 171 
 
 of the grale, our great geniuses, our Schillers and 
 Shelleys, who come to transfigure the world, and are 
 for long the jest of worldlings. But Percivale does 
 not rest till he has the outward polish as well as the 
 inward worth of the court and the lists. An ancient 
 knight instructs him in all courtly usages and noble 
 manners. Such gains often imply a corresponding 
 loss, and Percivale, in acquiring the accomplishments 
 of the world, forfeits something of his open sense for 
 all that is great and wonderful. Among other things 
 he is told that he asks too many questions ; a knight 
 should be able to see strange sights without always 
 inquiring their meaning, an instruction of fatal 
 result. Meanwhile he goes out on adventures, rescues 
 the Queen Conduiramurs and weds her, but immedi- 
 ately passes again to new enterprises. He comes to 
 the Savage Mountain, and sees all the pageantry of 
 the grale, the bloody lance at which all lament, the 
 grale itself borne behind a procession of maidens, the 
 wounded king reclined on his couch ; but, mindful of 
 his lesson, goes to rest without question asked. His 
 dreams are hideous ; he wakes to find the castle empty ; 
 only one old servant lets him out, who curses him for 
 his clownish silence. Thus Percivale, by his schooling 
 in the great world, has lost his triumphant innocence 
 and wonder, his power to feel the grand mysteries 
 of life. At first no ill overtakes him, and he returns
 
 172 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 in safety and honour to Arthur's court. But there 
 he is appealed of treason by an ill-favoured damsel, 
 who says he has played the churl on the Savage 
 Mount. Gawain, too, is attainted on another charge, 
 and the two knights must avoid the fellowship till 
 their fame is cleared. Gawain is careless and confi- 
 dent, he knows that his cause is just, and bids his 
 friend the cheerful farewell greeting, " God give thee 
 luck." But Percivale is in despair. " Alas ! " he 
 returns, " what is God ? Were He great, lived He in 
 power, would He have fastened this reproach on us 
 twain ? Since I understood His grace I have followed 
 His service. Now such service I renounce. If He 
 bears hate, so can I." 
 
 Gawain is now chief person for a large portion of 
 the story. His prowess is stainless, but it is the 
 prowess of the world. He suffers no religious eclipse, 
 and the world's honours fall thick upon him. But 
 through his bright career of jousts and rescues we 
 have glimpses of Percivale, gloomy and reckless, 
 forgetting God or defying Him. At last, one Good 
 Friday, his heart is softened. He thinks, "What, 
 indeed, if there be help with God ? Now for the last 
 time will I prove it. Truly this is His day of grace." 
 He leaves himself to the guidance of his horse, which 
 brings him to a lonely hermitage. Here the worldly 
 lessons of the old knight are counteracted by the
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE. 173 
 
 religious lore of an old anchorite. Percivale is re- 
 proved for his ambition, and dismissed into the great 
 world with his sins forgiven. Restored to simplicity 
 and meekness, he is also restored to all he has lost. 
 Once more he is welcomed to his seat at the Round 
 Table. Once more he is called to the Grale Mountain 
 and made its king. Best of all, once more he is re- 
 united with Conduiramurs his wife. 
 
 This crowning bliss of love is the starting-point of 
 the other supplement to the Arthurian cycle, the great 
 romance of " Tristram and Iseult," perhaps the best 
 known and most cherished of all the series ; which in 
 the Middle Ages penetrated to the Greeks, and even 
 to the Slavs, and in our own days has attracted the 
 genius of the greatest poets and musicians. As to its 
 early growth we are left in doubt, but at least the 
 Provencals knew it in the middle of the twelfth 
 century; and in North France, besides the versions 
 of Berox and Thomas, Chrestien made it the subject 
 of a poem which has unfortunately been lost. It has 
 survived in many different languages and in many 
 different forms, which apparently may be grouped in 
 two main branches ; but its main features are common 
 to all. In English literature, the metrical romance of 
 the thirteenth century conforms to a higher type than 
 Malory's prose narrative, and this type has, on the 
 whole, been favoured by the greatest mediaeval and
 
 174 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 modern poets. Perhaps the best of the elder versions 
 is the poein begun by Godfrey of Strassburg, and 
 completed by Henry of Freiberg. 
 
 Who does not know the story of Tristram, the child, 
 the knight, and the slave of love ? Born on the battle- 
 field, and left orphan of both his parents, he is bred 
 by his foster-father in ignorance of his descent. His 
 beauty makes him the prey of pirates, but they fear 
 their own crime, and leave him free but an outcast 
 on the Cornish coast. His skill in venery and min- 
 strelsy makes him the favourite of his uncle, King 
 Mark ; and when his birth is declared, he becomes the 
 acknowledged heir of Cornwall. Then follows his 
 rejection of the Irish claim to tribute ; his slaughter 
 of the Irish champion in single fight ; and his voyage to 
 Ireland, in minstrel disguise, to be healed of the wound 
 he has thus received. He returns full of the praises 
 of Iseult, the fair princess who has wrought his cure, 
 and readily undertakes to procure her as wife to 
 King Mark. He sets out on his second voyage, gains 
 his point by the slaughter of a dragon, is recognized 
 and all but murdered by Iseult, as the slayer of 
 her kinsman. Nevertheless he fulfils his task, and, 
 despite her reluctance, bears her back to Cornwall. 
 Now comes the fatal mishap with the love-philtre. It 
 is intended for Iseult and Mark, but accidentally 
 drunk by Iseult and Tristram, and henceforth the fate
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL ROMANCE. 175 
 
 is laid on them to love each other. To this passion 
 they surrender themselves, and breaking all other ties, 
 respecting no other claims, become the mediaeval type 
 for all true lovers. And if dangers faced, hardships 
 endured, sacrifices joyfully offered for their love were 
 claim enough, they should be entitled to all praise. 
 Their deception of King Mark was only the inven- 
 tiveness of love, their flight to the forest only its 
 enterprise, which was also its exceeding great reward. 
 Tristram's marriage with another lady, the fair one 
 of the white hands, is palliated by her suggestion of 
 his absent mistress ; and this partial lapse, besides 
 bringing him to his death, is expiated in passionate 
 remorse and implicit revulsion to his early love. 
 
 We must be careful not to read in the mediaeval 
 romance the misgivings of modern thought. One 
 great modern poet treats it as a story of free and 
 careless desire. No doubt Tristram is brave, cour- 
 teous, generous, and sacrifices all for love. But this 
 love is an unlawful passion that leads him to violate 
 every obligation of life, and is so essentially ignoble, 
 that he cannot remain true even to it; he betrays 
 all for Iseult, and is not faithful to her. Another 
 modern view is, while admitting this, to lay the 
 accent on the love-philtre, the compelling cause that 
 lay outside Tristram's free choice, " the sinless source 
 of all their sin," and to interpret the magic potion
 
 176 STUDIES IN GEEMAN LITEKATUEE. 
 
 as the passion, the irrational basis of man's life, 
 the dark power of nature which he must follow to 
 his doom. In Wagner's opera the overture opens 
 with the voices of the ocean, on which we seem to 
 float, weeds without a root ; and Swinburne leaves 
 the lovers, their dust, their tomb, the land of their 
 sojourning, engulfed in the waves on which they 
 had sported and tossed : 
 
 " Peace they have that none may gain who live, 
 And rest about them that no love can give; 
 And over them, while death and life shall be, 
 The light and sound and darkness of the sea." 
 
 But these are the glosses of a moralizing age, which 
 has lost the power of seeing the chivalrous tales eye 
 to eye. In a certain sense, Ascham was right when 
 he complained of Tristram and his fellows, " Those 
 be counted the noblest knights that do kill most men 
 without any quarrell, and commit fowlest aduoulteres 
 by sutlest shiftes ; " and unless we consent to forget 
 for a time some of our ten commandments, we shall 
 never find in the mediaeval stories just what they offer. 
 For his own age, Tristram was the ideal of worldly 
 chivalry. Even in his outward appearance he is the 
 image of a knight, tall, strong, and beautiful. In all 
 courtly accomplishments, from hunting to minstrelsy, 
 he excels the experts in the craft. He gives away 
 kingdoms as other men give alms, he is grateful and
 
 THE THREE CYCLES OP MEDIAEVAL EOMANCE. 177 
 
 true to his friends, his bravery is without a flaw. 
 And lastly, all his powers, all his prospects, all his 
 merits he sacrifices to the service of love, to the lady 
 of his heart. No wonder that his was the favourite 
 story of chivalry, and that he was the darling figure 
 of romance. To compare a man to Tristram, was the 
 highest honour that could be paid him, and grave 
 seniors recommended Tristram as the best model for 
 the youth of the day. It has been said, with happy 
 infelicity, that his relation to Mark is a coarse 
 doublet of Modred's relation to Arthur. It is, perhaps, 
 unnecessary to discuss its coarseness, but it may be 
 noticed, that, if a doublet, it is one in which our sym- 
 pathies are inverted. It takes the side, not of the 
 uncle, but of the nephew, and thus represents the 
 point of view more native to an age that licensed 
 the service of love. If Tristram commits a fault, 
 it is not by loving another man's wife, but by follow- 
 ing in a weak moment a criminal impulse towards 
 marriage. Yet this is but a brief eclipse of his 
 gallantry, as Percivale passes through an eclipse of 
 his faith. Despite their temporary lapse, they remain 
 respectively the great types of love and devotion. 
 
 It must be noted that both knights, though tend- 
 ing away from the centre of chivalry to the two 
 modes of life which it had joined, do not actually 
 transgress its limits. The drift of Percivale's life is 
 
 N
 
 178 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 to holiness, but he is not insensible to human affection, 
 and the summit of his bliss is reunion with his wife. 
 Tristram is the Paladin of love, but he is pattern of 
 the other knightly virtues as well, and he, too, feels 
 the stirrings of religion. Yet we feel that here there 
 is some inconsistency. Percivale alone, of the grale 
 knights, is allowed to wed, but precisely the excep- 
 tion is unintelligible, for he is their chief: surely 
 in those days, if the highest life were the goal, the 
 monastic vows must be observed. Similarly, though 
 Tristram is the flower of worldly knighthood, he does 
 no doubt show that faithlessness to sacred ties, that 
 prostration before headlong passion, which modern 
 feeling so eagerly remarks. If the perfection of 
 chivalry, he is also its disgrace ; his story, if its psean, 
 is also its dirge. Yet this aspect of the question is, in 
 his romance, quite overlooked. 
 
 If the quest of the grale, the search for absolute 
 union with God, were described in real earnest, it 
 would have for its hero one who did not yield to the 
 compromise of chivalry, one who knew no earthly 
 love, and who could not rest in the half-hearted 
 compliances of the Round Table. And thus in later 
 romance Galahad supplants Percivale in the achieve- 
 ment of the grale. On the other hand, if the uncon- 
 ditional surrender to love which the age demanded 
 were pictured in its naked truth, it would be shown
 
 THE THKEE CYCLES OF MEDIEVAL ROMANCE. 179 
 
 over-riding, but not with impunity, all other knightly 
 duties of honour and religion, and leading to the dis- 
 ruption of chivalry, the dismemberment of the Round 
 Table. In this respect Lancelot, who for the sake of 
 his queen betrays his king, who is not worthy of the 
 grale for which he yearns, whose life is a losing 
 struggle, and who ruins the knighthood that he 
 adorns, takes the place of the cheery and unhesitating 
 Sir Tristram. The search for the grale weakens 
 Arthur's fellowship : on Lancelot and his kinsfolk that 
 fellowship makes war. 
 
 And meanwhile Arthur himself, who at first had 
 gathered up in little all that was good in chivalry, 
 was changed and desecrated, and became the author 
 of his ruin, the father of the nephew who was to 
 accomplish his fall. Thus in his own person, as in 
 the order of the Table and the idea that they both 
 express, we see the union of warring principles, the 
 mingling of unsanctified passion and overstrained 
 religiousness, which could not blend, and which in 
 their disruption meant the overturn of the old ideal. 
 
 These, the last significant accretions of the Ar- 
 thurian romance, are represented in the prose stories 
 of " Merlin," attributed to Borron, of " Artus," and of 
 " Lancelot du Lac " and the " Queste del Saint Graal," 
 both attributed, perhaps rashly, to Walter Map. 
 These were developed in almost entire independence
 
 180 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATUEE. 
 
 of each other, and only some of them in isolated 
 parts passed into poetical romance : thus Chrestien's 
 " Chevalier a la Charrette," and the fine fourteenth 
 century alliterative poem, " Syr Gawayn and the 
 Grene Kni3t " are episodes from Sir Lancelot. It is 
 characteristic that the first experiment in gathering 
 the loose threads together again, and assigning to the 
 adventures each its proper place in the one great 
 tragic scheme, is made under Edward IV., that king 
 who destroyed the "last of the barons," and in whose 
 reign the new principles of society begin obviously 
 to work. Sir Thomas Malory made this attempt, and 
 made it pretty easy for himself. He aimed at no 
 great solidarity in his work, was rather capricious in 
 his insertions and omissions, and often leaves an 
 adventure half told. Yet he must be allowed to have 
 given the story of the British king, so that none of 
 its pathos and terror is lost. The son of the Christian 
 champion Uther, he is the fruit of a lawless amour ; 
 and though hallowed and chosen by heaven, in his 
 first love he violates the common instincts of man- 
 kind, and ruthlessly but vainly seeks to shun the con- 
 sequences of his guilt. Yet for long all seems to go 
 well with him. He weds the fair Guinevere, and with 
 her receives the Round Table, founded to bring back 
 the holy grale among the people. He fills its seats 
 with knights of unmatched prowess, some of whom
 
 THE THKEE CYCLES OF MEDIAEVAL KOMANCE. 181 
 
 excel himself in games of chivalry, and he does his 
 devoir in purging the world of ill. Yet, amidst all his 
 pomp and magnificence, his weird is slowly fulfilling 
 itself. Lancelot, his best knight, his best friend, is but 
 his " dearest foe." As Arthur's truant passion has its 
 fruit in Modred, born to be the scourge of the order by 
 his villainy, so Lancelot, in his one breach of faith to 
 the queen, becomes father of Galahad, born to be its 
 scourge by his holiness. For this attracts once more 
 the holy grale to the haunts of men, and while the 
 fellowship breaks itself on a quest which is only for 
 the virgin knight, Galahad disappears to be grale 
 king elsewhere. Never again does the Round Table 
 feast so goodly a company, and soon the discovery 
 of Lancelot's love divides it against itself. When 
 Arthur is warring against him over sea, the traitor 
 Modred seizes kingdom and queen, avenging his 
 origin with equal wrong ; and though Arthur returns 
 to take swift vengeance for this baser treason, 
 vengeance does not mean redress. In that weird last 
 battle the great king and his nephew son fall by each 
 other's hands. 
 
 Thus the Arthurian stories, after expressing the 
 beauty and fulness of chivalry, end by expressing 
 its dissolution. That this ultimate phase was neces- 
 sary both in the ideal and in its literary reflection, we 
 may see, if we recall what chivalry was, and how it
 
 182 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 found utterance in song. It sought to establish a 
 compromise, an equipoise between the opposing forces 
 of religious monastic theory and irreligious lay life. 
 The scales dip to the clerical side in the " Song of 
 Roland," to the mundane in the " Lay of Alexander ; " 
 only in the career of Arthur, and its elaboration in the 
 adventures of his knights do we find anything like 
 an exact balance. But since there was mere adjust- 
 ment and no real fusion in chivalry, at best it was 
 in unstable equilibrium, liable at every moment to be 
 destroyed. In the added romances of Percivale and 
 Tristram we find the fine poise disturbed. In the 
 reconstruction of the story, which makes Arthur in 
 his own person represent the conflicting forces, and 
 Lancelot and Galahad follow them out to the utter- 
 most, the whole contrivance breaks up. 
 
 And this was the fate of chivalry as a guiding prin- 
 ciple, because it was unequal to the problem which it 
 undertook to solve, and men soon saw that it merely 
 professed to give the answer. Yet it remains a great 
 attempt to reconcile man's impulse to self-indulgence 
 with his impulse to self-denial; and the fictions to 
 which it gave rise retain, in like manner, and for the 
 same reason, a certain depth and breadth which gives 
 them a charm even now.
 
 THE MINNESONG. 
 
 [Hagen's " Minnesanger," 1838, contains the complete series of 
 songs with lives of the authors. Since then the works of individual 
 minnesingers have been more accurately edited, e.g. in Lachmann's 
 " Minnesanges Friihling," in Pfeiffer and Bartsch's " Walther v. d. 
 Vogelweide," in Haupt's " Nithart," and Ettmiiller's " Frauenlob."] 
 
 THE contrast between the position of women in 
 ancient and in modern times, among the Germanic 
 and the " classical " races, has often been explained ; 
 and if it has lost nothing in literary descriptions, is 
 yet very real and important. The Greeks, who were 
 always children, regarded women as boys regard 
 girls : even when deepest in love, perhaps then most 
 of all, they were blind to the higher claims and 
 qualities of those they admired ; and their charac- 
 teristic lyric celebrates stray amours rather than 
 permanent attachments. They had clearer eyes for 
 female beauty than for female character and worth, 
 and their feelings at their healthiest had more of 
 instinct than of spiritual sympathy. 
 
 For the more refined and typical minds of recent
 
 184 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Europe the reverse of all this is true. Before the 
 Middle Ages have begun, the Anglo-Saxons sing of the 
 man's longing for his absent wife or the wife's for her 
 banished lord, and deal with none but wedded love ; 
 and thus early strike the ground note of the later lyric. 
 Not as though modern poetry of this kind were all 
 or most of it put in the mouths of married personages. 
 The pursuit has inspired more verse than the fruition. 
 But in it generally, and by preference, " the bent 
 of love is honourable, and the purpose" might be 
 " marriage." It often touches its highest levels in 
 uttering the hope of life-long union or the feeling of 
 reverential respect ; and few, by comparison, are the 
 pieces that we find in absolute conflict with these 
 ideas. Moore does not take the most ideal view of 
 love, but see how differently Moore and Horace 
 contemplate the fading charms of their mistresses. 
 Lyce is insulted with sarcasms : 
 
 " Quo fugit Venus ? heu ! quove color ? decens 
 Quo motus ? Quid habes illius, illius, 
 Quas spirabat amores, 
 QUSB me surpuerat mihi." 
 
 But Moore only sees a new demand and a new oppor- 
 tunity for his affection : 
 
 " It is not while beauty and youth are thine own, 
 
 And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear, 
 That the fervour and faith of a soul will be known, 
 To which time will but make thee more dear."
 
 THE MINNESONG. 185 
 
 If we select a greater modern poet for the com- 
 parison, the contrast becomes more drastic. Horace 
 tells us how Glycera aroused his sleeping love : 
 
 " Urit me Glycerae nitor 
 
 Splendeiitis Pario mannore purius, 
 Urit grata protervitas 
 
 Et vultus minium lubricus aspici." 
 
 Coleridge's lines to Genevieve could not be more 
 diametrically opposed were they written in conscious 
 protest : 
 
 " Maid of my love, sweet Genevieve, 
 In beauty's light you glide along, 
 Your eye is like the star of eve, 
 And sweet your voice as seraph's song. 
 Yet not your heavenly beauty gives 
 This heart with passion soft to glow, 
 
 Within your soul a voice there lives 
 
 It bids you hear the tale of woe. 
 When sinking low the sufferer wan 
 Beholds no hand outstretched to save, 
 Fair as the bosom of the swan, 
 That rises graceful o'er the wave, 
 I've seen your breast with pity heave, 
 And therefore love I you, sweet Genevieve." 
 
 Erotics ancient and modern have thus their several 
 and well-defined spheres. But a third variety, hardly 
 inferior in beauty of form and content, the mediaeval 
 lyric of Provence and Germany, is more ambiguous in 
 character, often more remote from our sympathies, 
 and therefore less amenable to our judgment. If the 
 classical view of love was boyish, and the modern be
 
 186 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 manly, the mediaeval may perhaps be described as 
 youthful. But as Keats says, " The imagination of 
 the boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of the 
 man is healthy ; but there is a space of life between, 
 in which the soul is in a ferment, the character un- 
 decided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick- 
 sighted ; thence proceeds mawkishness." These words 
 are severe in their criticism of youth, and doubly 
 severe if transferred to the criticism of the Middle 
 Ages ; yet they are not without a deep measure of 
 truth. And just as many men retain more feeling 
 for their boyish open-air life than for their youthful 
 dreams, so the world has more at heart the direct 
 appeals of the classical than the harebrained fancies 
 of the romantic age. 
 
 So far as these fancies prevail in the domain of 
 love, they are marked by two salient features, their 
 frivolity and their extravagance. 
 
 If men's homage fell to professional beauties in 
 ancient, and to possible wives in modern times, it was 
 paid in the Middle Ages to other men's wives. 
 These, at least, had the preference, and in more rigid 
 circles only the pursuit of them was strictly entitled 
 to the high name of love. To judge from their 
 poems, the chivalrous singers served for very tangible 
 reward, and thus, far more than the naif worshipper of 
 Aphrodite, broke through what are now regarded as
 
 THE MINNESONG. 187 
 
 the most primary demands of social morality. They 
 themselves do not feel that their conduct is at all out 
 of the way. They pay a certain price of devotion for 
 which they expect remuneration, and complain when 
 remuneration is withheld. Attempts have been made 
 to show that all this literary gallantry had nothing 
 corresponding to it in real life. But such attempts 
 have a great body of evidence against them, and 
 were this otherwise, they would hardly succeed in 
 rebutting the charge of levity. It is a question 
 whether the man who spends his life breaking the 
 marriage vow cuts a sorrier figure than one who is 
 always constructing fictions how he has broken and 
 is going to break it. 
 
 But this theory of love had at least one advantage 
 for the knight errant. It opened the floodgates for 
 a lavish waste of devotion. To this, indeed, they 
 were already inclined. Unlike the boy, who is some- 
 times conceited and tyrannical by reason of his 
 strength, the troubadour almost seemed to find his 
 strength standing in his way. He was not satisfied 
 unless he could spend it to the uttermost, not for his 
 lady's real good, but simply in token of his own self- 
 surrender. Her weakness was her imperial title, her 
 merest whim was his law. His love-making was rightly 
 styled the service of women. And how could the 
 servant display his devotion so well as to a mistress,
 
 188 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 removed by rank or distance, or above all by mar- 
 riage ? Thus there were more difficulties to over- 
 come, more dangers to surmount, a great many more 
 chances of posturing and keeping his passion on the 
 qui vive. If the whole thing after all were much 
 ado about nothing, that did not greatly matter. 
 The main point was gained, he had plenty of 
 scope to throw himself away in the very asceticism 
 of love. 
 
 This extravagance was, however, very excusable, 
 and in a way very laudable. When the world or 
 when a man begins to feel the might of a new 
 idea, the result is apt to be a one-sided enthusiasm, 
 often carried to ridiculous lengths. Every principle 
 develops through opposite excesses to the golden 
 mean. And the new-born reverence for women was 
 no exception to this rule. Western Europe, through 
 the combined influences of race and religion, was 
 beginning to perceive what dawns on a youth as 
 the result of his physical and mental growth. The 
 surrender of love to be complete, must be as much 
 in feeling as in fact; and the feeling cannot be 
 evoked save by sympathy, self-sacrifice, and service. 
 The vagaries of chivalry are eternal, because they 
 are renewed in successive generations of youthful lives. 
 
 Neither is the frivolous nature of the end proposed 
 very mysterious. The Church of those days set
 
 THE MINNESONG. 189 
 
 celibacy above wedlock, and the upper classes, among 
 whom the service of love found its chief votaries 
 and minstrels, could not but be affected by the 
 teaching of the Church. The lower orders might 
 do their own will, marry and be given in marriage 
 without question asked, and sing simple love songs 
 on their rustic courtings and quarrels. But the 
 nobles could not help being a little doctrinaire, and 
 attempted a compromise between their natural bent 
 and their authoritative ideals. This compromise was 
 the service of woman, which is a sort of middle 
 term between free love and marriage, or between 
 both and continence. That it should enjoy such 
 universal favour need not surprise us when we 
 remember that a Templar who violated the statute, 
 de osculis fugiendis, was yet by common estimate 
 a more sacred person than a wedded layman. 
 
