OSMER'S GERMAN LITERATURE THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES GIFT OF FREDERIC THOMAS BLANCHARD FOR THE ENGLISH READING ROOM PRFVATE LIBRARY A SHORT HISTORY or GERMAN LITERATURE BY PROF. JAMES K. \ HOSMER " So viel Einzelnes ist in den Vordergrund gestellt warden, dass der Jclare Ueber- blick iiber das Game fast verloren geht." Rudolph Gottschall. FIFTH EDITION ST. LOUIS, MO. AMERICAN SCHOOL BOOK CO. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by JAMES K. IIOSMER, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at \Vashington, Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1879, by JAMES K. IIOSMER, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. St. Louis: Press of G. I. Jones and Company. PREFACE. If we turn back two hundred years, we find the read- ing men of England, if they have time to go beyond their own authors, giving their attention, among moderns, to the Italians and Spanish. As yet in Europe only Italy and Spain, besides England, had seen the rise of litera- tures of sufficient moment to influence the cultivated world beyond the national limits. Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, MachiavelH had lived, and these are still the greatest Italian names. In Spain, Cervantes, Lope do Vega, and Calderon had done their work, work which no succeeding writers of that land have equalled. If we go back one hundred years, the literature of France has taken the place in the estimation of the Eng- lish once held by the writers of Spain and Italy ; the brilliant men of tlie age of Louis XIV have laid the world under their spell. In our time, again, the influence of France has been, to a large extent, supplanted. Fol- lowing especially the lead of two of the most gifted Englishmen of the century, Coleridge and Caiiyle, the present generation turns with most reverence to the Germans, often regarding their literature as the most important in the world, after our own, if, indeed, we are to make that exception. It will scarcely be ques- tioned that some knowledge of the history of German literature is, to English-speaking persons, an essential part of thorough culture. In the account of the adventures of the god Thor IV PREFACE. among the giants, as told in the Prose Edda, the story is given of his attempt to lift from the earth the cat of Utgard-Loki, the king of the giants. With all his strength the mortified Thor, lifting the cat's back into an arch, can get only one of her feet from the ground. He is consoled, however, when Utgard-Loki tells him in confidence that the cat was no other than the great Mid- gard serpent, which encircles the whole earth. The writer is reminded of the story as he thinks of a certain ingen- uous, but callow, youth who once undertook to possess himself, of a knowledge of German literature, and who, after valiant wrestling, became the victim of chagrin as deep as that which befel the mighty god of the ham- mer. Certainly the great Midgard serpent, encircling the earth, with its tail in its mouth, is scarcely less appro- priate as a symbol of German literature than as a symbol of eternity. Twelve thousand five hundred and sixteen works are said to have been published in Germany in the one }"ear, 1876. Of the writers esteemed of sufficient sig- nificance to be noted in a thorough history of literature, the number is legion ; in one such history the indices alone, containing little else than names, fill fifty-nine large, closely-printed, double-columned pages. Again, 3 T our proper German author has no respect whatever for the e3 - es or the power of attention of his readers ; his conscience assaults him until he gains peace by building his volumes about himself into a towering barricade. Gothe's dramatic pieces alone number more than fifty, and his work in that direction is a trifling part of what he accomplished. Jean Paul wrote between sixty and seventy books, the difficulties of whose style are so great that it has been found necessary to prepare for him a special dictionary. The selected works of Hans Sachs, the Nuremberg mastersinger, amount to more than six thousand, and are fairly corded into the vast folios in PREFACE. V which they are preserved. Again, if we look at the size of some of the individual books, one of the works of Lohenstein, a dramatist and tale-writer of the seven- teenth century, contains alone three thousand quarto pages, its synopsis requiring ninety-six. Histories of German literature in the German language abound. Several have been translated into English ; in- dependent histories have also been attempted by English authors. Of such accounts some are intended for scholars, great works of reference, others for popular reading. As regards histories of the latter kind, the present writer believes it to have been a prevailing defect that perspective hns not been sufficiently considered, and that the attempt has been made to comprehend too much. The German mind has been accused, perhaps with justice, of wanting the instinct of "selection ; " it has a passion for being exhaustive, and " writes a subject to its dregs," dis- criminating too little between the important and the value- less. By contagion the trouble has communicated itself to English writers who have consiiic ;ed German subjects. In the accounts of German literature may be clearly seen the defects described in the sentence from Eudolph Gott- schall, which stands on the title-page of this book as a motto: "So many particulars have been put into the foreground that a clear, comprehensive view of the entire subject is almost utterly lost." Take, for instance, the excellent work of Gostwick and Harrison. It is cor- rect and thorough ; the style is not without a certain pic- turesque quality. Jt is excellent as a book of reference ; but, as a whole, from its minuteness, quite unreadable. The attention utterly breaks down in the effort to retain the names of unimportant books and individuals ; one wanders bewildered in a maze of detail, and obtains no satisfactory general view. In the present sketch of the history of German litera- vi PREFACE. ture, the writer confines himself to one field, " Die schone Literatur," Belles-Lettres, Polite Literature. Even with this limitation the sea is practically boundless, and he hardly dares to claim that he has picked up even the Newtonian pebbles. During many years he has read industriously of the immense mass, and can, at any rate, assert that in the pages that follow few names are men- tioned in whose case an honest attempt has not been made to reach an estimate at first hand by study of the most characteristic works. The authors mentioned are comparatively few in number. Attention is concentrated upon "epoch-making" men and books, the effort being made to consider these with care. What is of subordi- nate importance has not been neglected ; but the attempt has been made in every case to proportion the amount of light thrown to the significance of the figure which was to receive it. While I am indebted to a considerable number of critics and scholars, to whom reference is made in the foot- notes, I must acknowledge especial obligation to the really vast work of Heinricli Kurz, 1 in which a thorough critical history of German literature is combined with a full and judiciously-made anthology. Immense though the domain of German literature is, it may be almost said that Kurz, in his four compact royal octavos of nine hundred pages each, stands forth as its conqueror. To a large extent, at any rate, he is victor ; the pnges ranging before us with such wealth of booty, such hosts of captives in- cluded within the double columns, marshalled front and rear by his own well-ordered history and critique, that one cannot ask a more perfect subjugation. If a reader were compelled to rely solely upon the work of Kurz for his knowledge of the subject (let him first be sure of his 1 Geschichte der Deutschcn Literatur. PREFACE. Vli eyesight), he need not consider his information shallow. For the purpose of this book Kurz has been invaluable ; beginning, as he does, with the first fruits, and ending with the men who are making themselves known at this very hour. His estimates and discussions, sometimes translated word for word, sometimes abridged and modi- fied, have often been used, as the frequent references indicate. The writer's plan has been so far elastic that he has sometimes permitted himself aiuhistorical digression, if in that way he could obtain illustration for some point of the story he has sought to tell. The chapters contain digressions of still another kind. In a tour in German} 7 , in which the pilgrim followed, perhaps, no unusual track, but proceeded with the somewhat unusual purpose of visiting the spots famous through connection with great writers, much was seen possessing interest. In the idea that a grateful relief might be obtained, the accounts of books are interspersed with descriptions of the homes and haunts of the men who wrote them. The translations which the book contains, except when it is otherwise specified, are original. PREFATORY NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Less than a year has passed since the publication of the "Short History of German Literature," but the pub- lishers feel called upon already to issue a new edition. The author desires to thank the public and the critics for the marks of favor shown to his book. The work has been improved in important ways. The text has been carefully revised, and a full analytical index placed at the end. In an appendix, one or two errors are corrected, and the attempt made to defend some positions of the book which have been made the subject of sharp strict- ures. The author feels grateful for assurances he has received that what he has written has stimulated readers to make a closer acquaintance with German literature, and hopes his chapters will have a still farther usefulness. ST. Louis. November 15, 1879. CONTENTS. PAKT I. FIEST PERIOD OF BLOOM. CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNINGS. men First Appearance of the Germans in History; the Strife with Rome; Ulfilas; Karl the Great: as a Warrior, as a Law-giver and Organizer, his Court, his Influ- ence on Literature ; the Work of the Monks ; the Time of the Hohenstauffen 1-22 CHAPTER H. THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. The Burgnndian Court at Worms ; Wooing of Brunhild ; Marriage of Siegfried and Kriemhild; Death of Siegfried; Etzel's Wooing; Riidiger; Kriemhild's Revenge 23-49 CHAPTER m. THE NIBELUNGEN LIED (continued). High Appreciation in which the Poem is held; its Origin and History; the Poem as a Picture of Primitive German Life and Spirit; Critique of the Principal Characters; Comparison with Homer; Spots made interesting through Connection with the Poem CO-SI xii CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. G UDRUN. The German Odyssey; a Picture of the Life of the early Sea Rovers; the Heroes of Friesland; Horant'a Singing; the Abduction of Hilda; the Betrothal of Gudrun; her Captivity; the Heroes at Sea; the Washing at the Beach; the Rescue; the Ani- mal Epic 82-103 CHAPTER V. THE MINNESINGERS. Walther von der Vogelweide; Iladlaub of Zurich; Ulrich von Lichtenstcin; "The Rose-garden at Worms ; " Hartmann von Aue ; Gottfried von Strass- burg; Wolfram von Eschenbach 104-131 CHAPTER VI. THE DEVELOPMENT OP PROSE. The German Kaisers; Political Circumstances of Ger- many from the End of the Thirteenth Century; Strassburg; the Chroniclers; the Preachers; the Satirists; the Drama 132-154 CHAPTER VH. THE MASTEUSINGERS. Heinrich Frauenlob; the Artisans; Literary Life of the Cities; Hans Sachs; "The Tailor and the Flag; " " Saint Peter and the Goat; " "The Wit- tenberg Nightingale ;" Nuremberg 155-171 CHAPTER Yin. LUTHER EN LITERATURE. Outline of Luther's Career; his vast Literary Activ- ity; his Influence upon the German Language CONTENTS. nil FAGB and Literature; the Translation of the Bible; his Polemical Writings; his Preaching, Letters, Hymns ; Places Associated with Luther .... 172-205 CHAPTER LX. THE THIRTY YEARS WAK. From Luther to the End of the Sixteenth Century; Friedrich, King of Bohemia; Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus; the Portraits in the Castle at Coburg; Liitzen; Exhaustion of Germany; Decay of Literature 206-245 PART SECOND PERIOD OF BLOOM. CHAPTER X. LESSING. Gdttschorl and Bodmer; Sketch of Lessing's Life; the Fables; the early Dramas; "Laocoon;" "the Hamburg Dramaturgy ;" Writings: Political, Pol- emical, Theological; "Nathan the Wise;" Les- sing's Resemblance to Luther 246-299 CHAPTER XI. KLOPSTOCK, WIELAND, AND HERDER. Klopstock's Youth; Appearance of the "Messias; " his Patriotism; his wide Influence; Career of Wieland; the Favorite of the Elegant World; "Oberon;" "The Abderites;" Contrast with Klopstock; the Career of Herder; Immense .Range of his Studies; his Influence upon Poetry; his "Ideas upon the Philosophy of History; " Greatness as a Preacher; his Church and Statue at Wciuiar 300-329 CHATTER XIL GOTHK. VAOB Boyhood at Frankfort; Description of his early Home, and Places associated with him; Life at Strass- burg; his extraordinary Impressibility; Brilliancy of his Early Fame; Description of Weimar; his Journeys; his Universality; as Man of Affairs; ' Vitality in Age ; as Man of Science ; the Novels . 830-374 CHAPTER XHI. GOTIIE (continued). Go the as a Poet; his Contrast with Schiller; the Lyrics; the Epics; "Hermann and Dorothea;" the Dramas; "Iphigenia;" "Faust; "Greatness of his G emus ; Estimate of his Character . . . 875-414 CHAPTER XIV. SCHILLER. His Life and Character; Hardships of his Boyhood; his early Fame; Contrast with Gothe; Schiller's Prose; as a Historian; as a Speculative Philoso- pher; his Lyrics; "The Song of the Bell;" The Ballads ; the Dramas ; the Constant Growth of his Genius; " The Robbers ;" " Wallenstein ; " "Wil- liam Tell ;" Nobleness of Schiller 415-473 CHAPTER XV. THE ROMANTIC SCHOOL. Influence of Speculative Philosophy upon Literature; Kant; Fichte; Schelliug; the Brothers Schlegel; Jean Paul; Tieck; Novalis; Fouqu6; Theodore Korner and Arndt; Rlickert; the Decay of Roman- ticism; Uhland 474-504 CONTENTS. XV CHAPTER XVI. IlEIXRICn IlEIXB. FAQB The Jews In Germany; Heine's Youth; his Apostacy; Journeys; Life in Paris; The "Mattress-Grave;" his Descriptive Power; his Wit; his Pathos . . 605-545 CHAPTER XVH. THE MODERN ERA. Influences at Present affecting Literature; the Broth- ers Grimm; Great Names of the Present Time; Anticipations; Means for Culture; Probable Effect upon Literature of present Unity and Political Greatness of Germany .... 16-568 CHAPTER XVHL GERMAN STYLE. Carlyle's Defence of Obscurity; Herbert Spencer's Dictum; Periodicity of German Style; Severity of German Critics; De Quincey's Judgment; Freili- grath's " Germany is Hamlet; " Comparative Esti- mate of German Literature 569-591 APPENDIX. INDEX PAET I -THE FIKST PEEIOD OF BLOOM. CHAPTER I. THE BEGINNINGS. The German tongue belongs to the great Aryan family of languages. At a time very remote, the parent speech from which it was derived from which too were derived in the East the Sanscrit and the Persian, and in the West the Greek, the Latin, the Celtic, and the Sclavonic was spoken some- where upon the highlands in Central Asia, or per- haps upon a continent, now submerged, lying to the south of Asia, of which the great island- world of Oceanica is a remainder. 1 From indications con- tained in the descendant languages we may know that the primeval tribe was not utterly rude. Per- haps it was due to a certain degree of civilization they reached that they gained the upper-hand in the early world. At any rate, they multiplied, swarmed forth from their homes, sent emigrants to people India, and westward to take possession of Europe. The Hellenic race, developed from these, plays its part in Greece ; as its force expires, the Italic race, in the neighboring peninsula, establishes the glory of Rome. This in turn culminates and decays. Then step upon the scene the Teutons, whose empire was to last far longer, perhaps to be far mightier 1 Ernst Haeckel : Schopfungsgeschichte. 2 GERMAN LITERATURE. and more brilliant, than its predecessors ; to what extent grander we cannot say, for the end is not yet. The name German, full of picturesque suggestion 'as it is, " Shouters in battle," occurs first in Herod- otus, in the fifth century before Christ. They were fully established in Europe when history begins ; yet we cannot assign their immigration to a very ancient date, for at our first knowledge of them the remem- brance of their former home remains vivid in the people, expressed in legends, institutions, and social customs. tin the time of Alexander the Great, Pyth- eas of Massilia, a wandering merchant of that colony of Greece, having reached the Baltic shore, gives some account of the Teutons and Guthons ; he was, however, not believed by the writers of his time. It is probable that the Germanic wave, sweeping into Europe from the East, had poured across Russia and thence into Scandinavia, and was now beginning to work southward. Again there is a period of silence until the second century before Christ, when Papir- ius Carbo, a Roman consul appointed to fight with the Celts in Noricum, comes unexpectedly upon an enemy far more powerful, a vast migrating people, whose men are of huge strength and fierce courage, whose women are scarcely less formidable, whose children are white-haired, like people grown aged, and are bold-eyed and vigorous. Upon their great white shields they slide down the slopes of the Alps to do battle ; they have armor-of brass and helmets fashioned into a resemblance of the heads Of beasts of prey. The women fight by the side of their hus- bands ; then, as priestesses, slay the prisoners, letting THE 'BEGINNINGS. 8 the blood run into brazen caldrons that it may afford an omen. Even the Romans are terrified, veterans though they are from the just-ended struggle with Hannibal. Papirius Carbo goes down before them, and Rome expects to see in her streets the blond Northman, as she has just before looked for the dark- skinned Numidian. Caius Marius meets them, 100 B. C., in Southern Gaul, and again in Northern Italy, the front rank of their host that they may stand firm bound together, man by man, with a chain, and the fierce women waiting in the rear with up- lifted axes to slay all cowards. But Marius comes off conqueror from the corpse-heaped battle-fields, and Rome has a respite. Within half a century the} r grapple with the legionaries again, who this time have in their van the sternest heart and strongest head of his great race, Julius Coesar ; and henceforth, for five centuries, there is scarcely an intermission in the wrestle. Drusus, Germanicus, Varus, Claudius, Julian, Yalens these are Roman names that sound as we go down the ages, made memorable by strug- gle sometimes successful, sometimes disastrous with the shouters in battle ; Ariovistus, Arminius, Maroboduus, Alaric, Chnodomar, Theodoric these are the confronting Goths. Dealing blows almost as heavy as he receives, at length the Roman is beaten to his knees, the strength of the vanquished, as in the struggles of fable, passing into the body of the victor. As he drops the sceptre it is seized by the Goth, who becomes imbued moreover with his civilization and his faith ; strengthened and enno- bled by the gain, he shapes the modern world. 4 GERMAN LITERATURE. Tacitus, writing in the first century after Christ, with the desire to bring back his degenerating coun- trymen to nobler standards, portrays for their ad- miration the Germans, as a purer people. His rep- resentation is held to be in all its main traits an accurate one, and is the first extended account. Tacitus speaks of songs sung in honor of the god Tuisco and his son Mannus, of battle-hymns and lays intended for the expression of joy. There was among the Germans no special class of singers like the bards of the Celts, or the scalds of the Scandi- navians ; minstrelsy was a universal gift among the people. They were not utter barbarians ; with sev- eral other arts, they understood the use of runes, a modification of picture-writing. The songs of which the Roman writer speaks have perished, but, as will be seen, not without leaving some trace of them- selves in the poetry of the race. Christianity, upon its introduction, destroyed their religion, in a measure, their nationality. The songs were the clamps which, more strongly than anything else, fastened to them their old heathenism. The mis- sionaries who converted them did what they could to bring these lays into oblivion, encountering them all the more bitterly perhaps because they themselves were to a largo extent of a different, often hostile, stock, Celts, from the island of Britain. At Upsala, in Sweden, is preserved a venerable relic, the chief treasure of the library of the univer- sity. It is a book of purple vellum, whose pages, blackened and mildewed though they are, are still sumptuous, and retain, plainly legible, the charac- THE BEGINNINGS. 