 But, indeed, the best interpretation of this theory, 
 too, is found in the feelings of youth. Love's young 
 dream is concerned rather with episodes than with 
 the whole future life, that it leaves to other young 
 dreams of ambition, knowledge, work, perhaps re- 
 ligion. The dreamer pictures himself oftener as lover 
 than as husband ; indeed, of all his castles in the 
 air, perhaps the least frequent is the Englishman's 
 castle of his own house. Thus, with all his reverence, 
 he divests love of what alone can entitle it to
 
 190 STUDIES IN GEKMAN L1TEEATUEE. 
 
 reverence, for he seeks its ideals outside the family. 
 He lives in the atmosphere of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Not that the spirit we have described was the 
 only one to express itself in the literature of that 
 day. We have also much that is antique, much 
 that is modern in feeling, the former originating 
 chiefly with the travelling scholars, the latter chiefly 
 with the people at large. Students still sing in 
 the spirit of the one " Vivant omnes virgines, faciles, 
 formosae/' and read the refrain of the other : 
 
 " An bendy hap ichabbe yhent, 
 Ichot from, heaene it is me sent. 
 From all wymmen mi loue is lent 
 And lyht on Alisoun." 
 
 In England, indeed, which has never accepted Con- 
 tinental impulses till they have lost something of 
 point as well as of violence, it is impossible to say 
 that the service of love distinctively existed. And 
 in Germany, the land of Volkslieder, we find 
 traces of an earlier and yet more modern style of 
 love-song, which was displaced but not destroyed by 
 the encroaching spirit of the age. How simple and 
 heartfelt, for instance, is such a stanza as this : 
 
 " Thine am I, mine art thou, 
 That is firm and sure, I trow. 
 Locked thon art 
 In my heart, 
 And within must ever be ; 
 For I've lost the little key."
 
 THE MINNESONG. 191 
 
 Some of these anonymous verses betray a certain 
 contempt for the theatrical devotion that was to 
 carry the day against them. Thus, in one of them, 
 a knight tells a lady how he found her sleeping, 
 and, struck dumb with awe, feared to awake her. 
 " Mischief take you ! " replies the fair one. " Did you 
 think I was a wild bear ? " But such lays are few 
 and unimportant. In Germany, which is so apt to 
 ponder, as in the romance lands which are so apt to 
 act, on the impulse of the day, the dominant lyric, 
 when once imported from Provence, is the lyric of 
 chivalry. 
 
 If we remember that the fundamental feeling in 
 the service of love is exalted devotion to an 
 insignificant end, we may thus describe the relations 
 of the Northern minnesinger and the Southern 
 troubadour. The Provencal clearly realizes the aim 
 towards which he works, and fears not to insist on 
 it ; but the German is taken up with the means, 
 and dwells on the emotion, the self-sacrifice of his 
 service. They are contrasted as the professional 
 fisherman and the amateur angler, as the commercial 
 traveller and the holiday rambler. If the one is 
 more steady and direct in his purpose, the other 
 has more sense for the marvels and beauties of the 
 way. 
 
 And from this many consequences follow. First,
 
 192 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 the German is by far the more reverential of the two. 
 It is not uncommon to find the troubadour, after a 
 while, writing satires on his lady ; but the minne- 
 singer is respectful to the last. The minnesinger has 
 delicacy enough to mention no names, while the 
 troubadour gossips to all the world who is mistress of 
 his heart. In Germany, the service of women was 
 connected very closely with the service of the Virgin. 
 She was made very human, they were made very 
 divine. It has been said of the hymns and love- 
 songs, that, with title covered, one could hardly know 
 whether they were addressed to " the Queen of 
 Heaven or a Queen of Hearts." The younger Rein- 
 mar says, "Pure women are the world's treasure, 
 God's own body was born of a maid," and elsewhere 
 he compares the service of love to the quest of the 
 grale. Such reverent mystical touches come naturally 
 from the German, who, absorbed in his feeling, broods 
 over and tends it with a kind of religious care. 
 
 This brings us to another point of difference be- 
 tween the two love-songs. The Provenfal impresses 
 us with his active personality. He is aggressive and 
 pushing. He will fight for his lady and maintain 
 her beauty against the world. But the German retires 
 within himself, he communes with his own feelings, 
 they fill him with wonder, he meditates on them and 
 tries to exhaust their meaning. Minnen and minne,
 
 THE MINNESONG. 193 
 
 the mediaeval words for love, are from the same root 
 as the English 'mind, and at first meant, the verb, to 
 bear in mind, to think upon ; the noun, remembrance 
 or reverie. And so the minnesingers, in their poetical 
 meditations, ask, " Is Minne man or wife, is Minne 
 body or soul ? " and rifle a passage in Veldeke's 
 " ^Eneid," where the fancy-free Lavinia first hears of 
 love, its contradictions, its potency of joy and pain, 
 and proclaims its mystery by confessing that she can 
 make nothing of it. In the same way, Friedrich von 
 Hausen, far off in the crusades, is perplexed in mind 
 because he cannot forget his cruel lady: often in his 
 reverie he wishes people " good-night," instead of 
 " good-morning ; " often he thinks of her instead of 
 his sacred mission ; " God forgive me ! " he cries, fairly 
 puzzled, " but why has He made her so fair." " Woe 
 is me," says another, who gives it up with a touch 
 of irritation ; " God has done me great wrong in 
 shaping so goodly a lady ! " 
 
 And from this constant occupation with their feel- 
 ings arises a third great difference between the Germans 
 and the Provenpals. The latter sing about everything : 
 they take up theology and politics, social and literary 
 criticism ; they abound in satire and invective. But 
 with the exception of one, Walter von der Vogelweide, 
 though strangely enough he is their chief, the minne- 
 singers sing only of minne : they cannot leave the 
 
 o
 
 194 STUDIES IX GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 circle of their ruling feeling ; if they look at the world 
 at all, it is through the medium of their love ; their 
 whole universe is their adoration. The literature of 
 the South has thus greater variety, that of the North 
 greater depth, but also a vein of wearisome iteration. 
 With the monotony of matter it is hard to avoid this, 
 but a remedy is at least attempted by constantly 
 varying the form. And this leads us to speak of their 
 Metric. 
 
 The measures of the purely native minnesong were 
 very simple, and hardly ever went beyond rhymed 
 couplets, common four -lined stanzas and their easiest 
 modifications. But under the French regime all this 
 was exchanged for a new store of elaborate and com- 
 plex harmonies. There was a more intricate arrange- 
 ment of rhymes, more variety in the length of the lines, 
 the whole structure was made more artistic and com- 
 plete within itself, and as such, suited better the wants 
 of lyric poetry. But just as- we saw the Germans 
 while accepting the French matter, modify it in the 
 .process, so now they modified the form. This they 
 did by their observance of two canons, which have 
 been called the Laws of Variety and Triplicity. Of 
 these, the first was quite unknown among the Pro- 
 venpals, and the second was, at least, by no means 
 universal. 
 
 The first is an extraordinary phenomenon, probably
 
 THE MINNESONG. 1J)5 
 
 quite unique in literature. Every verse-form was 
 regarded as belonging to the man who invented it, 
 and its use by another was infringement of the rights 
 of property. This law forbade such infringement, 
 and enacted that every one should fabricate his own 
 stanza. The reason for this strange regulation must 
 be sought for in the fact that, so long as the single 
 feeling of love was the subject of every song, there 
 were few chances of originality save in the form. 
 And no doubt it did produce infinite variety. Men 
 were even afraid to plagiarize themselves, and con- 
 tinually strove to diversify their own metres. The 
 result was by no means satisfactory. Very many of 
 their stanzas are mere metrical experiments, eccentric 
 and surprising, but not in the best sense of the words 
 original. In no department does the effort after 
 novelty, the craving to be different from one's pre- 
 decessors and neighbours, result in anything of real 
 worth. The greatest works of the greatest geniuses 
 are original in the sense, not that they are brand new, 
 but that they disclose a richer significance in old and 
 well-worn themes. Even Shakespeare has his sources, 
 and more of them than a smaller man. And, for the 
 case on hand, this is illustrated by the Provencal way 
 of working. The troubadours were hampered by no 
 such oppressive and harassing legislation. They could 
 freely appropriate the results of other men's labours,
 
 196 STUDIES IN GEEMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 and by constant development of the best forms bring 
 them to perfection. To these, men return even now ; 
 but of the countless German stanzas, though some of 
 the less adventurous are very fine, hardly one is 
 remembered. The choice selection of the Proven9als 
 is better than all the motley stores of the minnesinger^ 
 where the real gold lies half hid in tinsel and pinch- 
 beck. 
 
 This variety, however, was not allowed to be utterly 
 lawless. A certain element of resemblance, a certain 
 type, was preserved and enforced by the Law of 
 Triplicity. According to it each stanza must contain 
 three parts, the first two of which, as in the sonnet,, 
 should exactly correspond, while the third should be 
 on a different model. This triple framework is, no 
 doubt, necessary to the most perfect verse-form: the 
 repetition of the first part impresses it on the memoiy 
 and leads up to the variation in the last, which brings 
 cadence and completeness. But it was a mistake to- 
 insist on such a model, however good, for a whole 
 generation of poets. The second law of the minnesong 
 brought back, as it were, the monotony of which the 
 first tried to get rid. The stanzas may contain three 
 lines or thirty; the lines may contain one foot or 
 ten; but the arrangement is always in the obvious 
 and glaring threefold scheme. We have, indeed, 
 endless variety, but it is within a narrow range, and
 
 THE MINNESONG. 197 
 
 one sometimes gets to long for any common couplet 
 or quatraine. Despite, therefore, of the first promise 
 to the contrary, the fault of the matter returns in the 
 form. There the minnesingers rang the changes on 
 the single emotion of love; here they force the 
 strangest metres into the single triple mould ; but in 
 both cases the result is apt to weary. These poets 
 are fond of calling themselves nightingales. "Cer- 
 tainly," says Jakob Grimm, "we could not find a 
 better simile than the song of birds for their 
 exuberant melody, which we can never anticipate, 
 in which every moment the old notes return in 
 a new modulation ; " but they remain the old 
 notes. 
 
 Since this is so, an historical account of the minne- 
 singers is apt to be tedious and indistinct, and may 
 be compared with a sail down the Rhine in rainy 
 weather. The impression it leaves behind is like that 
 of a long series of hazy headlands, each repeating the 
 same fine slope, each surmounted by its knightly 
 castle, and all obliterated and ghostly in the mist. 
 The authors were almost all men of rank, the sons of 
 stirring times, in which they must have led adven- 
 turous lives. But seldom are these reflected in their 
 verse, which mirrors only the clouds and brightness 
 of their one vast overhanging thought. It is well to 
 look less at the crowd of individual singers and more
 
 198 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 at a few of the typical kinds* of song, which arise in 
 some sort chronologically ; and then to trace the growth 
 and decay of the feeling which these songs evince. 
 Perhaps only one great aspect of our subject will 
 thus escape us, viz. its tediousness; but that it is 
 impossible, were it desirable, to reproduce in any 
 selection or brief notice. Hence it comes that out- 
 siders often have a higher opinion of this poetry 
 than those who have actually waded through its 
 interminable stream of languishings and longings. 
 
 The minnesong, in its most general undeveloped 
 phase, simply ran through the Avhole gamut of love ; 
 its despairs and raptures, its lamentations when 
 favour is withheld, its wonderment when favour is 
 accorded. This love-song of moods remains with the 
 minnesingers to the last, but in the earlier period it 
 has a more exclusive sway, and is marked by a cer- 
 tain shrinking reverence, a certain tender submission, 
 which gradually becomes more rare. What lover was 
 ever more religious in accepting his lady's frowns than 
 the Burggrave of Nietenburg in this little snatch ? 
 But for the disturbing reference to sex it might be a 
 hymn of Christian resignation : 
 
 " Since she wills to chasten me 
 I shall count it for a grace, 
 
 * In selecting these types, I have not in all cases adopted the 
 technical species of mediaeval art.
 
 THE MINNESONG. 199 
 
 And like gold I thus shall be 
 That within the fire we place 
 To approve it well ; 
 Whence it doth excel, 
 Fair and clear and pure. 
 This my song is sure." 
 
 Freidrich von Hausen's lines on his absent mistress, if 
 not so meek, are even more delicate : 
 
 " Full many a time I ponder, 
 If I again should meet her, 
 
 The words that I could say. 
 It helps me, as I wander, 
 In fancy to entreat her 
 
 To lift my load away. 
 
 Thus falls it day by day 
 Men think my life the sweeter, 
 
 And ween my heart is gay, 
 
 While but with dreams I play." 
 
 But even the patience of the minnesingers would have 
 been tired out by songs of this simple kind ; and we 
 early find a variety in which the words are placed in 
 the mouth, not of the knightly author, but of his lady. 
 Generally the motive is grief at the absence or joy in 
 the worthiness of the lover. " The Falcon," attributed, 
 perhaps rashly, to " Him of Kiirnberg," as the earliest 
 known minnesinger is rather vaguely styled, is a lay 
 of this kind, and belongs to the very oldest period of 
 the art, while yet it was hardly touched by foreign 
 influence. Its versification, rough but not unmusical, 
 with the peculiar halt in the last line, is popular in 
 character, and is also employed in the great German 
 epic, the " Niebelungen Lied : "
 
 200 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 " I once reared a falcon a year and more with me, 
 And after I had trained him as I would have him be, 
 When gay was his plumage with gold from my hand, 
 He soared aloft right freely, and flew to seek another land. 
 
 " In fair flight my falcon saw I once more, 
 And silken were the leashes that round his foot he bore, 
 And all of his feathers were ruddy with gold. 
 God send those together that love each other from of old ! " 
 
 When the poets' imagination had grown so dramatic 
 that their songs claim to be the utterances of ladies, the 
 idea must have lain near to increase their vividness, 
 by giving them the form of a dialogue between the 
 knight and his lady. And this step was soon taken. 
 The example I quote is, indeed, rather a couple of 
 monologues than a single dialogue; but elsewhere 
 there is a closer approximation to actual conversation. 
 The two quatraines, modelled like the preceding, seem 
 certainly to be by the Kiirnberger; and few other 
 pieces illustrate so well how, at first, in Germany 
 the self-sacrifice of love was placed before its gratifi- 
 cation : 
 
 " Full late in the night-time I stood by the wall, 
 And far underneath me I heard a knight call. 
 Like him of Kiirnberg sang he, in the self-same measure, 
 The land he must void me, or else I yield me to his pleasure." 
 
 " Now bring me and stay not my steed and weeds of war, 
 Since I for my lady must hie me hence afar. 
 Forth she drives me from her because I love her well ; 
 For this she, too, surely without my love must ever dwell." 
 
 When once the form of dialogue became established
 
 THE MINNESONG. 201 
 
 it received further modifications. For instance, the 
 lady appears in discourse, not with her lover, but 
 with her lover's messenger. Perhaps this device, by 
 its indirectness, gave the author greater opportunity 
 for the praise of his constancy and devotion than he 
 could becomingly find so long as he spoke in his 
 own person. The "Messenger's Lay," given below, 
 was written by the elder Reinmar, the teacher of his 
 greater pupil, Walter von der Vogelweide, who, how- 
 ever, hardly overtopped him in the praise of con- 
 temporaries. Despite the utter self-abasement of the 
 knight, it is plain that the idea of the wage is nearer 
 the minds of all the parties than in the songs hitherto 
 quoted. 
 
 " ' Say, for guerdon of iny giving, 
 Hast thou seen the man I love so well ? 
 
 Is it true he still is living, 
 As they say and I have heard thee tell ? ' 
 
 ' Lady fair, he dwells at rest ; 
 His heart beats ever high, nor shrinks from yonr behest.' 
 
 " ' I forbid him joyance never ; 
 Yet one suit 'twere well to lay side : 
 
 This I pray him, both to-day and ever, 
 Snch it is, it needs must be denied.' 
 ' Lady, words like these are ill. 
 He says : " What she would have, all that do I fulfil." 
 
 " ' Fellow, hath he ever plighted 
 Knightly faith to sing his lay no more, 
 
 Save it were by my own lips invited ? 
 ' Lady, when we parted, thus he swore, l 
 
 Surely yon have heard the tale.' 
 * Alas ! If I entreat him, that may be our bale,
 
 202 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 " ' Yet to leave him in his madness 
 Were to lose my joy in him, and worse ; 
 
 Since, for spoiling earth of gladness, 
 All the folk would load me with their curse. 
 
 Only now begins my care ; 
 I know not which is best, to do or to forbear. 
 
 " ' Sad we women, friends we gain not, 
 Save who further grace than words would know. 
 
 Love of mine shall he obtain not, 
 Unfaith works a faithful woman woe. 
 
 Were I false as I am not 
 Then him I might forget, to be of him forgot.' " 
 
 While in these varieties the moods of love were 
 explained by the descriptions of a second and third 
 party, another series had set about the same thing by 
 the different method of bringing the lover's life into 
 relation with that of nature. Many of the songs are 
 distinguished by their reference to a season : above all, 
 into the two great classes of spring lays and autumn 
 lays. Heine sings how, in the marvellous month of 
 May, the buds burst open, and love, too, opened in his 
 heart. This is the central idea of all those spring- 
 lays. The flowers come back, the bare trees bear 
 tender sprouts, the sun shines again on the plash- 
 ing grass, the birds are heard once more, " they 
 sing their young a lullaby," says Wolfram, " all 
 through the month of May." Nature calls the 
 poet to the field; as Chaucer goes out "one May 
 morning" to gather daisies, so he searches for the 
 best flowers, red and white ; he thinks on the lady
 
 THE MINNESONG. 203 
 
 that looked from the window he binds a wreath to 
 offer her ; he knows the fairest meadows will she not 
 join him there ? When the world is glad from dawn 
 to dark will she alone refuse to smile ? In like 
 manner the autumn lays tell of the lost glory of the 
 summer and the misery of the earth ; the dark nights 
 grow longer, the cold winter is nigh, the fountain of 
 his lady's grace is frozen. One of the earliest spring 
 songs is written by Meinloh von Sevelingen, and, 
 though not the most poetical, is among the most 
 characteristic : 
 
 " The harbingers of summer I see, even blossoms bright. 
 Thou knowest, fairest lady, the prayer of thy knight ; 
 His secret suit he tenders, of nought he is so fain, 
 Since last he parted from thee, at heart he still hath suffered pain : 
 Now hearten thou his spirit for this blithe summertide ; 
 At rest [he never can be, until thine arms have held him, and 
 clasped him closely to thy side." 
 
 As a specimen of the autumn song we may select 
 a stanza by Heinrich von Veldeke, one of the earliest 
 minnesingers who write under conspicuously French 
 influence. He has said that without Tristram's 
 draught he has Tristram's constancy, even in view 
 of favour withheld ; and then proceeds : 
 
 " See the glorious sun on high 
 
 For the cold its light concealing, 
 Hear the anthems fall and die 
 
 Which the little birds were pealing. 
 Sorrowful at heart am I 
 For the winter draweth nigh.
 
 204 STUDIES IX GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 First his cruel might revealing 
 
 On the flowers left desolate, 
 
 All their gayness 
 
 Changed to grayness. 
 Thus they bode my fate 
 Joyless, full of hate." 
 
 Sometimes the connection with the season is less 
 direct, and the treatment is freer and more elaborate. 
 Here, for example, is a spring song by Walter von 
 der Vogehveide, which more properly is a parallelism 
 between women and flowers : 
 
 " When the flowers from out the grass are springing, 
 
 As with laughter for the sunshine o'er us, 
 On some May morning ere the day is high 
 And the little birds o'erhead are singing 
 
 In their sweetest and their subtlest chorus, 
 What gladness else may with this gladness vie ? 
 'Tis half the worth of heaven to share it. 
 Would you ask with what we can compare it, 
 
 For me, one only thing I trow 
 
 Hath more rejoiced mine eyes, and seen again would more rejoice 
 them now. 
 
 " Know you ought of woman's queenly presence 
 
 When well chapleted, apparelled fairly, 
 With goodly following and with gracious cheer, 
 Gone amidst the people for her pleasance ; 
 
 Round she looks, but neither long nor rarely, 
 As the sun the stars might overpeer ? 
 
 Let May have marvels out of measure, 
 What hath he so winsome in his treasure 
 
 As her own body rare and good ? 
 
 We straight forget the fairest flowers to gaze on her sweet woman- 
 hood. 
 
 " Rise then, join me at the feast on Mayday, 
 Ye who will to know the matter truly,
 
 THE MINNESONG. 205 
 
 Where Spring is come arrayed in all his might. 
 Look on him and look on some fair lady ; 
 
 Tell me then if I have chosen duly 
 And which excels the other in delight. 
 If charge were laid on me, by choosing 
 One to win myself, while one refusing, 
 How easy were that choice of mine. 
 
 Sir May, thou shouldst be March ere I would give my lady's 
 charms for thine." 
 
 Thoughts like these recur in song after song, 
 slightly modified and in new combinations. They 
 begin the sentimental poetry of nature, which either 
 suffuses the world in subjective feeling, or at most 
 makes the scene the setting for the emotion. Such 
 poetry, always a little wanting in body, readily be- 
 comes conventional. It does so among the minne- 
 singers, who after a while treat song and bird, sun- 
 shine and frost, greenwood and meadow, as so many 
 indispensable counters in the game of verse-making. 
 Spring and autumn are the respective insignia of 
 the hopeful and the despairing lover, just as in 
 heraldry eight strawberry leaves are the emblem of 
 a duke. 
 
 This degeneration into allegory was almost neces- 
 sary, for man's inner life cannot be arranged according- 
 to the calendar. The third great group of minnesongs 
 have no such artificial connection with their subject. 
 They describe a situation, a crisis, an event full of 
 emotional meaning. By far the most of them are the
 
 206 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 so-called day-songs or dawn-songs, undoubtedly the 
 perfection of the minnesinger's art. They correspond 
 to the Aubade, or Alba, of the South, and are supposed 
 to have been introduced by Wolfram von Eschenbach ; 
 but there are traces of them earlier in Walter von der 
 Vogelweide, in Heinrich von Morungen, and even iri 
 a song which, if truly ascribed to Dietmar von Aist, 
 must have preceded the French influence altogether. 
 At daybreak a lady arouses her knight 
 
 " Sleep'st thou, dear heart ? Alas ! we must waken, 
 for a little sweet bird which has lighted on the linden 
 bough." 
 
 " I had softly fallen asleep, and now, child, thou 
 call'st : To arms ! Love may not be without sorrow. 
 What thou wilt, that fulfil I, my sweet." 
 
 Then the lady fell aweeping. " Thou ridest hence 
 and leavest me alone. When wilt thou to my side 
 again ? Alas ! thou bear'st my joy away with thee." 
 
 Here, however, the speakers may be man and wife ; 
 the day-songs proper have also their point of departure 
 in the return of the sun to wake the earth, but the 
 circumstances are now more definitely marked and 
 the persons are lovers par amour. In the dark, the 
 knight has stolen to his lady's window, the sun rises 
 and they must part. Heinrich von Morungen has 
 written a poem of this description which, if not exactly 
 a day-song, fulfils all the conditions but one. It is a
 
 THE MINNESONG. 207 
 
 series of alternate recollections and not a dialogue, but 
 otherwise it is almost the finest in this branch : 
 
 " ' Alas ! and when again shall I 
 
 See flashing through the night 
 Her shape made wondrously 
 And as the snowflake white ? 
 It did deceive mine eyes ; 
 I thought : The moon doth rise 
 To lighten all the skies. 
 And then it dawned.' 
 
 " ' Alas ! and when again shall he 
 
 Await the morning here ? 
 While night so fast doth flee 
 We give no thought to fear ; 
 Ah, soon returns the day ! 
 When erewhile here he lay, 
 And all his grief would say, 
 Even then it dawned.' 
 
 " ' Alas ! again and yet again 
 
 She kissed me while I slept : 
 Her tears ran down like rain, 
 So bitterly she wept. 
 
 I soothed her sore distress, 
 Her sobs grew less and less, 
 She neared me to caress, 
 And then it dawned.' 
 
 " ' Alas ! he would not be denied 
 To gaze on my poor charms : 
 The veil he laid aside 
 
 And needs would see my arms 
 All disarrayed and bare. 
 It was a wonder rare 
 For such a sight to care, 
 But then it dawned.' " 
 
 These two songs give the chief motives of their
 
 208 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 class, though some of the others are more fervid and 
 impassioned. The morning light or the morning bird 
 wakes the lovers and warns them they must part. 
 They have been too much lost in each other to mark 
 the flight of time, and now they will not understand 
 that it is really day ; they make believe that the sun 
 is the moon, that the lark is the nightingale. The 
 lady cannot bring herself to dismiss the knight ; the 
 knight is ready to stay if that be her good pleasure ; 
 at length in terror of the broadening light she hastens 
 him away. The great scene in " Romeo and Juliet," 
 rather than any translation, will give English readers 
 an idea of these songs in their intensity of emotion. 
 Feeling and feeling mingle and conflict ; love and fear, 
 the need of immediate parting and the sense that 
 parting is impossible, the anguish of leave-taking and 
 the hope of reunion all meet and crowd each other in 
 the lines ; and as a background we see the old castle 
 on its hill, and the still dawn filling the valleys with 
 light. 
 
 A further modification of Wolfram's, adopted by later 
 minnesingers, was to make the castle watchman a 
 confederate. He announces the daybreak in friendly 
 words, interposes to counsel an instant separation, and 
 with his cool sober sense presents a new foil to the 
 distraught and passionate lovers. The whole, complete 
 in a few stanzas, is like nothing so much as one
 
 THE MINNESONG. 209 
 
 of Browning's dramatic lyrics. The following is a 
 version, not of the best, but (for Wolfram is a virtuoso 
 in metres) of the easiest : 
 
 '"Behold! the daylight 
 
 Mounts aloft in all its strength 
 And rends the clouds with claws of flame. 
 I see the grey light 
 
 Broaden out : the sun at length 
 Will send him forth who lately came 
 
 To tryst of love the valiant man- 
 And entered in with careful heed. 
 
 Hence shall I bring him if I can ; 
 His wealth of worth has claim to help at need.' 
 
 " ' Watchman, thou singest 
 
 Songs that swell my sorrow still, 
 And steal me all my joy away. 
 
 News thou bringest 
 That, alas ! I like but ill 
 Every morn at break of day. 
 
 Such thou oughtest rather hide : 
 And this I charge thee on thy troth, 
 
 Reward thou'lt have whate'er betide, 
 But leave in peace me and my lover both.' 
 
 " ' Oh God ! delay not ! 
 He must hence while yet we speak ; 
 My sweetest lady, bid him go. 
 Thy knight will stay not 
 Soon again your love to seek 
 With life and fame unhurt of foe. 
 
 My sacred faith he bade me plight 
 To bring him forth when day was come ; 
 
 And now 'tis day : it yet was night 
 When you with kiss and clasp received him home.' 
 
 " ' What suits thy pleasure, 
 Watchman, sing, but leave him here
 
 210 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Who brought me love for love of mine. 
 
 'Tis thy false measure 
 Oft doth rouse us both in fear 
 While yet no morning star doth shine 
 
 On him who came for love's delight ; 
 While yet no morning meteors dart, 
 
 'Tis thou dost ever snatch my knight 
 From my white arms, but not from out my heart.' 
 
 " Here through the casement 
 Glimmering beams began to glide. 
 At this, and at the warder's hest, 
 
 In sore amazement 
 For him who rested at her side, 
 Her bosom close to his she pressed. 
 
 He thought upon his nobleness 
 (The watchman's song was in his mind) ; 
 
 He tore him from the close embrace, 
 The meed of love and left his joy behind." 
 
 Notice the daring description of the sunrise as a 
 bird that strikes fiery talons through the clouds. It 
 is almost as fine as Shelley's 
 
 " Sanguine sunrise with his meteor eyes, 
 And his burning plumes outspread." 
 
 But for all that, the beauty of these poems and in 
 the original they are very beautiful need not blind 
 us to their essential immorality. Indeed we shall 
 not see the one unless we see the other, for an appre- 
 ciation of both depends on our thoroughly realizing 
 the situation. However the passion may be idealized, 
 however the adjuncts may be glorified, the underlying 
 fact is one which only a particular class of modern
 
 THE MINNESONG. 211 
 
 novels would treat so lovingly. Of course it would 
 be as unjust to judge it by the modern ethical formulae 
 as it would be to estimate the good Samaritan's charity 
 by the present purchasing power of twopence; for 
 moral standards change no less than those of finance. 
 But it may at least be fairly said that in these poems 
 much of the haze of feeling has lifted from the goal 
 of the service of woman, and that henceforth either 
 the reverence of love will be greatly diminished, or it 
 will be retained by artificial means. 
 
 And this, in fact, strikes us about the remaining 
 types of minnesong. Niethart, a younger contemporary 
 of Walter and Wolfram, introduced a new song of 
 situation, or, more strictly, bent an older one into 
 quite a new shape. The minnesingers had long dis- 
 tinguished between the songs which were merely to 
 be sung and those which should accompany the dance. 
 Many of the latter introduce, as it were, an invitation 
 to dance, and in these Niethart has his point of 
 departure. But he loves to treat the merry-making 
 as the subject of conversation between some peasant 
 woman and her daughter, and always hints intelligibly 
 enough that his gallantry and minstrelsy form the 
 chief attraction, but also the chief danger, of the rustic 
 festival. All this may be, and very often is, bright 
 and clever ; but one is conscious of a great descent 
 from the tone of the old days when the knights did
 
 212 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 not deign to sing of village amours, and when their 
 hearts beat high as their ladies approached the scene 
 of revel. Here is a dancing song of Walter's, not so 
 respectful as some others, for in the last stanza he 
 fears he has been too sentimental, and hastens to finish 
 up with a comic and impudent touch : 
 
 " ' This wreath, fair maiden, take ! ' 
 To a lovely lady thus I made request, 
 ' The dance for thy sweet sake, 
 Will in fairness then of fairest flowers be dressed. 
 Were mine a wealth of noble stones 
 All were on thy brow ; 
 Oh believe me now, 
 Is truth not breathing in these tones ? 
 
 ' You are so beautiful 
 Blithe am I my chaplet in your hands to yield, 
 
 The best that I can cull ; 
 
 Know I where are red and white flowers of the field ; 
 In yonder heathland hid from view 
 Fairly are they springing, 
 And the birds are singing, 
 There shall we pluck them, I and you ? ' 
 
 " She took my offering, 
 So a child might take a gift half fearfully. 
 
 Her cheeks were reddening 
 As the rose that standeth by the white lily : 
 Then, as in shame, her bright eyes fell : 
 A fair reverence 
 Was my recompense, 
 If aught beside, I must not tell. 
 
 " Meseemed that I never 
 Gladness of the heart like this in life had found ; 
 
 The flowers were falling ever 
 Prom the boughs above us down upon the ground,
 
 THE MINNESONG. 213 
 
 And, look you, for sheer joy I broke 
 
 Into laughter there, 
 
 Dreamland was so fair, 
 It dawned, and needs must that I woke. 
 
 " And hence is come my case, 
 All the summer through that every maid I see 
 
 I gaze into her face : 
 
 Pound I her I seek, of pain I then were free : 
 Haply to dance she cometh now : 
 Ladies, deign to throw 
 Back your bonnets low ! * 
 Oh, might I meet her, wreath on brow ! " 
 
 Now here is a dancing song of Niethart's, not the 
 most characteristic, but one of the most suitable for 
 quotation : 
 
 "An ancient dame steps forward now, 
 A thousand wrinkles on her brow ; 
 ' Daughter, keep the house for me 
 While I dance for very glee.' 
 
 " ' Mother, what has taken you ? 
 Have your wits forsaken you ? 
 Fifty years have passed away 
 Since the time your hair grew gray.' 
 
 " Up she starts like bird from twig : 
 ' Yet to-day I'll have my jig. 
 See, my joints are not worn out, 
 But good for many a merry bout. 
 
 " ' Daughter, thbu the house must guard, 
 While I foot it on the sward. 
 Quick and stealthily, look there, 
 Yonder youth with yellow hair ! ' 
 
 An allusion to the low broad Austrian hats of the day.
 
 214 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 " ' Mother, I can go instead : 
 The gallant asked me ; " Yes," I said. 
 He keeps the time from being long.' 
 
 Herr Niethart wrote this dancing song." 
 
 It will not be disputed that if Niethart's production 
 is nearer real life, Walter's has the finer aroma of 
 feeling. 
 
 But those who tried to preserve the forms of feeling 
 when the life was gone, became mere pullers of wire- 
 drawn verse and arrangers of meaningless phrases. 
 Passion yields to word-play, and reverie to conceit, 
 and at last we find Frauenlob introduce for the 
 first time into Germany, the tenso of the Proven9als. 
 This kind of verse argument became in his hands the 
 very product and shrine of the formal understanding. 
 In one of these, he maintains against Walter von der 
 Vogelweide that lady is a nobler name than woman. 
 But the shallowness of his purpose appears when we 
 find that he fastens a quarrel on his great adversary 
 only by arbitrarily restricting the word lady to 
 married women. On turning back to the poem of 
 Walter's which Frauenlob attacks, we discover that 
 they are perfectly agreed. So, on this side, the 
 minnesong degenerates into wordy sophistries. 
 
 These remarks on the form of the minnesong 
 already suggest the history of its spirit. A Chauce- 
 rian poem on the praise of women sketches the course 
 of the service of love in the case of certain mauvais
 
 THE MINNESONG. 215 
 
 sujets at the English court. They swear that they 
 never before knew Love nor his dreadful observance, 
 but now they feel how sorely he can wound. And 
 with that they draw to bed, and complain that their 
 lady has given them such pain with a dangerous look 
 of her eyes, that they must needs go to their death. 
 And then they sigh as though their heart would burst 
 in two, and call her their " lady " and their " hertes 
 queene," but if for ruth she give comfort in any wise, 
 " than wolle these j anglers deme of her full ille." 
 
 The career of the service of love as a general prin- 
 ciple of the age is not dissimilar, if we only add that 
 the later generations often went on tagging the 
 fantastic devotion which the real life of the times 
 had outgrown. We may, perhaps, roughly distin- 
 guish three periods of the art which mediaeval love 
 called forth, each with its prevailing tone, and each 
 with its typical authors as characterized by history, 
 or legend, or inference. 
 
 In the first, the lays approach nearly in form and 
 substance to the floating popular songs which seem 
 in all lands to grow up spontaneously without definite 
 authorship. No name is attached to the earliest 
 specimens of the minnesong; and when we come to 
 the collection by " him of Kiirnberg," we feel that 
 this name, if it can be called one, is literally 
 " attached " to a number of the pieces. A peculiar
 
 216 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 literary theory illustrates their position, and indeed 
 that of most of the love-lyrics of this group. It was 
 observed that the Kiirnberger's stanza was the same 
 as is employed in the "Niebelungen Lied," and the con- 
 jecture was started that he might be the author of 
 that poem. But this similarity ratlier cuts the other 
 way. For the " Niebelungen " stanza seems to have 
 developed from the older native verse, and thus the 
 lays of the Kiirnberger run a chance of being con- 
 sidered rather public than private property. Be that 
 as it may, there can be no question that in this period 
 the inspiration is almost entirely native ; that few 
 measures have been adopted from without ; and that 
 the tone, save in depth and in increasing depth of 
 respect, is more popular than in the lyrics of the 
 second period. 
 
 In this, though the ownership of individual songs 
 may still be doubtful, there is no further difficulty in 
 pointing to the authors as a class, and in indicating 
 the names of most of them. They are all of knightly, 
 some of princely rank, and even imperial minnesingers 
 are not unknown. This circumstance speaks for itself. 
 We have here to do with a class which, in those days 
 at least, had more culture, and, with that, more open- 
 ness to foreign ideas, and more impulse to introspec- 
 tion than the masses of the people. Thus, as we 
 might expect, the influences from Provence on metre
 
 THE MINNESONG. 217 
 
 and sentiment are now undisguised. The depths of 
 German feeling are stirred by the breath from the 
 sweet south, and break into ripples of liquid music. 
 These songs have, indeed, the freshness, the sweet 
 monotony, and the countless fine diversities of summer 
 waves. The singers live, and dream, and have their 
 being in the emotion of youthful love. They explore 
 its reaches and sound its depths. They detect its 
 lightest murmurs, its most inarticulate vibrations, 
 and have trained their verse to reproduce each, as an 
 Indian imitates the cries of his native forest. In 
 other respects their careers were often noble and 
 notable. Take three conspicuous instances : Friedrich 
 von Hausen, whose songs are like old memories in 
 their plaintive sweetness, for he has read the heart 
 of youth, was a chivalrous crusader, a follower of the 
 serious Barbarossa in his ill-fated march to the 
 Holy City, and perished at the battle of Philomelium 
 in the last triumphant charge. The army forgot its 
 victory in mourning for his death. Walter von der 
 Vogelweide, the greatest of the minnesingers, who 
 meditates every impression, drinks in all beauty, 
 masters each mood of love, is driven by his ponder- 
 ings to themes beyond. In the struggle between rival 
 emperors, he chooses his part with a view to the weal 
 of Germany, and maintains it as he may. In the 
 feud between emperor and pope, he assails the latter
 
 218 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 with his songs, for his faith is fixed mystically on the 
 Almighty One, who is " too long and too broad," " too 
 great and too small " for us to know. And Wolfram 
 von Eschenbach, who rejects all that might be con- 
 ventional, pierces the husk of sentiment, and in his 
 burning day-songs crowns the period, is better known 
 for a higher achievement. He is the author of 
 " Parzival," the great mystical poem that tries to 
 thread the maze of man's spiritual life ; yet he would 
 rather have fame as a good knight than as the best 
 singer on earth. 
 
 Men like these, even if the fashionable view of love 
 leads them into slippery places, do not care to dwell 
 on its seamy and sordid side. If sometimes anti- 
 inoral, they are never vulgar or brutal. It was at 
 this time that they were compared with nightingales, 
 and even in their sensual strains they somehow seem 
 to rise above the earth into the element of air. They 
 are bird-like in all their tones, whether they are 
 tremulously tender like Friedrich, full and clear like 
 Walter, or throbbing with passion like Wolfram. 
 This, perhaps, as much as the name Vogelweide, or 
 pasture of birds, suggested the beautiful old legend of 
 Walter, and this was felt by the modern poet who 
 repeats it. To repay the lessons they taught him, the 
 minstrel is said to have left a legacy to feed the birds 
 on his grave from day to day. And this was done till
 
 THE MINNESONG. 219 
 
 the monks of the abbey appropriated the bequest to 
 the " fasting brotherhood." " Time," says Longfellow 
 
 " Time has long effaced the inscriptions 
 
 On the cloister's funeral stones, 
 And tradition only tells us 
 
 Where repose the poet's bones. 
 But around the vast cathedral 
 
 By sweet echoes multiplied ; 
 Still the birds repeat the story 
 
 And the name of Vogelweid." 
 
 But the minnesingers are fond of telling us how 
 summer joys pass, and the birds are silent as the 
 winter draws nigh. Winter, too, came for them, and 
 they all became mute save some few who were either 
 barn-door fowls or well-taught parrots. The bloom 
 of the minnesong was too evanescent to last. The 
 service of love was too unpractical, too much in 
 conflict with the claims of the world, long to hold its 
 place when its real nature was discovered. And in 
 Germany, owing to that very meditative trait which 
 is its chief charm, it was doubly exposed to a double 
 danger. The practice of introspection would either 
 disclose its real issue without disguise, or would 
 become a mere pastime for the idle. Some later 
 minnesingers are so unfortunate as to go astray in 
 both directions at once, like that Ulrich von Lichten- 
 stein, who, in his book styled the " Service of Women," 
 unwittingly parodies what he writes about by his 
 mere extravagance, yet is so insincere in his devotion
 
 220 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 that he creates an impression approaching disgust. 
 But generally in South Germany the former alter- 
 native was chosen, and the songs became frivolous ; 
 while in the North the latter course was preferred, 
 and they became artificial. 
 
 In form and tone the later lyrics of the first class 
 tend, but with more lubricity, towards the type of 
 the popular songs. Their verse is often simple, 
 their personages are often peasants, and their scenes 
 in the country. Sometimes there is a no/if humour 
 about them, which indeed is their best quality. Thus 
 Gottfried von Nifen tells us, in a dialogue, how he 
 has the ill-luck to break a girl's pitcher, and charmed 
 with her good-natured way of taking the mishap, 
 asks her to run off with him. " No," says she, " I 
 should lose my lady's favour ; and, besides, she owes 
 me a shilling and a shirt. Wait till I have these, 
 then perhaps I may listen." This may be a carica- 
 ture of the refusals which ladies used to give their 
 knights, or it may be a genuine popular touch. 
 
 And this return to the folk-song was not without 
 its reason. The later minnesingers in Austria were 
 often poor knights, who were glad to go round the 
 festivals of the well-to-do peasant, furnish music for 
 the dances, and for guerdon enjoy, with other more 
 innocent rewards, certain easy triumphs among the 
 village belles. The chief of them is Niethart, who,
 
 THE MINNESONG. 221 
 
 for some unexplained reason, probably a discreditable 
 one, had to make off from his native Bavaria. He 
 was so notorious for his rustic adventures, that he 
 earned the name of Peasants' -foe, and one is glad 
 to think he came in for one of those drubbings which 
 he has drastically described with a humour like that 
 of " Peblis to the Play." 
 
 In its other current, the art spreads beyond the 
 knightly class altogether, and runs into the later 
 master-song, the mechanical exercise of well-meaning 
 burghers; nay, we find a Jew among its votaries. 
 The metres become over complex, the experiments in 
 rhymes and arrangement more hazardous ; till they can 
 no longer be followed by the ear, but only by the eye if 
 they are read with one's pencil ready, and with frequent 
 back references. In substance they contain, at their 
 best, prosaic apothegms, at their worst, verbal quibbles 
 and tame conceits. The most talented offender is 
 Frauenlob, Anglice Ladies'-praise, whose name looks 
 as if he himself had invented it in one of his brighter 
 moments, but is nevertheless his true family addition. 
 Pity that Mr. Walter Shandy knew not of this, when 
 maintaining the influence of names on character. He 
 would have forgotten Aunt Dinah for Frauenlob, for 
 the latter did as much for the praise, as the former 
 for the dispraise of the sex. Two circumstances may 
 perhaps serve to characterize him. By way of sub-
 
 222 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 limity, he addresses the Deity as Tetragrammaton, 
 much as the Romans called a thief a man of three 
 letters. And at his funeral, the maidens and matrons, 
 as we are told, poured wine and tears into his grave, 
 till a stream rippled round it, and flowed out from the 
 churchyard. This, like his name, reads as if one of 
 his conceits had been done into real life. 
 
 The relations of the two tendencies may be further 
 illustrated by two traditions. 
 
 Tannhauser, who wrote in the style of Niethart, 
 becomes in legend the guest of Venus in her sub- 
 terranean grotto, the votary and victim of infernal 
 pleasures, the accursed of man and God; but the 
 master-singers thought that Frauenlob had taken 
 orders, and was doctor of divinity. 
 
 The verses of the men furnish some excuse for 
 both these inventions, and it is just this that shows 
 how the minnesong has fallen into decay. What a 
 gulf between them and the legend that arose about 
 Walter von der Vogelweide ! We can linger with 
 him and his fellows in many a vacant hour ; we are 
 lured back to them by their " native woodnotes wild," 
 as they were drawn by springtime to the fields. But 
 who cares to pursue the stagnating river till it is lost 
 in the sands ? The birds may give us hints for our 
 best music, but we do not go for our best poetry 
 either to the halls of theologians or to the under- 
 ground caverns of Venus.
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OF GERMANY. 
 
 [Lichten stein's works have been edited by Karajan and Lachmann. 
 His life is given in Hagin's " Minnes'anger," bd. iv.] 
 
 THERE are few stranger figures in the Middle Ages 
 than Ulrich von Lichtenstein, and few stranger books 
 than his " Vrouwen Dienest." * His vagaries make 
 him an interesting monster ; but that is not his only 
 or his chief claim on our attention : he has a place 
 in the history of culture. He is sometimes called the 
 Don Quixote of Germany, and though the analogy 
 is by no means exact, he does represent the decay of 
 chivalry on its grotesquer side. 
 
 This extraordinary phase of life, the fantastical 
 mixture of clerical and lay ideals, was already past 
 its prime in Germany. In literature it had produced 
 its best. It had found its most perfect expression in 
 the Arthurian romances, and these their most genial 
 poets in Hartmann, Wolfram, and Gottfried. In the 
 
 * Frauendienst, ' ' Service of Women."
 
 224: STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 lyric, too, the minnesong had outlived its springtime. 
 Even Walter von der Vogelweide did not in his later 
 poems equal the freshness of his youth. The " service 
 of women" was no longer quite heartfelt, the old 
 completeness of feeling was broken up. Chivalry had 
 reached that stage which comes in the history of 
 every imperfect theory, when its extreme partisans 
 only show its weakness, and by their very consistency 
 make it ridiculous. Such an extreme partisan was 
 Ulrich von Lichtenstein. Chivalry had attempted to 
 unite the secular and clerical conceptions of life; it 
 had done this by a mere compromise, and therefore 
 only for the time. The elements soon fell apart. A 
 religious and a worldly order of knighthood arose 
 within chivalry itself. To the original Arthurian 
 group were added on the one hand the legend of 
 the Grale, on the other the romance of Tristram. 
 On the one line by degrees the tone became more 
 purely mystical, the subjects more purely legendary. 
 The other ended in frivolity and coarseness, though 
 these were for long concealed behind an excess of 
 courtly forms. Ulrich belongs to this latter direction. 
 He is fond of saying that for his lady's favour he 
 would give the grale which Sir Percivale won with 
 such knightly labour and pains. The "Service of 
 Women " is the name of his book and the thought 
 of his life : but it has undergone a change there is
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OF GERMANY. 225 
 
 none of the old naif reverence about it. The flourish 
 of knightly extravagance heightens rather than hides 
 the background of vulgarity. The incongruity is all 
 the greater that its satire is unconscious. The 
 "Vrouwen Dienest" is Ulrich's autobiography; he 
 regards himself as preux chevalier; his life is the 
 fitting theme for an epic which accordingly he 
 writes in stately eight-lined stanzas interspersed with 
 his songs. Of course in such an account, which is 
 both " Diehtung und Wahrheit," the latter is a little 
 apt to suffer. Still, on the whole, Ulrich is trust- 
 worthy. Some of his wildest freaks have external 
 evidence for them, and others are told with a sim- 
 plicity of detail which looks like truth. Again, he 
 frankly confesses points which, were he elaborating, 
 he would rather conceal. And, finally, if he altered 
 at all, he would alter to improve himself, to make 
 himself what he would fain be like, to give his life 
 at his own valuation. His book would thus be a true 
 description of his ideal, even if the facts should be a 
 little twisted. And probably there is no serious mis- 
 statement even of them. The following sketch taken, 
 save in its last scene, from his own account, and 
 retaining where possible his own words, is a true 
 picture probably of his life, certainly of his times. 
 
 Ulrich was born, in the beginning of the thirteenth 
 century, of a noble and wealthy house. He himself 
 
 Q
 
 226 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 was afterwards lord of three castles Lichten stein, 
 Murau, and Frauenberg ; and his father seems to have 
 kept some state and to have opened his halls to the 
 minnesingers and minstrels. Their praise of chivalry 
 and love the young Ulrich heard while he was yet a 
 child riding round the room on a stick. And he 
 thought, "When I am a man I will give my pos- 
 sessions and strength and life itself to women, and 
 serve them as best as I can." When eleven years old 
 he was sent to be page in the court of a neighbouring 
 prince, whose name he is discreet enough not to men- 
 tion. Here the little monkey, his mind on fire with 
 the lays he had heard, looked about for a lady to 
 whom he might offer his adoration. He modestly 
 fixed on the wife of his prince. There was only one 
 objection she was of higher rank than he. But 
 Ulrich was hopeful of overcoming that difficulty by 
 faithful service. He began at once, so far as a child 
 could, to pay his devoir early and late. In summer 
 he plucked her flowers, and was overjoyed when they 
 were accepted ; he thought, " Thou art touching them 
 even as I have touched." His next proof of devotion 
 is rather more wonderful. In those days knives and 
 forks were not much used at table, so it was all the 
 more necessary that the hands should be clean. As 
 a precautionary measure water was presented to the 
 guests before meat, and it would be the duty of
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OF GERMANY. 227 
 
 Ulrich as page to serve his lady with a silver ewer. 
 When she was ready, he stealthily bore it away into 
 a corner, and drank the water. After waiting on 
 the princess for five years, he was removed to the 
 household of Henry, brother to the Duke of Austria ; 
 that is to say, his body was removed ; his heart, he 
 is careful to tell us, remained with his lady. But 
 his new lord taught him all courteous manners and 
 chivalry, how to serve women and how to sing the 
 minnesong. With Henry he remained four years ; 
 then his father died, and he returned to Lichtenstein. 
 At home he practised tilting and jousting ; and three 
 years later he was able to join in a great tournament 
 at Vienna, on the occasion of the marriage of Leopold's 
 daughter with a Saxon prince. Two hundred and 
 fifty pages were knighted at this time, and among 
 them was Ulrich. To add to his happiness, he saw 
 from afar the lustre of his joy, his pure sweet lady ; 
 but on account of spies he did not venture to speak 
 to her. However, he heard at second hand, and that 
 was some satisfaction, that she approved of his 
 knighthood. Under these good auspices he with- 
 drew from Vienna, sought out tournaments all the 
 summer through, and was everywhere successful ; for 
 which he thanked his lady in his heart. 
 