5 ters written upon them in silver. The binding of the manuscript is also of silver, but that is of a later date, the work of a Swedish noble who wished to enclose in a fitting manner one of the most pre- cious relics of the world. It is the Codex Argenteus, the silver manuscript, the translation made by the Mceso-Goth, Ulfilas, of the Bible, at the end of the fourth century, the earliest memorial in any Teutonic speech. The Codex Argenteus is believed to be very nearly contemporary with Ulfilas, if not from his own hand. This venerable personage, the first name in Teutonic story which becomes famous for other deeds than those which belong to fierce warfare, was a Goth only by adoption, for he was descended from .a Christian family of Asia Minor, which had been taken captive. He was thoroughly identified, however, with the race of his captors, becoming their bishop at length, and foremost man. He was a zealous follower of Arius, preaching to his people in Greek, Latin, and Gothic. An interesting hint has been preserved that Ulfilas was thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of the faith he professed, m the circumstance that he omitted in his transla- tion the Book of Kings, lest the minds of his flock might be stimulated by its warlike pictures. The translation is not a mere slavish rendering, but a work of intellect, the dialect of the woods asserting itself vigorously according to its genius, not strait- ened to conform to the idioms of more polished tongues. When Ulfilas died, at the age of seventy, the Goths carried his Bible with them to Italy, and thence to Spain. The language in which it is writ- 6 GERMAN LITERATURE. ten was spoken as late as the ninth century, when it disappeared as a living tongue, and with it its sole memorial. Greek church historians mention the translation, and so the world knew that such a work had been performed. At length, after centuries, its tattered fragments were disinterred from the rubbish of an old cloister, and, later, carried to Sweden as a prize of the Thirty Years' War. The Bible translation of Ulfilas is the foundation-stone of German litera- ture. With reverent hands the peace-loving teacher placed it, going then to his grave, in the year 388 ; it lay for ages before the work of construction was continued. The centuries 'go. At length we encounter a mighty figure which, whatever be the department of early research engaging attention, demands atten- tive consideration. I stood once on the bridge which connects the city of Frankfort-on-the-Main with its suburb of Sachsenhausen. Below me rushed through the arches the broad river, the rocks of the shallows showing through the pale green .stream. Frank-fart, ford of the Franks. Here it was that, in the dawn of the modern period, i restless race, striving for mastery, poured back and forth through the river barrier. I looked over the parapet, upon the venerable ledges that once felt the Frankish foot-print. The traveller to-day gets over dry-shod, but the builders of the bridge have appropriately set above the central arch a figure that recalls the older memories. A flowing robe wraps the shoulders of the statue ; his mighty face THE BEGINNINGS. 7 is surmounted by an imperial crown ; his hands bear the insignia of rule. So stands in powerful present- ment Karl the Great, Charlemagne, upon a spot which once knew him. The world has produced many an ambitious ruler during the thousand years since his time ; but no one has striven after anything higher than to be set by the side of Karl the Great. 1 Never, perhaps, has a more extraordinary result gone forth from the striving of a mortal. He was brought up as a soldier, and never was soldier greater. In youth he descended into Italy to subdue the Lombards. In Spain, to the west, the Saracens were submitted; the Sclaves and Avars to the east. To the north lived a race never tamed, descendants of the old Cherusci, who, with Hermann, conquered Yarus, taking their name appropriately from the sahs, the short sword they wielded. At length came the great tamer of men to the Saxons, hitherto indomitable. The clash and tramp of the fierce campaigns that followed is still audible in the pages of old chron- iclers. Not until the entire youth of the land was exterminated, and multitudes were exiled, did they submit. The Frankfurt suburb, Sachsenhausen, houses of the Saxons, recalls the fact that there a colony of these tough strivers was established in en- forced exile. They have some interest to us ; out from their number had gone, some centuries before, Hcngist and Horsa ; in England their stormy-spirited cousins in the Heptarchy at this same time resist- 1 Giesebrecht : Gesehichte der deutschen Kaiserzeit 8 GERMAN LITERATURE. ing Danish encroachment, judging culprits by jury- trial, and meeting for law-giving in the witenage- mote were at work on the ground-sills of English and American freedom and order. But Karl the Great was not a soldier through blood-thirstiness or love of tumult. In those wild days the only path to order led across the battle- field, and toward a nobler order the great Frank was always advancing. At Christmas, in the year 800, in Rome, Karl the Great entered the Church of Saint Peter in the robe of a patrician, the dignity he had received from his father. A golden crown was set upon his head ; the multitude raised the cry, " Salutation and blessing to the great peace-seeking emperor, Carolus Augustus." Pope Leo III. did reverence at his feet. His empire was vast, all France and Germany, most of Italy, a large part of Spain. It was w r on by the sword, but ordered by a power far nobler. His ideal was no other than to establish the kingdom of God upon earth, in which the emperor was to be installed as God's vicar, in order that he might rule all people according to the divine will. He sent out messengers on an apostolic mission to admonish the people to lay virtue to their hearts and remember the judgment-seat of Christ. His glory as a law-giver was greater than that as a soldier. His " capitularies" the collection of his edicts and ordinances were the universal code of the empire, a body of wise provisions, the source of inestimable political benefits to all Teuton races, even as the civil life of Koine rested upon the "Twelve Tables." Every important problem with THE BEGINNINGS. 9 which politics in succeeding centuries has occupied itself was entertained by him, even that of free schools for the people. 1 The results of the striving of Karl the Great were sometimes harmful. He went from his own land into Italy, seeking to renew the life of the Roman empire, which had died awav. Thus he turned outward the strength of Germany, which was sorely needed at home, the source of great misfortune afterward, whose bad effects are still to be felt. He established firmly the temporal power of the popes, whence came the unhappy strifes in which the emperors of succeeding times lost their dignity, and their people their lives. Great and wise as he was, he had no superhuman immunity from mistakes. He was admirable in small things as well as great. He was the best farmer in his empire, saw to every- thing personally, even had the reckoning laid before him of every wolf slain on his estates. He gave security to trade, opening roads along the Rhine connecting the Mediterranean with the North Sea : so from the mouth of the Elbe to the middle of the Danube, with branches to the Black Sea and the Adriatic. With homely friendliness, he cher- ished the middle and lower classes, seeing that the welfare of the land lay in their prosperity. Princes far and near confessed his greatness. Haroun-al- Raschid, the greatest of the caliphs, sent him an ele- phant and merry apes ; the king of the Moors, a lion and Xumidian bears ; the emperor of Byzantium, an 1 Giesebrecht. 10 GERMAN LITERATURE. organ, the first in the land of the Franks. The rich music of fhe miracle aroused astonishment, as it imitated now the rolling of thunder, now the sweet tone of lyre and cymbal. The hospitality of Karl the Great was profuse. So many strangers came to his court, it became at length a serious burden. It was a many-colored company. Near the monk from Italy, who could make Latin verses in the emperor's praise, stood, in the ante-room, the Sara- cen chief from Spain, with robe and turban covered with jewels. There were conquered Saxon chiefs in long linen robes, Lombard counts in short purple mantles set off with peacock feathers, Avars with long plaited hair, gorgeous ambassadors from Byzantium, brown Arabs, and slender Persians. These were the guests, and among them many a wild warrior stretched his giant limbs, spending the interval between battle and battle in boasting of his achievements. " How were you pleased with Bohemia? " 1 it was asked of one. " The people are little worms," was the reply. "Seven or eight I spitted, like larks, and carried them hither and thither on my lance. I do not know what they grumbled meanwhile. It was not worth while for the emperor and me to put on our helmets on their account." It is hard to touch upon a character so command- ing as Karl the Great without being led to inappro- priate lengths by the fascination he exerts. We have now no concern with the magnificent figure O O Gustav Freytag: Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit. THE BEGINNINGS. 11 except as he affected literature. He scarcely learned to read until he became a king, but he was a learner until his death. That he wrote himself, we can hardly say ; but he stimulated marvellously the intel- lectual life of others. Out of the old German songs which his race taught by the monks was begin- ning to despise, came to the emperor the breath of a noble life. He comprehended them as no one before him had done, and caused a collection to be made of the lays of the ancient heroes. To him is due also the first German grammar. He encouraged the clergy, because he saw in them the bearers of all higher intellectual culture ; they in turn worked for him with enthusiasm, preaching in German instead of Latin, and translating books. He called to his as- sistance the first scholars of Italy and England : not- / o ably, Peter of Pisa, Paulus Diaconus, Alcuin, and Eginhard. He allowed no original impulse of the Teutonic nature to fail, but disciplined each one, en- nobled it, and so made it capable of maturing more beautiful blossoms and more useful fruit than before. 1 He set within the earthy Teuton a Promethean spark, kindling within him the possibilities of a fine spirit- ual and intellectual life, afire that has not been quenched through the ages. No other man in all succeeding time has so influenced German develop- ment. No human being has ever made a deeper impress upon the world. The plain citizen revered him as the fatherly friend of the people and the just judge ; chivalry held him to be the first of knights ; 1 Giesebrecht. 12 GERMAN LITERATURE. the Church has made him a saint ; he is as famous in poetry as in history. Impressive pictures have came down to us respect- ing his person and bearing. In height he was seven times the length of his own foot, and nobly propor- tioned. His body never hindered his spirit. He fought with wild bulls in the forest of Ardennes, such was his force, and for more than thirty years he had no sickness. His brow was open, his eyes large and quick, his hair thick and fine, and, in age, of venerable whiteness ; his countenance cheerful . His usual garb was a linen robe, woven at home by the women of his family, and over it the flowing Frisian mantle. He avoided pomp, although about him were vassals appointed to be models of splendid knightly discipline. These paladins surrounded him, it is said, as the stars the sun ; he darkened them all. There is no character concerning whom the tradi- tions are more picturesque. In the Germanic Mu- seum at Nuremberg I remember a great painting by Kaulbach, illustrating what is perhaps the most strik- ing story of all. When Karl the Great died, at Aachen, in 814, a sepulchre was constructed in which he was placed, sitting upon a throne not in his sim- ple Frisian mantle, but in the royal pomp which in life he had sometimes upon occasion assumed in im- perial robes, with a crown upon his head and a book of the Gospels, bound in gold, upon his knees. A century and a-half later the young emperor, Otto III, after a drinking-bout, broke into the tomb with a party of boon companions. There sat upon the throne the majestic figure, unwasted, save that the THE BEGINNINGS. 18 beard, grown long, swept his breast. It was as if decay had not dared to approach him ; he was too great to crumble into dust ; the tomb-breakers re- coiled abashed. It is a fine subject for Kaulbach, who renders it with great power, the gloom of the sepulchre, the recoiling revellers, and before them the towering form of the buried emperor, with*his sweeping beard, and the golden book of the Gospels resting upon his knees. At Vienna the visitor goes to see the treasure- chamber of the House of Hapsburg. It is an Alad- din's cave, where, from the heaped-up abundance of gold and precious stones, the heads of people are well-nigh turned, and the guards stationed every- where are obliged to watch, not only those who might rob, but those who might become insane. There one may see extraordinary relics by the hundred. The metal circlet yonder, Wallcnstein held when he dealt with incantations in his gloomy seclusion. This cra- dle the great Napoleon rocked, his heart full of the tenderest yearning that ever filled it, for it held for him his only child, the baby king of Rome. There hangs the great Florentine diamond, the fourth in the world, which was worn in battle as a talisman by Charles the Bold of Burgundy, and found upon his body after the battle of Nancy, in 1477 ; and there, more interesting than these, is the great im- perial crown of German}', coming down from an un- known antiquity, passed from brow to brow down the long line of kaisers, with its huge uncut jewels and heavy masses of gold, rudely wrought by some primeval artificer. But more interesting than all, 14 GERMAN LITERATURE. to me, was a relic side by side with this, the golden book of the Gospels which rested so long upon the knees of Charlemagne in the tomb at Aachen ! The great empire of Karl the Great fell, at his death, into confusion, and at first all that had been gained seemed to be lost. Not until one hundred years later do we see signs that once more a spirit of order is beginning to move on the face of the chaos. At the beginning of the tenth century appears Henry the Fowler, a Saxon, and for the next hundred years the rulers of the empire come from the tough race which Karl the Great had found it such a task to subdue. There are great names in the time during which the Saxon dynasty is powerful ; so too among the Franconian princes who succeed them. As re- gards the present subject, however, those ages are nearly dumb ; the history of their literature is almost a blank. When Karl the Great had gone, the monks destroyed the collection he had made of the poetry of the nation. In the cloister of Reichenau, in the }-ear 821, we know that twelve heroic poems were preserved which were part of it, and scholars are not entirely without hope of some day finding them ; but it has not yet come to pass. The sole fragment of heroic song extant from this period is the Hildebrand's Lied, Lay of Hildebrand, con- cerning which the interesting and probable conject- ure has been made that its preservation is due to the leisure probablv the cmmi of two old monks who had once been soldiers. Hundreds of the roujjh ^l> fighters of those days, when the strength of youth had departed, sought the asylum of the monasteries, THE BEGINNINGS. 15 the head that had worn the helmet submitting to the tonsure. The songs of their warrior life would re- main in their memories, and in the tedium of the cloister what more natural than that they should sometimes be sung under the breath, full of hea- thenism though they were ! Once, at such a time, while one veteran sang or dictated another wrote down on blank leaves at the beginning and end of a service-book the profane, half-Pagan lines of the Hildebrand's Lied. It was its fate to be handed down, and the parchment is kept at Cassel as one of the principal manuscript treasures of Germany. 1 To the songs of the heroes succeeds a literature of the Church. Of such culture as existed the monas- teries were the seats, noteworthy among which were Fulda, in Hesse, and Saint Gallen, in Switzerland. From these came many translations and paraphrases which have no interest except of a linguistic kind. A work of a different order is the Holland, meaning the Saviour, a poem of the tenth century, from the lately converted Saxons, which has interesting traits, representing Christ in the character of a great prince of the German people. The Ludwig's Lied cele- brates a victory of Louis the Pious, son of Karl the Great, over the Normans. Now too, at Weissem- bourg, in Alsace, the monk Otfried writes his gospel harmony, a paraphrase of the evangelists, of some interest as being the first example of German rhyme. With these few pages the beginnings of our sub- ject are sufficiently considered. To the twelfth 1 Vilroar: Geschichte der deutschen Literatur. 1 GERMAN LITERATURE. century the story of German literature is a meagre one; and who will wonder? The wild Teutons, wandering through unknown ages, in unknown places, encounter at length the outposts of Rome. With eyes unopened to civilization, they strike at the new foe, who at length goes down before their barbarian fury. Little by little Goth and Vandal penetrate to the centre of Roman power ; gradually to their savage souls comes a sense of the grace and majesty they are overwhelming, and at length they stand before the ruins the}'' have made, awe-struck. 1 For a next step they reverently appropriate the culture and faith of the empire they have vanquished. Upon the brow of the warrior the brazen helmet takes the place of the head of the wolf or the bear slain in the chase ; life is no longer regulated by the rude forest legislation, but by the Pandects ; in place of the victims offered to Tuisco and Mannus comes the symbolic sacrifice of the mass. But as the Teutons pressed upon Rome, they in turn are pressed upon. To the eastward the Avars must be beaten back ; to the westward the fanatic Saracens, sweeping through Spain toward the heart of Europe. Soon comes war to the death with the encroaching; O Sclave ; and scarcely is he restrained when the Hun is upon the people with sword and scourge. The storv of those times is one of mi;htv striving for life v ~ / ~ and place. The rudely wrought gold and uncut jewels of that old imperial crown at Vienna rest upon the head of many a powerful leader. The 1 Bryce : The Holy Roman Empire. THE BEGINNINGS. 17 pages of the chroniclers are dark now with tales of treachery, now bright with heroism ; now lamenta- tion over a province devastated, now rejoicing over success. The Teuton wins the mastery ; rapine and death are no longer constantly near at hand ; tumult and anxiety subside ; there is space at length for the graces and refinements of life. It has been said that German poetry has had two periods of bloom : the later, from the middle of the eighteenth century through the first quarter of the nineteenth ; the earlier, from the end of the first quarter of the twelfth century to the middle of the thirteenth. 1 To this earlier period we have now come. We leave behind the Old High German, which has been the vehicle of the earliest literature ; the Middle High German has supplanted it. In place of the few memorials nearly valueless except for historical and linguistic purposes, we come upon a literature abundant in quality, and in every way interesting in its character. From the year 1137 to 1254 the emperors of Germany were from the great family of Hohenstaufien, rulers superbly gifted, under whom the land attained such grandeur as it has never since possessed. First of the line stands the mighty Barbarossa, Red-Beard. Unmatched was his power in Germany, Italy, the Holy Land. Great in council he was, great in strife. Before the door of his tent was hung, high upon a lance, his shield, as a sign that he was ready, upon summons, 1 D. F. Strauss. 18 GERMAN LITERATURE. to redress all wrongs. 1 His life went out in Syria, and presently, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, a figure not less fine inherits the sceptre, his grandson, Friedrich II. With the politics of the period we have no concern. In the world of letters a brilliancy may be discerned commensurate with the power and prestige which the nation had reached. As the Germans emerge from the night of of barbarism, for a time, as we have seen, the monks alone are the writers, at work with scriptural com- ment, with homily, now and then with a chronicle. With the Hohenstauifen, however, the courts of princes become the centres of culture ; from South- ern France the lyres of the troubadours strike the key-note of chivalric song, and in Germany springs up the race of Minnesingers. Let us call up a picture of the mediaeval life in order to understand the conditions under which the poetry that has come down to us from this time took its rise. The forest is disappearing, but the edge of the horizon is yet wooded, and many parts of the plain are still heavily shadowed. In low places, between cultivated ground, are frequent ponds and marshes. The number of villages and farms is probably not less than at the present time, although they are not so populous. Between the crop and the wood, upon some mountain spur or the edge of the wilderness, rises the chapel of a saint. In the villages everywhere are towers, whence on feast-days, bells ring from one plain to another 1 Von Kaumer : Geschichte der Hohenstauifen. TH& bEGINNIN&S. 1^ through the whole land, to whose light peal the mighty humming of a greater bell from some town in the distance gives the foundation-tone. In the river valleys, in the midst of houses and surrounded by strong walls, rise the towers of cathedrals. On the other side, opposite the town, stands, on the hill-summit, a walled tower, with narrow windows, the possession of the lord of the region, and the home of some trooper-vassal, who keeps house up there, not to the joy of the peasant. Cities have just sprung up, as it were, overnight ; in the case of many it cannot be said when they began, nor did their builders know how immeasurable was to be the benefit to their descendants. 