 But in winter matters were riot so pleasant. He 
 had nothing to do, and was sick for love. Fortunately;
 
 228 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 he found that a favourite cousin knew the princess, 
 and through this good-natured young lady was able 
 to transmit messages and a song. The princess was 
 astonished at his presumption. No doubt the song 
 was good, but she could never accept the service of 
 an inferior. Besides, she objected to Ulrich's personal 
 appearance. "It must always be a vexation to a 
 woman," she said, " to look on his ugly mouth." Of 
 this deformity Ulrich himself gives a fuller account. 
 He describes himself as having three lips, whatever 
 that may mean certainly not a formation that would 
 recommend him as a gallant. But as soon as he heard 
 this criticism of his princess, he determined to get 
 rid of the superfluous member. He rode off to Graez, 
 where there was a famous surgeon. One of his lady's 
 men, whom he chanced to meet, accompanied him to 
 see the performance. The surgeon wanted to bind 
 Ulrich, but to this he objected: he would bear the 
 pain without flinching for the sake of a certain lady. 
 The instruments were brought, and the operation was 
 soon over, both parties having acquitted themselves 
 with honour. As Ulrich tersely remarks, "The 
 doctor cuts like a master, and I endured like a man." 
 The spectator was deeply affected. " If only you 
 recover," he said, " I am glad to have been here." 
 For five and a half weeks Ulrich remained under 
 treatment, which he describes in great detail. He
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OF GERMANY. 229 
 
 could not eat for the great pain in his mouth and 
 teeth; he feelingly alludes to his agonies of hunger 
 and thirst, and especially to the evil odour of a salve, 
 green as grass, with which his wound was anointed. 
 But all the while he consoled himself by composing 
 a song, and, when he was once more going about, 
 rode with it to his cousin. She was delighted with 
 his appearance, assured him that none could now take 
 exception to his mouth, and forwarded his poem in 
 a letter which told of the marvel that had happened. 
 The princess was really curious to see the transformed 
 Ulrich, and in a prose reply, mentioned where she 
 would be on the next Monday. Of course Ulrich was 
 there to meet her ; but at the goal of his hopes he was 
 doomed to disappointment. Thrice he rode to where 
 she stood ; but love deprived him of utterance, and 
 thrice he had to retire without saying a word. A jest 
 of hers completed his misery, and sent him home to 
 bed so wretched that his friends thought he was going 
 to die. The next morning, when they were fetching a 
 doctor, Ulrich sprang to his feet, leaped on his horse 
 and galloped through the streets. He met his lady, 
 and with the courage of despair told his whole story. 
 She called him a child, remarked very decorously that 
 it did not beseem a lady to ride alone with a knight, 
 and summoned a second cavalier to her side. Ulrich 
 withdrew, glad at least to have spoken with her.
 
 230 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 When winter came, he composed a new song, and 
 what was called a "Buchlein," a sort of love-letter 
 in verse, and sent them to the lady. They were 
 returned, but he saw that more was written on them 
 now than when they left his hands. And here he 
 makes a curious revelation. It was ten days before 
 he learned the purport of the message, for his secre- 
 tary was from home, and he himself could neither 
 read nor write. When at length the mystery was 
 declared, it did not greatly edify him. It concluded 
 with the warning, repeated thrice : " W T ho wishes what 
 he must not get, denies himself." 
 
 Ulrich was rather depressed at this response, but 
 next spring was again ready for the lists. He took 
 part in a great tournament at Frisach, and acquitted 
 himself creditably. "What I myself did," he says, 
 " on that day, and before, and often since, that for my 
 breeding's sake I shall conceal. But one thing I will 
 tell you, and my mouth speaks truly : there I was not 
 the best, neither was I the worst." However, his 
 cousin had heard that he was the best, and told the 
 princess so when she sent his next poem. This song 
 is a good specimen of Ulrich's lyrical style, so I quote 
 the first stanza. 
 
 '' In the wild wood there are singing 
 
 Little birds their gladsome lay, 
 
 On the heathland there are springing 
 
 Fairest flowers in shining May.
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OP GERMANY. 231 
 
 Thus my valour blooms, I wis, 
 
 When on her sweet grace I ponder 
 Who on me doth gladness squander 
 
 As dreams give the poor their bliss." 
 
 So far, however, was she from squandering any glad- 
 ness on him just now, that she wrote back to his 
 cousin, " You praise your kinsman from kinship ; 
 others praise him not." These words quite over- 
 whelmed poor Lichtenstein. To make matters worse, 
 the great lady forbade any further intercourse through 
 the agency of the cousin, so his resources were ex- 
 hausted. He spent the summer in jousting, then wrote 
 laments on the lost glories of the earth ; and in winter 
 according to his own confession, rode into the country 
 to seek out pretty ladies. More than once we find 
 him consoling himself in this way when he should 
 have been sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 
 
 Next summer he went tourneying again, and came 
 to a great passage of arms at Brixen. There he met 
 with an accident to which mediaeval champions were 
 continually exposed. He had a finger broken off so 
 that it hung from the hand only by a shred by the 
 vein, Ulrich says. His friends were greatly concerned, 
 but he bade them be still ; it moved him right little, 
 it had chanced to him in a woman's cause. A doctor 
 bound it up, promising to make Ulrich whole again. 
 But on the sixth day, when the bandages were re- 
 moved, the finger was so black and discoloured that
 
 232 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 both patient and physician were horror-stricken. 
 Ulrich chased his adviser from the room, and set out 
 for Botzen, where a celebrated doctor lived. He lay 
 for seven days under his treatment ; and during his 
 illness a strange lady sent him, first, four books for 
 his entertainment, then a foreign melody to do into 
 German, and lastly a little dog to reward the masterly 
 execution of this commission. Ulrich, now partly 
 recovered, began to search for a messenger to supply 
 his cousin's place. For long he was unsuccessful ; but 
 at length met a page, a courteous boy, who was his 
 friend. When this page, without being told, guessed 
 who the lady was, Ulrich swooned with terror ; could 
 he have been indiscreet ? Reassured on this point, he 
 commissioned the youth to tell the adventure with 
 the finger and deliver sundry songs. The lady's reply 
 only expressed astonishment at his impertinence, 
 though, she confessed, his service was true and his 
 songs were lovely. The messenger, however, assured 
 Ulrich that despite these words she was not ill dis- 
 posed towards him ; and often before he had received 
 a similar consolation from his cousin. Their opinion 
 will strike us as probably the correct one. The lady's 
 subsequent behaviour shows that she was very well 
 pleased to have as one of her admirers this clever 
 young poet rising into notice, who was at the same 
 time rich and well born, and able to hold his own in 
 the lists.
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OF GERMANY. 233 
 
 Ulrich at any rate did not take his repulse as final. 
 After a short absence in Rome, he sent new songs and 
 greetings to the lady. But this time she received the 
 messenger with more asperity than ever. She com- 
 plained that Ulrich had betrayed her. She had been 
 led to believe that he had lost his finger on her 
 account ; but in point of fact, as she hears, he had not 
 lost it. The page had to admit that her information 
 was correct. In vain did he urge that the finger was 
 now crooked and of little worth. She was not to be 
 propitiated. On receiving those tidings, poor Lichten- 
 stein's resolution was soon taken. He summoned his 
 friend, Ulrich von Hasendorf, and bade him strike off 
 the offending finger. Hasendorf at first refused, but 
 Lichtenstein was firm. He gives a very circumstan- 
 tial account of this operation too still in heroic 
 measure. He placed his hand on the table, and a 
 knife on the finger, and cried out, "Now, smite 
 away, honest friend." His friend smote, and the 
 little finger, as Ulrich puts it, " sprang away." 
 
 He then wrote a " Biichlein," wrapped it in green 
 samite, and enclosed it and the finger within two 
 golden boards, specially prepared by the goldsmith 
 and clasped with two little golden hands. This he 
 sent in a neat parcel to his lady. When she opened 
 it, she very sensibly exclaimed, " Alack ! I could 
 never have believed such folly of any sane man ! "
 
 234 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 At the same time she melted so far as to say she 
 regretted this, not from any regard for Ulrich, but 
 from its having happened on her account. Moreover, 
 she promised to place it where she could see it every 
 day! 
 
 Ulrich was now jubilant, and received her sanction 
 to a new undertaking which he always regarded as 
 the crowning achievement of his life. This was his 
 famous " Progress of Venus." He departed secretly, 
 disguised as a pilgrim with staff and scrip, as though 
 he would go to Rome. But he turned aside at Venice, 
 where he hired a remote lodging. There he lived 
 during the winter, and had women's clothes made to 
 his order. The articles he mentions are twelve gowns, 
 thirty sleeves, three white mantles with hoods, two 
 beautiful long brown braided tresses interwoven with 
 pearls ; the last, he tells us, a kind of merchandise 
 which was very plentiful. His saddle, shield, and 
 helmet were all silver white, as were a hundred spears 
 specially prepared for him. His page's clothing and 
 his horse-cloths were also white. When all his pre- 
 parations were completed, he issued the following 
 prose proclamation, which he quotes in full : " The 
 worthy Queen Venus, Goddess of Love, to all the 
 Knights who dwell in Lombardy and Friuli and 
 Karinthia and Styria and Austria, even to Bohemia, 
 offers her grace and greeting, and makes known to
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OF GEEMANY. 235 
 
 them that she of her good pleasure will visit them, 
 and teach them in what manner they should deserve 
 and obtain the love of worthy ladies. She gives them 
 to know that she will rise from the sea at Mestre 
 the day after St. George's Day, and will journey to 
 Bohemia in such wise. And whatso knight will come 
 up against her and break a spear upon her, to him will 
 she give for guerdon a golden ring : that let him send 
 to the woman whom he loves best. The ring has such 
 virtue that to whatsoever woman it is sent, she must 
 ever seem the fairer, and love without deceit him who 
 has sent it. If my lady Venus overthrow a knight, he 
 must bow to the four ends of the world in honour of a 
 certain woman ; but if any knight overthrow her, he 
 shall have all the horses that she leads by her." Then 
 follows the itinerary of my lady Venus, describing in 
 detail the route she will take, and on what particular 
 days she will be at the various halting-places. The 
 progress is to last twenty-nine days, and on the eighth 
 day after its termination she will hold a tournament 
 at Neuenburg. During all that time she will not 
 uncover her face or hands before strangers, nor will 
 they hear her voice. The missive concludes by placing 
 in the ban of love, and in the ban of all good women, 
 whoso hears and comes not up against her. There- 
 fore has she given her route that all may know when 
 and where to meet her.
 
 236 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 This proclamation was made by Ulrich (for he, of 
 course, was the goddess Venus) thirty days before he 
 should begin his progress, and it was repeated at each 
 of the stations exactly thirty days before his arrival. 
 By this means a great concourse was gathered together 
 early on the day after St. George's, to behold ascending 
 from the sea this new 
 
 " Idalian Aphrodite, ocecan-born." 
 
 This occurred on Sunday, April 25, 1227. Ulrich at 
 once made himself ready for the road, and now 
 describes his order of march with obvious pleasure in 
 his own magnificence. First rode his marshal and his 
 cook ; then came two trumpeters ; between them 
 Ulrich's banner, white as any swan ; next followed 
 three sumpter-horses with three boys running at their 
 side. Then came three spare chargers, covered, under 
 the care of three more pages. They carried Ulrich's 
 silver shield and silver helm, and his silver saddle was 
 always ready on the back of one of the horses. After 
 them came a flutist, who also beat the drum ; then 
 four other pages, each bearing a sheaf of three great 
 spears. Here followed two handsome maidens dressed 
 in white, or, as is probably more accurate, two boys 
 costumed as maidens. Then came two fiddlers, who 
 played a merry march ; and last of all Lichtenstein 
 himself, decked out in his woman's attire, not unmind- 
 ful of his hat trimmed with pearls, his silk gloves, his
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OF GERMANY. 237 
 
 golden girdle of three fingers' breadth, and the costly 
 brooch on his bosom. In this style they proceeded to 
 Treviso ; but here Ulrich met with a vexation which 
 he had not foreseen. The " potestat," the magistrate of 
 the place, interfered to forbid any jousting, and called 
 the whole thing a foolery. The people thought they 
 were to be disappointed of their amusement ; Frau 
 Venus and the knights she had summoned gave up 
 hopes of an encounter. Fortunately the potestat was 
 a man of gallantry, and a number of ladies had flocked 
 to see the spectacle; at their petition he agreed to 
 permit the exhibition. But now the press was so great 
 that a bridge had to serve the combatants for lists. 
 Here Venus broke her first lance, and after the battle 
 gave away two rings, for which "many a rosy red 
 mouth blessed her." 
 
 The history of Ulrich's twenty-nine days' progress 
 is in the main uninteresting. It is a chronicle of 
 tiltings and joustings, which are all very similar. 
 Some of the incidents, however, that sprung from his 
 feminine disguise are rather amusing, especially as 
 Ulrich has no idea of their comic side. Thus on the 
 second morning he slept rather long. A page rushed 
 in and exclaimed (not " Sir," for even with his own 
 retinue must the fiction be maintained, but) " Dearest 
 Lady, noble Queen, two hundred women have come 
 to visit you." Ulrich put on his morning gown and
 
 238 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 received them. After a while they set out for church, 
 heard mass, and went through the ceremony of giving 
 the " pax," that is, the kiss of peace, which was still 
 part of the ritual of the communion in the Western 
 Church. Ulrich's experiences in this matter were 
 dissimilar. As Venus, he always went to the women's 
 side of the church ; and in Italy, he says, there was 
 invariably a crowd about him, while in Germany he 
 could not get any one to accept his salutation. 
 
 But everywhere he was regarded with great favour 
 by the ladies, who looked on his garb as a compliment 
 to their sex. Once he had occasion to give four 
 gowns to the wash ; an unknown admirer ascertained 
 this, and, when they were sent back, placed among them 
 a fifth, containing a letter, a girdle, and a chaplet. It 
 escaped the marshal's notice. Not till four days later, 
 Avhen he was looking over his wardrobe, did Ulrich 
 discover the addition. He feared he might be charged 
 with unfaithfulness, and was more grieved than 
 pleased. He stormed at the marshal, who knew 
 nothing about it. All that was ever ascertained 
 was the statement of the note, "These trifles are 
 sent you, because in wearing woman's dress, you 
 honour all women." The reasoning is perhaps a little 
 obscure. 
 
 Ulrich received another donation of this kind under 
 more laughable circumstances. He was having a bath
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OF GERMANY. 239 
 
 outside the city, in the greenwood, and had been left 
 alone by his attendants. A strange page appeared, 
 and, spreading a carpet on the sward, proceeded, de- 
 spite Ulrich's remonstrances, to lay on it female apparel, 
 which, he indicated, was the gift of a lady. Ulrich 
 was furious; but the page, nothing abashed, fetched 
 heaps of roses from two companions, and scattered them 
 on Ulrich and his bath till both were completely 
 buried. And in this condition the astonished cham- 
 berlain shortly afterwards discovered his master. 
 The picture of the irate paladin in his tub, vociferating 
 vengeance but afraid to move, and pelted with roses 
 as a delicate attention, is one of the most amusing in 
 the book, and of course is recorded with all tragic 
 seriousness. 
 
 But though thus honoured, Ulrich was not the only 
 knight " in character." He tells us of two other 
 masqueraders whom he encountered. The first was 
 got up as a monk, and this Ulrich took as a personal 
 insult. Either for that reason, or because he did not 
 choose to attack the cloth, he for long refused to fight 
 him ; and when, at the prayer of common friends, he 
 at length consented, he punished the reverend gentle- 
 man rather severely. 
 
 The other masquerader was dressed, like Ulrich 
 himself, as a woman, with earrings and yellow ringlets. 
 When invited to this encounter, Ulrich offered to come
 
 210 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 merely in his robes, without harness, if his adversary 
 were really a woman. From this, therefore, we see 
 that underneath his silks he wore his mail coat a 
 precaution with which he has not always been 
 credited. 
 
 And now follows an extraordinary passage. At 
 Glokeniz, after jousting all day long, he secured the 
 door of his lodging, and prepared for a secret expedi- 
 tion. He stole away with one trusty page and " rode 
 joyfully to his darling wife, whom he could not love 
 better ! " Now this is the first time we hear that he 
 is married. He has said much of his lady, but nothing 
 of his wife. And in all likelihood he had children at 
 this time. Moreover, he was comfortable in his 
 home. His wife gave him a glad welcome, and he 
 spent a happy day with her. Nothing shows more 
 clearly the unreal, artificial character of the Service 
 of Love. 
 
 But to this service TJlrich was sworn, and he soon 
 rode off to resume his duties. On the way he met his 
 messenger, and, following him into a field, demanded 
 news. The messenger, with a glad face, refused to 
 give them unless Ulrich should kneel. Ulrich was 
 immediately on his knees, " as at prayers," he adds ; 
 and was now informed that his lady, well pleased with 
 his prowess, had sent him a ring. This threw him 
 into ecstasies, and he went back to work with new
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OF GERMANY. 241 
 
 vigour. At the end of his progress he had distributed 
 two hundred and seventy-five rings and thrown four 
 knights, without ever being thrown himself.. These 
 figures show how his expedition commanded the 
 sympathies of his class. His freaks were the freaks 
 not only of the individual but of the age. 
 
 And now the day arrived for the final tournament 
 at Neuenburg. On the morning of this event Ulrich 
 had another message from his princess ; this time not 
 so favourable. She accused him of treason, of showing 
 
 7 O 
 
 attentions to another lady, and demanded back her 
 ring. Poor Ulrich, who was quite innocent of the 
 offence, was so deeply hurt that he wept like a child, 
 and only on compulsion rode to the lists. But there 
 he fought like a good knight and true. When all was 
 over, he sent off a pitiful message to his lady, while of 
 himself he says, " I rode hence in sorrow to a place 
 where I found comfort to my darling wife. She 
 could not be dearer to me, though another woman was 
 mistress of my life ! " 
 
 He heard nothing further for ten days. At length, 
 as he was riding through the fields, a new message 
 was brought him, which again he must kneel to receive. 
 Secret emissaries of his lady had watched his behaviour 
 at the tournament; they had satisfied her that he 
 was true, and she now restored him to favour. More- 
 over, she would grant him an interview, if on Sunday 
 
 R
 
 242 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 morning he could be at her castle, disguised as a leper. 
 It was already Friday evening, so there was no time 
 to lose. Ulrich rode off in hot haste, without even 
 going home or sending word to his people. On the 
 Saturday night he procured porringer and clothing 
 such as lepers used, and next morning joined the crowd 
 of diseased beggars who sat before the castle waiting 
 for alms. When getting his share, Ulrich was told to 
 remain within reach till he received further instruc- 
 tions. This command he obeyed to the uttermost ; and, 
 to disarm suspicion, actually took his food with the 
 lepers, not without shuddering. His hair rose to a hill 
 for their foul breath and at the sight of fingers " which 
 might have been a dead man's laid in his grave for a 
 hundred days." Ulrich now answers the possible 
 objection, how was not he discovered to be a healthy 
 man. "I knew then," he says, "and still know, a 
 herb, which, if taken into the mouth, produces swelling 
 and discolouration. This herb I then had, and had 
 dyed my hair grey." For his lady's sake, he spent the 
 rest of the day in asking alms from door to door, and 
 at night he slept in the corn. The rain poured down, 
 the wind blew, a bitter frost came ; and what with 
 these and the stony ground, Ulrich was very miserable. 
 But another day brought him recompense. The 
 princess, surrounded by all her ladies-in-waiting and 
 attendants, granted him an audience, and praised his
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OF GERMANY. 243 
 
 devotion. And everything was managed just as the 
 romantic Ulrich would have wished. 
 
 The interview took place at dead of night. He 
 skulked among the bushes all the evening till a sheet 
 was lowered for him. Unfortunately during all his 
 years of service he had grown older and heavier than 
 he once was, and the ladies' strength could not lift 
 him very far. In this difficulty he substituted his 
 page for himself. The youth was easily lifted, and 
 Ulrich had the annoyance of seeing him greeted with 
 a kiss which was meant for himself. But now, with 
 the page's help, he was safely hoisted up. The inter- 
 view did not remain very amicable, however, and 
 Ulrich was suddenly dismissed. In letting him down, 
 too, the ladies played him a trick : he fell headlong, 
 crying, " Alack, alack, and ever alack ! " and scaring 
 the watchman out of his wits, who thought it was the 
 devil in the flesh. Ulrich would have drowned him- 
 self in despair, but his page brought him a cushion, 
 and said it was from the lady, again turned gracious. 
 This, however, was not true. On the contrary, she 
 was highly indignant at the noise he had made in 
 falling, and imposed on him as punishment a pil- 
 grimage over the sea. This Ulrich readily undertook, 
 and meanwhile rode through the land, looking at the 
 ladies, and by his own account finding many that 
 were fair. The pilgrimage never took place. The
 
 244 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 lady excused him ; and, besides, Ulrich, perhaps from 
 the memory of his night among the corn, had gradually 
 become less enthusiastic about her, till in 1231 he 
 renounced her service altogether. " She did me a 
 deed," he says, "which would make all honest men 
 lament, could I for my breeding's sake disclose it." 
 It is rather a pleasing feature in the shatter-brained 
 Ulrich that he never betrays the secret of his lady's 
 name or of her misdemeanour. But now he could not 
 refrain from writing angry songs about her. Another 
 lady remonstrated with him for this, and he gave it 
 up. He set himself to find out a new empress, and 
 discovered one "fair and gentle, who crowned her 
 beauty with good bearing and soft manners, and there- 
 with was pure and suitably old." This last excellence 
 would recommend her to Ulrich, who was himself no 
 longer a youth. Possibly, too, this second lady was 
 the same who stopped his attacks on the first.* In 
 her honour he began a new progress : this time as 
 Arthur, who had returned from Paradise to restore 
 the Round Table. Nothing shows more graphically 
 how the Arthurian romances had sunk into the lives 
 of the court circles. A number of knights flocked to 
 Ulrich, and named themselves, after the celebrities 
 of the Round Table, Ywan, Parzival, Segremors, and 
 the like. But they kept their native German desig- 
 * Comp., however, pp. '131 and 439, Laclimann's edition.
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OF GERMANY. 245 
 
 nature so far as their estates were concerned; and 
 \ve have thus such odd combinations as Tristram of 
 Lebenherg, Lancelot of Spiegelberg ; " his right name 
 was Henry," naively adds Ulrich of the latter. On 
 the whole, however, this second expedition is rather 
 tedious, and henceforth such is the character of the 
 book. 
 
 One other incident deserves to be recorded. In 
 1246 Duke Frederick of Austria perished in his war 
 with the Hungarians ; and two years later Ulrich 
 was surprised by two friends -Weinhold and Pilgerin 
 who imprisoned him for a year and three days in 
 his own castle of Frauenburg. By imperial command 
 he was at length restored to freedom, but for some 
 time his two sons and his castle were held as pledges. 
 During his captivity the inveterate old beau, now 
 nearly fifty, had consoled himself by writing love- 
 poems. Indeed, the rest of his book is made up for 
 the most part of minnesongs and the praises of love. 
 Some of these are musical and graceful enough, and 
 read with a certain swing. Ulrich is fully alive to 
 his merits as lyric poet. He is fond of remarking at 
 the end of his verses: "This song was universally 
 sung," "This song pleased the fiddlers," "This song 
 was not understood by the simple, but was praised by 
 all who knew," " This song men thought good, and 
 they were right" After one he exclaims, "These
 
 246 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 verses were composed wonderfully, the rhymes set in 
 a masterly fashion, the melody could not be better ! " 
 
 On the other side, however, Ulrich has now to 
 register a series of laments and rebukes. He sees the 
 youth growing up destitute of courteous manners, the 
 people living miserably, the men rejoicing more in 
 hunting and drinking than in knightly service, and 
 the women no longer inciting them to noble deeds. 
 Probably to the same period belongs Ulrich 's other 
 work, " Der Vrouwen Buoch," which is one long indict- 
 ment of the age for its corruption and degeneracy. 
 In it a knight and a lady accuse respectively the 
 women and the men as guilty of all the evil, till 
 Ulrich himself enters and settles the dispute. The 
 last pages of the " Vrouwen Dienest " breathe exactly 
 the same spirit, and Ulrich's one resource amidst the 
 growing barbarism is to cling more closely to his own 
 service. His last statement is that his lady's behest 
 has moved him to write this biography, and hence its 
 name, " The Service of Women." 
 
 From these closing remarks we see that Ulrich 
 eventually lost rapport with his age. When a system 
 landed men in such extravagances as he has described, 
 we cannot wonder that the majority should con- 
 temptuously reject it. Chivalry had been weighed in 
 the balance and found wanting. In Lichtenstein him- 
 self we find much that shocks ; even knights such
 
 THE DON QUIXOTE OF GERMANY. 247 
 
 as he were not free from the prevailing rudeness. 
 The rudeness, indeed, as we saw, inevitably resulted 
 in the inevitable disruption of chivalry. 
 
 What we notice here, therefore, is a contest between 
 old and new, in which each side must have our sym- 
 pathy. Chivalry, just in such adherents as Lich ten- 
 stein, had showed its insufficiency. It was thrown 
 aside ; but in the struggle to a new principle much 
 lawlessness, much coarseness, much folly, were neces- 
 sarily present. So it was natural that men of the old 
 regime should remain true to it, and see in all the 
 anarchy and change no new life, but only death. 
 
 The last incident known of Ulrich's career pic- 
 turesquely illustrates this opposition between the old 
 and the new. At a banquet in Breslau he, with some 
 other nobles, was accused of high treason. The 
 veteran j ouster claimed the knightly trial by combat. 
 But the world was grown prosaic. His appeal was 
 disregarded ; he was thrown into prison, and, when 
 released, his castles were confiscated. This happened 
 in 1268. He survived a few years, being alive in 
 1274 and dead in 1277; but the glory of his life had 
 departed, like the glory of the order to which he 
 belonged. 
 
 When we now take leave of the poor old knight, 
 it is obvious where his resemblance to his Spanish 
 brother breaks down. In truth, from one point of
 
 248 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE.! 
 
 view he is neither Don Quixote nor Cervantes. Not 
 Don Quixote, for he is no isolated specimen ; during 
 the greater part of his life his absurdities were the 
 fashion, though he may have carried them further 
 than usual. Not Cervantes, for his satire is un- 
 conscious ; he never guesses that he is describing 
 anything but the most rational mode of life. In so 
 far, however, as he reduces chivalry to a burlesque, in 
 so far as the irony of history becomes incarnate in 
 him, in so far as his exit with the old order is partly 
 comic and partly pathetic, we have a right to call him 
 the Don Quixote of Germany.
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE 
 MASTERSONG. 
 
 [A good selection of Hans Sachs's woi-ks is given by Goedeke and 
 Tittmann, " Deutsche Dichter des 16 tin Jahrhtinderts," with literary 
 an I biographical introductions. See, too, Gervinus's " Deutsche 
 Dichtung," bd. ii. ; J. Grimm, " Ueber den Meistersang; " Goedeke, 
 " Zur Geschichte des Meistergesangs, Germ.," 15,197.] 
 
 " Not thy councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard, 
 But thy painter, Albrecht Diirer, and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler 
 bard." 
 
 SUCH are Longfellow's words to the old merchant 
 town of Nuremberg as he paces its streets and court- 
 yards and dreams over its busy past. The memories of 
 old Nurernbergers crowd upon him, their fame is the 
 fame of their city ; yet many of us know Hans Sachs 
 only through this very poem. Such knowledge must 
 be nebulous, but need not be incorrect. To associate 
 his name with Albrecht Diirer, to recognize in him a 
 Nuremberg burgher of the sixteenth century, the poet 
 of its toil and traffic, is to find the right stand-point 
 from which to judge him. For Hans is essentially
 
 230 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 the poet of handworkers and traders ; he has the 
 honesty and humour and good sense of the thriving 
 bourgeois. He does not detect the passing shadows 
 and delicate tints of life ; its crimes and sorrows have 
 for him no mystery, they have a moral ; but he sees 
 the world " as Albrecht Dlirer saw it its firm life and 
 manliness, its inner force and steadfastness." * 
 
 This plain unromantic way of looking at things 
 was very characteristic of the Reformation. Great 
 pleasure and interest in daily life were accompanied 
 by a certain dulness to its problems. After all, the 
 liberty which Luther claimed was in the main a 
 practical one. In his famous doggrel he rejects the 
 cant of his cloister, "Who loves not woman, wine, 
 and song, remains a fool his whole life long." But he 
 would not permit much speculative liberty. The sus- 
 pension of judgment on which modern science insists 
 he would have denounced as doubt, as a temptation 
 of the Devil. The obstinate questionings of unseen 
 things which make Shakespeare's plays so free and 
 human, never sounded in his ears, or if they did, were 
 dismissed with a text from Scripture. He occupied a 
 sort of double position. On the one hand, his appeal 
 to private judgment and his joy in the world could 
 not rest within the limits he prescribed, and on the 
 other his resumption of a whole body of Divinity 
 
 * Goethe's " Hans Sachsen's Poetische Sendnng."
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 251 
 
 could not harmonize with his other principles. Thus 
 we have in the sequel theologians more Lutheran than 
 Luther condemning pleasure, condemning reason ; and 
 we have as his true followers those who face the 
 problems of thought and existence, even should. they 
 sink under them in despair. Meanwhile the pheno- 
 menon at the Reformation was a hearty acceptance 
 of the facts of life, and a hearty acceptance of a 
 theological system. That is what we find in Hans 
 Sachs, and in this aspect he is the poet of the Refor- 
 mation no less than the poet of the guilds. 
 
 Not that he was the first whom those influences 
 inspired. The spirit of reform was working in all 
 the towns, rousing the ablest citizens (e.g. Sebastian 
 Brandt) to satirize old abuses and inculcate a sober, 
 practical morality. And not only did a few such 
 writers arise whose vigour and talent won them 
 fame in other lands; there was a general literary 
 fermentation among the labouring classes. Never 
 before or since did so many workmen devote their 
 time to music and verse-making ; indeed those were 
 in the minority who could not rhyme. They formed 
 societies, modelled on their trades guilds, with statutes, 
 penalties, and masters ; and their authorized poetry 
 was called the Mastersong. This is the third great 
 influence which moulded the mind of Hans Sachs, and 
 as less familiar it must be described more in detail.
 
 252 STUDIES IX GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 One of the official documents sets forth how " certain 
 godless fellows go about the town screaming out shame- 
 less street-songs all night long." The staid burghers 
 are much disturbed, perhaps in both senses of the 
 word, by such misconduct, and take measures to sup- 
 press "these evil lays and give praises to God." Their 
 remedy is the mastersong, which as a harmless and 
 even edifying entertainment, is meant to supersede 
 one more questionable. The hard-worked citizens 
 were to find their needful relaxation and religious 
 profit in the Mastersingers' Schools. These schools 
 had a double function, an exoteric and an esoteric ; 
 they had their public festivals for the uninitiated, and 
 their private festivals, with the necessary rehearsals 
 and practisings, for their associates. At the former 
 any one might be present, and all could take part ; 
 the subjects of the songs were passages of Scripture, 
 " fair maxims of ethics," or even stories from profane 
 history, "provided always they be true and profit- 
 able." It was in its private meetings that the school 
 showed itself as a school. In virtue of its religious 
 and social character it was held in the town hall, or 
 oftener in the church, and met on the holidays and 
 the Sunday afternoons. Its songs must be religious, 
 and indeed, after the Reformation, scriptural in sub- 
 ject. The rolls were rigidly kept, no member could 
 absent himself without good excuse, and none but
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 253 
 
 members were admitted. Entrance into the associa- 
 tion was guarded, the applicant having to satisfy the 
 board of his good character and birth in wedlock. 
 When baptized into the fraternity his labours only 
 commenced. The school was ranged in grades, and 
 before passing from a lower to a higher he must 
 undergo certain tests, for which he was prepared 
 gratis by mastersingers of established fame. When 
 taking his first lessons the associate was called a 
 Hckolar, when he knew the technical rules by art he 
 became a school-friend, when able to sing certain of 
 the existing songs he was raised to the rank of a 
 singer, after producing verses of his own in the 
 recognized measures and to the recognized melodies 
 he became a poet, and finally he was entitled master- 
 linger only when he had invented a new tone or wise 
 terms which include both metre and music. He 
 was called the father of his tone, and, choosing god- 
 fathers, baptized it with some " befitting " name. 
 Thus we have ruddy tones and green tones, long 
 tones and high tones, tones named of dragons, of 
 princes, of " strong nightingales," of " woman's 
 honour." Wherein precisely the fitness consists the 
 present writer is generally unskilled to say. No 
 tone was considered original which encroached 011 
 another for more than four syllables, or was sanc- 
 tioned without solemn deliberations. None was ac-
 
 254 STUDIES IX GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 cepted if it violated oftener than seven times the rules 
 of the art laid down in the Tdbulature. This was 
 the codex of the mastersong, a table of definitions, 
 injunctions, and warnings. It fixes that the strophe 
 must be of a threefold form, two like parts followed 
 by one unlike, as we still see in the sonnet. It gives 
 in its uncouth terminology a list of permissible rhymes 
 and verses; a line containing only one syllable was 
 called a pause, such as had none to rhyme with them 
 were orphans, those which found their rhymes in the 
 next stanza were grains. It enumerates the possible 
 blunders, some artificial enough, others all too glar- 
 ing ; the common speech must have been barbarous 
 indeed when it was necessary to point out the latter. 
 The want of the connecting particle between words 
 was condemned as a blind meaning, a false rhyme 
 was a vice, the transposition of letters a difference, the 
 compression of two syllables into one a Idebsylbe, a 
 lumped syllable. It is well known how much Luther 
 did for the German language both by his theoretical 
 researches and by the practical examples that he gave 
 of a purer style. We can easily imagine what a 
 god-send they would be to the mastersingers in their 
 struggle with lawlessness and vulgarism. His trans- 
 lation of the Bible was adopted as their standard ; 
 idioms to be found in it were accepted, all others 
 were condemned. And it was the final authority, as
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 255 
 
 for the expression so for the thought. We saw that 
 the mastersong was always religious and latterly 
 scriptural in subject. At the scrutiny of a new 
 piece the author had to cite chapter and verse, and 
 the official critic or marker who sat behind a screen 
 with a slate in his hands and a Bible on his desk, 
 jotted down not only the mistakes of form but the 
 false meanings, the variations from Scripture and the 
 wrong interpretations. 
 
 Besides the ordinary practisings, the school had 
 its solemn contests when the masters competed for 
 prizes ; these were chains and wreaths, often of con- 
 siderable value. In Nuremberg the first prize, a 
 cord with three silver-gilt medals attached, was 
 called King David, after the Hebrew psalmist, who 
 was represented on the centre medal with crown 
 and harp. It was a great event for the master 
 and his friends when he gained a prize, and where 
 the school possessed many such decorations the prize- 
 takers were enjoined to wear them on all ceremonious 
 occasions. It was these prize-takers who initiated 
 the young apprentices into the mystery of the art, 
 who explained the tabulature and taught them the 
 more difficult measures, often sitting up late into the 
 night without expecting or receiving any fee. When 
 not busy in composing verse, instructing others, or 
 perfecting themselves, they spent their leisure in
 
 256 STUDIES IX GEKMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 copying out the standard songs. It is this unwearied 
 devotion that strikes us so strange and admirable. 
 No doubt the mastersong is on the whole without 
 much merit. It attended only to the form and not 
 to the matter, which it tortured into stubborn and 
 unfitting moulds. Even in form it is scrupulous, 
 laboured, and artificial, on the one hand; yet sur- 
 prisingly rude and barbarous on the other. We 
 must, of course, remember that we judge of it only 
 by half, and may easily be one-sided ; for of the 
 accompanying music we know next to nothing, and 
 if Gervinus's conjecture be rather rash, that with 
 that before us we should see in the mastersongs 
 the source of the oratorio, yet they may well be 
 among its chief tributaries. But leaving this out 
 of account, it seems a thing quite without parallel 
 for wearied workmen, on leaving their tools and 
 their booths, to devote themselves to a liberal art 
 with, at lowest, the disinterestedness of artists. 
 All their spare time they spent in teaching, practising, 
 or chronicling what was to them their "benignant 
 art." 
 
 Such then was the association of which Hans 
 was the scholar and the teacher, which cherished 
 his powers and grew with their growth. This fact 
 must not be lost sight of in estimating his work. On 
 the one hand it acted on him favourably, supplying
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 257 
 
 him with an appreciative audience ; on the other, 
 it tied him down to a mechanical style. To under- 
 stand his mastery over such tools and materials as 
 he had, the state in which he found them, and the 
 improvements which he made, we must know the 
 history of the mastersong. 
 
 Strange to say it is descended in direct line from 
 the minnesong, the old love lyric. Much indeed 
 is altered. The poets are no longer adventurous 
 knights, but cautious burghers; the meeting-place 
 is changed from the castle to the church ; the wor- 
 ship of ladies has yielded to the praise of God. 
 Yet the connection is not hard to prove between 
 these later theologico-didactic rhymesters and the 
 dreamy minnesingers who sang like birds of love 
 and ladies and flowers. Even in these old days 
 when chivalrous poetry was in full vogue, the more 
 solid and instructive verse of the Renner and 
 Freidank had appealed to the citizens ; and at the 
 break-up of chivalry, when the degenerate minstrels 
 were no longer received in the degenerate courts, 
 they found a welcome and a refuge in the large 
 towns. There they not only sang, but taught ; for 
 after a time the burgher, from listening, began to 
 imitate. He attempted the measures of the court 
 poets, but their melody escaped him ; their silken 
 network of sound was changed in his hands to 
 
 8
 
 258 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 tangled yarn. And if the form was unlovely, the 
 matter was barbarous ; not prosaic, because unfit 
 even for literary prose. Many subjects were treated, 
 but naturally the religious interest preponderated, 
 and the religion of the day could supply only subtle 
 scholastic questions about the Trinity, the sacraments, 
 the atonement. Where God was before the creation 
 of the world ; how He could be born by one of His 
 own creatures; how the Holy Virgin could be the 
 Holy Mother as well on points like these the honest 
 workmen dilate in stanzas which sometimes contain 
 120 lines. In such verse, then, did the minnesong 
 issue when transplanted from the castle garden to 
 the town green. The transition is proved beyond 
 question. To some extent the ancient peculiarities 
 of the verse, and notably the threefold divisions of 
 the strophe, are still preserved ; and among the twelve 
 patriarchs froni whom the legends of the master- 
 song trace its descent, some are famous minnesingers. 
 The story runs that these twelve reproved the shame- 
 less lives of the clergy, and were found guilty of 
 heresy ; but, on appeal, were acquitte'd and rewarded 
 by the emperor, who is sometimes called Henry I., 
 sometimes Otto the Great. This story is not his- 
 torically true. With Frauenlob, chief of the twelve 
 and the smith Kegenbogen, both minnesingers of 
 the decline, it associates others who lived long before ;
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTEKSONG. 259 
 
 but probably it contains a reminiscence of the real 
 origin of the mastersong. 
 
 The reverent regard in which these minnesingers 
 or twelve wise masters were held, shows no less the 
 divergence than the connection between the two 
 schools. In olden times it was considered plagiarism 
 to employ the stanza of another man, whether pre- 
 decessor or contemporary. The originality of a poet 
 lay in his power of inventing new verse forms. But 
 the unskilled artisans dared not alter their models, 
 they feared to be original. Certain measures were 
 attributed to the twelve masters and called by their 
 names ; to these their disciples were tied down, and 
 no new tone was admitted. Such, at least, was the 
 theory. In point of fact the perpetual recurrence 
 of the same leathern forms, and the same wiredrawn 
 subjects, proved too much for the most timorous 
 piety. From time to time new melodies were smug- 
 gled in ; but they were at once labelled with old 
 names. In the middle of the thirteenth century 
 some such fraud was detected by the mastersingers 
 of Mainz, who seem to have been especially con- 
 servative, and the culprit was publicly censured. 
 But, meanwhile, the craftsmen had been working 
 hard at their new craft, and were ready to throw 
 up their indentures. The wiseacres of Mainz must 
 have stood aghast at the reception which their
 
 260 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITEKATUEE. 
 
 verdict found in the neighbouring town of Worms. 
 Hans Folz, a barber, broke a lance, or perhaps a 
 razor, on behalf of the new art. He ridiculed the 
 pretended enthusiasm for old melodies which were, 
 in fact, chiefly new; he laughed at the pedantry 
 and barbarous language of the schools ; he extolled 
 the teachings of nature, and maintained that the 
 best masters were Spring, Summer, and Autumn. 
 
 These opinions were revolutionary in art, and in 
 those days a literary quarrel had very practical 
 consequences. Folz made the district too hot to hold, 
 him. He had to emigrate to Nuremberg, where, 
 partly through his influence, a new period of the 
 mastersong commenced. Artificial and wooden it 
 remained to the last, but Folz at any rate vindicated 
 a larger sphere to individual talent. Dogmatic riddles 
 still remained the theme of his verse ; but probably 
 the new regulation dates from his time, which grants 
 the name of master only to the maker of an original 
 tone. 
 
 Few towns of the day were so ready to receive new 
 ideas as Nuremberg. For generations it had steadilj' 
 grown into mercantile importance, till in 1427 the 
 inhabitants purchased city rights from the emperor. 
 After this its development became more rapid. The 
 fame of its manufactures, especially in hardware, 
 spread far and near. In commerce it rivalled Augs-
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTEKSONG. 261 
 
 "berg as depot for the drugs, silks, and spices of the 
 South, which poured in upon it by way of Venice. 
 The prosperity of the great Southern Kepublic brought 
 new wealth to Nuremberg, and the advantage of their 
 intercourse was not merely commercial it fostered 
 the taste for gaiety, culture, and art. The streets 
 were always bright and tumultuous at the Carnival ; 
 the processions were celebrated with a splendour 
 hitherto unknown ; the wealthy burghers' sons had 
 their tilts and tournaments, and knew how to main- 
 tain their rights against the neighbouring nobles, who 
 disliked such sports among the commonalty. The 
 governing council was a little despotic and overbear- 
 ing to the plebs ; but it had the interests of all at 
 heart, and the whole population shared in the muni- 
 cipal prosperity. Of great men the town had 
 nourished not a few. It could boast one alleged 
 inventor of gunpowder, one alleged discoverer of 
 America: Schwarz, in the thirteenth century, was 
 its citizen; Behem, in the fifteenth, was its son. 
 Less questionable were other of its claims. The 
 humanist Wilibald Pirckheimer, the friend of Hutten 
 and Erasmus, was a member of its council; Konrad 
 Baumann, the blind organist of St. Sebald's, had 
 a reputation throughout Germany and Italy. Its 
 churches, its fountains, its sculptures, bore witness to 
 the talents of Adam KrafFt and the Fischers ; and
 
 262 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 now, at length, it had produced Albrecht Diirer, the- 
 genius of earnest and truthful work. 
 
 It was in this stirring town that Hans Sachs was 
 born in 1494, when his great townsman was a youth 
 of twenty-three. His father was a tailor, and seems 
 to have succeeded fairly in his trade. But a modest 
 competency did not save a man in those days from 
 narrow alleys and close rooms, and Hans was born at 
 once into the common trials of the time. The plague 
 was raging in the city; both parents were struck 
 down, but not fatally, and strangely enough the infant 
 escaped altogether. In due season, at the age of seven, 
 he went to school, and began a curriculum which 
 quite appals us. Even in these days of higher educa- 
 tion what schoolboy but would tremble at the pro- 
 gramme : Grammar, rhetoric, music, logic, arithmetic, 
 astronomy, geography, astrology, philosophy, poetry, 
 and the "science of many creatures in air, water, earth 
 and fire" Later, he confesses that he has forgotten it 
 all, perhaps fortunately for his readers ; but, in the 
 first place, it cost him ten years to acquire. This 
 period deserves attention, and if the usual one is a 
 credit to his age and his class. For, despite his formid- 
 able row of accomplishments, Hans was not to follow 
 any of the learned professions, which, if we may trust 
 Hutten, were all three gigantic swindling societies. 
 Hans was to be useful at any rate, and he turned his
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 263 
 
 philosophy, rhetoric, and astrology to account in 
 making boots. We are apt to consider his ten years 
 at school rather badly employed ; but, after all, he 
 learnt the best the age had to offer. And only when 
 the sciences dwell among the people are they secured 
 against useless flights, only when they become national 
 property can there be a national development. Hans, 
 and perhaps many like him, had a certain acquaint- 
 ance with the technical world of the schools. They 
 knew something of its ways, could judge roughly of 
 its results, and were not simply puzzled in the con- 
 troversies which were soon to arise. But, on the 
 whole, the best thing that Hans learned was to speak 
 his mother tongue "neatly, purely, and truly," to play 
 on stringed instruments, and to sing. These lessons, 
 at least, he did not forget amidst the new cares and 
 duties of his trade. As shoemaker's apprentice he 
 could join the mastersingers' school, and so have a 
 right to instruction in their art. This he did, and 
 was taught by Leonhard Nunnenbeck, " the weaver 
 liberal in song." At the same time he did not neglect 
 his business ; he seems to have felt a kind of love for 
 it, and did not shrink at a later day from singing 
 the praises of pitch and leather, of bradawl and last. 
 
 Meanwhile, after an apprenticeship of two years he 
 became journeyman, and entered on his wander jalire 
 or years of travel, working his way from place to
 
 264 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 place after the fashion of German artisans. This en- 
 larged his circle of ideas, and by lifting him out of 
 the Nuremberg world qualified him to become its 
 exponent. For despite the fuller life of the town and 
 its stimulating influences, the artisan may be as dull 
 as the agricultural labourer. If the peasant is con- 
 nected with no larger existence, the townsman is only 
 a part of such ; if the one is naturally a vegetable, the 
 other may become a machine. The years of travel 
 obviate this, and in contact with other principles and 
 ways we get to know our own. 
 
 Hans was now brought into relation \\dth the con- 
 fused, restless life of the time which in Nuremberg he 
 could only learn at second hand. The government 
 there was, on the whole, just, enlightened, and autono- 
 mous. It was a shrewd, orderly trading city ; but in 
 less favoured districts what abuses, what ignorance, 
 what superstition reigned supreme ! Hans tramping 
 the country learned the ways of the peasants, and the 
 smart young tradesman was vastly amused with their 
 simplicity and slowness. Later, when he could make 
 verses, it was a favourite theme. Thus he tells of 
 certain villagers Avhose whole wardrobe, like that of 
 the future Bolivar, was a blanket with a hole in the 
 middle ; but Hans does not discuss it so profoundly as 
 the philosophic Teufelsdrockh. A crab which a pea- 
 sant has caught, and which incurs the displeasure of
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTEKSONC4. 265 
 
 the township, is condemned to death by drowning. A 
 country fellow finds a crossbow in the forest, and 
 taking it for a cross, lifts it reverently to his lips ; but 
 the bow goes off, carrying away his nose, so he throws 
 it to the ground, exclaiming, "You may lie there a 
 whole year before I pick you up again." At another 
 time, the peasants go to the wood to gather acorns. 
 One slipping from a tree is decapitated by a forked 
 branch and falls headless to the ground. By-and-by 
 his friends find him, and debate whether he had his 
 head with him, in the morning. They take him home 
 and appeal to his wife, but she does not know ; she is 
 sure he had it on Saturday, but after that she cannot 
 say. Hans, though often harping on the contrast 
 between town and country life, knows that the advan- 
 tage is only half with the former. In one of his 
 adapted fables the gout meets a spider, and complains 
 that he can't thrive or even live among the peasants. 
 The spider replies that the town housewives won't 
 leave her in peace. They exchange quarters, and the 
 spider is never molested more ; while the gout is com- 
 fortably housed and fed. 
 