1 In the winter, the sun setting early, the knight and his retainers are driven to shelter from the foray or hunting, which occupy the short day ; the feast is disposed of, then come many hours of unbroken darkness before the day begins again. Consider how dull the winter evenings must have been in a German mediaeval castle ! What substitutes had they for such intellectual excitements as are now supplied by our newspapers, our prolific literature of fiction, our theatres, and highly-developed music? Often the snow chokes the narrow horse-paths through the forest, so that the day as well as the o +> night must pass in inaction. How spend the weary hours but by hearing the minstrel ! He has been trained to arms, but he devotes himself in the prime of life to the study of versification, wandering on 1 Freytag: Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit. 20 GERMAN LITERATURE. from court to court, and there, in the presence of ladies, singing his songs to tunes of his own com- posing. His fru'e is studious and melancholy ; he accompanies himself with a lute. The logs are heaped high in the fire-place ; the torches flare and smoke about the walls. In the wavering glare the cups of ale and trenchers loaded with flesh stand on the table. The knight and his followers their armor thrown aside, but their leathern garments showing the stain and imprint from the steel that so often covers them alternately revel and listen. Somewhat apart, on a dais perhaps, or in some overlooking balcony, sits the castle's mistress, with her ladies. The labor of the castle household goes forward. The yeoman strings his bow afresh, or replenishes his quivers ; skins are sewed into gar- ments ; jesses are made for the falcons and leashes for the dogs ; the ladies are busy with the embroid- ery of scarfs ; the serving-women go. in and out. Meanwhile the minstrel strikes vigorously his rude instrument, singing song after song, or reciting by the hour his rhythmical story. His voice rings often through a tumult ; he closes his song, to re- sume it the next day if the storm prevents the chase, or when evening again comes round. What the knight had in the castle the peasant and burgher in the plain below would imitate in a humbler way. At the other end of the scale, in the courts of princes, there was a scene far more bril- liant, halls with magnificent hangings; guests in garments bought of merchants fresh from Venice, laden with splendid fabrics from the East ; the gleam TEE BEGINNINGS. 21 of gold, the flash of jewels. When it happened that the castle lord, or the master of the hut, or the king in the palace, was a man of ready mind and lively fancy, we can understand how he too should have sometimes remembered strains, to repeat them, or indeed himself have invented lays. So did many a plain farmer ; so did TValther von der Vogelweide and Hartmann von Aue ; in a higher rank so did Duke Heinrich of Breslau, the Kaiser Friedrich II., and the princes, his sons, and, in another land, Kichard Cceur de Lion. Of the poetry of the Hohenstauffen period a broad division into two classes may be made : first, what was current among the people ; second, what was liked in the courts and castles. To the popular poetry belong certain great epics, founded upon na- tional traditions which for centuries, the monks had tried to crush out, with partial success, and yet which, tough as the bears in the woods from which they came, in many instances lived on tenaciously in the mouths of the folk. In the courts and castles, however, when the crusades had begun to bring the Germans into contact with the outside world, the chivalry of France sweeping along the highways and down the streams, and the Italian cities, with their finer life, becoming known, there was an aping of foreign models ; the old national material seemed far too rough, and the minstrels translated or rewrought the stories of troubadour and trouvere. The line of division between the two classes is not precise. Although it was utterly un- fashionable, a national subject sometimes received a 22 GERMAN LITERATURE. hearing in a castle hall ; a story of the troubadours sometimes reached a peasant's hearth. There are poets coining from both directions who approach sometimes stand on the dividing line. 1 Speaking generally, however, the broad division may be made into Court and Popular Poetry ; the former is char- acterized by a preference for foreign subjects and a finer structure ; the latter by a preference for Teutonic traditions, and by a rougher form. The Popular Poetry will be first considered. August Koberstein : Geschichte der deutschen National Literatur. CHAPTER II. THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. Of the bequests made to us of the Popular Poetry of the time of the Hohenstauffen, by far the most important, in fact the most important literary me- morial of any kind, is the epic of between nine and ten thousand lines known as the Nibelungen Lied. The manuscripts which have preserved for us the poem come from about the year 1200. For full a thousand years before that, however, many of the lays from which it was composed had been in exist- ence ; some indeed proceed from a still remoter antiquity, sung by primitive minstrels when the Germans were at their wildest, untouched by Chris- tianity or civilization. These lays had been handed down orally, until at length a poet of genius elabo- rated them and intrusted them to parchment. What may have been that poet's name cannot be said with certainty. Although no doubt a man of courtly culture, he took the songs current on the lips of the people, racy with their life, adapting them with skill, while retaining all their spirit. The work of the unknown genius who wrote the Nibelungen Lied has come, in our time, to be prized immeasurably. It is set side by side with Homer ; it is reverently studied by minds of the highest power ; it has be- 24 GERMAN LITERATURE. come a text-book in the schools, as containing fig- ures worthy to become the ideals of youth. Who are the Nibelungen, concerning whom the lay is written ? It is a race of supernatural attri- butes who are possessed of a certain wonderful treasure or hoard. Siegfried, the hero of the poem, has wrested from them this treasure, and thereby obtained immeasurable wealth. He has also found a mantle which has power to make its wearer invisi- ble, and a sword, " Balmung," a blade of the trust- iest. "Vain were it to enquire where that Nibe- lungen land especially is ; its very name is Nebel- land, mist-land. The Nibelungen, that muster in thousands and tens of thousands, though they march to the Rhine or Danube, and we see their strong limbs and shining armor, we could almost fancy to be children of the air." l We cannot tell where their land is. Siegfried has subdued them and taken their treasure ; henceforth he and his followers are called Nibclungen. In fact, to whomsoever, for the time being, the treasure has been transferred, the name Nibelungen is assigned. After Siegfried's death, when, as Ave shall see, the hoard falls to his slayers, they in turn are spoken of as the Nibelungen, the name passing with the pos- session. Before the opening of the poem, Siegfried, the hero, has made himself famous. He has not only conquered the mysterious Nibelungen, but slain in fight a remarkable dragon ; bathing in his blood, he has made himself invulnerable. 1 Carlyle : The Nibelungen Lied. THE NIBELUNQEN LIED. 25 I will give now, without further preface, the story of the Nibelungen Lied, reserving for another chapter a more particular account of its origin and preservation, and a development of its beauties and lessons. In arranging the story for a brief pre- sentment, I have made much use of the account of the enthusiastic literary historian, Vilmar, the most picturesque and beautiful which I have met, and preserving well, too, the spirit of the orig- inal. The poem has simple and child-like traits j it has, too, aspects of horror; aspects, too, of the highest nobleness. We also are Teutons. Think, as you read, that you are looking into the fore- time of our own race, beholding the lineaments of our fathers long ago. In the land of the Burgundians, in the old royal castle at Worms on the Rhine, Kriemhild, the noble daughter of a king, after her father's early death, grew into blooming maidenhood. Dreams full of presage for the future hovered about her in her sleep, in the quiet retirement in which she passed her youth. She dreamed she was cherishing a falcon, when two eagles swooped down and killed it before her eyes. Full of sorrow, she awoke and told her dream to Ute, her mother. " The falcon," said the mother, " is a noble spouse for whom thou art des- tined ; may God preserve him from being early lost." '-Unless I love a hero," said Kriemhild, " I will remain a maid until death." Cheerful in his joyous and manly youth, Siegfried, meanwhile, in the Netherlands, son of an old king 26 GERMAN LITERATURE. and queen, already had grown from a boy into a hero, and wandered through many lands. He heard at length about the beautiful maid at Worms, far up the Rhine. In order to woo her he left home, with his followers. Before the king's palace at Worms the strangers came riding, their horses and trap- pings finer than were ever before seen. Hagen of Tronei, retainer of the king, is sent for who knows all foreign lands to tell who they are. "They must be princes or princes' messengers," he says. " Wherever they come from, they are noble-spirited heroes. It can be only Siegfried who rides there so proudly, he who conquered the race of the Nibe- lungen, and took from them the uncounted treasure of jewels and red gold ; who won in battle the man- tle that makes one invisible ; the same Siegfried who also slew the dragon and bathed himself in his blood, so that his skin became as invulnerable as horn. Such heroes we should receive as friends." Gun- ther, the king, and his brethren, Gernot and Giese- ler, brethren, too, of Kriemhild, receive him hospitably. Joyous tournaments take place. Kriem- hild catches stolen glances from her window, and forgets her work and play. Siegfried remains a year at Worms before he sees the maid he has come to woo. Meantime he marches forth, as a warlike comrade of the heroes of Burgundy, to strife. Messengers hurry back from the army to the Rhine to announce victory. " Now give me good news," says Kriemhild. " I will give you all my gold." " No one," says the herald, " has ridden more nobly into battle than the guest from the Netherlands. . THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 27 The captives you will see, his heroic might subdued and sent hither." The king's daughter bade give the messenger ten marks of gold, and rich clothing. Then she stood silent at the narrow window, watch- ing the road on which the victors were to return to the Rhine, until she saw the rejoicing knights and the happy tumult at the castle gates. At length a great tournament is held, on the joyful Easter festival ; from far and near approach the highest and the best. Then, at last, standing at her mother's side, sur- rounded by a hundred chamberlains, who carry swords, and a hundred glittering ladies of noble rank, Kriemhild appears in public, and she goes forth like the dawn from troubled clouds, in the gentle brightness of youth and beauty. " How can I help loving her," says Siegfried. " It is a foolish illusion, but I would rather die than abandon thee." The hero bends courteously before her ; the might of love draws them towards each other, but as yet no word is exchanged. At length, after the mass with which the festival begins, the maid thanks the hero for the brave help rendered to her brothers. " That was done in your service, Kriemhild," is his reply ; but when the sports are done, he prepares to return to his home, heavy-hearted, for he despairs of success. There was a queen, Brunhild, beyond the sea, of wonderful beauty, but also of wonderful strength. In contest with men who desired her love she leaped, and threw the lance ; whoever was defeated was be- headed ; only to a victor would she surrender her- self. Already had many a brave man sought her, 2f GERMAN LITERATURE. only never more to return. Then Gunther, king of the Burgundians, resolved to risk his life for her love, and summoned Siegfried to help him. Sieg- fried consents, if Gunther will give him for his wife his sister, Kriemhild. This, Gunther vows to do, :md the ship is prepared for departure, furnished forth with gold-colored shields and rich garments. After a sail of twelve days they reach the Isenstein, where Brunhild rules. Now begin the contests ; but Gunther, unable to maintain himself against the demon power of the maid, is helped by Siegfried, who puts on his obscuring mantle, to fight invisibly. He stands at Gunther' s side, and bids him only make the motions of a fighter. Now Brunhild throws the spear, and the sparks fly, as from flames blown by the wind, from the shield of her oppo- nent, upon which it strikes. Siegfried trembles, but soon stands firm again, and throws Gunther' s spear at the maid with yet wilder strength. She catches it upon her shield, but falls ; then, angry at her defeat, she runs to the stone which has been brought into the ring by twelve heroes. She, how- ever, raises it alone, and with her powerful arm slings it far away, then leaps after it, so that her armor rings aloud. But Siegfried, tall and quick, hurls the stone far beyond the mark of the maid ; then catching the king under his arm, he leaps far- ther than the leap of Brunhild. The queen imme- diately turns to her retinue: "Maids and men, approach ; you are all to be subject to King Gunther." The end is reached. As Brunhild is betrothed with Gunther, so is Kriemhild with Sieg- THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 29 fried. In sight of the kings, Kriemhild receives the kiss which plights their faith. But tears fell down the cheeks of the proud, beautiful Brunhild. As- tonished and anxious, because his conscience accuses him, Gunthcr asks for the cause of the tears, and Brunhild answers : " For Kriemhild, thy sister, I weep, because she is to be debased by marriage to a vassal." Brunhild, although vanquished, again shows her unmanageable warrior spirit. On the evening of the wedding-day she wrestles again with Gunther, who, no longer having Siegfried's help, is shamefully vanquished, and bound with the girdle of his bride. She winds this about his hands and feet, and hangs him by it to a hook fastened in the wall ; he is set free only after much begging. Sad and ashamed, the next day he tells Siegfried, who again assumes his obscuring mantle, wrestles with Brunhild, and a second time subdues her. For a time all misfortune slumbers. Siegfried with his young wife goes joyfully home to his par- ents. His father vields to his son crown and kino- *s O dom. For ten years they enjoy their happiness in entire peace, Siegfried, ruler of the Netherlands, and of the realm of the Xibelungen, with their innu- merable treasures, the most powerful of kings ; Kriemhild the most beautiful and happy of queens. But in Brunhild's heart the anger still burns. " How does Kriemhild dare behave so proudly to- ward us," she cries, " as not to visit us once in all this time. Is not Siegfried your vassal? Yet for ten long years he has rendered us no service." 30 GERMAN LITERATURE. Gunther yields, and sends messengers to Siegfried. They invite him to a great festival, which at the sol- stice the old German festival time is to be cele- brated at the Burgundian court at Worms. With a retinue of a thousand nobles, Siegfried and Kriem- hild, accompanied by Siegfried's father, in the se- cure cheerfulness of innocence, go to Worms on the Rhine. Rich gifts of red gold and gleaming jewels are borne along, that Siegfried may be generous at the Burgundian court. A splendid reception awaits the guests, for thou- sands of knights from all the roads come streaming into the gates of the royal city. In magnificent at- tire the kings ride, with their retinue, through the streets ; the noble ladies and beautiful maidens, hand- somely adorned, sit at the windows. The sound of trumpets and flutes fills the great city by the Rhine until it rings with music ; but notwithstanding all, the air is full of boding. The two queens Kriem- hild and Brunhild sit together as ten years before. " I have a husband," says the happy Kriemhild, "who deserves to possess all these kingdoms." That was the spark which kindled fire. " How is that possible," says Brunhild, gloomily. "These realms belong to Gunther, and will remain subject to him." Kriemhild fails to catch the tone of gath- ering anger, and continues, less guardedly : " Scest thou how lie stands there, how he walks so grandly before the heroes, like the moon before the stars? Therefore it is that my heart so rejoices." Brun- hild replies: "To Gunther belongs precedence among all kings. When thy brother won me as a THE NIBELUNOEN LIED. 31 wife, Siegfried himself said he was Gunther's serv- ing-man, and so I have considered him ever since. He is and shall remain subject to us." Then breaks forth Kriemhild's anger: " Siegfried is indeed no- bler than Gunther, my brother ; we will see whether I shall not have precedence over thee when we go into the cathedral to-day." Before the minster the quarrel is renewed with greater bitterness. After stinging words, Kriemhild repents, and adds, " Thou art thyself to blame that we have fallen into this strife. It is hateful to me, and for true heart friendship I shall always again be prepared." But the words have been too bitter. Brunhild falls into cruel desire for revenge. Sieg- fried laments the strife. "They have forgotten themselves," he thinks. "Let us be silent about what has happened, and let our wives be as silent as we." But Brunhild, lamenting in weak rage, sits solitary in her room. There Hagen finds her, and learns from her more particularly how she has been injured. The man must die. The three kings, Gunther, Gernot, and Gieseler, are summoned in council. Only the youngest, Gieseler, considers the affair a woman's contest, too trifling to bring death to a hero like Siegfried. The rest agree to spread a false report of war ; the army is to be sum- moned, and since, plainly, Siegfried will not be ab- sent from the march, the hero shall be slain in the campaign. Then the cruel Hagen goes to Kriemhild to take farewell, according to custom. She has already half forgotten the quarrel, and not the slightest 32 GERMAN LITERATURE. suspicion comes into her mind that she has before her the implacable enemy of her husband, who, in his fealty to his queen, has sworn his death. " Hagen," she says, " thou art my kinsman. To whom can I better trust my husband's life in the war than to thee ? Protect Siegfried ! To be sure he is invul- nerable, but when he bathed himself in the dragon's blood, a broad linden leaf fell between his shoulder- blades, so that this place was not wet by the blood, and remained unprotected." " Sew a sign for me, royal lady," says the traitor, " on this place on his garment, so that I may know exactly how to protect him." Kriemhild sews with her own hand a cross of fine silk on Siegfried's dress, the mark for his bloody death. Next day the march begins, and Hagen, riding close to Siegfried, sees the sign. From a campaign the expedition becomes a great hunt ; Siegfried sees Kriemhild for the last time, while threatening visions trouble her soul, as for- merly, when she dreamed of the falcons and the eagle in her childhood. Now she sees two moun- tains fall upon Siegfried, he vanishing among the ruins. The hunt is finished ; the heroes Siegfried first (who has slain the most game) are thirsty and tired with the chase under the heat of the sun. There is no more wine ; the Rhine is distant ; there is no chance for the refreshment they desire. Hagen, however, knows of a spring in the wood near by, the Odenwald, and thither he advises them to go. Already they see the broad linden under whose roots the cool spring bubbles forth. Then THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 33 Hagen begins: "It has often been said that no one can follow the quick Siegfried ; let us try it now." "Let us run for a wager," replies Sieg- fried, "as far as the spring." When the race begins, like wild panthers spring Gunther and Hagen through the forest, but Siegfried is first at the goal. Quietly now he lays away his arms, waiting until the king comes up, that he may drink first. Gunther comes up and drinks ; after him Siegfried bends down to the spring. Hagen, leap- ing forward, quietly puts the arms out of Siegfried's reach, then takes the spear in his murderous hand ; while the hero is taking his last draught, Hagen throws the javelin through the cross on his back, so that the heart's blood streams over the slayer. In wrath the wounded hero springs to his feet, grasp- ing after sword and bow, but finds no weapon. Then he clutches his shield and rushes upon Hagen. Wrathfully he smites the traitor with his shield, so that the jewels with which it is set are scattered about, and the wood resounds with the fury of the blows. Then his cheek grows pale, and his limbs totter. Kriemhild's husband falls among the flow- ers, and the blood pours from his death-wound. With his last breath he turns angrily upon his murderers. "You have repaid my fidelity by slaying your kinsman." Many a lamentation is heard, among others the voice of Gunther, whose heart fails him, but the grim Hagen pours out scorn upon those bewailing, and upon the man shamefully murdered. " I know 34 GERMAN LITERATURE. not why you lament ; now comes to an end that which we have borne with sorrow and care. Well for me that I have slain this one ! " Once more the hero speaks : "I sorrow for nothing so much as for my wife, Kriemhikl. If you mean, noble King Gunther, ever again to be faithful to any one in your life, to you do I commend her. Let it be well for her that she is your sister." Far around the flowers of the forest are reddened with his blood, for the death-struggle has ended. Then the lords, according to old custom, place the hero's corpse on a gold-red shield, and bear it to Worms on the Rhine. Some advise to say that robbers have killed him. But Hagen cries, "What care I though Kriemhild hears that I have killed him? She has injured Brunhild so much, I hold her sorrow to be but a slight thing. She may weep as much as she will." And the terrible Hagen, when by night they reached Worms, had the corpse laid before the house where Kriemhild dwelt, well knowing that she herself would find it there when, according 1<> custom, she went to matins. A chamberlain, going- first in the gray dawn with a light, sees the corpse. ''My lady," he cries, " rennin. A slain knight lies before the gate." Kriemhild's answer is a loud cry of terror. Well she recognizes in the pale torch- light the heroic figure and the noble features stiff- ened in death. Loud lamenting fills, far and wide, the halls and courts. The faithful associate them- selves for revenge ; Kriemhild can scarcely restrain them. " It is not now time for revenge ; hereafter it will come." When the corpse lies upon the bier, THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 35 the kings, her brothers, come, and her kindred. Hagen,too, stalks forward without shame. Kriem- hild waits at the bier for the judgment. If the murderer steps near the murdered, or touches his body, the wounds will open and blood flow afresh. As Hagen approaches, the wounds flow. " God will revenge the deed!" cries Kriemhild. The corpse is put into its coffin and borne to the grave, Kriemhild following, almost in a death- struggle with unspeakable woe. Once more she desires to see the beautiful head of her husband ; the costly coffin, ornamented with gold and silver, is broken open in the cathedral ; with white hand she raises the hero's head and presses a kiss on the pale lips. Then Siegfried is buried. While Siegfried's father and the Nibelungen re- turn to the Netherlands, Kriemhild is fixed to the spot where her love began, where it ended in cruel woe. Her life has fully gone out into the grand hero who was hers. She has henceforth only two feelings, suffering and revenge. She passes thir- teen years at Worms, in deep mourning. To ap- pease their sister, the kings, her brothers, have the immeasurable treasure in jewels and gold which lies in the Nibelungen land the Nibelungen hoard brought thence. Twelve wagons go four days and nights in order to bring it from the hollow mount where it is hidden, to the ship. It arrives, and is given to Kriemhild ; henceforth the Burgundians are called Nibelungen. But again the grim Hagen steps as an enemy in her way, for he fenrs she may, by her generosity from it, win so many to her service 36 GERMAN LITERATURE. that it ma}'' do injury to the power of the king him- self. He accordingly sinks the Nibelun; the Huns." o The news of the approach of the Burgundian army is brought now to the court of Etzel. Kriemhild and her husband go to the window to see the troop arrive. There, in the distance, appear the well- known Nibelungen escutcheons and eagle-helmets. " He who now will Avin my favor," cries Kriemhild, " let him think of my grief." The Huns press for- ward to see one man in the company, the terrible Hagen, who slew Siegfried. There lie rides upon a powerful steed, the gloomy, formidable hero, tall, firm as iron in breast and shoulders, with gray be- sprent hair, and dark, angry, rapid-glancing eye, overlooking the rest. The main body of the Nibe- THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 43 lungen is quartered in the city. The noble vassals go with the three kings to the palace of Etzel. In the press in the inner court Hagen finds Volker, and knowing that the end is close at hand, the two boldest heroes of the Nibelungen conclude a league for life and death. Before one of the palace build- ings they sit on a bench of stone, surrounded by Huns, who behold them in respectful silence. Kriem- hild too sees her mortal enemy from the window. She breaks forth into angry weeping, and passion- ately summons her faithful ones to revenge the cruel sorrow which she has suffered from Hagen ; sixty men arm themselves to slay Hagen and Volker, and in the front of the troop descends Kriemhild herself the crown on her head into the court, to get from Hagen' s own mouth the confession of his mur- der. Volker calls Hagen' s attention to the armed troop coming from the stair-case, who replies, flaming out in angry spirit, " Well do I know that all this is for me. But tell me, Volker, will you in the hot battle stand by me in faithful friendship, as I never will abandon thee ? " "So long as I live," is Volker' s answer, *' even though all the hordes of the Huns storm against us, I will not yield from you, O Hagen, one foot." "May the God in Heaven reward you, noble Volker. What more do I need? They may come on with their armed troops." As Kriemhild approaches the pair, Volker rises before her, but Hagen keeps his scat in quiet defiance, that she may not think he fears her. But with this proud scorn of etiquette he combines a second far worse scorn. He lays across his knees, just as 44 GERMAN LITERATURE. Kriemhild approaches, a gleaming sword, in whose hilt burns a jasper. It is the sword of Siegfried, Balmung, renowned in legend, which Kriemhild immediately recognizes. There is the golden belt, the red embroidered sheath, which she has seen so often at Siegfried's side. Close to his feet steps Kriemhild. "Who sent for you here, Lord Hagen, that you dared to ride hither? You know what you have done for me." "Three kings have been in- vited hither," replies Hagen; "they are my mas- ters ; I am their vassal. Where they are, am I also." "You know," continues Kriemhild, "why I hate you. You slew Siegfried, and for that I must weep until death." "Why talk longer," bursts out Hagen. " Yes, I, Hagen, I slew Siegfried, the hero, because Kriemhild rebuked the beautiful Brun- hild. Let him avenge it who will." Thus was war declared to the death, but it was not to break out at once. The crowd of Huns ven- ture not to attack the champions. The two rise quietly, and go, firm of step, to the king's hall, where their lords are, to protect them in life and death. They forswear sleep, and keep watch before the chamber of the kings. There tower in the darkness the giant figures, silent and almost motionless, before the door. In the night a troop of Iluns attempts to surprise the sleepers, but are frightened away by Hagen's fearful voice. The remainder of the Xibehmgen Lied is a tale of blood. I must give its outlines for the light it throws on the time and the race. Let it be remem- bered it is a barbarian minstrel singing to barbarian THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 45 hearers. Hitherto Etzel, mindful of the duty of a host, has sought to protect his guests, and persisted in showing toward them the truest friendship. Hagen slays the son, Ortlieb, and the father is aroused. At a banquet the savage mother holds in her arms the little boy, five years old. The higher vassals of Etzel are present ; so, too, Hagen and Volker, with the noblest of the Nibelungen. Sud- denly a messenger shouts into the hall that the Huns have slain the Nibelungen outside. The princes and vassals start up in wrath, and fall upon the Huns present, in revenge. In the fray Hagen slays the boy Ortlieb in his mother's arms. In the wild bat- tle Kricmhild in anguish cries out to Dietrich to protect her, and the king of the Goths, not prepared for such cruel vengeance, is quickly ready. He raises his 'powerful tones to a deep, resound- ing shout, which rings throughout the whole palace like the blast of a trumpet. For a moment the fray is hushed ; Gunther replies they are only concerned with Etzel' s- vassals, who have slain his followers; the others can withdraw. Etzel, with Kriemhild, Rlidiger, Dietrich and his troop, leave the hall. The strife begins anew, and Etzel's followers are slain together. Now steps Ilagcn, arrogant through victory, to the door, and scorns the gray Etzel for withdrawing from the battle. lie mocks Kriemhild, and Volker joins in the grim defiance : " Such poor cowards as the Huns have never been seen." Kriemhild commands that Etzel's shield shall be filled with gold, and given to whomsoever shall slay Ha 2:011 and brinle Riidigcr, your like is not upon the earth.' ' Hagen refuses to fight, and withdraws with his shadow, Volker, and Gieseler. The others remain, and the strife begins ; poor Gernot hurries to help his men ; Riidiger strikes a death-wound upon his head, and the last blow which Gernot aims with the sword given him by Riidiger is Riidiger' s death- blow. The heroes sink together. Palaee and towers resound with the mourning over the heroes who have fallen, so that Dietrich of Berne, standing aloof as one that had no part in the quarrel, sends a messenger to learn the cause of the cries. Finding that Riidiger, whom they have loved, is dead, Hildcbrand demands his body for burial. Scorn is the answer of the Nibelungcn ; Dietrich's giant followers hereupon grasp their swords, and anew the combat rages. Volker, the merry gleeman, falls by the mighty hand of Hilde- brand. Gicseler and a Gothic 'prince arc mutually slain ; and Hagen, to revenge Volker' s death, presses upon Ilildebrand with blows so terrible that the rusliino- can be heard far away of the miirhtv O */ o *; strokes of Balmung, the sword of Siegfried, about the head of the grisly Goth. Hildebrand, however, escapes with a heavy wound ; he returns to Dietrich, but none of his followers. In the royal hall, soli- tary too, among the bodies of friend and foe, stand Gunther and Hagen. Then at length goes forth Dietrich ; Gunther and Hag-en wait gloomily, and when summoned to yield, Hagen refuses to do so until the sword of the Nibelungen is broken. Diet- rich overpowers Hagen, with lion clasp binds him, THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 49 and leads him to Kricmlrl 1. Gunther is also bound. Dietrich recommends that their lives be spared, and departs in gloom. But Kriemhild must drain to the dregs the cup of revenge. If Hagen will give her back the Nibehmgen treasure, he shall keep his life. But Hagen is still defiant : "So long as one of my lords lives, I will not reveal the treasure." Gunther is promptly slain, and his head brought by the fury to Hagen. "It is now ended," he cries. " Xo\v is dead the noble Nibelun- gen king', as also the young Gieseler and Gernot. No one knows now the place of the treasure but God and I alone. From thce, cruel woman, it shall be forever hidden . ' ' "So, then," cries Kriem- hild, "I have only the sword of my Siegfried." She draws it from its sheath, and Balmung at length avenges the murder in the hand of the furi- ous queen of the Huns. Then springs up the old Hildebrand in wrath, because the peace which his lord asked for Gunther and Hagen was broken. Kriemhild sinks before his blow, with a shriek, and all is done. "With sorrow," so ends the song, "was concluded the high festival of the king; as always joy gives sorrow at the end." The last stanza runs : I cannot tell TOU farther about the slaughters red ; The hosts that then were smitten in silence all lay dead. "What afterwards befell, herein ye may not read ; Here has the song an ending; this is the isibelungen Lied, 4 CHAPTER III. THE NIBELUNGEN LIED Continued. In the preceding chapter the story of the Nibe- lungen Lied was told, after a brief account of what the poem was, and why it is worthy of attention from a generation like ours, removed eight hundred years from the time of its composition. I hope some traits of beauty and grandeur have made themselves plain, rude though it sometimes is. Here, at any rate, are the judgments of certain writers whose opinions deserve to be weighed : " From whatever side we view it," says Kurz, 1 "it is by far the most important work which the Middle Ages have given to us. We may dare, in proud confidence, to set it beside the best which has founded the glory of other races." "It is," says Carlyle, 2 "by far the finest monument of old German art. A noble soul the singer must have been ; he has a clear eye for the beautiful and true ; the whole spirit of chivalry, of love, and of heroic valor must have lived in him and inspired him. Everywhere he shows a noble sensi- bility ; the sad accents of parting friends, the lament- ings of women, the high daring of men, all that 1 Geschichte der dcutschen Literatur. 3 The ISibeluttgeu Lied. THE XIBELUXGEN LIED. 51 is worthy and lovely prolongs itself in melodious echoes through his heart. A true old singer, and taught of nature herself." "Whoever," says Lud- wig Baur, 1 "desires with poetical look to transport himself into primeval Germany must not only read, but study, the Iliad of the Germans, The Nibe- lungen Lied. There the original spirit of the people breathes purest ; there it becomes plain how formerly the world and the intricacy of human fate were re- garded." But no tribute is so picturesque as that of Heinrich Heine : "Would you nice little people form an idea of the Nibelungen Lied, and the gigan- tic passions which move in it? Imagine to your- selves a clear summer night, the stars pale as silver, but large as suns, stepping forth in the blue sky, and that all the Gothic cathedrals of Europe had given one another a rendezvous upon a wide mountain plain. There would come striding on the Strassburg minster, the Kolner-Dom, the Campanile of Giotto, the cathedral of Rouen, and these would pay to the beautiful Notre Dame of Paris, very courteously, their obeisance. True, their walk would be a little clumsy ; some among them would be slightly awk- ward, and one might often laugh at their infatuated waggling. But this would have an end when one should see how they would fall into a rage, slay one another, as Notre Dame de Paris raises her strong arms to Heaven, suddenly seizes a sword, and strikes the head from the greatest of all the cathedrals. But, no. So, you get no idea of the figures of the Quoted by Schonhuth. 52 GERMAN LITERATURE. Nibelungen Lied. No tower is so high, and no stone so hard, as the grim Hagen and the revengeful Kriemhild." l That tlio testimony is not all of this kind is true ; and as an oll'sct to the opinions just given, here is that of Frederick the Great, which has been framed, and is now kept under glass in the library at Ziirich : "You have much too high an opinion of it. To my notion, it is not worth a charge of powder. I would not tolerate it in my library, but would sweep it out." There is a rare charm in the antique phrase in which the poem is given, as there is in the lan- guage of Chaucer. It is like the broken talk of childhood, and through it the conceptions come to the reader with a sweet and simple artlessness. To give more particularly the account of the ori- gin of the Xibelungen Lied, about one hundred and fifty years ago the Swiss Bodmer discovered in the castle of Hohencms, in Switzerland, two bulky manuscripts, agreeing in most respects, and giving the text of something long forgotten. The poem had no title, and for want of a better one, the words were used found at the end of the closing stanza, " This is the Xibelungen Lied." In spite of Frederick the Great's disparaging criticism, it found readers, and more admired than condemned. Straightway came questions : Who wrote it? Is it possible to separate in it the historical and fabu- lous? and many more. It has been made the sub' ject of that microscopic scrutiny which only Ger- Quoted iu the Bibliothek der deutschen Klassiker. THE NIBELUXGEN LIED. 53 mans seem to have patience and strength to bestow. Of the labors of the too patient scholars, and the fierce controversies in which thev have eno-aijed *; C C among themselves, I propose to make no note. Karl Lachmann was the acute and persistent critic who led the way, and a small army of disciples came after to elaborate the work of their chief. Holtzmann was the first who dared to question their conclusions ; and he too gained a considerable following. The clash of their fencing resounds still in the philological Jahrbiicher and Zeitschriften. Taking as guides Dr. Hermann Fischer, who in 1874 wrote out an account of Xibelungcn studies, and the poet Simrock, let the following be stated as to the poem's origin : Every rude race has its singers, who invent lays relating to the experiences of their nation and their mythological beliefs, handing them down to suc- ceeding generations by oral tradition. Of such minstrels, as has already been mentioned, the Ger- mans had an abundance, who sang with vigorous imaginations of the wild deities, of the heroes partly human and partly divine, of the wanderings and fightings of the race as it poured out of Asia into Europe, sweeping restlessly to and fro until it found stabilitv. AVhen at "length dvinsr Rome {rave *. / o c to the Teutons her sceptre, her civilization, and her faith, what had been oral tradition was intrusted to writing. Xow, however, the monks were at work. It was a hard ta>k to wean the barbarians from the faith and life of their fathers ; the ties by which, more than anvthino- else, thev were bound to this 54 GERMAN LITERATURE. old faith and life were these traditions. For sev- eral hundred years, while the Teutonic tribes were gradually passing under the power of the cross, the persistent effort of the Church to throw into oblivion the traditions of the past continued. This effort of the Church has already been noted, and also that Karl the Great loved well the songs of his fathers ; he would fain have preserved them ; but for the most part they perished. Now and then appeared a churchman in whom zeal for the new order had not quite supplanted the old Gothic impulses. Going from Regensburg to Vienna, the traveller takes the steamer, for the trip down the Danube, at Passau. One will be likely to remember the little city, lying quiet just where the blue stream becomes comforta- bly navigable for the craft of to-day, and the black crag rising steeply on the opposing bank, whose weather-beaten brow is surmounted by the bishop's castle. It frowns from the summit there to-day as it has done for a thousand years. Here, just nine hundred years ago, lived Bishop Piligrim, who one day told his secretary, Konrad, to make a book out of lays he had heard the minstrels sing. Konrad faithfully executed the command. Coming from the primeval times, as young minstrels learned them from the lips of gray-beards, to sing them in their turn, each put into his version something of himself and of the time in which he lived, until, in the many elaborations, the lays had become en- riched from the life and spirit of all the generations they had touched. The lays, in part, were more ancient than the first swarming of that primeval THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 55 Aryan hive. It is believed that Konrad was the first to commit the mass of tradition to writing, probably in Latin, probably in prose ; not a syllable of his work has come down to us. In times that followed, Konrad's book was rewrought by others, again and again, until at length we reach the year 1200. Europe was aflame with the spirit of the crusades, and the hosts then, as they swept east- ward in all the splendor of steel armor and knightly pennons, trailed past the city of Passau, as the cur- rent bore them swiftly on. It was sometimes a halting-place, and, for the entertainment of the knights, the minstrels poured in to sing at the ban- quets and in the intervals of the tournaments. Then it was that some bard, whose home perhaps was Kiirenberg, 1 a little farther down the stream, a knight himself, though with a soul that brought him into sympathy with the people, for the last time worked over the ancient lay. It is conject- ured that one of the manuscripts found a hundred and fifty years ago at Hohenems is the veritable work of the Kurenberger, prepared that he might recite it to the crusading guests of the hospitable bishop of Passau. Whoever the poet may have been, he gave to his elaboration some superficial traits of the age of chivalry ; the Nibelungen and their kings are nominally Christian, and there is much talk of tournaments and other mediaeval usages. But the spirit of an era more ancient than the introduction of Christianity is well preserved. 1 Fischer. 56 GERMAN LITERATURE. The faith and the chivalry are mere drapery upon figures that belong to the primeval heathendom. All the motives of the characters are Pagan ; Christianity does not affect events or persons. 1 The heathenism may be yielding, 'but Christianity nowhere as yet takes hold ; it is almost entirely confined to outer religious observances. A founda- tion principle of the personages is the duty of re- venge ; it comes as a necessary sequel of fidelity, and is no less honored than fidelity. At first the Nibelungcn Lied was popular. Be- sides the manuscripts of Hohenems, more than fifty others have been discovered, in a more or less frag- mentary condition, and allusions to the poem in writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are not uncommon. Gradually, however, interest in it declined ; in the fifteenth century it had dropped from the knowledge of the world. At length, in the eighteenth, it was again read with admiration, harsh Frederick sneering at the folly that was super- seding the wise foraretfulness of the fathers. In the o o nineteenth the admiration for it has become per- haps excessive. It should be to the Germans, 2 it is said, all that Homer was to the Greeks ; but Homer, by the Greeks, was reverenced as a Bible. What precisely is the picture of primeval Ger- many which tha Nibelungen Lied gives us? His- torical are the three Burgundian kings, Gunther, Gernot, and Giescler ; historical is Etzel, or Attila, Gotho. F. H. Schonhuth. FEE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 57 and the annihilation, through him, of the Bursrun- o o dian royal house ; historical is Dietrich, the great Theodoric, the Ostrogoth. It is not, however, in this way that the poem has a value, as a source from which is to be derived knowledge of particular inci- dents and individuals. Events are moved forward or backward in time at the pleasure of the poet ; personages made contemporary who really were separated by main- hundred years ; things purely mythical combined with facts. The Dietrich of the poem is hardly the Theodoric of history ; and Etzcl, certainly the quiet, hospitable prince, advanced in years is far different from the terrible " Scourge of God" of the fifth century, a figure as tremendous in the world's annals as he is in the great picture of Kaulbach at Berlin, the Battle of the Huns," where he towers in the air, scourge in hand, lifted upon a shield borne on the shoulders of his Huns, a sublime embodiment of savage fury. The service which the poem renders history is of a far different kind from this. It lies in the faithful representa- tion of the disposition and character of the race. 1 These can be learned not only more picturesquely, but more exactly and surely, than in formal history. Hector and Achilles, Agamemnon and ./Eneas may be mere names, inventions of the poet, not por- traitures of men ; but we are, nevertheless, sure that we have in Homer a revelation of primeval Greece, its faith, life, and spirit ; so, through the Nibelungen Lied, as through a window, we behold 1 Vilmar. 