 The poor peasants, indeed, were little exposed to 
 such an ailment, harried as they were by all who 
 were stronger or cleverer. They had their oppressors 
 recognized and unrecognized, spiritual and temporal, 
 but alwa} 7 s irresistible. The nobles exacted their
 
 266 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 dues, the priests their tithes ; the wandering soldiers 
 robbed in the emperor's name during war, in their 
 own during peace ; the wandering magicians, embryo 
 Fausts, and the resident witches extorted the rest by 
 threats and promises. Much of this Hans, no doubt, 
 Avould see ; much more he would hear. For, despite 
 their alleged stupidity, these peasants had their share 
 of shrewd mother-wit. They told stories against 
 themselves and their oppressors, stories that were in 
 every mouth, but had no author. The French mon- 
 archy has been called a despotism tempered by epi- 
 gram; their condition was misery solaced by anecdote. 
 Such anecdotes Hans would lay up for future use ; 
 meanwhile misery needs no boots, and he went 
 further. But to work one's Avay is a precarious 
 method of travelling. Shoemaking seems to have 
 been as superfluous in town as in country, and at 
 Innsbruck we find Hans with trade changed, acting 
 as forester to Kaiser Maximilian. At this he remained 
 long enough to learn the rules of venery, of which 
 he afterwards compiled a poetical code, and to gain 
 some knowledge of the ways of the court where the 
 emperor fostered the arts and sciences, the false and 
 the true. But the independent tradesman could not 
 long remain a servant among the great lords whom he 
 loved to make fun of and ironically calls the " pious 
 nobles." Perhaps, too, in his kindliness to all created
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 267 
 
 things, he had a plebeian dislike to his work. By 
 and by, at least, he describes a "wonderful vision, how 
 sundry hares pursue, catch, and roast a huntsman," and 
 his sympathies are evidently with the hares. 
 
 But with^ all his homely predilections and bourgeois 
 morals, Hans was not of those for whom Bohemianism 
 has no charms. He was urged by his companions and 
 drawn by his own desires towards the careless life of 
 the soldier. Only when Genius, " the God of Nature," 
 showed him the smoking homesteads, the ruined 
 churches, the empty schools, the idle workshops, the 
 famine, violence, and shame which filled the country ; 
 only when he heard the ribald talk of the camp, saw 
 the rags, debauchery, and slaughter of the soldiers, 
 did he decide for a peaceful career. Revelry and 
 luxury also tempted him, but even in his youth he 
 was "stern with all folly." What then was he to do. 
 with his time when business did not engross nor com- 
 mon pleasures content him ? In this perplexity he 
 recurred to the "lovely art of the mastersong ; " he 
 found suddenly that he was called to be a poet ; for 
 hitherto, though unconsciously gathering materials, he 
 had written nothing. Long afterwards, he described 
 how he awoke to his vocation, and much true feeling 
 shines through the conventional allegory of the narra- 
 tive. Weighed down with heavy troubles, the false- 
 hood of friends, the hatred of foes, the shame of love,
 
 268 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 he falls asleep by a rocky fountain among the flowers 
 and the grass. The Goddesses of Art appear and 
 call him to their service, in it he will find relief. 
 Delighted, but doubtful, he hesitates to accept till 
 they approach and reassure him with many gifts. 
 It is worth while noting the list, for it shows what 
 merits he attributed to himself. Characteristically he 
 lays stress on " steadfast will, constant practice, wide 
 experience ; " so far he seems to degrade poetry to 
 a handicraft, but his remaining endowments are "joy 
 in his work, a pleasant style, and daintily-leaping 
 measures." Again, the aims set before him, " the glory 
 of God, the praise of virtue, the blame of vice, the 
 instruction of youth," are not exactly what we might 
 expect from the Goddesses of Art, but they do not 
 forget " the delight of sorrowful hearts." Thus Hans 
 Sachs characterizes his own genius. Whatever else 
 we may think, there is at least nothing affected or 
 tumid about it. His muse is laborious, practical, 
 didactic, but honest, pleasant, and kindly. She is no 
 light-robed, light-limbed heathen nymph, but a 
 homely German housewife who smiles over her work, 
 and goes to church on Sunday. To this muse Hans 
 henceforth surrendered himself with a devotion which 
 no chance nor change could interrupt. At Braunau 
 he composed his first tone, and was made a master. 
 After this, whenever he halted in a city he joined its
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 269 
 
 mastersingers' school, and became one of the office- 
 bearers and teachers. 
 
 At the age of twenty-two he returned to settle 
 in his native town. He had learned much in his 
 travels, accustomed himself to other men and ways, 
 and penetrated into the mysteries of his art. But 
 Nuremberg was his home and had his first affection ; 
 he loves to sign himself Hans Sachs of Nuremberg. 
 In one of his allegorical dreams he sees a well-hedged 
 rose garden on a round hill. Through the tufted 
 boughs are visible pomegranate and nutmeg, orange 
 and vine, fruit-trees and spice-trees in plenty, and 
 rows of sugar-cane. The dreamer takes it for para- 
 dise. On a rose-bush warbles a marvellous bird like 
 an eagle, with coal-black feathers, one side decked 
 with roses red and white. It gathers its young under 
 its pinions, it feeds them and keeps them safe : it 
 rests right little by day or night for evil birds and 
 beasts that lie in wait to devour it. When they 
 approach it fights manfully, it rends them with beak 
 and claw, and four noble maidens stand by to succour 
 it. The first in robe of white has a golden scroll in 
 her hand; the second is clad in blue, and holds a 
 sword and balance ; the third in green bears the sun 
 in her arms ; and the fourth is harnessed from head 
 to foot and armed with a great steel hammer. The 
 hill is the site of Nuremberg, the stores of its gardens
 
 270 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 are the produce of the world, the eagle is emblem 
 of the city and the other birds are its foes, the 
 four maidens are its Wisdom, Justice, Truth, and 
 Strength, which ensure its final triumph. When 
 a man is so proud and glad in the civic life that 
 surrounds him, his happiness is secure, and Hans 
 \vas a happy man. In a little house, at first outside 
 the gate and afterwards in Meal Alley, he plied his 
 trade and resisted the solicitations of Jack Idle, 
 Hal Headstrong, Lazy Lenz, Harry Restless, and 
 other typical figures whom his poems immortalize. 
 At this time he married Kunegund Kreuzer, with 
 whom he lived for forty-one years. After her death 
 she appeared in a dream to comfort him, and his 
 account of this portent, in the main solemn and 
 religious, reveals by one little realistic touch that 
 their household was not invariably peaceful : " She 
 was ever faithful, orderly, and frugal, but somewhat 
 violent in her words to the servants." To more than 
 the servants, if we may trust another account. Hans 
 begins a poem on the " Bitter Sweet of Wedded Life," 
 with the remark that all women have long clothes and 
 short tempers, and proceeds to describe his wife in 
 the same antithetical style. She is his paradise and 
 his purgatory, his angel and his demon, his rosebud 
 and his thunderbolt in short, all his weal and all his 
 woe.
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 271 
 
 With a wife who was thus everything to him, in 
 a city that he loved, with good business and flourish- 
 ing family, we see Hans a prosperous man. To crown 
 all, he remained true to the benignant art. He found 
 it sadly degenerated in Nuremberg, and set himself 
 at once to teach the young apprentices, to heal the 
 dissensions of the school, and to preserve its tra- 
 ditions. With what loving care he fulfilled his task 
 may be seen from a manuscript of extreme beauty 
 executed by him. It contains the songs of his pre- 
 decessors, only at the end are a few of his own. 
 There is nothing as yet to distinguish these from 
 the ditties of Hans Folz or Nunnenbeck. The 
 rhymes may be smoother, the style purer, but the 
 subjects are still old dogmas, prayers to the saints, 
 hymns to the Virgin. But now an event took place 
 which influenced Hans profoundly in his life and 
 his work. The time of the Reformation was come, 
 and he left versifying for a season to study the new 
 doctrines. In 1521 he had by him forty-one tracts 
 by Luther and his friends ; in 1522 he was poring 
 over the Testament ; in 1523 he wrote his "Wittenberg- 
 Nightingale," the first fruits of his new style fittingly 
 inscribed to Luther. In his "Morning Wise" he greets 
 the dawn of the Reformation. " Wake up," he cries, 
 "the dawn is nigh. I hear a joyous nightingale 
 singing in the green hedge, it fills the hills and
 
 272 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 valleys with its voice. The night is stooping to 
 the west, the day is rising from the east, the morn- 
 ing red is leaping from the clouds, the sun looks 
 through. The moon quenches her light ; now she 
 is pale and wan, but erewhile with false glamour 
 she dazzled all the sheep and turned them from 
 their pasture lands and pastor. Both have they for- 
 saken, they have followed the glistering moon through 
 the forest into the wilderness. The lion, too, have 
 they followed; they have harkened to his voice, 
 craftily has he led them far astray into the waste. 
 They have lost their sweet pasture, have eaten weeds 
 and thistles and thorns ; the lion has snared them, 
 torn and devoured them ; wolves and serpents have 
 bitten them in every limb ; therefore are the sheep 
 withered and lean. But now they are roused by 
 the nightingale's song, the sun reveals ravening foe 
 and deceitful pasture. The lion and his brood, 
 swine, goats, cats, snails, and other unclean beasts 
 plot against the nightingale. 'What new thing is 
 he singing ? ' they ask ; ' let him stir up no tumult 
 among the sheep.' But he, secure in his hedge, sings 
 ever the louder. The sheep hear and return, many 
 are slaughtered on the way, but the sun shines on, 
 and none can hide the sunlight." 
 
 Quaint and incongruous though it be, does not this 
 suggest another new song to another new dawn ? A
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 273 
 
 song like this that welcomes the melting of clouds 
 and dreams and the " stars that shone as sunbeams 
 on the night of death and sin." A song like this that 
 hails the morning, and cannot yet sing the glory of 
 the noon. 
 
 " For the shades are about us that hover, 
 
 When darkness is half withdrawn, 
 And the skirts of the dead night cover 
 
 The face of the live new dawn. 
 For the past is not utterly past, 
 Though the word on its lips be the last ; 
 And the time be gone by with its creed 
 When men were as beasts that bleed." 
 
 We have quoted about a quarter of the " Wittenberg 
 Nightingale," sometimes epitomizing. The remaining 
 three-quarters contain an interpretation "that we 
 may understand more clearly," an interpretation 
 which destroys the poetical charm like a bad com- 
 mentary, but is there with an object which it prob- 
 ably served. Few of us, perhaps, would compare 
 Luther to a singing bird ; but he, it seems, is the 
 nightingale whose song brings back the wandering 
 sheep to the true fold. The unclean beasts are his 
 enemies; Eraser and Dr. Eck are the goat and the 
 swine their lives, says the poet, justify the com- 
 parison. The relevancy of other names lies in a pun : 
 Pope Leo X. is the lion ; the snail is Cochkeus, the 
 theologian ; the satirist Murner is the cat. The fading- 
 moon is the papacy, the new risen sun the Evangel. 
 
 T
 
 274 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 This poem, composed first as a mastersong and then 
 in couplets, was received with delight, was read and 
 re-read, and ran through many editions. The reform 
 had begun among the theologians, but had soon 
 reached the people, and now Hans Sachs, one of 
 themselves, was found to carry on the work. He set 
 himself to purge his early songs of the old leaven; 
 they appeared in altered form, "christianly revised, 
 evangelically corrected," i.e. with the saints' names 
 expunged and the name of Christ in their stead. His 
 new views inspired new efforts ; he paraphrased the 
 Bible in song after song, and his verses, sung in nearly 
 all the master-schools of Germany, spread the Lutheran 
 faith among the most earnest and energetic workmen 
 of the towns. Moreover, in this he set the fashion ; 
 his example became law, and soon in all the great 
 singing guilds nothing but the Scriptures could be 
 heard. 
 
 But the mastersongs were confined to the initiated, 
 and Hans wished to teach the nation at large. He 
 took to writing dialogues on the great topics of the 
 day the right of private judgment, justification by 
 faith, the union of the Churches, the new social duties 
 which the new doctrines brought. These questions 
 he discusses in seven tracts, which, says Goedeke, 
 excel all the dialogues of the day, save, perhaps, 
 Luther's; in artistic form (and, we may add, in
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 275 
 
 temper) even Luther must yield the palm to Sachs. 
 Earnest he always is, but never fanatical ; keen, not 
 cruel; enthusiastic, but placid. The monks dubbed 
 him the " cursed cobbler ; " he accepts the name with 
 a smile, and Hans the shoemaker plays an important 
 part in these colloquies. 
 
 The simplicity, force, and homely humour of these 
 papers made them far more popular than the " blasts " 
 of the theologians, who began to see in Hans an impor- 
 tant ally. Andreas Osiander, the celebrated divine, at 
 this time a pastor in Nuremberg, had discovered an 
 old book of prophetic pictures, and determined to issue 
 a facsimile with anti-papistical interpretations. He 
 asked and obtained assistance from Hans, whose 
 couplets and quatrains, printed below the plate, 
 summed up all the heavier theological explanations 
 of the opposite page. Luther, whom one of the 
 pictures was altered to suit, disclaimed the compli- 
 ment but praised the book; he himself (he wrote) 
 would reissue these " hieroglyphica," and, indeed, 
 there are two other editions in the same year. But 
 the town council of Nuremberg did not share his satis- 
 faction. This council, though ultimately deciding for 
 his party, was very cautious and deliberate in its 
 behaviour. It established the new religion, but the 
 monks and nuns were left undisturbed. When an old 
 hymn, "Salve Regina," was altered to "Salve Jesu
 
 276 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Christe," it forbade the tune altogether. The same 
 tolerance which makes the controversial cobbler gentle 
 as a dove, made the merchant princes wise as serpents. 
 They considered this prophetic picture-book quite out 
 of place, suppressed the edition, summoned, warned, 
 and rebuked printer and authors, adding, in regard 
 to Hans, that it was "not his place nor business to 
 treat such matters, and the council strictly enjoin him 
 to mind his handiwork and shoemaking, and hence- 
 forth refrain from publishing any rhyme or pamphlet 
 whatever." Poor Hans, commended by Luther, the 
 truest poet of his age, must " refrain " from doing 
 what he can best do, as " it is no business of his." 
 Strange how Dogberry in all ages insists with clamour 
 that you write him down an ass. 
 
 Hans, however, in the midst of his family, in the 
 midst of his township, could not disobey ; probably lie 
 was too loyal to think of such a thing. His songs, 
 printed separately on loose leaves, become rare during 
 the following years; perhaps along with this public 
 prohibition he may at this time have been paralyzed 
 by a private trouble. What exactly it was we do not 
 know, for he alludes to it vaguely. He describes 
 himself as puffed up with pride and success, walking 
 like the hypocrite in the temple. Only through a- 
 sore temptation into which he fell was he taught 
 humility, only through agonies of despair was he
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 277 
 
 restored to his right mind. "God," he says, "drew 
 me to Him by the hair of my head." We need not 
 take all this self-reproof too literally. Hans, we may 
 be sure, never swerved very far from decent citizen- 
 el om ; it is easier to believe him unjust to himself than 
 untrue to his principles. But, if great prosperity 
 endangered him, he was soon to be safe. His business 
 went wrong, his seven children died one after the 
 other, and last of all he lost his wife. It is touching 
 to hear him tell us in his simple way how he did not 
 feel his loss till he got home and saw the empty 
 rooms, the unused clothes, or how he forgot that she 
 was dead, and kept thinking that she must be with 
 some neighbour, or was late with her marketing. 
 
 Meanwhile, from private distress, whether tempta- 
 tion or adversity, Hans found refuge in working all 
 the harder for his people. His political poems become 
 more frequent. He exports the nation to unity ; 
 attacks the hostile powers of France and Turkey; 
 insists that every selfish man is a public enemy. He 
 feels the importance, the vital necessity, of the citizens 
 having the civic virtues ; and it is now, as Gervinus 
 shows, that the classical literature becomes to him a 
 living power, which he studies and partly under- 
 stands. To his amazement he finds in it exactly 
 what he wants the ideal citizen. He wonders over 
 the old stores; hunts after new translations; cannot
 
 278 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITEKATUEE. 
 
 leave the book he has once begun. He throws himself 
 on this study with the same abandon as formerly on 
 the Bible. He had paraphrased its stories, and set 
 others to the work ; now he will do as much for the 
 classics. Anecdote, history, apologue, dream inspired 
 by some old maxim borrowed from some old author 
 flow without stint from his pen, and all are ani- 
 mated by the same psedagogic intention. Gradually 
 the anecdotes predominate ; the didactic moral, though 
 not abandoned, is curtailed ; the range of the sources 
 is widened. He returns to Boccaccio, whom he had 
 read as a youth ; he dives into chronicles, history, 
 folksbooks; he studies native poetry, and listens to 
 native humour. In his old age he turned his atten- 
 tion to the drama, and produced tragedies, comedies,, 
 and farces with the same marvellous fertility. What- 
 ever we may think of them now, they were popular at 
 the time. They were in request for representation 
 in public and in the houses of wealthy citizens ; for 
 apparently the local magnates resented the shoe- 
 maker's fluency only while they disagreed with him. 
 Hans now entered on a new period of prosperity. He 
 married again, and lived happily with his second wife 
 for fifteen years. A publisher, with his sanction, 
 began a collected edition of his works a rare honour 
 for an author in those days, and the congenial labour 
 of revising, arranging, and registering occupied Hans
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 279 
 
 in his declining years. Besides this general popu- 
 larity he was chief of the mastersingers, acknowledged 
 as such in his own and other schools, and surrounded 
 by young disciples in whose measures he would still 
 occasionally compose. One of these admirers, Adam 
 Puschmann, gives a pleasing, but rather suspicious 
 account of his old age. He dreams of a little house in 
 the garden of a merry city, where an old bearded man, 
 grey and white like a pigeon, sits poring over his 
 books. When strangers enter and greet him he gazes 
 on them and nods gently, without speaking ; his senses 
 begin to fail him. 
 
 Authentic or not, this is a likely picture of poor 
 old Hans, and we may without scruple think of him 
 thus in his last days ; for he lived to a great age, and 
 we may be sure would never leave his beloved books. 
 When he died in 1576, in his eighty-third year, he 
 had written more than four thousand mastersongs, 
 more than two hundred plays, and nearly two 
 thousand other poems. 
 
 How are we to estimate this German Lope de Vega ? 
 Many of his works are in manuscript, many are prac- 
 tically inaccessible ; but the ordinary editions contain 
 quite enough to overwhelm us. Perhaps the very 
 quantity suggests the first characteristic. Hans must 
 have turned out a new poem almost every day we 
 were near writing, almost every hour. He does not
 
 280 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 think long over his work, or wait for inspiration ; he 
 does not investigate causes or harmonize motives he 
 takes his subject very much as he finds it. He is not 
 a shallow writer, but his depth lies more in his temper 
 than in his treatment. He has marvellous facility in 
 rhyme, marvellous power of making pictures; with 
 him everything has definite external features. He is 
 a good storyteller. He is like a man who at his 
 quiet family dinner gives the daily bulletin of news, 
 retailing all that he has heard, or read, or seen. Hans 
 has such a daily bulletin of poetry. Of course he 
 must make considerable loans ; but all is done in good 
 faith, and he seldom omits chapter and page of his 
 authority. Sometimes he develops these materials 
 and works them up ; sometimes he translates almost 
 literally, adding here and there a happy phrase, or 
 shifting time and place into contemporary Germany. 
 
 With all his borrowings, Hans had little under- 
 standing of past times or a foreign spirit. This is not 
 strange. All his poems show him content with the 
 present inspired, not troubled by it. Such unques- 
 tioning absorption in his time gives him fluency at 
 the expense of passion and thought ; it also disguises 
 the distant and the past, which are in his eyes only 
 another perhaps in some points a better present. 
 He has no feeling for tradition. If he tries something 
 in the style of the old minnesingers he breaks down.
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 281 
 
 Thus among his mastersongs there is an imitation of 
 their aulades, in which the watchman warns the lady 
 and her lover that the sun is up, and the lord of the 
 castle will soon awake. We are astonished to hear such 
 things from moral Hans ; but he hastens to explain : 
 the lady is the soul, the strange knight is the flesh, 
 the watchman is conscience, and the unfortunate 
 husband is we dare not finish lest we seem profane. 
 In the same fashion he approaches foreign authors ; he 
 wants above all to make them edifying. One of his 
 most important functions is translation : like that 
 " grant translateur, noble Geoffroi Chaucier," he fami- 
 liarized his people with the treasures of other tongues. 
 In many cases the sources of the two poets are the 
 same, but how different in their treatment ! Thus, 
 in the story of Griselda, Chaucer tones down the 
 improbable by humanizing touches and sly sarcasms ; 
 but Hans takes it all for gospel, and sees nothing in it 
 to laugh at. According to him the story teaches that 
 " the husband, as saith St. Paul, is the head of the 
 wife," a moral which the playful "Envoye de Chaucer" 
 distinctly rejects : 
 
 " O noble wyves, ful of heigh prudence, 
 Let noon humilite your tonges nayle, 
 Ne lat no clerk have cause or diligence 
 To write of yow a story of such mervayle." 
 
 Or, again, the history of Isabella's sorrows, which 
 Keats concludes with the wail
 
 282 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 " Oh, cruelty ! 
 To steal my basil-pot away from me," 
 
 contains for Hans two important lessons : (1) that 
 love and (2) that murder will out. It is the same 
 with his translations from the classics. He does not 
 care for the acknowledged masterpieces. Homer and 
 Virgil leave him cold. He loves little gossiping stories, 
 like those about the death of ^Eschylus or the birth of 
 Augustus, and he never fails to extract from them the 
 inevitable moral. In this branch his versions of Scrip- 
 ture are probably the least interesting nowadays, but 
 they are also the best. Here he has thorough sym- 
 pathy with the foreign spirit, or rather the spirit was 
 not foreign, Luther had naturalized it it was the 
 spirit of the age. 
 
 And whenever Hans is inspired by the feelings of 
 the day, by the daily life of the time, he ceases to 
 bungle. He is no longer an imitator, but a true, 
 original poet ; his words are instinct with life they 
 may be homely, but they are always fresh. He has 
 left us a gallery of pictures, grave and gay, of feelings, 
 customs, and men, which the historian has certainly 
 not exhausted. His " Wittenberg Nightingale " and 
 " Lament for Luther " are masterpieces in their way, 
 and there are many such among his religious, his 
 political, and, above all, his social poems. We mention 
 only " Why art thou cast down, my soul ? " " All
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 283 
 
 the works of God are good " " The Council of the 
 Gods." Perhaps the quaintest and most pathetic is 
 his "Vision of the Wild Army." It overtakes him 
 at nightfall in a forest, he shrinks aside and sees it 
 whirl by a route of ghastly, famished wretches ; the 
 last one stops and hails him grimly. These are the 
 petty criminals, the little thieves, robbers of henroosts 
 and the like, who have been hanged on earth, and now 
 they prick and spur to and fro, hunting for justice. 
 They are not guiltless ; but why do the guiltiest, the 
 great thieves, the usurers, the oppressors of the poor, 
 still live at ease, in peace and plenty ? Justice they 
 shall find on the day of judgment. This fancy is 
 typical of Hans Sachs. The progress of the gods has 
 ceased to impose, the demon host to appal ; we see 
 instead a crowd of wretched men whose miseries call 
 for pity and redress. 
 
 Equally good are his pictures of comic life. Alche- 
 mist and witch, priest and lawyer, shrewish wife and 
 henpecked husband, none escape him ; ajid the pea- 
 santry, as we mentioned, have the lion's share of his 
 satire. He is at his best when his humour has a 
 purpose, when his love of teaching and his love of 
 laughter become indistinguishable. He warns those 
 Avho consort with Hans Idle that soon their only 
 cattle will be their cat ; he pictures the Good Monday, 
 a day on which workmen would not work, as a
 
 284 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITEEATURE. 
 
 hideous beast, seven-legged, pot-bellied, with sharp 
 teeth, and a bald head ; it crawls fawning to his bed- 
 side when he lies too late a nightmare that might 
 rouse the laziest dreamer. In his " Schlauraffen-land," 
 or lubber's paradise, the German Land of Cockayne, 
 roasted pigs run about with knives and forks in their 
 backs ; the ponds are full of nicely boiled fish, and 
 birds cooked to a turn fly into one's mouth ; the trees 
 grow pheasants, and the horses lay eggs. Men are 
 paid twopence an hour for sleeping; if they gamble 
 their money away, it is restored them double ; if they 
 cannot clear their debts, the creditor hands them the 
 amount. The archer who shoots widest of the mark, 
 the runner who is last in the race, receives the prize ; 
 the laziest is king, and the honest man is a rogue and 
 a vagabond. 
 