58 GERMAN LITERATURE. the Teutons just emerging from the shadows of pre- historic night. Lovingly do the Germans dwell upon the interesting picture. If there is anything in it to excite pride, in that we are entitled to share, brethren as we are of the Teutonic household. The features of the ancient external civilization are here made visible. We see the fondness for gold, jewels, and rich apparel, the joy in hunting, the passion for minstrelsy and pageants. We see the superstitions by which the forefathers were mas- tered, superstitions often which hold the race to- day. Kriemhild dreams of her falcon struck dead by the eagle, of Siegfried crushed by mountains ; her mother dreams that the birds are all dead on field and plain. Straightway they are interpreted as forebodings of woe. At the near foot-fall of the murderer the blood flows afresh in the wounds of his victim. We see here too the German respect for woman, a fine confirmation of the report of Tacitus. Siegfried, Riidiger, Gunther, Etzel, are all husbands of one wife, who sits honored in the home, presides at the banquet, and welcomes the guest with a chaste kiss of salutation. In narrating the most valorous deeds of the heroes, the poet, instead of giving their own names, often designates them by their wives, as if to lift them into higher honor. Not Siegfried, but Kriemhild' s husband, it is who thunders victoriously upon a fugitive army ; not Riidiger, but Gotlinde's spouse, goes serenely to- ward his death. In the fore-front of life stands the woman, no less vigorous than tender, a mark for deep respect, as well as affectionate caress. What THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 59 vitality is theirs ! Ten years after her marriage Kriemhild is widowed, and thirteen years after that her charms gain her a new husband. Six years later Btill she bears to Etzel the child Ortlieb, and when at length she, her brethren, and race have perished, her mother, the old Queen Ute, still hale and strong, in the monastery at Lorsch survives to lament them all. The vitality and prominence are, in fact, some- times alarming. Here is an account of a sorrowful experience of King Grimther, on his wedding-night at the hands of his wife, Brunhild, translated, as precisely as I can give it, from the old text of the year 1200 : Then when to meet his darling the gallant king did haste, She unclasped the band she wore 'round her waist. It was a beauteous girdle, and thereto strong and tough ; With that unto her spouse, the king, she caused sorrow enough. She bound him hand and foot so the knots could not fail ; Unto the wall she took him and hung him on a nail. If he talked while she slept, she made him hold his breath; From her strength I ween that he almost caught his death. She did not ask him how he was while she in quiet lay; There he had to hang until the dawn of day Until through the window the morning threw its streak; What strength he had had vanished, and he felt tired and weak. "Ah, well a day," he cried ; " if I should lose my life, Only think of the example ! I fear that every wife In all future time, that else might be meek, To rule her patient husband will disastrously seek." l Far grander, far more important than the picture 1 Strophe 687 et seq. 60 GERMAN LITERATURE. of outward traits, is the portrayal in the Nibelungen Lied of the old Teutonic soul. What did they love as the bright qualities of manhood? We can know from the conceptions the poets drew to stand for the highest heroes and heroines, and what they set before themselves as ideals we may be sure they made real in some part in their own lives. Rich, beneficent liberality, so long as it has anything to give, is the quality of the lords ; gratitude, which goes out only with life itself, is the quality of the man, his retainer ; for we may see in the poem the close bond between vassal and chief, the institution which had its birth in the German woods, and, be- coming connected with things less noble, grew .up at length into the feudal system. Finer than the generosity finer even than the gratitude is the superb fidelity. For the dear king and suzerain is everything done, faithful fighting, the free out- pouring of blood, and, at last, of life ; and on the other hand, not even in death do kings abandon the faithful servant, but hold fast even to the fearful perishing of themselves and their whole race. "This fidelity is the peculiar life-element of the German people, and the real throbbing heart of our epic." ] Taking now the four leading characters of the poem, Siegfried, Kricmhild, Ilagen, and Riidi- ger, let us sec if a somewhat closer examination will bear out the claims. As to Siegfried, 2 \ve are to notice that contrasting qualities are thoroughly 1 Yilmar. 2 Kurz. THE NIBELUNGEX LIED. Gl harmonized in him. Nothing can surpass his ten- derness at times ; at times he is the lion in spirit and courage. The modesty of a maiden is now not more marked than his ; again, upon occasion, he shows a proud self-consciousness, which, however, we do not blame him for entertaining, and the ex- pression of which appears to be only a finer frank- ness. He ventures not to woo the beautiful Kriem- hihl, even when, by the conquest of the Saxons, he seems to have preserved the Burgundians from de- struction ; for when ho sees her "who walks like the morning redness out from troubled clouds, who shines before other women as the still moon moves before the stars," he is struck with fear. "How could I have thought to love thec ! It is a vain illusion ; death would be better." He remains near her for twelve days ; and even though it is plain that his love is returned, he ventures not to hope, and is on the point of departing in sorrow to his own home down the Rhine, when Gernot draws him back. He seems to himself not yet worthy of the peerless princess, and not until he has done for King Gunther still another great service the van- quishing of Brunhild in the contests at Isenstein does he dare ask for Kriemhild's hand. His aifec- tion from now onward becomes different, but not less warm or true. Even in his death-hour it is revealed as the passion of his soul. " Then spoke, in his woe, the hero wounded to death, to Gunther : ' If, O King, you ever mean in this world to be true to any one, I commend to your mercy my dear wife. Let it be fortunate for her that she is your 62 GERMAN LITERATURE. sister. With the virtue becoming a prince, stand faithfully by her. Never before to woman has such sorrow come.' ' He is full of trusting honor. Not alone toward his wife, but in other relations, does Siegfried show himself noble. Always gentle, generous, just, and forgiving, the hero is almost without spot. Possibly, in lending himself to Gun- ther's plans and employing the stratagems by which Brunhild is overcome, a want of openness may be seen which is inconsistent with the highest concep- tion. It is, however, but a momentary stooping to deceit. He is for the most part thoroughly true to others, and expects to his sorrow that others will be as true to him. With Siegfried we part in the middle of the poem, leaving him dead in his adorned coffin in the f" cathedral at Worms. Kriemhild, 1 however, is the persistent figure of the lay. A simple maiden, in the shelter of the palace, she tells in the first few stanzas of the poem, to her mother, her dream of the slain falcon. When, at last, a woman stricken in years, she falls at length beneath the sweep of the sword of Hildebrand, it is the culmination and close. She is very picturesque, the fierce heathenism of the elder time breaking out in the characterization in a way that is very striking. At first, a bashful maiden, she cannot think of a husband ; but when Siegfried appears at Worms, and his praise resounds everywhere, a premonition fills her soul of the love that is to come. As soon as she has become his Kurz. THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 63 wife the shyness of the virgin vanishes ; she steps forth among women with a matron's dignity, all whose thoughts and feelings are centred in her husband. He is to her the sum of all excellence, to whom nothing is comparable. At the detraction of Brunhild she falls into an excessive rage, which our sympathy does not follow, and the quarrel results whose sequel is to be so sad for her. It is an excess of wifely love ; and it is an excess too which makes her happiness to conclude with the death of Siegfried ; for during th many years that folloAv, sorrow alone it is which colors her life, bound up as she is in the recollection of her lost love. Thus far in Kriemhild we have a picture of the loveliest maidenhood and womanhood, only defective in that wifely devotion is made to go too far. The portrait is unique in German mediae val literature, yet it could have been drawn by no one but a Teutonic poet, and the hearts of all of Teuton stock go forth towards it. It can stand with the most beautiful pictures of all times and races. But what shall be said of the Kriemhild that follows? With maidenhood and wifehood behind her, she broods in widow's weeds over her sorrow. The imperishable affection which inspires her gives birth to a heathenish outcome, which the minstrel, filled with no faith but that of the primeval forests, develops, apparently without a thought of disap- proval, until Kriemhild bla/es luridly forth in the character of a fury. Her soul becomes filled with the desire for revenge. It is Ilagen who has slain Siegfried, and he must expiate the crime. Terrible 64 GERMAN LITERATURE. as Kriemhild appears in the closing- scenes, demand- ing new thousands for slaughter, and at length bathing her hands in her brother's blood, she docs not lose our sympathy entirely. Really, the fury of the c:id is not inconsistent with the timid maid who looks from her retired window, in the early scenes, upon Siegfried prancing with his retinue in the plain ; her re vengeful ness is, so to speak, but a phase of her fidelity, a distortion, of her undying love, which by circumstances is led into excesses not planned before. She carries the revenge to a terrible extreme, but the poet has given a most reasonable account of it, developing the dreadful issue, not merely from Kriemhild's character, but also from the connection of events. 1 It is Hagen only whom she seeks to reach ; but the Nibelungcn have gone into the land of the Huns bound together as one man ; if he dies, the kings and nobles of Burgundy must die with him. She can only reach her end, so fixed is the reciprocal fealty between lord and dependent, by the destruction of all. Re- call how it is that Kriemhild, step by step, is pushed into the horrors. She invites the Xibelungen to Etzel's court with deceitful cordiality, to be sure ; but to avenge Siegfried in some way is, in her unregenerate soul, a paramount duty. She con- templates no wholesale murder, but only the pun- ishment of Ilagen. lie, by his insulting bearing, enrages her still more, and at length makes her des- perate. The deaths of Gunthcr and Hagen are, as 1 Kurz. THE NIBELUNOEN LIED. 65 it were, forced upon her, through Hagen' s defiant scorn. Terrible is the picture which the poet, with unsparing hand, draws, fit for unconverted barba- rians. Husband gone, child killed, Etzel's knight- hood all lying slain, Kriemhild seems forced by an irresistible power to annihilate him who has robbed her of everything. Great though the gulf is, it has been finely said, 1 which is opened between the tender maid, palpitating with first love, and the murderous fury, yet it is perfectly intelligible. We feel it is the same power of love which at first leads her to the breast of Siegfried, and at last raises her arm for the stroke that kills her brother. Still more picturesque than in Kriemhild is the mingling of dark and light in the grim Hagen. The retainer of Gunther, to whom he is unswervingly faithful in sorrow and joy, performing in his behalf, deeds of the blackest treachery and murder, deeds of the noblest sacrifice and most unshrinking cour- age, he is a truly appalling blending of the angel and the devil. He appears first as the man of wide experience, who, when the Burgundians are trying to make out Siegfried, approaching suddenly with his shining Nibelungen, must be called in to tell who they are. When, at length, Kriemhild and Brunhild have fiercely quarreled, it is Hagen who, in savage fidelity, becomes the instrument of revenge to the wife of his lord. Perhaps a twinge of jeal- ousy comes in to influence him, since Siegfried has so far surpassed him in exploits ; but his motive is, 1 Kurz. 66 GERMAN LITERATURE. in,. the main, to do the will of those to whom he is bound. By blackest treachery he wins from Kriem- hild the revelation as to Siegfried's vulnerability between the shoulders, where the linden leaf fell as he was bathing in the dragon's blood. Most foully he uses his knowledge, casting the murderous jave- lin when Siegfried, unsuspecting, stoops to drink at the spring. ^When Siegfried, in his death-agony, by his appeals melts the confederates of Hagen, the dark-faced ruffian, whose eyes are described as al- ways darting rapid glances, stands unmoved, reply- ing with exulting insolence to the upbraidings of his victim. In the same spirit he orders that the corpse shall be borne to be placed at Kriemhild's door, at Worms ; and his self-centred coolness is not affected when, before the whole world, as he steps to the side of the body, the wounds bleed afresh in the mur- derer's presence. This is all the harshest savagery, and so too his subsequent treatment of Kriemhild, whom he always cruelly thwarts, taking from her V V the Nibelungen treasure to hurl it in the Rhine, and at length opposing her nuptials with Etzel. When at last Kriemhild, seeking revenge, invites the Burgundians to Etzel' s court, the wary Hagen penetrates her purpose and holds back. When, however, the journey is resolved upon, he follows resolutely the lead of his masters. The supernat- ural prophetess makes known to him his own fate, and that of the entire host. He cannot change the purpose of his lords ; no more can he abandon them, for is not fidelity entwined with his very life? Grimly he moves through the festivities and *j C7 THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 67 pageants which precede the final slaughters. Recoil- ing before his swarthy, tempestuous countenance, the lovely Dietlinde, when, at her father's (Riidi- ger's) bidding, she gives the kiss of welcome to his guests, starts back in alarm. He rides unsmiling amid the welcoming multitudes, and at length, side by side with Volker, sits before Etzel's court, beheld at length by Kriemhild. Touching is the bond of friendship which the doomed servitor enters into with the minstrel Volker ; cruel, and yet most lion- like is his bearing the sublimity of hardihood when, before Kriemhild' s troop, he coolly lays across his knees Balmung, the sword of Siegfried, and glories in his murder. "Who sent for you here, Lord Hagen, that you dared to ride hither? You know what you have done for me." " No one has sent for me," replies Hagen. "Three kings have been invited hither ; they are my masters, I am their vassal. Where they are, am I also." "You know," continues Kriemhild, " why I hate you. You slew Siegfried, and for that I must weep until death." "Why talk longer," bursts out Ha- gen. " Yes, I, Hagen, I slew Siegfried, the hero, because Kriemhild rebuked the beautiful Brunhild. Let him avenge it who will." In the fearful scenes that follow, Hagen towers merciless, gigantic as another Thor, yet with a heart full of friendship, and toward Riidiger at length he shows affecting gratitude. The tie that binds him to Gunther, Gernot, and Gieseler is of adamant, which cannot be broken ; and just as true on their side are the kings to their vassal. Truly piteous is 68 GERMAN LITERATURE. the outcry of the young Gieseler to Kriemhild: "Ah, fair sister, how could I have believed to see this great calamity when you invited me here from the Rhine? How have I deserved death in a for- eign land? Faithful was I always to thee, and never did thee harm. I hoped to find thce loving to me ; lot me die quickly, if it must be so." Kriemhild demands to have only Hagen given up. "I will let you live, for you are my brothers ; we are children of one mother.' " Let us die with Hagen, since die we must," cries Gieseler. "Let us die with Hagen, even were there a thousand of us of one stock," says Gernot. They will be faithful to him until death. Forward they go, smiting and smitten, falling one by one, friend and foe heaped in the car- nage, until at length Hagen, last of the race, in bonds and wounded to death, confronts Kriemhild alone. If Hagen will restore to her the treasure of the Nibelungen, given to her by Siegfried, long ago thrown by him into the Rhine, even now he may live. "Now is dead," cries Hagen, "the noble Burmindian kinir, as also the young Gieseler and O O ' */ O Gernot. No one knows now the place of the treas- ure but God and I alone. From thce it shall be forever hidden." With these words he bows be- neath the stroke, and the fierce life goes out. The ideal of a savage hero ! A figure fascinating through all its repulsiveness ! Such cruelty, such unscrupu- lousncss, such manful virtue ! But to my mind the glory of the Nibelungen Lied is the grand story of the Margrave Riidiger, noblest of the heroes. There is not a point of the charac- THE XIBELUNGEN LIED. 69 terization here that does not excite admiration. He appears at first as the messenger sent by Etzel to win the hand of Kriemhild. He departs in state from Bechlarn, his castle, proceeds to Worms, and with all the forms of knightly ceremony demands the princess for his master. "When at length the suit is successful, and Kriemhild leaves the Rhine, on her way to the distant land of the Huns, Riidi- ger receives her on the frontier with the finest hos- pitality. His wife, Gotlinde, shows her all possi- ble respect, and together they speed her on her way. Still finer, however, is the hospitality shown when at length the Nibehmgen, their kings at their head, pass through the land to visit Kriemhild. Rlidiger receives the thousands of them, and the days pass with music and feasting. The incidents are most attractive when Gotlinde and Dictlinde, the wife and daughter of Riidiger, salute with a chaste kiss the princes, and when the beautiful daughter recoils with fear before the sinister look of Hagen. In sign of friendship, Riidiger gives Gernot his sword ; and becomes still further bound to his guests when at length Gieselor and Dietlinde love one another, and arc betrothed. In company with the strangers from the Rhine, at length he goes down the Danube. The meeting with Kriemhild takes place, and pres- ently begin the horrors. Riidiger holds aloof until at length, commanded by his lord, he is forced to stand forth. The struggle in his noble spirit be- tween his duty toward his sovereign and his obliga- tion toward those who have boon his guests and be- come his close friends is most pathetic. It is hard to conceive of a situation more tragically pictu- 70 GERMAN LITERATURE. resque ; he is rent asunder, as it were, by two angels. Here at length is the account of his end, in a translation, in which I have striven to give the rugged, irregular movement as well as the simple pathos of the original lines : " Ah, woe is me ! that I must live to see this day. All my cherished honor I must put away ; All the truth and faith which God commanded me. O, would to Heaven that I through death this trouble now might flee." Then spoke to the king the hero true and bold : " Take back, O Lord Etzel, what I from you hold; My land and my castles, I give them back to thee, And empty-handed now will I go forth into misery. * " The Xibelungen strangers, how can I them molest? Within my castle walls I have welcomed each as guest. Together at the board we have broken bread; Gifts I have bestowed, am I now to strike them dead?" Kriemhild and Etzcl, however, are inexorable. Riidiger resolves to go forth, sure of finding death. He gives a last charge to his suzerain : " To thee must revert my castles and my land; I shall fall to-day by some Nibelungen hand. My wife and my child I now commit to thee, And all my poor retainers, who then must homeless be." He arms and goes forth, with five hundred fol- lowers. The Nibelungen think at first he is coming to their assistance ; when he undeceives them, they sorrowfully upbraid him. "I would to God," said Riidigcr, "0 heroes, that ye were Back by the Rhine's fair river, and I lav lifeless hero. So might I save mine honor, which now I must resign : Ne'er yet from friends has hero caught such sorrow and shame as mine." fHE NIBELUNGEN LlEti. 1l Sorrowfully and affectionately the Nibelungen deprecate the contest, but Rudiger is unbending. When at length Hagen complains that his shield is broken, the margrave says : " Take mine, take mine, O Hagen, and carry it in your hand ; Would that thou mightest bear it home to the Nibelungen land !" When he his shield thus willingly to Hagen offered had, The eyes of many standing by with weeping became red. Though grim the ruthless Hagen, his heart though hard and stern, Yet, as he took the shield, his heart with pity and love did burn. " Now God reward you, most noble Kiidiger ! On earth your equal can be found nowhere. Heaven pity us, that now our swords 'gainst friends we take ! " Then spoke the margrave, bent with grief: "For that my heart doth break." Hagen refuses to fight, and retires. Rudiger over- comes many Nibelungen ; at length Gernot comes forward, with the sword he had received as a gift from Rudiger, at Bechlarn. Sharp cut the swords ; no ward against them could avail. On Gernot's helmet fell the blows of Kiidiger like hail; At last 'twas beaten in, although 'twas hard as stone. For the mortal wound of Gernot the margrave must atone. Though struck he was with death, high swung he Riidiger's gift ; He smote the margrave's helmet-bands with strokes heavy and swift. He smote him unto death through his armor fast ; Both heroes fell, and breathed out their lives at last- Hospitable, generous, brave, pitying, faithful unto death, what quality in the heroic catalogue do we here miss ? We can hardly find fault with the eii- 1 Strophe 2090 tt sej. 72 GERMAN LITERATURE. thusiastic declaration of the poet, who, more deeply perhaps than any man of our day, has pen- etrated into the spirit of this old literature, that the death of Riidiger is the most touching episode to be found in heroic poetry. 1 There are so many points of resemblance be- tween the Nibelungen Lied and the Iliad and Odys- sey of Homer that it is almost impossible to speak of the former without making some comparison be- tween them. As the Homeric poetry is amber, se- creted in the morning of the world from a magnifi- cent stock which long since was hewn down and has perished, precious amber, in which has been em- balmed for us and for immortality the quintessen- tial quality of the vanished Hellenic soul, so is the Nibelungen Lied an exudation from the spirit of the primeval Teutons, wildly fragrant even yet, from their barbarian wanderings in the wintry, unsunned forests of prehistoric time. As to the origin of the poems, the same controversies have prevailed. Shall we say that one bard was the writer in each case ; or is each pieced work, the lays of many poets combined into one whole ; and if this is true, what shall we sav of the piccer? Was his work an inar- tistic setting together of the fragments that came to his hand ; or were they matched and blended with taste, heated and hammered over anew by a great genius, as he shaped them into an exquisite master- piece ? The probable answer to those questions in the case of the Teutonic epic has been given ; a sim- 1 Karl Sirarock. THE NIBELUNGEN LIED, 78 ilar answer best satisfies many modern scholars in the case of Homer. Can the Nibelimgen Lied ever be considered such a treasure as the Iliad and Odyssey? Probably not. The best German au- thorities, with all their enthusiasm, do not venture to claim that. It does not give in its manifoldness the human character, as do the Homeric poems. Siegfried and Hagen can nerer replace Achilles and Hector. 1 In outer completeness it must stand be- hind the Iliad. In the great general plan a compari- son is possible, but in perfection of execution the Greek is superior. 2 In one point, however, and it is an important one, I believe we may claim for the Nibelungen Lied an incontestable superiority to Homer, depth of moral sensibility. It may be de- scribed as, throughout, a portrayal of one form or another of faithfulness to duty. The spring of Ha- gen' s career, from first to last, is fealty to his king and queen, whether he murders and betrays, or pro- tects at the cost of his own life. Fidelity of another kind is, throughout, the motive of Kricmhild, distorted at leno-th into a strange frenzv of devo- ~ ~ - tion, in which she sacrifices her brothers, her hus- band's entire knighthood, and her own race. It is fidelity again that makes the nobleness of Riidiger : it is the struggle between two forms of it which makes the crisis in his career, tearing his heart asunder, so that with one hand he deals a blow, while with the other he gives a shield by which it 1 Gervinus. 2 Simrock. 74 GERMAN may be warded off, in a sublimity of distraction. Search Homer as we may, and we can find nothing to match these pictures. The scene is a fine one when the raging Diomede meets with hostile pur- pose the champion Glaucus, and the two, mindful of the ancient guest-right in which their fathers have stood, forbear their fighting, to exchange arms and plight new friendship. 1 Andromache laments, amiably, the long-lost Hector; 2 Penelope can be constant through twenty years, and the pious Tele- machus wanders in search of his long-lost father. These are passages of great tenderness ; but how faint in comparison with the passionate devotedness upon which, as upon a thread red with German heart's blood, the strophes of the Nibelungen Lied throughout are strung. 3 The German epic has, plainly, its inferiorities ; but it has, too, this superi- ority. Great in its day was the Hellenic race, in hand and heart, in thought, in art, and in arms ; until at length it \va.s smitten by the Roman mace, and, becoming defiled with base intermixture, went sadly to ruin. The promise of all this greatness shines in the poems which came from it in its morn- ing. So too in Siegfried and Riidigor yes, in Kriemhild and Hagen we may read a promise of Teutonic mastery. Among the most impressive of modern paintings is one by Delaroche, in which two figures, typifying respectively the ancient Hellenic spirit and the spirit 1 Iliad, vi. 1 Iliad, xxii. 3 Vilmar. THE NIfiELVNGEN LIED. 75 of mediaeval times, when the Teutons were coming to be leaders, are represented as sitting side by side. The type of Greece is a superbly beautiful woman, whose features are of absolutely faultless regularity, whose drapery falls in perfectly classic folds. The face, however, is cold; the calm eyes down-turned, without a trace of inspiration . The companion figure is less beautiful ; the face is of the German type ; the hair streams back disordered ; the folds of the robe are less statuesque ; but the countenance is turned upward, and warm with soul. From the eyes an aspiration leaps forth toward the heavens ; the brow is anxious, as if it felt the weight of obligation which could not be fully discharged ; the lips burst open from within by the struggling forth of some heart- birth of rhapsody. In some such contrast, to my mind, stand Homer and the Xibelungen Lied. No American capable of the finer impressions can set" foot, for the first time, on the soil of Europe without a thrill. In our land we have no past be- hind us ; our surroundings are all of the present, and suggest nothing beyond yesterday. In the Old World a solemn perspective of ages lies, as it were, behind all that we see. Each stream, each mount, each weather-scarred town and tower, has a hundred great associations of history that touch a sensitive spirit beyond the power of words to express. If one be at all of a romantic nature, he will be carried backward into those dimmer regions of legend with which this chapter has been occupied, the misty twilight which intervenes between authentic storv 76 GERMAN LITERATURE. and the utter darkness from which our race proceeds. Once I made the pilgrimage down the Danube from Regensburg to Vienna. Marcus Aurelius and Julian, Karl the Great and Richard Cceur de Lion, Gusta- vus, Wallenstein, Napoleon, so impressive a series of the world's heroes as this have made the blue current upon which you are borne along memorable with their exploits, that, and the towering hills and wide plains between which you pass. Often, however, it was to the shadowy phantoms of the ancient poem that my mind surrendered itself, and these were so overmastering sometimes as to leave scant room for the shapes substantial and authentic, august as these are. So I believe it must be with whoever submits himself to the fascination of the primeval minstrels. At Passau the river Inn, still cold from the glaciers of Tyrol, swells the current of the Danube so that it becomes navigable. AVhen you leave the train that has brought you thus far from Regens- burg for the little steamer that is to carry you on- ward to Linz, in the pause before starting, throw your gaze across the river upon the black and tower- ing crag and the fastness on its summit. Here it was that a good bishop, the uncle of Kriemhild, re- ceived her on her way to Etzel. There, too, in some secluded cell, nearly a thousand years ago, wrought patient Konrad, while the monks threat- ened him for dealing with forbidden lore, compil- ing the legends perishing from the people's mouths, that a successor of genius might elaborate them into the masterpiece that has survived. Think, too, of THE NIBELUNGEN LIED. 77 the crusading hosts, inspired by Peter the Hermit, sweeping with their steel and scarfs and pennons, with steeds of noble mettle, and glittering shrines filled with, relics, pausing for a bivouac in the meadows where stands the town to-day ! Among the tents appears a reverend singer, and chants to the chiefs while they lie for a day, with armor thrown aside, the ringing strophes in which the harsh hero- ism of their ancestors and ours lies embalmed. At last it is Vienna itself you will see, the capi- tal, rolling vast out upon its plain, with the pinnacle of Saint Stephen's spire soaring into the air almost live hundred feet. If you ascend it, you will have before you the broad Marchfeld, whereon lie the vil- lages of Aspern and Wagram. There too rode So- bieski and his host, uplifted crescents and horse- tail standards storming against him, when Islam was terrible. And, still earlier, it was there that bold Rudolph of Hapsburg defeated and slew Ottocar, king of Bohemia, and founded a dynasty beside which almost every other reigning house appears ephemeral. Go back of all these ; think of the trooping chivalry of the Huns, the twenty-four trib- utary kings and their sparkling retinues, the lavish splendor and innumerable gifts, when Etzel cele- brated at length the coming of his queen. But if the East is interesting, even more so is the West, the old Nibelungen home. Worms, the an- cient city, sits, as of old, in the midst of the broad field, the hills of the Odenwald ranging blue before it. The French of Louis XIV. 's time burnt it to the ground ; the streets seeni scarcely older than 78 GERMAN LITERATURE. those of an American city, but there is one antique pile, some parts of which we may easily imagine go back to the reign of Gimther. It is the cathedral, one of the most ancient in Germany, as beautiful as venerable. The rounded arches speak of a time when, as yet, the Gothic was not ; upon the black- ened pinnacles and quaint ornaments of buttress and keystone have gazed in turn the men of nearly thirty generations. As you enter within the sombre shadows, it will be thrilling to you if you can go back in imagination to its earliest time, and make yourself feel that the figures of the old poet had once some real existence here. What massiveness in the columns, and how heavily majestic the rounded arches turn, high overhead, in the dusky gloom, which sunbeam can never reach ! What dim, relig- ious light ! How worn the pavement, from the pressure of knees which have bent here and then mouldered, in a succession whose length we strive in vain to compass ! The minstrel must have known the pile ; try to believe- that Siegfried and Kriem- hild, and the fierce-glancing Hagen knew it too. There, in the space before the portal, Kriemhild and Brunhild strove for precedence, the outburst of haughtiness for which a hero died and a whole race must at length fall. Here knelt Kriemhild, while as yet she was lovable ; and here lay the slain Sieg- fried, in his gem-incrusted coffin, the beauty not yet effaced on brow and form. But grandest of all is the Rhine. The German has thrust forward his frontiers and taken the stream into the heart of the Fatherland. It flows, as it THE NIBELUNUEN LIED. 79 were, from first to last through his history; for there is not a generation to which its banks have not been memorable. It flows through his poetry from first to last ; the minstrel of the Nibelungen Lied gives the name throughout his strophes in thousandfold affectionate repetition, as a lover murmurs the name of his darling. It reverberates in the songs of every age, and never was the German lyre more enamored of it than to-day. The Rhine, the glorious Rhine ! It would seem, sometimes, as if the German would take it bodily into his arms. I saw once a performance of " Rhein-Gold," the prelude to the great trilogy of Wagner, " The Ring of the Nibelungen." Above me sat, in his orna- mented box, the king of Bavaria, who had given the artist carte-blanche for his representation among the revenues of his kingdom. At first, in some inde- scribable way, as the curtain rose, the Rhine seemed flowing past us on the stage. We looked into its deeps as into the sides of an aquarium. Far upward toward the roof the sunlight seemed to glitter on the wavelets of the surface ; the weeds below swayed to the shouldering current ; the fair spirits, with whom legend peoples its abysses, swam white-armed be- fore us, singing amid their buoyant curvings, now floating to the surface, now sinking slowly to the depths. And what glittered at the bottom? It was a mysterious treasure, like the Nibelungen hoard, won by Siegfried in his youth, brought after- ward to Kriemhild, at Worms, thrown at length into the stream between Worms and Lorsch by Hagen, the knowledge of its hiding-place perishing from the 80 GERMAN LITERATURE. earth with him ! They had taken the beloved river bodily, as it were, into their arms, and from prince and people went up a shout of joy. A few months upon its banks, and even a stran- ger will catch, by contagion, something of the glow. I have leaped across it high up at the pass of the Spliigen, where it makes its way, a thread-like rill, from its parent glacier. At its mouth I sailed out upon its waters to the da*k North Sea. Midway in its course I have crossed it at Strassburg, where score upon score of armies have passed, some east, some west ; some shouting victors, some groaning vanquished, in the mighty series from the time when the chief of the Marcomanni went over it to meet Julius Caesar, to the passage of the crown prince of Prussia on his way to Weissembourg and Worth. But I love to remember it best as I saw it from a high hill of the Odenwald. The crag on Avhich I stood might have echoed the horn of Sieg- fried, as he joyfully hunted on the morning of his death. The April rain-drops on grass and foliage shone like the jewels that fell from his shield, as in his death-struggle he smote at his murderer. Far below in the plain lay the city of Worms, the cathe- dral looming dark against the sky. The great river trailed some leagues of its length at my feet, and at one loop the setting sun made it glow with a ruddv splendor. It was as if the treasure of the Nibe- lungen were shining up to me from its secret caves. " It shall be forever hidden ! " were the last words of Ilagen, as he fell beneath the sword Balmunsr ; but I can almost fancv it was a gleam from the red THE NIBEtUXGEN LIED. 81 gold, and the flash of the mysterious jewels, that was revealed to my gaze that night. The light of sunset faded, and lo ! in the East, through the hori- zon mists, weaponed with splendor, vindicated her dominion in the gathering night, the solemn moon. There, glorious in silver light, whispering among the reeds of its margin, lapping lightly the barks upon its breast, the river passed grandly on into mys- tery, even as on the night when it swept beneath the corpse of murdered Siegfried, borne across to his waiting wife, the oars dipping slow, repentance on the faces of the retinue, the spear of Hagen yet fixed in the heart it had sundered I CHAPTER IV. GUDRUN. It has been judged fit to give to the epic of Gud- run written about the year 1250 the name of the German Odyssey, as the Nibelungen Lied has been called the German Iliad. The name is a con- venient one. Of the two poems, the Nibelungen Lied is the most warlike and tragic, and, in general, possesses superior interest. Gudrun is somewhat softer in character, though by no means wanting in pictures of strife ; the most prominent figures are those of women ; domestic life is portrayed ; there is much restless wandering to and fro, often recalling the adventures of the prince of Ithaca. As in the case of the Nibelungen Lied, the name of the writer of Gudrun has not come down to us. This much can be said with certainty : that he had for the basis of his work, as did the writer of the com- panion-piece, old legends and lays. The influence of some of the poets of his time can be traced in his verses, but, before all, the Nibelungen Lied was his model, which is believed to have been written about fifty years before. There are several allu- sions in the poem which make it certain that the minstrel was a wandering singer of the people ; from the language, scholars believe him to have GUDRUN. 83 come from Southern Germ-iny ; the manuscript which has come down to us was discovered some fifty years since, in Tyrol. The poem, however, has to do entirely with the North, and with the races to which our forefathers belonged, a fact that should make it of especial interest to us. Struggling through refinements borrowed from the, court poets, and ideas and embellishments gained from Chris- tianity and the notions of chivalry, we may see the traits, still vivid, of the life and soul of our heathen ancestors. The horizon which stretches about us is one of the sea, with its storms, ships, sea-kings, and their voyages. The coasts and islands of the German ocean form the scene, and before our eyes is disclosed the bold activity of the sailor races, which, driven by an eternal disquiet, ventured out amid storms, in their weak barks, to gather in other lands such booty as they prized. In the midst of barbaric harshness will be found things beautiful and admirable. There sat at Hegelingen a powerful king, Hettel, 1 who ruled over Friesland, and who, upon the advice of his friends, determined to woo the beautiful Hilda, daughter of Hagen, the fierce king of Irlancl. The heroes Wate, Frut, and Horant undertake the mes- sage, upon well-prepared ships, going, with many knights and men, to Irlancl, where they give them- selves out for merchants, driven away by Hettel of Hegelingen. They send to King Hagen rich pres- ents, in return for which he promises them peace 1 Adapted from Yilmar. 84 GERMAN LITERATURE. and guidance, presenting them at last to the women, who talk with them kindly. The queen and her daughter, Hilda, ask the old warrior Wate what he prefers, to sit by beautiful women or fight in the battle with men. Then spoke the old Wate : " This thing seems better to me. By beautiful women I never yet sat very softly. One thing I could do easier, fight with good warriors, when the time should come, in the fierce charge." At that the lovely maid laughs, and they jest about it long in the hall. Then come battle-plays, in which AVate says he cannot fight, and asks King Hagen to teach him the use of arms. But when the old man gives the king skilful buffets, the king cries, " Never saw I pupil learn so quickly." One evening Horant, vassal of Hcttel, begins to sing so sweetly that all are surprised, and Hilda sends messengers asking him to delight them with his song every evening, which the hero willingly promises. The next day at dawn Horant begins to sing, so that all the birds in the hedges round about are silent before his sweet lay. The sleeping sleep not long. King Hagen himself hears it, sitting by his queen, and from the chamber they go forth upon the roof. Hilda, too, and her maids sit and listen. Yea, even the birds in the court of the king forget their notes ; well hear the heroes also. His voice sounds with such power that the sick, as also the well, lose their sense. The beasts in the forest stop their feeding ; the worms in the wood, the fishes in the waves, all stop their movements. Forgotten within the church is the chant of the priests ; also the bells sound less GUDRUN. 85 sweetly than before. What he sang then seemed long to no one ; to all who heard him was sorrow after Horant. Then the fair Hilda has him come secretly to her, that he may sing yet more. She offers him the gold ring she wears on her linger, but he will accept from her only a girdle, to carry as a present to his mas- ter ; and now, while she is moved, he discloses to her how King Hettel has sent them to woo her for him. Willingly is Hilda induced to fly secretly with them, and preparations are made. Hagen sees the preparations, and asks why the strangers desire to leave. Wate replies that Hettel has sent for them that he may be reconciled, and they are pressed to see again their dear ones whom they have left be- hind at home. But, before they go, will the king allow the women to behold the great treasures which they have kept stored up in the ships ? This Hagen grants. The next morning the king rides, with many warriors and the women, to the beach ; the women ascend the ships, the queen is separated from the princess, the sails are hoisted, and the guests move off with the maid. So they return with good for- tune to Hettel, who welcomes the fair Hilda, esteem- ing himself happy to have won the maid. But already, on the following evening, appear the pur- suing ships of Hagen. In the battle that follows, however, he is wounded and defeated. The grisly Wate, at Hilda's entreaty, heals the hurts he has himself caused ; easily now does peace come to pass, and Hettel' s marriage with Hilda is celebrated with pomp. 86 GERMAN LITERATURE. Hettel and Hilda, living together in the fullest happiness, have two children born to them, a son, Ortwin, who is given to the veteran Wate to be educated, and a daughter, Gudrun, who soon grows to such exceeding beauty that her fame spreads through all lands, and many mighty princes woo her without success. She is refused to King Siegfried of Mohrenland, who therefore threatens Hettel' s lands with plunder and fire. She is refused to King Hart- muth of Normandy ; just so woos in vain King Her- wig of Seeland. But Herwig appears with three thousand men before Hettel' s castle, while all are sleeping. A battle follows, and then a truce. Her- wig pleases all by his manly bearing and beauty, and Gudrun, when asked by her father whether she will take the noble hero for her husband, replies : " She desires no better lover." So they are betrothed, but the mother requires that the daughter shall remain a year longer with her. Hettel and Herwig must straightway fare forth in their ships together to fight other enemies, and Hartmuth, the Norman, learning that the land is bare of defenders, determines to arm quickly and carry away the maid. His father, Ludwig, joins him. Presently they are at hand, and Hartmuth renews his suit to Gudrun, threatening her with his hatred if she will not follow. The steadfast maid replies that she is the betrothed of Herwig, and de- sires no other lover as long as she lives. Hartmuth and Ludwig hereupon fiercely storm the castle, and Gudrun, with her serving-women, is taken captive. The mother remains behind, loudly lamenting. At GUDRUN. 