 Hans teaches without tediousness and laughs without 
 guile. To modern readers he may sometimes seem 
 profane ; but no judgment could be more unjust. A 
 refined man will treat every subject with delicacy, 
 and a subtle man with subtlety : in the same way a 
 humourist will always be humourous and Hans is 
 emphatically a humourist. With the gravest subject, 
 with the most serious intention, he cannot suppress 
 his genial smile; and because we feel that it is not 
 quite in keeping, it makes us laugh outright. Thus 
 it seems odd for a strict Lutheran to make fun of the
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 285 
 
 devil, and the devil is Han's favourite butt. When 
 the Prince of Darkness is represented as a gay wooer, 
 as a hen-pecked and then a runaway husband, as the 
 dupe of an old witch, as rather stupid but perfectly 
 good-humoured and harmless, it is impossible to keep 
 one's gravity. On one occasion he hears the Lands- 
 knechte mentioned as people after his own heart, and 
 sends " Belzebock " up to earth to fetch him one. 
 These Landsknechte were fellows who took to soldier- 
 ing, hired themselves to the largest bidder, and went 
 about robbing the country obviously a set of men 
 whom tradesman Hans would particularly dislike. 
 Belzebock goes to a tavern where some of them are 
 drinking, and hides behind the stove to wait his 
 opportunity. But their talk fills even him with 
 horror ; his hair stands on end at their stories, and he 
 is afraid to touch them. At last one fellow who had 
 stolen a cock and hung it up where Belzebock has hid, 
 cries to the host, "Landlord, pluck the poor devil 
 behind the stove and roast him for supper." This 
 command completes Belzebock's dismay ; he flies for 
 clear life, and when once more among his friends 
 implores the devil to give up thoughts of these people, 
 and content himself, as hitherto, with monks and 
 nuns. 
 
 A second story of these Landsknechte introduces us 
 to St. Peter, the other comic personage in whom Hans
 
 286 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITEEATURE. 
 
 chiefly delights. This rather extraordinary selection 
 is a new sign of his evangelicism. The Devil whom 
 Luther can frighten with an inkbottle, and who is 
 considered the chief emissary of Rome, is clearly fail- 
 game for all good Protestants. In the same way 
 St. Peter, chief of the Roman Hierarchy, has no great 
 hold on their reverence. He is portrayed as a self- 
 opinioned critic of the Divine Government which he 
 wishes to reform. One day he is allowed to try his 
 hand : the first prayer that he hears is from an old 
 woman to look after her goat ; the weather is hot, 
 the goat is active, red and breathless Peter must chase 
 it up and down ; he has no time for anything else, and 
 at length, in a copious perspiration, is thankful to 
 resign office. So, too, in the story of the Landsknechte, 
 the most amusing of which he is hero. A party of 
 them appear before the gate of Heaven and demand 
 admittance, but Peter has received strict injunctions 
 not to let them in. At this they begin to swear, 
 " Sacrament," " Body of Christ," and so on, till the 
 porter's heart warms to them, for he thinks they are 
 praying. " I never saw such pious people in all my 
 life," he cries, and opens the door. But no sooner are 
 they in than they fall to gambling and quarrelling, 
 and when Peter remonstrates they hunt him through 
 the streets with their naked swords. He escapes 
 panting to the Deity, and asks what is to be done.
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 287 
 
 "I told you how it would be," is the answer. But 
 the matter is not beyond remedy. An angel is sent 
 to blow a trumpet outside the walls, the soldiers hear 
 and think a new war must have broken out ; they 
 rush off to enlist, and the door is promptly closed 
 behind them. 
 
 But Hans surpasses himself in the story of " Eve's 
 Unlike Children," the best known and most delicious 
 of all his productions. Adam and Eve, cast out of 
 Paradise, sit wearied and depressed with their day's 
 work.* Adam, trying to comfort his wife, mentions, 
 in off-hand fashion, how an angel has just given him 
 a piece of news. God will visit them to-morrow to 
 hold high feast (hohes fest\ and see how they are keep- 
 ing house and bringing up the children. Therefore, 
 let Eve sweep the rooms, spread the floors with sweet 
 straw, wash the children, and dress them in their best. 
 The first part of the injunction is easily obeyed, but 
 not so the second. For Eve's children are sharply 
 separated into two groups. Some are very good, 
 pretty, and obedient ; the others are bad, dirty, unruly, 
 and deformed. Abel and those like him are soon 
 made tidy, but Cain and his fellows are playing and 
 quarrelling in the gutter, and flatly refuse to let 
 themselves be washed. When Abel announces who 
 
 * It was also a favourite subject with the author, who has made 
 use of it four different times. In the following sketch I have 
 borrowed traits from all the versions.
 
 288 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 is coming, Cain replies, " I'd liefer He would stay 
 away." When his father bids him prepare for the 
 prayer, sacrifice, and sermon of the morrow, the 
 wicked child wishes that "prayer, sermon and 
 sacrifice had never been invented." At this, Eve 
 loses her patience and exclaims, she will leave them 
 the eyesores that they are, and God will find them a 
 dirty rabble foul as pigs; but in one version she 
 relents, and stows them away in the loft, under the 
 straw, in the chimney. Next day the visitor comes 
 as announced, and after a hospitable welcome asks to 
 see the children. Those who are dressed, with Abel 
 at their head, advance singing a psalm, and shake 
 hands with the guest. He asks them questions out of 
 Luther's Catechism on the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, 
 the meaning of Amen, the Commandments, with what 
 they forbid or require, and the children come off with 
 flying colours. Reassured by their success, Eve 
 ventures to produce the other lot; but when they 
 come tumbling in dirty, naked, shapeless, unkempt, 
 God cannot keep from laughing (der Her let des 
 Tostigen haufens lacheri). They offer Him their left 
 hands, make a frightful mess of the Catechism, and 
 excuse themselves on the plea that they don't see 
 the use of it, that they can't remember it, that they 
 did not know He was coming. The examiner is much 
 displeased and determines to punish them ; they and
 
 HANS SACHS AND THE MASTERSONG. 289 
 
 their seed shall be mechanics, fishermen and peasants, 
 but Abel and the good children shall be kings, nobles, 
 rich merchants and scholars. Eve in pity for her 
 offspring offers objections, but is told that all is for 
 the best, only in this way can there be order in the 
 world. 
 
 Even here, then, Hans writes with an object, and 
 with the very Lutheran one of justifying the existence 
 of ranks. In this sense Melanchthon tells the story 
 in another version, and to any who have found it 
 irreverent, we may say with Hans himself, that he 
 has it from the Latin of Melanchthon. But such an 
 excuse is unnecessary. Even the figure of the Deity 
 is not irreverent, but only quaint, and at heart truly 
 Protestant. Tieck characterizes him as a " strict but 
 affable superintendent." Scotchmen will rather think 
 of the old Presbyterian catechists who used to make 
 the rounds of the outlying districts, stopping at the 
 farms, and examining the whole household, parents, 
 children, strangers and servants, on the Bible and 
 Shorter Catechism. 
 
 After a lifetime of popularity, and two centuries of 
 neglect, Hans Sachs attracted the affectionate admira- 
 tion of Goethe. In his autobiography the greater poet 
 describes how this study influenced his style, and in 
 " The Poetical Vocation of Hans Sachs " pays a sym- 
 pathetic tribute to our worthy mastersinger. In this 
 
 u
 
 290 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 poem Goethe describes and explains an old wood-cut. 
 Hans sits in his workshop on Sunday. The young 
 damsel Honesty, the old crone History, and a merry - 
 andrew crowd round offering him their stores. 
 Pleased with his task, but at a loss for words, he 
 looks up and meets the friendly gaze of the Muse. 
 She vows him to herself, promises that his heart shall 
 be ever "merry as a bud in dew," and shows him 
 his wife waiting in the garden to cheer and hearten 
 him in his work. An oak wreath floats above him 
 in the clouds, and a frog-pond in the corner for carping 
 critics completes the picture. " After this manifesto," 
 says Hoffman, "Hans was safe. Few wish to be 
 banished by Goethe into the frog-pond."
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 
 
 [Klopstock's complete works were published in 1817, and Diintzer 
 has edited his odes separately. Of the biographies the most con- 
 venient is Graber's, and Strauss has given some interesting particu- 
 lars in his " Kleine Schriften." Gervinus has given an admirable 
 criticism of Klopstock's life and works the best that I have seen 
 in his " Deutsche Dichtung," bd. iv., being here more in sympathy 
 with his subject than he sometimes is ; from it I have largely 
 borrowed. 
 
 Klopstock was unfortunate in the quality though not in the quan- 
 tity of his English translators, and his complaints about this formed 
 one item in his famous conversation with Coleridge and Wordsworth. 
 In Mrs. Meeke's version of the " Messiah," his diction ceases to be, 
 what Herder called it, " a dance of syllables," and becomes rather a 
 prance of syllables. In the following essay I have made use of 
 Baskerville's unrhymed and of Nind's rhymed translations, the latter 
 the best English renderings of Klopstock, but not quite faithful 
 because they are rhymed.] 
 
 DURING the first half of the eighteenth century 
 presages were not wanting in Germany of a coming 
 literary revival. People acquired a sufficient interest 
 in poetry to lose their tempers about it ; they 
 discussed it with zeal if not with knowledge ; the 
 rival leaders, Bodmer and Gottsched, had each a keen 
 scent for the faults of the other, if not for his own.
 
 292 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 But the direct results of all this controversy were very 
 meagre. Neither party as yet had a genius in its 
 ranks. The verses produced were commonplace prose 
 chopped into defective metre, from which all the 
 essential elements of poetiy were carefully excluded. 
 
 The German writers of the time failed in three 
 respects. They wanted first, the sense of form ; 
 second, independence and national character ; but last 
 and most, all contact with life. No doubt both 
 Gottsched and Bodmer busied themselves with in- 
 quiries into language and style, but their methods 
 were inadequate, and they were worshippers of false 
 gods. Gottsched wrote in the French interest, but 
 the French lightness of treatment and suggestive wit 
 escaped him altogether, and the French wisdom of life 
 which fulfils a Moliere he never tried to acquire. In 
 the same way Bodmer, who appealed to England, had 
 not Shakespeare in his eye ; and though he professed 
 himself a disciple of Milton, it was only Milton's 
 mistakes that he admired. The energy of plastic 
 creation, the " planetary harmonies " of the English 
 poet for these he had no sense, and he placed him 
 much on the same level with such respectable persons 
 as Edward Young, author of the " Night Thoughts." 
 Thus the two rivals got little more from their study 
 of foreign models than inflated blank verse and mono- 
 tonous Alexandrines. And they looked upon these
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 293 
 
 measures as absolutely perfect : they applied them 
 mechanically without understanding their principles ; 
 they did not know that the form of a work of art is 
 prescribed from within by the spirit ; that it is like 
 the shape to which a flower grows, not like a mould 
 into which metal is cast. 
 
 But perhaps a worse fault than having an imperfect 
 ideal was having a foreign one. No doubt every 
 nation, if it be wise, will learn from all its neighbours ; 
 no doubt it will absorb elements offered from without. 
 That is a vastly different thing from accepting any 
 foreign standard. We may import tea from China 
 without importing its mandarins. But Bodmer and 
 Gottsched thought differently. At war in all else, 
 they agreed in this, that Germany could produce 
 nothing of its own ; that it must imitate the literature 
 of more fortunate countries, and that such imitations 
 would supply all native wants. 
 
 The reason for such preposterous opinions among 
 men of talent lay in the separation which existed 
 between poetry and life. People had no idea that a 
 man's writings were connected with his character. 
 The statement of Goethe that his poems are his confes- 
 sions the words he attributes to Tasso 
 
 " And if the human heart in silence break, 
 Mine is the God-given strength to tell my SOITOW," 
 
 would have been applauded as amusing paradoxes.
 
 294 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Bodmer professed enthusiasm for Milton ; but when in 
 later days Lessing repeated Milton's principle that to 
 write a poem one must live a poem, that no one can 
 sing what he has not felt, Bodmer made merry over 
 this " monstrous idea." " No, no, friend Lessing," he 
 exclaimed ; " it is not the man, it is only the poet, who 
 loves and revels and weeps in his verses." Of course 
 these opinions could hold ground only while there was 
 no one of poetical insight to contradict them. As soon 
 as men of real feeling and genius arose, their first task 
 would be to restore literature to paths more human, 
 more German, and more artistic. The two writers 
 who fulfilled this mission, though in very opposite 
 ways, were Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock and Christoph 
 Martin Wieland. 
 
 Already in Klopstock's life we see that he was 
 peculiarly fitted for the work of reform. He was born 
 in Quedlinburg in 1724, and like most German boys 
 of his rank, grew up in an atmosphere of the strictest 
 religion, but iwlike most of them, with plenty of active 
 exercise and outdoor employment. Both influences 
 were due to his father, a man of somewhat excited 
 pietistic notions, who believed in spectres, presages, 
 and the bodily presence of the devil, but who was also 
 keenly alive to the importance of muscular Christianity. 
 The son was not behind in either direction. One of 
 his biographers would have us recognize in the child
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 295 
 
 the ancient Cheruscan hardiness described by Tacitus, 
 and dwells with especial delight on a swimming 
 adventure which he undertook in spite of his parents' 
 commands. Sent to school at Pforta, the other side 
 of his character began to disclose itself. He threw 
 himself on the study of Greek, broke loose from the 
 pedantry of his masters, and read Homer, not as a 
 grammatical exercise, but as the great epic of every 
 nation and every age. The contrast of this with what 
 in his own country were by courtesy called poems, 
 tilled him with burning shame. He vowed that if he 
 lived he would wipe out the reproach of his fatherland ; 
 at night he could not sleep for thinking of his high 
 career; and though his conscience accused him of 
 worldly ambition, his heart beat high with hopes of 
 immortality and fame. Among the rather puritanical 
 circles in which he moved he came to be noted for a 
 certain exuberance of life. He revelled in an excited 
 feeling of friendship. Friendship, next to peace of 
 conscience, was the supremest happiness of man. He 
 was an enthusiast for field-sports. He drew up a code 
 of laws for skating, which he afterwards celebrated in 
 an ode. Goethe, too, was proficient in these matters, 
 but the eternal riding, swimming, and boating of 
 Klopstock and his school soon became a very nuisance 
 to the more judicious poet. When Klopstock visited 
 Zurich, Bodmer and all his pious friends were greatly
 
 296 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 shocked. . They had expected a holy young prophet, 
 and were prepared to shed tears with him over his 
 religious poems. But the lion would not roar, or 
 rather would not weep. He was in disgracefully high 
 spirits, and deserted his tearful admirers to amuse the 
 ladies of the company. 
 
 But like most men in whose character the emotional 
 predominates, Klopstock could be as easily depressed 
 as exalted. Some of his odes, inspired by a merely 
 hypothetical lady, express the innermost languishing 
 of love. In others, which, contrary to contemporary 
 German usage, he addressed to a real lady, Fanny 
 Schmidt, he is often hoarse with misery. With 
 streaming eyes he entreats Bodmer to intercede for 
 him, and Bodmer good-naturedly consents. He is 
 jubilant at the welcome which in 1748 the first three 
 books of his " Messiah " receive ; but he is presently 
 plunged in despair when he remembers that, tutor as 
 he is, he cannot devote his whole soul to the under- 
 taking. This grief was removed. BernstorfF, Prime 
 Minister of Denmark, invited him with a pension to 
 Copenhagen. Klopstock set out in his most expansive 
 mood, and during the journey fell in love with Meta, 
 or Margaretha Moller, whom he celebrated under the 
 name of Cidli in several fine odes, and who three 
 years later became his wife. This is the lady who, 
 with no introduction but her admiration, struck up
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 297 
 
 a correspondence with Richardson the novelist, and 
 who, with her pleasant broken English, her talk of 
 a " manly (i.e. male) Clarissa," and of " war, the great 
 fiend of friendship," was at one time pretty generally 
 known in this country. In these and other letters 
 she appeal's to the full as gushing, as lachrymose, and, 
 we may add, as high-souled as either Richardson or 
 her husband. She returns to the days "when," to 
 quote her own words, " I was only the single young 
 girl." She writes of her first meeting with Klop- 
 stock : " I must confess that, though greatly pre- 
 possessed of his qualities, I never thought him the 
 amiable youth whom I found him. This made its 
 effect." For though merely his friend to begin with, 
 " at the least," she proceeds, " my thoughts were ever 
 with him filled." It is perhaps cruel to make her 
 furnish evidence that Klopstock was a sentimentalist 
 and a bore, but after all the statement is now in print, 
 and she gives it with an enthusiasm too innocent to 
 pass by. On the anniversary of her marriage she 
 writes to a friend, " Klopstock greeted me, ' Wife of 
 my heart, best wife, rare Meta, thou angel, thou, my 
 heart and soul.' Yes, he said all that and much 
 more, and ah ! he has been saying it already the whole 
 year through." Which certainly is exactly what we 
 would expect of Klopstock, but few would add with 
 his victim, " How happy I am ! "
 
 298 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 After his marriage, Klopstock resided in Hamburg, 
 where he lived a quite poetical life, idolized by his 
 friends, his wife, and even by his wife's family. The 
 " Messiah " was his dream by night and his work by 
 day, and whilst he wrote, his wife prayed that he 
 might have inspiration. Klopstock can describe the 
 existence he now led only in the most superlative of 
 superlatives. But it was soon to pass. After four 
 years his wife died ; his progress with his work was 
 slow, twenty -five years elapsing between the publica- 
 tion of the first book and the last, and during the 
 interval the German public gradually cooled in its en- 
 thusiasm till it grew quite severe. Klopstock consoled 
 himself for these misfortunes as best he might. He 
 tried his success in what he called bardieUes, imitations 
 of what he fancied the poems of the bards must have 
 been, and becoming the leader of the Patriotic School, 
 formed a " society of bards," which met on Saturday 
 afternoons. He also founded a Ladies' Poetical Club 
 in Hamburg of which Lessing's wife wrote, " I shall 
 never be admitted : I am neither young nor pretty 
 enough for Herr Klopstock," and by-and-by he 
 married again, this time a widow lady named Win- 
 them. For the defection of the public he comforted 
 himself with the admiration of aristocratic friends, 
 who granted him pensions, and paid him almost 
 divine honours. " After the mother of the Messiah
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 299 
 
 himself," writes one, " comes the mother of Klopstock." 
 He lived to welcome, and then to denounce the 
 French Revolution, both in unmeasured terms, and 
 died in 1803. 
 
 From Klopstock's biography it seems pretty evident 
 that his gifts are chiefly lyric. There is no trace 
 with him of the measured, stately self-control that we 
 associate with great epic poets, with Virgil and Dante 
 and Milton. And still less does he possess that quick 
 wide sympathy with all types of character, all shades 
 of opinion which the dramatist requires. He once 
 pronounced it sin to love a freethinker. But his con- 
 tinual enthusiasm, his raptures of despair and delight, 
 would all find their vent in the intenser kinds of 
 lyrical composition. 
 
 It is noteworthy that Horace and Pindar were 
 his early favourites, and inspired his first poetical 
 attempts. With them he cultivated his sense of 
 form. As soon as he tried odes in German he found 
 that he must have a perfect control over his language, 
 a thorough insight into its spirit, a complete mastery 
 of its materials. He studied it in the light of his 
 Greek and Roman masters; he plunged into it, and 
 it bore him up ; he felt he could compete with the 
 ancients in their own measures, and contemptuously 
 rejected what he called " the modern click-clack of 
 rhyme." He strove with might and main to reach
 
 300 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 the old classical perfection of form, and not without 
 success. " Klopstock," says Kolbe, applying the famous 
 epigram on Dryden, " might boast as Augustus boasted 
 of Rome, ' I found the German language brick, and 
 left it marble.' " It is unfortunate, but it is character- 
 istic of the man, that this formal perfection means 
 nothing more to him than mastery in speech, metres, 
 and the arrangement of sounds. But in these he almost 
 always succeeds, at least where they are the vehicle 
 of exalted feeling. No doubt he takes liberties in his 
 treatment of German, he forces it to be sublime in 
 spite of itself; what it gains in majesty, it loses in 
 simplicity. A friend once told him that people did 
 not understand his language : " Then they may learn 
 it," was Klopstock's reply. In this he was too proud 
 and uncompromising, he would not take a telling. He 
 persevered in classical constructions, involved sen- 
 tences, obscure allusions, which it requires some eru- 
 dition to explain. To illustrate this it is usual to 
 quote his verse 
 
 " The pious monk's invention now resounds." 
 
 Perhaps few readers guess at once that he means " the 
 gun is fired," and that " the pious monk's invention " is 
 the powder. A smart but somewhat flippant critic 
 greatly annoyed Klopstock by proposing to translate 
 his odes into German. Often he seems to have con- 
 structed his periods like Chinese puzzles, that his
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 301 
 
 reader may have the pleasure of taking them to pieces 
 again. But, after condemning all these faults, we 
 must remember that they are by no means universal 
 with Klopstock, and that it is very easy to make too 
 much of them. Take him at his best and he is one of 
 the best ode-writers of the modern world, and worthy 
 to stand beside Dry den and Collins. "Hence it comes 
 that he has the ease and confidence of a master in all 
 the primitive and original kinds of poetry. He seizes 
 in its very essence the stormy ecstasy of the bards, the 
 religious majesty of the Psalms, and once or twice the 
 more human beauty of the Greek lyrics." It has 
 been said that in his youthful odes we hear again 
 Pindar and David and the Edda. These names suggest 
 a rough threefold division, not only of those, but of all 
 his poems, according to three principles, which exercised 
 a powerful influence on his life and development. 
 Some of the odes are simple and severe, and have a 
 faint breath of Greek beauty. Others are abrupt, 
 difficult, involved and obscure, composed after 
 Northern models and intended to express the Ur- 
 deutsch, the original native German. A third class 
 are dithyrambic hymns of religious content, steeped 
 in the spirit of David and Isaiah and St. John. 
 
 The Grecian inspiration, as we saw, was his first. 
 In the classical world he learned the significance of 
 form : Pindar and Horace taught him their measures
 
 302 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 and their style. All his odes may be considered as 
 the direct or indirect outcome of these influences. 
 " But in that alien pagan world as it was to him he 
 could not long linger. Already when he left school he 
 pitied Homer and Virgil for their religion's sake, and 
 refused to follow in their steps." He placed the bard 
 above the poet, the Christian above the heathen. " My 
 heart," he cries, " demands tumult and storm and lofty 
 flight, the audacious pictures of Northern song, count- 
 less, hot, and true." Thus we see him return from 
 Greece to his own country, he is fired with the idea of 
 independence ; he will be a national poet and sing- 
 German strains ; the scholar is merged in the patriot. 
 This change it is not hard to explain. No man of suffi- 
 cient poetical feeling really to appreciate the Greeks 
 could fail to see that they were great by the inspiration 
 of the life around them. The pulse of their people beat 
 more quickly in their veins, and the aspirations of their 
 people shone more brightly before their eyes. Will 
 one produce Greek art, the sure way to fail is to imitate 
 it : the only chance of success lies in making one's self 
 the mouthpiece of one's own country and one's own 
 time. This the young German felt. He began to 
 search for a native hero and a native theme. He 
 sought to revive the primitive German virtues. He 
 wished to make his countrymen free and simple and 
 hardy once more. This explains his passion for field-
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 303 
 
 sports. "Had he been converting the heathen he 
 could not have preached skating with greater unction." 
 When Macphersoii's " Ossian " appeared, Klopstock 
 was in ecstasies. To call it a forgery was, in his eyes, 
 blasphemous. Here was a poem original to the 
 Western races, "which defied Homer and shamed 
 Apollo." Besides, in those days the distinction was 
 not very precisely drawn between Celt and Teuton, 
 and Klopstock was disposed to claim Ossian as the 
 champion of all Northern Europe. "Ossian was a 
 Caledonian," says Gleim; "and therefore of German 
 origin;" and Klopstock talks of his "Celtic or ancestral 
 mythology." At a later day, when he composed his 
 cumbrous allegory of the "German Eepublic of Letters," 
 he described it as a sort of society of Druids. In like 
 manner, considering the bards common to both races, 
 he wrote strange hybrid poems, which he called 
 bardiettes, and which celebrate the feats of Arminius, 
 or Hermann, who had routed the legions of Eome. I 
 may quote the following fragment to illustrate generally 
 his treatment of these patriotic themes. The dialogue 
 is between Hermann and his wife Thusnelda, when 
 he returns from a victorious battle. The original 
 antique metres are preserved in the translation : 
 
 " Lo ! with sweat on his br5w, with Koman gore stained, 
 With the dust of the battle decked he cometh, 
 
 Ne'er was Hermann so 15vely, 
 Thus never flashed his bright eye.
 
 304 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 " Come ! I tremble for joy ; give rne the eagles 
 And thy sabre blood-reeking, come, breathe freely ! 
 Rest within my embraces 
 After the terrible fight. 
 
 " Rest, that I from thy brow may wipe the sweat-drop, 
 And the blood from thy cheek, thy cheek how glowing I 
 Hermann ! Hermann ! Thusnelda 
 Never hath loved thee as now. 
 
 " Not even when in the forests' shades so wildly 
 Thou with sun-embrowned arm didst seize me, stopping 
 I already beheld thee 
 With immortality crowned. 
 