87 her summons Hettel and Herwig return in haste, only to find the land desolate and Gudrun gone. But hope presently revives. Unexpectedly a fleet of pilgrims appears in sight, bound for the Holy Land, their sails marked with the sign of the cross. They are men of peace, and cannot resist when Hettel and Herwig, with their warriors, take pos- session of the crafts, with all their stores. There are seventy of them ; these are filled at once with fighting men, and depart to recover the captive. Meantime the robbers, feeling secure, pause in their voyage upon an island, the Wulpensand, resting from their victory. Soon, in the distance, appear the crowding sails, all marked with the sign of the cross. "A fleet of pilgrims," they say ; "we may let our swords lie in their sheaths." But when the ships come nearer, they behold the helmets of soldiers, and no longer doubt that Hettel and Her- wig approach. They are attacked before they have time fairly to seize their arms. Wate springs first upon the shore, and Herwig, filled with battle- fury, leaps into the waves and stands up to his shoulders in the tide. Many a spear the enemy shoot at him, but he forces his way to the beach, where the battle grows fiercer. Disaster, however, is destined to fall upon the friends of Gudrun. The sea is sounding and the night falling, when her father, Hettel, meets Ludwig, the father of Hart- muth ; they fight, and Hettel is slain. When the grim "\Vate learns of Hettel' s death he begins to rage like a wild boar, and the warriors see fire flash from the helmets he strikes, like the redness of the 88 GERMAN LITERATURE. sunset ; his followers do the like, but in the dark- ness friend cannot be told from foe, and they are forced to recede. The Normans, in the gloom, abandon the dreary island, and when at day-break Wate springs up to renew the fight, the camp is vacant, and no sail is to be seen upon the sea. The Normans are gone ; Wate and Herwig are too weak to follow. They gloomily bury the dead, lift the wounded into the ships, and determine to found a cloister upon the Wulpensand, where prayers may be offered for the souls of the slain. Mournfully sail the heroes home. Ortwin, the brother of Gudrun, who had gone in the pilgrims' ships for his sister's rescue, does not appear before his mother to tell her of his father's death. Wate bears the gloomy news, and when the queen mourns aloud for her slain husband and the destroyed manhood of the land, the ancient champion cries, "Woman, cease lamenting. They will not return ; but when, after many days, the boys of the land have grown to be men, we will avenge upon the Normans our pain and shame. ' ' Wate feels that the disaster is a judgment upon them for their impiety in seizing the ships of the pilgrims. They are straightway returned to their owners, that the battle to come may not fail. It is resolved that the queen shall cause good ships to be built while the children grow to be men. But when the warriors are gone, the queen sends food to the priests on the island, that they may remember her in prayers before God. To that end she causes a minster to be built that is vast, and thereto a cloister and a hospital, so that it OUDRUN. 89 is known in many lands. It is called the cloister of the Wulpensand. Meanwhile the Normans have reached their coun- try. When Ludwig, the father, beholds his castles, he shows them to the sad captive, Gudrun. "If thon wilt wed Hartmuth," he says, " thou shalt rule over a rich land." But when Gudrun declares, "I would rather die than take him as a lover," Ludwig grows angry, catches the maid by the hair, and throws her into the sea. Hartmuth draws her quickly forth again, and brings her once more into the ship, where she, with her women, weeps over the unworthy treatment, concerning which Hart- muth reproaches his father bitterly. Now comes the old Norman queen, Gerlint, with her daughter, Ortrun, to receive the heroes ; but when she will kiss Gudrun, the maid starts back in anger, for she thinks Gerlint has had the greatest share in her un- happiness ; she it was who urged her son to carry Gudrun off. But toward Ortrun, Hartmuth' s sis- ter, is Gudrun kind, for she is well disposed, and seeks to relieve her sufferings. Gerlint urges a speedy marriage ; since, however, Gudrun persists in her refusal, the queen grows angry, forcing her to undertake the lowest services, and separating her from her women. So is the unhappy one tor- mented three years and a-half, for which Hartmuth, returning from forays, chides his mother in anger. But nothing can induce the princess to receive Hartmuth' s suit, till at last she is forced by the evil Gerlint to wash clothes at the shore. When one of the serving-women, Hildburg, shows compassion 90 GERMAN LITERATURE. for her unhappy mistress, she is compelled to help in the labor ; but thereat both rejoice, for in this way they are again united. Thirteen years pass, and Queen Hilda has in no way forgotten her daughter. She causes many good ships to be built. These being ready, and the boys of the land having grown to be men, she summons her friends for an expedition against the Normans. When all is ready the fleet sails away, but soon driven back by a contrary wind, it falls into great need. The ships are carried near a loadstone mountain ; though the anchors are good, the ships are almost engulfed in the gloomy sea, and stand with their masts all bent. But a wind carries them once more into the flowing ocean, and at last they reach the Norman coast. The soldiers rest, while Gudrun's brother and lover, Ortwin and Herwig, go into the country to get intelligence. Now Gudrun, at the shore with Hildburg, busy at her menial work, sees a sea-bird come swimming toward her ; a messenger of God it is, which an- nounces that Hilda yet lives, and has sent a great army to save them ; that Ortwin and Herwig are already in the neighborhood with the ships, and that messengers will soon appear. The maids think no longer of their labor, but talk of the heroes who are to come to free them, until the day approaches its end. At night they receive harsh words from Gerlint for accomplishing so little, and are com- manded to go to work the next day before dawn, since Palm Sunday is near, and guests are ex- pected. When the maids arise from the hard &UD&UN. 91 benches where they sleep, the earth is covered with snow, but the} T must go barefoot to the beach. While they wash the clothes they send many a longing look over the dark sea, and at last behold a bark with two men. As the strangers land, an impulse to flee seizes the maids, but they soon re- turn. "They were both wet," says the song. " They were in poor clothing, and, besides, the March wind blew cold. It was in the time when the winter went toward its end, and the sea every- where floated with ice. Their pain was great, for through their thin garments appeared their lovely bodies. That the messengers did not know them caused them sorrow." The heroes question them, and at length Herwig says to his companion, "Truly, Ortwin, if your sister Gudrun is alive, this must be she, for never yet saw I woman so like her." " She of whom you speak," says Gud- run, untruthfully, " has died through great suffer- ing." But the recognition is not long postponed, the lovers show their betrothal rings, and fall into one another's arms. One naturally supposes that Gudrun will be taken without delay to her friends, but the soldierly punctiliousness of her brother Ortwin stands in the way. "I do not think it should be so," he says ; " If I had a hundred sisters, I would let them die before I would act in a cowardly way in a strange land, stealing secretly from my enemy what was taken from me by force." Gudrun must again be the prize of battle. The heroes depart, promising to return with the host, and Gudrun, overjoyed, 92 GERM AX LITERATURE. spurns her labor, throwing the costly apparel into the sea. When chided at night by Gerlint, she answers proud and defiant, till the queen, growing angry, causes her to be bound, that she may be beaten with rods. Now Gudrun shows her cun- ning. She promises to listen at last to Hartmuth's suit, at which mother and son become overjoyed, treating her with all honor, and restoring to her the serving-women from whom she has been sepa- rated. To remove from the castle as many soldiers as possible, Gudrun begs that Hartmuth's vassals may be summoned to the wedding, whereupon the men are sent away in troops to carry the message. "Then they slept joyful-hearted ; they knew that many a good knight would come to them who would help them out of their great need." Meanwhile Herwig and Ortwin, returning to their friends, tell them of the interview with Gudrun ; and as her kindred begin to weep at the unworthy treatment which the king's daughter has suffered, the grisly "VVate cries out angrily, "You behave like old women ; you know not why. It is not be- coming heroes good, rich in praise. If you wish to help Gudrun, make red the clothing which her white hands have washed. In that Avay can you serve her." Then the host comes forth from its hiding- place, and before dawn stands before the Xorman walls, when Hartmuth, suddenly summoned by the watchman, exclaims, " I recognize the standards of princes from twenty lands. They come to avenge upon us their old shame." At his command the gates are opened, and the two kings, Ludwig and GVDRUN. 03 Hartmuth, father and son, proceed forth at the head t)f their warriors. Herwig encounters Ludwig, and with a mio-htv stroke severs his head from his trunk ; *_/ *- whereat Queen Gerlint, on the battlements above, bewails his fate. A faithless guard falls with naked sword upon Gudrun to slay her, as the cause of their misfortune, but Hartmuth hears her cries. From the field he shouts to the murderer on the wall, and the knave springs back, for he fears the wrath of the king. Meanwhile Wate rages with fury, and even Hartmuth almost loses his life. At Gudrun's feet falls his sister, Ortrun : " Have pity, noble prince's child, upon so many of our people who lie here smitten ! Behold, O maid, my father and my kindred all are dead, or near to death, and now does the bold Hartmuth stand in great danger. Let this speak for me ; when no one pitied thee, of all who are here, I alone was thy friend. Whatever harm was done to thee, that always I sorrowed for." Then Gudrun pities her faithful friend, and cries from the wall until Hartmuth' s life is spared, and he is made prisoner ; but the castle is taken and plundered, Wate raging grimly, with gnashing teeth, piercing eyes, and beard an ell broad. With fearful voice he asks for Gerlint. Gudrun gener- ously seeks to save her foe, but the queen is drawn forth. " Now say, Queen Gerlint," says the hero scornfully, " do you longer afflict the fair wash- women? " With that he smites her with the sword. Henceforth all is glee. The ships depart, full of the rejoicing victors and reclaimed captives, whom the aged Queen Hilda, forewarned by heralds, 94 GERMAN LITERATURE. meets at Hegelingen, upon the shore. " Who could buy with gold the bliss when the child and the mother kiss one another?" Grisly, broad-bearded Wate is also kissed, and the remaining heroes. Great preparations are made for the marriage of Gudrun and Herwig. Ortwin, moreover, woos the noble Ortrun, and Hartmuth, liberated and forgiven, the faithful Hildburg, who stood with Gudrun in the ice upon the beach when the deliverers arrived." " When the rich kings came together," so ends the song, " the heroes strove which of the women was most beautiful. The marriage was celebrated with the greatest splendor. The kings returned home, swearing to one another firm fidelity ; and they vowed to one another that they would always honor- ably bear their princely dignity, in a manner worthy of their lofty fathers." Gudrun has sometimes been preferred to the Nibchmgen Lied, but not wisely ; it is, however, far superior in interest to the court romances of the same period. Without doubt it has for its basis old legends and popular songs, with which have become intertwined materials from a later age. Although the wild spirit of the bold sea-rovers is drawn in many places with the liveliest truth, something milder is blended with it. Even the grim Wate, in whom, before all, the character of Northern heroism is stamped, who prefers "to hear the noise of battle to sitting by beautiful women," atones in part for his savage fierceness by his devotion to his king. In the character of Gudrun there is much beauty, though she is not faultless. She guards the fidelity GUDRUN. r: she has sworn to her lover unconquerably, submit- ting to the lowest humiliations ; and although the recollection of the hardships she has suffered fills her heart, she is not revengeful, but interposes, vainly indeed, to save Gerlint, her tormentor, from the sword of "VVate. But she does not scruple to be un- truthful in telling Ortwin and Herwig, upon the sea- shore, before they recognize her, that she is dead ; and though we may think stratagem not unjustifiable toward her Norman captors, she undertakes rather too joyfully the deceptions which lead to the cap- ture of the citadel. To us, I think, Gudrun, like the Nibelungen Lied, will be principally interesting as a portrayal of our forefathers. In Gudrun the picture is far less plain than in the companion epic, since it is much more overlaid by accretions from the after ages. A fine, picturesque heathenism, however, does look through ; and often in the verse we seem to hear the roar of the broad, tempestuous seas, in battle with which the children of the ancient race still take pleasure. "Both poems," says a high authority, "are to the nation an everlasting glory . Thev o o / . reach across, as it were, into those old times, with their deeds, customs, and ideas, out of which the voices of discontented Roman enemies extolled the bravery, the trustiness, the chastity of our venerable ancestors. AVhcn we behold these poems, full of healthy strength, of sturdy although rude ideas, of noble morals, we hear quite other testimonies speak for the ancestral excellences of our stock than the dry declarations of the chroniclers ; and, in germ, 96 GERMAN LITERATURE. we shall already, among our fathers, find the honor, the considerateness, and all the creditable qualities which distinguish us to-day in the circle of Euro- pean nations." 1 " To characterize in the shortest way," says an- other critic, " the Nibelungen Lied, let me recall a scene from the Alpine world. Bursting forth from the blue glacier grottos of the Finster Aarhorn, the river Aar flows, at first quietly and gently, past the Grimsel, upon a broad expanse which it murmur- ingly traverses. But the colossal mountains to the right and left press constantly closer upon it. Masses of granite tower before the current ; its course becomes always more tortuous ; ever wilder grows the roar in the narrow channel ; ever quicker hurry on the foaming waves ; ever gloomier threaten the countless crags and precipices ; until at length, in mad career and with fearful thunder-crash, the stream plunges headlong into the gloomy gulf of Handeck." 2 The student of the Nibelungen Lied, who at the same time knows the Alps, will recog- nize the excellence of the scholar's parallel ; and if I were to search for an apt symbol of the Gudrun, it might be found in others of those mountain streams, which, after the torture of cataracts and the smothering of sunless abysses, flow forth at length among the trees and grass of laughing low- o o o ~ O land plains, at first tumult and despair, then the fairest peace. 1 Gervinus : Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung. 1 Job. Scherr. GUDRUN. 97 When the voyager approaches the shore of the Old World, and sees at length the iron-bound Irish coast, ledges of granite, seamed and battered so long by the sledges of the surf, the scream of the sea-bird meanwhile answering the wild wind, he will behold the little vessels of the fishermen, the hulls scarcely visible, the brown sails bellying to the breeze, while the mast leans far to the leeward. In guise very similar did the three heroes of Fries- land, Wate, Frut, and Horaiit, carry off over these seas the fair Hilda, their little barks of osiers covered with hide and bound with thongs, the sails always wet with foam from the near-at-hand waves. So must have looked our pirate progenitors, of whom these figures arc representative. Out from the German ocean the blast blew strong against us, bleak and full of snow, it was the end of win- ter, as we pressed on past Normandy, the old realm ol Hartmuth, into the wider sea. It was a sea full of gales and mist, a tossing, whitening surface, beneath a sky overcast. Of the distant shore the sunken coast-line barely remained visible, now and then a low island, desolate, with its white sand, perhaps the Wulpensand. At night the storm grew wilder, a murky darkness, which a solitary bea- con far down amid the waters did not relieve. At noon we anchored off a wintry shore, a slow, gray river pouring out ice-masses, the beach heaped high with snow. Among these scenes the barefooted Gudrun came to wash the clothes, while she watched for the messengers whom the sea-bird had promised. Spots they are bleak and dangerous to-day ; nurs- 98 GERMAN LITERATURE. ing in that old time the hardihood that gave the sailor-races their dominion in the world ; not wilder the roar of the blasts than their own battle- cries, not more relentless the dash of their tides than the stroke of their axes, not darker the heavens than the movements of their spirits ; yet with traits in them too of manful virtue. Before we leave the consideration of the poetry which the people loved, a class of legends must be noticed, like those of the Nibelungen Lied and Gudrun, for a long period transmitted orally, and at the same time with them committed, at length, to writing. Allusion is made to the Animal Leg- ends, 1 a class peculiarly racy with the life of the Teutons, which have kept pace and place with the stock throughout its whole progress, and are yet in fresh remembrance. The roots of these legends lie in the wild simplicity of the oldest races. Such a people fastens passionately upon the phenom- ena of nature, rejoicing with spring and sum- mer, lamenting with autumn, bowed down in the heavy imprisonment of winter. AVith ready an- thropomorphism it lends to these changes its own human feelings, developing with the personification colossal myths, sometimes pleasant, sometimes fear- ful. Still more intimately does such a race connect itself with the more closely related animal world. One of Hawthorne's most charming characters is the weird creature, Donatello, the faun ; and no picture in which he appears is quite so attractive as 1 Thiersagcn. GUDRUN. 99 that one of the solitary Roman garden, in which Donatello disports himself, communing in strange sympathy with the brute world. He whistles to the birds in their own notes, who flock to him fear- lessly ; with beasts he enters into similar relations of mutual confidence. He is himself harmlessly happy, and makes happy the wild creatures, who, feeling his likeness to themselves, take part in his gambols and respond to his advances. We may hold that man has a nobler origin than development from some brutish type ; yet, as we trace him back- ward into his primeval state, he becomes more and more faun-like, until there comes to pass something of that community of feeling between him and the brute world that Hawthorne pictures. The animal legend can arise only among a primeval people, who are still hunters or herdsmen. These see in the ravenous wolf a powerful companion, strong and skilful almost as themselves ; in the grim bear, a hero ruling wood and heath. As they wander through the dim depths and sunny glades of the undisturbed forest, wolf and bear, and the red- bearded fox lurking at the wood's edge, are hunters like themselves, companions, and receive, besides their own brute names, familiar titles, Isengrim, Brun, Keinhart. Shepherd and hunter felt that it was good to be on friendly terms, in those solitudes, with these forest comrades. Not alone were their teeth and claws formidable. In the lithe form the primitive man believed a demon was lurking; in the wolf-soul, shining forth from the anger-sparkling eyes, there was something un 100 GERMAN LITERATURE. canny ; the bear was the embodiment of something dark and mysterious, endowed with magic ; in a certain way the brute was exalted even above man, and not to be restrained by physical power alone. 1 The animal legends that came into being were num- berless, and at length combined into a rude epic. It was full of truth, of nature, resting as it did upon the traditions of many centuries, knitted to life by a thousand threads. One may say the w r ork came to pass by itself. Its earliest form who shall de- scribe? After long tradition it was first written down in Latin, in the Netherlands. Sometimes the stories were modified, to convey moral instruction, into fables ; again they became vehicles of satire. The epic came again into Germany in the middle of the thirteenth century, the poet who gave it a new elaboration being Hoinrich of Glichesarc. Down the ages it has descended with popularity undi- minished, the great Gothe being the last to lay hand to the venerable material, in the famous Rey- nard the Fox. The work of Heinrich of Glichesilre exists only in fragments. Two or three specimens of the gro- tesque stories w r ill suffice, interesting as they are, through the rime of age Avhich rests upon them. Now the wolf is thirsty. The fox offers to procure him wine, and leads him and his wife to a convent cellar, where, after becoming intoxicated, they are heartily beaten by the monks. Again, plagued by sharp hunger, the wolf finds the fox, who professes 1 Vilmar. QVDRUN. 