 " ' Wherefore twin'st thou my locks ? Lies not our father 
 Silent, dead at our feet ? Oh had Augustus 
 Led his hosts to the battle 
 Gorier he would lie there.' 
 
 " Let me bind up thy waving hair, O Hermann, 
 That it may o'er thy wreath in ringlets threaten ! 
 Siegmar dwelleth in Heaven, 
 Follow and weep not for him." 
 
 But it was not Hermann who first suggested himself 
 as the great epical hero of Germany. Klopstock's 
 earliest choice was the Saxon Emperor, Henry the 
 Fowler, who had delivered his country from the 
 Hungarian invaders. A little unrhymed ballad on 
 this subject remains, which is a good specimen of 
 Klopstock's simpler style : 
 
 " Behold the foe ! the fight begins, 
 Come on to Victory ! 
 The bravest hero leads us on 
 In all our fatherland.
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 305 
 
 " The sickness feels he not to-day, 
 There bear they him along, 
 Hail Henry, Hero brave and good 
 In fields of flashing steel ! 
 
 " His eyeball glows with honour's flame 
 And victory compels, 
 Around him are the nobles' helms 
 With hostile blood bedewed. 
 
 " Oh welcome death for fatherland, 
 Whene'er our sinking head 
 With blood be decked, then will we die 
 With fame for fatherland. 
 
 " When we before us see a plain, 
 And but the dead behold 
 Around us, conquer then will we 
 With fame for fatherland. 
 
 " The fame we've won shall aye remain, 
 Yea, even when we are dead, 
 When we have for our fatherland 
 The death of honour died." 
 
 But though Klopstock at one time thought of Henry 
 for his hero, he soon abandoned him. We instinc- 
 tively think of Milton, who once, from a crowd of 
 epical and dramatic studies, selected the history of 
 Arthur for his life-work. But finally both poets 
 followed the summons of the sacred muse, and prob- 
 ably they were right. In the ode " To my Father- 
 land," Klopstock exclaims : 
 
 " Thine was I from my boyhood, when my breast 
 Felt the first pulses of ambition spring. 
 
 X
 
 306 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 I chose from heroes of the lance and crest 
 
 Henry thy rescuer to sing. 
 But I beheld the higher track of light, 
 
 And more than mere ambition fired my mind ; 
 The pathway I preferred that leads from night 
 
 Up to the Fatherland of all mankind. 
 That I pursue, but when the toil too much 
 
 O'erburdens this mortality, 
 I turn aside, and, to the telyn's touch, 
 
 Sing, Fatherland, thy fame to thee." 
 
 " In this way," laments Gervinus, " he sacrificed 
 Homer for Ossian and both for David." But this was 
 really the best, indeed, the only thing he could do. 
 How could he have sung a German heroic when 
 ( Germany at the time did not exist ? The Peace of 
 Westphalia, only less disastrous than the war to 
 which it made an end, had made any practical 
 patriotism impossible. The little princelings had 
 received sovereign powers which made them inde- 
 pendent of their emperor on the one hand, and of 
 their subjects on the other. Neither unity nor free- 
 dom existed; there was no German empire and no 
 German people. Klopstock might feel that patriotic 
 sentiment that burns itself out in an ode; but the 
 love of country which is necessary to inspire a great 
 effort, which springs from love and gratitude and 
 complete self-surrender, how could he feel that for a 
 land "where the subjects were, lackeys and the 
 sovereigns were brutes ? " For the monarch who 
 laid the foundations of a new Germany, for Frederick
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 307 
 
 the Great of Prussia, Klopstock on religious grounds 
 had no sympathy ; and indeed in his odes, though 
 not in his life, all kings indiscriminately were " sots, 
 albinoes, and ourang-ou tangs." In these circum- 
 stances what catholic interest remained on which he 
 could feel strongly save the interest of religion ? Dis- 
 contented with his own fatherland he turned to the 
 " Fatherland of all mankind." " I searched for a 
 hero," he says, " and sank exhausted. Then suddenly 
 him, whom as a Christian I loved, as a poet I saw 
 with one swift triumphant glance." Whatever faults 
 there may be in the choice of subject and in the 
 execution, we have here at least the first essential 
 condition fulfilled, the poet feels what he is writing 
 about. He will pour his life into this chalice, he will 
 consecrate all his powers to this task. The fruit of 
 his classical studies, the noble hexameters which few 
 could wield as he, his exuberant and headlong diction, 
 the inheritance from his Northern ancestry, these, he 
 says, " I will now hallow by dedicating them to 
 religion." He strove and struggled with himself to 
 delay beginning his work till he was thirty years 
 of age. But his subject possessed and overwhelmed 
 him. It carried him away ; he could not resist it, 
 he had to begin. Feeling begets feeling: a poem 
 which issued from such a state of mind must succeed : 
 the first three cantos of the " Messiah " awoke an
 
 308 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 enthusiasm equal to the author's own. No doubt a 
 reaction followed on both sides. Klopstock alternated 
 between exaltation and ague, fever and depression. 
 The public turned away from a work which dragged 
 itself out for years till it lost all wholeness of feeling, 
 and came to look like a string of lyrical fragments. 
 But meanwhile the deed had been done, the stimulus 
 given. Henceforth there could be no question that 
 the Germans had in them poetry of their own. They 
 could now advance to their new classical period. 
 They could never return to the " masterpieces " which 
 had disgraced the last two hundred years. 
 
 In his choice of a subject we must admit that 
 Klopstock was wrong. When a poet treats a larger 
 theme he is generally exposed to a twofold danger. 
 On the one hand his tastes may be a little recondite, 
 he may select what is neither well known nor 
 popular. In this case he will fail to excite catholic 
 sympathy, his work will not be national nor ever 
 become household property. Or, again, he may 
 choose what is too familiar, what is already sacred 
 and hallowed in the minds of the people, so that no 
 further artistic development is possible, and all change 
 is regarded with suspicion. No one, out of France, is 
 rash enough to write a new " Hamlet," and Klopstock 
 was guilty of almost as much foolhardiness when he 
 undertook to work up the simple stories of the Gospel 
 into an elaborate epic poem.
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 300 
 
 And the very conditions which determined his 
 choice made it impossible for him fully to succeed. 
 It was his orthodoxy dashed with pietism that drew 
 him to the subject. Now while his pietism filled him 
 with devout brooding reverence for the figure of 
 Christ, his orthodoxy forced him to view it only 
 through the old dogmas. These prescribed a certain 
 treatment and forbade a certain treatment. He could 
 not piece together, reject, remodel, and humanize. 
 We have seen this done in the prose of Renan and 
 others with results at least far more artistic than 
 came within the range of Klopstock's verse. Even 
 the Evangelical theologian, Dr. Dorner, says of him, 
 " He failed to perceive that the Divine, save when 
 human, remains unrevealed, aud hovers in a sublime 
 haziness, which may inspire inspiration and ecstasy, 
 but never keen plastic contemplation." Klopstock 
 conceives the Divine in what Dr. Dorner would call 
 its unrevealed state. He seeks its expression, not in 
 the workings of man's spirit, but in signs and 
 wonders. So, instead of bringing his theme more 
 fully and clearly within our consciousness, he shifts 
 it further away. To this result his artistic concurred 
 with his religious orthodoxy. He held the traditional 
 tenet that an epic poem demands supernatural 
 machinery. The whole apparatus, therefore, which 
 he found ready to his hand seemed to require enlarge-
 
 310 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 ment rather than dismantling. So he introduces a 
 multitude of marvels, a crowd of persons, an enormous 
 daemonic apparatus, of which the Evangelists know 
 nothing, and which every judicious reader must feel 
 to be out of place. Samma, a convert, Philo, a 
 Pharisee, play important parts, and Pilate's wife, 
 Portia, with her dreams and presentiments, has 
 nearly a whole canto to herself. Nicodemus, Joseph, 
 Lazarus, are made the heroes of imaginary occur- 
 rences. Indeed all the minor characters of the 
 Gospel, who are introduced casually, whose names are 
 hardly mentioned, or are left unmentioned, become 
 the centre of detailed and fantastical romances. Per- 
 haps the most ridiculous example is the little love 
 story of Semida and Cidli, the young man of Nain 
 and the daughter of Jairus. Since both died and 
 both were raised from the dead, Klopstock discovers 
 that they were evidently intended for each other. 
 Their connection is not indeed mentioned in Holy 
 Writ, but it is the glory of the poet to remedy such 
 omissions ! So he conducts them through a long and 
 tearful courtship, and at length unites them amid a 
 company of glorified saints and prophets who visit 
 the earth after the Crucifixion. Most of Klopstock's 
 admirers would think this blasphemy, did it not occur 
 in a religious poem. 
 
 Perhaps even more superfluous are the hosts of
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 311 
 
 angels, demons, and genii who are intended to help on 
 the action, but who really impede it. Nothing happens 
 save through their agency. Herder condemns this 
 with rather an amusing illustration. The Evangelist 
 in his story of the Crucifixion says, " Now it was about 
 the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the 
 earth until the ninth hour." These simple words 
 are intended to bring out the solemnity of the time, 
 and do so completely. But in Klopstock, the seraph 
 Uriel has been waiting for the proper moment, and 
 then punctually signals to a star to place itself before 
 the sun. In the same way no one can talk or think 
 but it is by the prompting of an angel or a devil. 
 " We get to know not men, but their guardian spirits," 
 says Gervinus. This fashion of supernatural poetry 
 became the bane of Germany, and Lessing proposed 
 to write a satire upon it in which old Gottsched 
 should ride out " to hunt the seraphim." Klopstock 
 only once attempts to portray character, and that is in 
 the case of the fallen Abadonna. Abadonna was peni- 
 tent, and his fate excited great interest in Germany. 
 It became one of the burning questions of the day. 
 The Zurich society supplicated for him, and in Magde- 
 burg his salvation was solemnly decreed. This is not 
 without parallel in England. Prayers have been 
 offered that little Dombey might not die, and what 
 is even more d propos that Lovelace's soul might be
 
 312 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 saved. In Germany these pious efforts were crowned 
 with success, and at the end of the poem, when 
 Abadonna beseeches God to annihilate him, he is mer- 
 cifully restored to his place in heaven. 
 
 He alone of all the spirits has definite features. 
 The others are a shadowy host, distinguishable only 
 by their names. Schiller says truly, " From all that 
 he touches Klopstock withdraws the body." And yet 
 despite that, he is grossly materialistic. He places the 
 infernal regions in the centre of the earth, lighted by 
 a sun of their own. He describes God as a visible 
 figure in space. He conceives spirit as body that has 
 somehow ceased to be solid. Coleridge rather un- 
 kindly translates his name " Clubstick," and certainly 
 he has no great subtlety of discernment or fineness of 
 thought. 
 
 This defect shows itself in the whole plan of the 
 poem, or rather in its absence of plan. When the 
 early cantos appeared, and every one was raving 
 about the new epic, Lessing cautioned the people that 
 their applause was premature. " You can't judge a 
 work of art from the parts," he said, " but only as a 
 whole." This warning was disregarded at the time, 
 but every new canto proved more and more con- 
 clusively that Lessing's fears had been well founded. 
 What an epic imperatively demands is unity of action, 
 but the " Messiah " had in the first place no unity, and
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 313 
 
 in the second no action. Christ is nailed on the Cross 
 at the beginning of the eighth book ; angels, mortals, 
 saints, and devils gather round, sing and declaim 
 during his dying agonies ; and at last he gives up the 
 ghost at the end of the tenth book. Now, one would 
 think the story must draw to a close, the catastrophe 
 is passed, the goal is reached. But in ten other cantos, 
 quite as long as the first ten, Klopstock, with choruses, 
 colloquies, and hymns, by a lavish use of celestial 
 armies and the spirits of just men made perfect, fills 
 up the interval between the Crucifixion and the 
 Ascension. If this betrays a want of epical power, 
 there is much else that absolutely contradicts the idea 
 of a narrative poem. Instead of deeds, we have long 
 debates : instead of acting, people talk. If before we 
 were offended by Klopstock's interpolations, now we 
 must marvel at his omissions. The procession to the 
 Cross, the threefold denial of Peter, the end of Judas, 
 should have been godsends to the poet ; already there 
 are touches about them hardly to be found out of our 
 best old ballads. But Klopstock does not know when 
 he is well off. We see the spectacle on the Cross ; of 
 the Via Dolorosa we hear no word. Peter's treason 
 takes place in the background, and when all is over 
 he comes forward and "weeps himself" (erweint sick) 
 the martyr's crown. At Judas' suicide, first the cul- 
 prit makes a long speech, then his genus and a bad
 
 314 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 angel discourse together, and finally the departed 
 spirit joins in the talk with a fatal fluency that death 
 has not impaired. Not only does everybody speak, 
 but their words are broken with passion : they foam 
 at the mouth, or if they do not lose their self-control 
 it is because they are sublime. Everything is at the 
 highest possible pitch. " For every feeling," says 
 Lessing, " " we feel nothing." Klopstock exasperates 
 his reader with continual interjections ; he had to be 
 reminded, " Not every one that crieth Lord ! Lord ! 
 shall enter into the kingdom of poetry." The same 
 phrases occur in wearisome iteration. Everybody 
 wonders and weeps, and swoons and smiles and 
 embraces everybody else, and dissolves in tears scald- 
 ing or holy as the case may be. This last performance 
 is specially Klopstockian. In almost every page one 
 finds the expression " weeping eyes." 
 
 All these criticisms we must make if we take Klop- 
 stock at his word and regard the " Messiah " as an epic 
 poem. But if we do this we are less than just. We 
 shall gain a truer point of view if for a moment we 
 contrast the " Messiah " and the " Paradise Lost." We 
 will not echo Coleridge's biting answer to those who 
 called Klopstock a German Milton. "Yes, a very 
 German one ! " Rather we must decide that the 
 two poets have as little as possible in common. With 
 Milton everything has distinctness, firm outline, definite
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 315 
 
 shape. Even his more hideous images have been 
 compared by Winckelmann to beautifully painted 
 gorgons. But no one in his senses would think of 
 naming painting in the same breath with Klopstock. 
 With him there is nothing fixed, nothing plastic ; to 
 use one of his own favourite formulas, " all things 
 melt in feeling." Take even the following noble 
 stanza on death : 
 
 " Again to bloom the seed the sower sows, 
 The Lord of Harvest goes 
 Gathering the sheaves, 
 Death's sickle reaps and leaves ; 
 Praise ye the Lord." 
 
 It is not too much to say that no pictorial thinker 
 could have written this, for it labours under a radical 
 confusion ; sowing and reaping, seed time and harvest, 
 are both employed as types of death. It certainly is 
 no picture, but does it not suggest another art ? 
 Take now this poem, which he calls the "Rose 
 Wreath : " 
 
 " I found her by a shady rill, 
 
 I bound her with a wreath of rose, 
 She felt it not, but slumbered still, 
 looked at her, and on the spot 
 My life with hers did blend and close. 
 I felt it, but I knew it not. 
 
 ' Some lisping broken words I spoke, 
 
 And rustled light the wreath of rose, 
 Then from her slumber she awoke ; 
 She looked on me and from that hour 
 
 Her life with mine did blend and close, 
 And round us it was Eden's bower."
 
 316 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 The presentiment, the dreaminess, the hush of feeling 
 that mark these lines at least in the original, do they 
 not come over the soul like a breath of melody ? All 
 poetry contains ideally the arts of painting and music. 
 It is word-painting and word-music, though it is 
 something more than their union. Klopstock's 
 peculiarity lies in this, that with him the first 
 element is more nearly wanting, and the second more 
 fully present than with almost any other poet. One 
 more quotation for the sake of one more comparison 
 will serve to illustrate this. It is from his ode on 
 
 skating : 
 
 " Sunk in the tomb of endless night 
 
 Is many a great inventor's name ; 
 Our torch we kindle at their light, 
 But where is their reward and fame ? 
 
 " How name ye him who ocean crossed 
 
 First with tall mast and swelling sheet ? 
 Nor would I that his name were lost, 
 Who added wings to flying feet : 
 
 " For should not he immortal live 
 
 Whose art can health and joy enhance 
 Such as no mettled steed can give, 
 Nor ever panteth in the dance ? . . . . 
 
 " The scene is filled with vapoury light, 
 
 As when the winter morning's prime 
 Looks on the lake ; above it night 
 
 Scatters like stars the glittering rime. 
 
 " How still and white is all around ! 
 
 How rings the track with new-sparred frost ! 
 Far off the metal's cymbal sound 
 Betrays thee, for a moment lost.
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 317 
 
 " Why to the isle dost list aloof ; 
 
 Unpractised skaters clamour there. 
 The ice not yet will load and hoof 
 Above or net beneath it bear. 
 
 ." Ah, nought upon thine ear is lost, 
 
 There wailings loud the death crash makes. 
 How different sounds it when the frost 
 Runs splitting miles along the lakes." 
 
 Now contrast this with what Wordsworth says 
 about skating in his poem on the "Influence of 
 Natural Objects." I regret that I cannot quote it in 
 full. 
 
 " So through the darkness and the cold we flew, 
 And not a voice was idle ; with the din 
 Smitten the precipices rang aloud, 
 The leafless trees and every icy crag 
 Tinkled like iron ; while far distant hills 
 Into the tumult sent an alien sound 
 Of melancholy, not unnoticed while the stars 
 Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west 
 The orange sky of evening died away. 
 
 How precise and graphic and distinct all this is 
 when compared with Klopstock's hazy rapture ! And 
 the opinions of the two men about Ossian point the 
 same moral. His " want of firm outline," to which 
 Wordsworth objects, is precisely what attracts Klop- 
 stock. For this, and Ossianic mastery of vague 
 emotion and feeling for sound as sound, are all 
 qualities of his own. Herder said that his odes must 
 be read aloud ; " then," he proceeds, " they rise from 
 the page and become a dance of syllables." This is
 
 318 STUDIES IN GEHMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 quite true, and Klopstock too often prefers the syllable 
 to the word, the music to the meaning; he tickles 
 our ears with pages of " sound and fury, signifying 
 nothing." To such an extent does he proceed in the 
 twentieth canto of the " Messiah," that his English 
 translator * has not ventured to render it. It contains 
 little more than shouts of Hosannah, choruses of 
 Hallelujah, wavings of triumphal palms. Clearly the 
 relation here is not with the painter, but with the 
 musician. Gervinus reminds us that seven years 
 before Klopstock began his poem, his countryman, 
 Handel, had composed his famous oratorio on the 
 same subject, and with the same name. Klopstock, 
 who loved music with his whole soul, had a peculiar 
 affection for this piece, and regarded it as his own and 
 his country's glory. 
 
 His own work is much liker an oratorio than an 
 epic. It is one great ode, or rather a great collection 
 of great odes. Klopstock is always a lyrical poet, 
 and he is never more lyrical than in the " Messiah." 
 If we look at it in this light we shall like it better. 
 Indeed, much that was repugnant to the idea of an 
 epic we may now find to be powerful and impressive. 
 We can now understand why the fragments were so 
 popular while the whole failed to tell; for the parts 
 must be read as lyrics. From this point of view some 
 
 * Mrs. Collyer (or Mrs. Meeke).
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 319 
 
 of the individual passages are in their way unsur- 
 passed. Thus the description of Adramelech's flight 
 is lofty and sustained. Ever on the watch, he seizes 
 the moment when the Messiah is exhausted and 
 agonized. ITe swoops like a vulture from his lonely 
 rock, and flies through the desolate valley. For an 
 instant he pauses above a suicide who lies weltering 
 in his blood, and whose dying blasphemies re-echo 
 from the surrounding hills. He reaches the prostrate 
 figure of Christ and gloats over his prey : he will 
 overwhelm Him with mockery and scorn. At this 
 moment the Saviour turns and casts on him the look 
 with which He will judge the world. Instantly the 
 fiend_shrinks back ; and sinks in blank amazement. He 
 sees no longer heaven, nor earth, nor Christ. Scarce 
 can he rally for headlong flight. 
 
 Even the debates, if we regard them as splendid 
 pieces of lyrical invective, may obtain their meed of 
 approbation. The best of them is the dispute in the 
 Sanhedrim, when the perturbation of Caiaphas, the 
 caution of Gamaliel, the charity of Nicodemus, and 
 especially the ruthless hatred of Philo, would make a 
 really powerful impression, were their harangues not 
 quite so lengthy. 
 
 Many, too, of the phrases and similes have a true 
 poetic ring. When Satan pours the evil dream into 
 Judas' open ear, does it not suggest old Hamlet's
 
 320 STUDIES IN GEKMAN LITEEATUEE. 
 
 tale how his brother " into the porches of his ear did 
 pour the leperous distilment " ? And the whole epi- 
 sode of this dream is one of Klopstock's triumphs. 
 Satan appears, as Judas' dead father, to excite in him 
 treasonous thoughts. He tells him that his Master 
 neglects and despises him. He shows him the future 
 Messianic Empire in all its splendour. Where the 
 mountains ribbed with gold cast long shadows on the 
 fertile vales, there shall John the beloved disciple be 
 king. Peter shall reign over hills where vineyards 
 are hanging, and boundless fields of waving corn. 
 All round, in a smiling land, cities glitter in the sun, 
 each like Jerusalem, daughter of the king ; a new 
 Jordan flows beneath stately arches, along lofty walls, 
 and gardens gay with fruit reach down to the golden 
 sands these are the kingdoms of the other disciples. 
 But far in the north lies a bleak region, wild and 
 barren, and hideous with withered shrubs ; above 
 are drizzly clouds, below are snow and ice. " That, O 
 Judas ! " cries the fiend, " that is thine inheritance. 
 There, companioned by birds of night, shalt thou 
 wander alone among the aged oaks, while the other 
 disciples smile in happy scorn." 
 
 It is in such passages as these, that afford scope for 
 musical rhetoric, that Klopstock is at his best. It is a 
 pity they are so scarce. They occur once or twice in 
 the " Messiah," in the dramas hardly ever. These last
 
 KLOPSTOCK. 321 
 
 effusions are indeed hopelessly dull. I have already 
 alluded to his northern bardiettes. His sacred dramas 
 are even poorer, and may be dismissed with a sen- 
 tence : they are merely overgrown lyrics. The first 
 and best of them, " Adam's Death," deals with the 
 mystery of death as it is first seen to approach, not 
 at the beck of a murderer, but in the common course 
 of things, and though monotonous, does not fail to 
 impress. These dramas, however, are chiefly famous 
 because of the evil fashion they introduced among the 
 poetasters of Germany. For a few years every man 
 who could versify, Wieland among them, and many 
 who could not, seemed to study the genealogical 
 chapters of Scripture for the purpose of weaving 
 tragedies about the obscurest names. In the same 
 way, the " Messiah " called forth a swarm of epics that 
 were no more epical and far less lyrical than itself. 
 
 Klopstock's prevailing character then is vehement 
 high-strung enthusiasm. And it was well for reviving 
 German literature that its first flight should be so 
 bold and lofty. It soared at once beyond the " arrows, 
 views, and shouts " of the profane Philistines. In his 
 poem of the "Two Muses," Klopstock proclaims at 
 once that no cheap triumph will suffice him. The 
 young untried Muse of Germany disdains contest save 
 with her victorious sister of Britain. They prepare 
 for the race : 
 
 T
 
 322 STUDIES IN GERMAN LITERATURE. 
 
 " The herald sounds ; they sped with eagle flight, 
 Behind them into clouds the dust was tossed : 
 I looked ; but when the oaks were passed, my sight 
 In dimness of the dust was lost." 
 
 Whatever we may think of the contest, we must 
 grant that Klopstock restored German art to life and. 
 liberty. He himself revelled in this strange freedom, 
 and abandoned himself to the guidance of his feelings. 
 Probably this was necessary for the reformation of 
 poetry, but it had its dangers. Klopstock's warmth 
 of emotional raptures was wholly religious, but there 
 were not wanting prophets of woe who foretold its 
 issue in something very different. And they were 
 right. It is proverbial that extremes meet. The 
 excess of pietism swings round into an excess of 
 frivolity. Both are the outcome of feeling and sensi- 
 bility rather than of character, both look more to 
 personal enjoyment than to a practical end. Klop- 
 stock himself was preserved from this transition by 
 his priest-like purity and narrowness. But the logic 
 of history made it necessary, nor is it to be considered 
 merely a relapse. His overcharged religion and stilted 
 diction need their supplement in an elegant style, and 
 a gay graceful wisdom of the world. So in the fulness 
 of days the spirit of Klopstock, who has been called 
 the German Milton, moved and fulfilled itself, and 
 assumed a new form in Wielaud, who has been called 
 the German Voltaire.
 
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