101 to have become himself a monk, eating roasted eels. Isengrim wishes also to become a monk, for the sake of the good living. "A monk," says Reinhart, "must have a tonsure," and in order to produce one he pours hot water over Isengrim' s head, so that hair and skin are scalded off; but the angry wolf is appeased when the fox calls his attention to the fish. When Isengrim asks for a share, " It is all gone," says the fox, "but I will show you a pond so full of them that nobody cares for them." Reinhart leads him then to a frozen pond, in the ice of which a hole has been cut to draw water. He ties a bucket to the tail of Isengrim, and bids him hold bucket and tail in the hole, while he stirs up the fish. The night is cold, and the tail at length firmly frozen in ; whereupon the fox, with feigned surprise and grief, goes off, promising to find help. A knight appears, who sets his dog upon the wolf, then cuts at him with his sword. The tail is severed, and the wolf, in that way set free, flees. Reinhart meanwhile comes to a well, provided with two buckets ; in the well he sees his own ima<>;e. * o Thinking it to be his wife, he jumps down for love, and sees then no way of extricating himself, until the wolf approaches. Reinhart calls out to him that he is in Paradise, which induces Isengrim to seat himself in the empty bucket ; this immediately sinks, and the fox is drawn out by Isengrim 's weight. As the trickster hurries off, monks, who come to draw water, beat the wolf half dead. At length the lion the king summons a general court. He is sick ; an ant has crept through his ear into his brain. 102 GERMAN LITERATURE. He 'considers his affliction a punishment from God, sent because he has postponed so long the condem- nation of Reinhart for his ill deeds. Brun, the bear, is sent to bring the culprit before the assembly. Arriving at the fox's quarters, he is diverted from his purpose by the promise of honey, and led to a split trunk, where he is told the bees have stored. He puts his head into the crevice ; Reinhart draws out a wedge ; the bear is caught . Peasants ap- proach, and Brun escapes with the loss of his skin and ears. With similar cunning Reinhart manages to reinstate himself in the favor of the king ; and after revenge upon his enemies, devises roguish re- wards for his friends. To the elephant the king gives Bohemia, where, however, he is lamentably beaten. The camel receives an abbey, but when he takes possession the nuns rise against him and drive him into the Rhine. Reinhart at length conquers, supplants his foes, and lives happily in his strong- hold. From this brief glance at the Animal Epic, as it was treated by Heinrich of Glichesare, the rude humor that pervades it may be caught, and an ap- preciation of the intimacy with the beast-world which comes to pass in a primitive, faun-like race. In the animal legends are to be recognized many a familiar nursery tradition. When little Red Riding Hood falls into the snare of her pretended grand- mother ; when the fox gets out of the well by en- trapping the wolf; when Silver Hair has her advent- ure with the three bears, when our children, at the dawn of consciousness, seize upon these, they GUDRUN. 103 grasp immemorial heirlooms which for ages have fallen to Teuton children, as they come from the cradle to the knee of the story-telling mother. CHAPTER V. THE MINNESINGERS. The poetry which has been considered in the three preceding chapters, that based upon the popu- lar legends, and which, though neglected by the courts, was loved among the folk, possesses, as has been said, at the present time, more interest than any other poetry of the age of the Hohenstauffen. A vast body of literature, however, has come down from the period, of a different kind, much of it worthy of study. The term minne has various meanings, the oldest and best being that of kind remembrance of a friend. In the worthiest of the minnesongs, to which we now proceed, the word is used in this sense ; but it acquired at last a licentious signification, to which many of the songs correspond. The Minnesingers proper are those who sing lyrical poems in honor of minne, or love. The name came, however, to have a wide application, embracing many who did not sing of love at all. The poets of the Hohenstauffen period already consid- ered, who wrote the Nibelungen Lied, Gudrun, and the Animal Epic, were, taking the term in its widest sense, Minnesingers, although the designation is more properly borne by the more elegant poets of the courts and castles. Nearly two hundred bards are known to whom the name can be , forms the crest of the top-heavy helmet. The knight is galloping through a rolling sea, in which sea-monsters are fighting together, which perhaps is intended to re- call the alleged rising from the Adriatic. The extravagance of Ulrich is so very fantastic that some scholars cannot believe he was a fair representative of his class, preferring to consider him as a mediaeval Don Quixote crazed by reading French romances. There is abundant evidence, however, to show that in the courtly circles he was held in his time in honor, and that his example was often followed, a fact which perhaps may be taken as indicating a singular lack of the perception of the ludicrous. The popular instincts of this time were far sounder, a healthy sense of humor being l>y no means wanting, which did much to make the songs and poems intended for the folk still more natural and attractive. Until late in the Middle Ages a favorite figure in the stories of the people, to which we recur for a moment for comparison, is the monk Ilsan, a character in the " Rose-garden at Worms,"- a poem in which many legends are blended, and which received its latest elaboration in the fifteenth century, after furnishing material to several poets of preceding ages. Kriemhild holds THE MINNESINGERS. 117 court at Worms, where she has a beautiful rose- garden, which Siegfried, with twelve heroes, guards against all strangers. Whoever vanquishes these guardians with an equal number of heroes is enti- tled to become liegeman of Kriemhild's father; besides, each of the victors shall receive as reward a rose-wreath and a kiss from Kriemhild. At the suggestion of his vassal, Hildebrand, Dietrich of Berne sets forth to undertake the contest, and in the story of the expedition the main figure is the monk Ilsan, a personage resembling Friar Tuck of the Robin Hood legends. He is the brother of Hil- debrand, and has been twenty years in the cloister. He has become old and gray, but since a twelfth hero is required, he is to be taken from his retire- ment to fill the place. The adventurers knock hard at the gate of the monastery, and Ilsan 's rough voice is heard from within, threatening that they shall pay dear for it who disturb the peace of the brotherhood. " Sir," says a monk who has looked out, " an old man stands at the gate who has three wolves upon his shield, and a golden snake upon his helmet-cre.st." "By the god of war!" cries Ilsan, "that is my brother Hildebrand." " And with him is a youth upon a swift horse, with a grim lion on his shield." " That is the Lord Diet- rich," cries Ilsan, and the gate of the cloister is opened. " Benedicite, brother," cries Hildebrand, to whom Ilsan replies with an old soldier's oath, ask- ing why he is always on some warlike enterprise. "We are going to Worms," is the reply, " to see the river Rhine, to gain rose-garlands, and a woman's 118 GERMAN LITERATURE kiss." Ilsan no sooner hears that he is bidden to the expedition than his old battle passion is aroused. With a lusty throw, he flings his cowl into the grass, revealing beneath his old fighting garb, which has never been laid aside. As he departs, the remain- ing monks run after him and wish him ill, it has been his habit to hale them about by their ears and beards when they have refused to do his will. Ar- rived at Worms, he gives rein to his spirit of wild mischief. He rolls like a horse in the flowers of the garden, uses his fists against all who come in his way, and when, after the victory, in which he vanquishes the minstrel Volker, he is to receive the kiss of Kriemhild, he rubs her face sore with his rough beard. The rose-wreaths which fall to his share he takes back with him to the cloister, and presses them, scratch as they may, down upon the heads of the monks who insulted him at his depart- ure. He orders them to help him make atonement for his sins, and when they refuse, he ties their beards together, and hangs them, two and two, across a pole. There is nothing malicious in Ilsan ; all he does and says is in rough, exuberant sport. Every word and act violates propriety, and nothing could be more shocking, as judged by the finical court stand- ards. The cloisters of the time furnished, no doubt, plenty of originals for such a portrayal. Many a wild spirit, momentarily sick of tumult, must have sought in them an asylum. In the tedium of their life, they sometimes reverted to their old ways, chanted to one another the war-songs, as in the THE MINNESINGERS. 119 case of the old monks at Fulda, to whom we owe the song of Hildebrand ; and when animal spirits were not quenched by the discipline, no doubt the convent precincts resounded with the horse-play and rough laughter of the camp. Before the examination of the literature of the Hohenstauffen period is concluded, an important class of poets remains to be considered, the writ- ers of the Court Epics. As has been noticed, the Popular Epics are derived from legends relating to the ancient deities, and the history of the Teu- tonic race in primeval days. In interest the Popular Epics surpass all that has been transmitted to us from the period we are studying. In treating their subjects, the minstrels show a poetic gift which, however rude it may be, sways the heart mightily. The subjects themselves are of absorbing fascina- tion. The legends they preserve, in which we dimly see the spirit and movement of our fore- fathers in distant days, when as yet no Teuton hand had traced a letter, affect the soul only with a deeper power as the race proceeds onward in its history. The Court Epics have an interest inferior to the Popular Epics, according to the general judgment, both on account of the subjects chosen and the manner in which they are treated. Generally, the subjects are foreign ; or, if German material is se- lected, it is such as had first received a foreign treatment. The Trojan War, Alexander and the heroes of classic days, saints and biblical person- 120 GERMAN LITERATURE. ages, Charlemagne and his Paladins, above all, Ar- thur and the Knights of the Round Table, are themes which gained attention. We cannot judge the court poets severely. What seemed good to their taste has been attractive ever since to poets, even to our own time. Morris and Tennyson, yes, the greatest names of all, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare himself, are elaborators of stories often many times told, and coming from foreign sources, often the same as those treated by the old German singers. As to manner, while the popular poets followed their own simple genius, so filling their verses with an inspiration, rude, but genuine, and of the freshest, the court poets were trans- lators, adapters, imitators, postponing themselves while exalting troubadour and trouvcre models ; over-refined until they became finical, often full of false delicacy. In the list of court-epic poets are found, however, men of genius, and there are critics who place some of them in the highest position. Any consideration of the literature of the period would be quite inadequate which should fail to give them extended mention. Three contemporaries are the great names among the writers of the Court Epics, Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried von Strassburg, and Wolfram von Eschenbach. 1 Hartmann, who died in 1220, is reckoned among the older Minnesingers ; he was a soldier of Barbarossa in his expedition to the Holy Land. He was a man of noble birth and active 1 Kobersteiru THE MINNESINGERS. 12 1 habits, who regarded his poetic fame with some con- tempt, writing his verses only as a pastime, when, as he says, he had nothing better to do. It has been mentioned that it is impossible to make a sharp distinction between the Court and Popular Poetry, and now, in considering Hartmann, the dif- ficulty of drawing the line appears. His rank and associations brought him into connection with the class of nobles, and for them he wrote ; but his best and most famous piece is thoroughly national in its subject, and treated in a manner most simple and natural. The title of the poem is " Poor Henry." l A rich knight, Hcinrich von Aue, is attacked by leprosy. Despairing of cure, he goes nevertheless to Salerno, the reputation of whose school of medi- cine was unbounded during the Middle Ages, where a wise physician tells him that he can only be healed through the blood of a pure maid who de- votes herself freely to death in his behalf. Robbed of all hope, he returns home, where he gives away his property and withdraws to a little farm ; this a peasant manages, who, through Heinrich's kindness, has won great success. The farmer cherishes him faithfully, aided by his wife, but particularly by his daughter, a tender girl of twelve. She is con- tinually with the knight, relieving his pain through her hearty sympathy and love, so that he can no longer live without her, and in sport calls her his little wife. After three years she learns by chance the means through which alone her lord can be 1 Der arme Heinrichu 122 GERMAN LITERATURE. saved, and immediately concludes to sacrifice her life for him. All the entreaties of her parents are useless. The generous Hcinrich refuses her offer, but is at last won by her entreaties, and the knight and the maid travel together to Salerno. She there repeats before the physician that she voluntarily offers herself to death. The salvation of her own soul, however, is always the uppermost motive. The physician is already preparing the knife for the sacrifice, when Heinrich, overpowered by the dreadful thought, forbids the murder. He returns to Swabia in company with the maid, who at first feels very unhappy at the failure of her intention. But be- cause the knight has humbled himself before God, with whose decree he has until now constantly striven, on account of his misfortunes, he recovers from his sickness, and becomes united with the maid in marriage. 1 It is in many points a sweet and simple story, the same used by Longfellow in the Golden Legend. It is wrought out by the Minnesinger with great tenderness, touching always the heart of the world, and finding often imitation. If looked at closely, however, the maid's nobleness is far enough from being of the highest. She is not self- forgetful. The judgment of one of the best of critics 2 will not seem too severe. The child goes forward to her death, not so much from compassion as from the idea that the sacrifice will bring to pass the sav- 1 Pfeiffer u. Bartsch : Deutsche Klassiker des Mittelaltera. 1 Gervinus. TEE MINNESINGERS. 123 ing of her own soul. When, after being under the knife and then preserved, she despairs of this, when she wishes to be free from the holiest bonds of nature, from father and mother, in order so much the quicker to share the eternal life, our sympathy does not follow her. Gottfried von Strassburg, the second of the three, is a writer of great elegance and delicacy, although he was not so far above the influences that sur- rounded him as to be kept always from an absurd over-refinement. He will not speak of sickness or the medicine necessary to relieve it, considering such topics as too full of unpleasant suggestion to be introduced before a courtier circle. The poem through which he has become known, "Tristan and Isolde," in matter and treatment, is based on French originals. The subject, moreover, the illicit love of the hero and heroine, is hardly moral. Tristan is represented as wooing Isolde for his master, a king. The suit is successful ; but while the squire conducts the bride to her destina- tion, through a love potion which they drink to- gether, supposing it to be wine, their hearts become united, and a clandestine relation, following through many years, is the result, described in long detail. The objectionable features of the story are so far modified that they cease, in great part, to be re- pulsive, and although Gottfried is only an imitator, his genius is great enough to secure for him a noble fame - 1 1 Pfeiffer u. Bartsch : Deutsche Klassiker des Mittelaltera. 124 GERMAN LITERATURE. Greatest, however, among the writer of the Court Epics is Wolfram von Eschenbach. ie was a man of knightly birth, although poor ; a zealous worker, although he does not scruple to confess that he values his rank more highly than his poetic gift. Three long epics Parzival, Titurcl, and Willehalm have come down from him (Titurel and Willehalm in fragmentary shape), an accom- plishment quite wonderful, since he could neither read nor write, elaborating in rapt mood his long- drawn strophes, then dictating them to a scribe. The Parzival is the masterpiece, and the only work we need to consider. In the Parzival, Wolfram combines the legends connected with the Holy Grail with the Breton stories relating to Arthur and the Round Table, material whose charm is imperishable. Deep in the ideas of gray antiquity, 1 in the myths of the Orient, cradle of humanity, is rooted the legend of a place on the earth where, untouched by sin and all dis- tress of life, mortals should reach the fulness of tireless enjoyment, a spot where wishes arc silent because satisfied, where hopes rest because fulfilled, where the thirst for knowledge is stilled, and the peace of the soul in no way suffers disturbance, the legend of "The Earthly Paradise." As this paradise, in the consciousness of later men, retreated more and more, a relic remained behind from it, something conceived of as a costly vessel, from which all the blessings of Heaven might pour them- 1 Vilmar. THE MINNESINGERS. 125 selves upon the earth. The legends connected with the vessel the deep spirit of the Middle Ages caught, although springing up on heathen ground ; then developed them' into Christian mythology, in which the idea of salvation through Christ re- ceived a poetic and sj'mbolical form. A costly stone of wonderful splendor so says the Christian myth was wrought into a chalice, and became the possession of Joseph of Arimathea. From this chalice, Christ, on the night of his betrayal, reached his body to his disciples ; into it, moreover, when the soldier, Longinus, had opened with his spear the side of the crucified one, was received that blood which flowed for the salvation of the world. This vessel, with which the saving of the world, through the sacrifice of Christ, was so closely connected, in the mediaeval legend became endowed with super- nal powers. Wherever it was kept and cherished, it was believed to afford the richest abundance of blessings. Whoever looked upon it, even though he should be sick unto death, could not die the same week. Whoever, with pure spirit, continually beheld it did not grow old, and at last passed into the great beyond without the death-struggle. This vessel the symbol of salvation in Christ was called the Holy Grail, to be the guardian and cher- ishcr of which was the highest dignity of humanity. Only the humblest, truest, and chastest were worthy of the honor, for the guardianship implied a spirit- ual chivalry of the noblest kind. There must be lowliness and purity, as well as the strongest and boldest manhood ; there must be fidelity toward 126 GERMAN LITERATURE. God and toward women, self-renunciation, tran- quil simplicity, the highest wisdom. The first chief of these Knights of the Holy Grail, or "Tempeleisen," as they were called, with a refer- ence to the Templars of the Crusades, was Titurel, a legendary king of Anjou. He was filled with religious chivahy, and had never felt earthly love for woman. To this stainless knight angels came, bringing the Grail, that it might be guarded. It was borne to Salva Terra, in Biscaya, where Titurel built upon Montsalvage, the unapproachable moun- tain, a castle for his knights and a shrine for the relic. Here it hovered unsupported in the air, and ruled the order of the Tempeleisen. At times, in a supernatural way, 'commands appeared as a gleam- ing inscription on the vessel's edge. Every Good Friday a white dove was seen flying thitherward to lay a holy wafer within the Grail, through which its power was renewed. The splendor of the temple is painted glowingly by a disciple of AYolfram Albrecht von Scharfen- berg. The surface of the mountain was of onyx, so polished that it shone like the moon. Hereon was drawn by the hand of God the plan of the castle and the temple. The temple was a vast dome, sur- rounded by chapels ; these, in turn, surmounted by towers. There were pillars of bronze, adorned with gold and pearls. There were arches of sapphire, and in the midst an emerald, whereon was enamelled a lamb, with the banner of the cross. The altar, moreover, was sapphire, a type of the annihila- tion of sin, and in its ornaments all precious THE MINNESINGERS. 127 stones were united. A diamond and a topaz pre- sented the sun and moon, so that by night the in- terior sparkled in wonderful splendor. The win- dows were of beryl and crystal, adorned with paint- ings, to assuage the burning glow ; the floor, of crystal, clear as water. Upon the temple's pinnacle was a mighty carbuncle, which beamed at night a beacon to the Knights of the Grail far into the thick wood of cypresses and cedars, into which no one could come uncalled. When at length the world grew godless, the temple was carried off bodily by angels. 1 CJ This picturesque and splendid legend, which per- haps received first its Christian form in Spain, and was afterwards developed in France and Germany, fascinated thoroughly the spirit of Wolfram . Dream- ing over it in the castle of the Wartburg, where he lived and sang for many years, protected by the landgrave of Thuringia, he blended with it the not less interesting Celtic legend of Arthur. There is no need to detail this. The greatest of the poets of to-day has made familiar as household words the names of Arthur and Guinevere, of Gawain and Galahad ; of Carleon, where gathered the court, and the wood of Broceliande, whither the knights rode in quest of adventure. The same traditions, gathered by Geoffrey of Monmouth, long ago, among the Celtic minstrels, passing the sea to inspire first the old Provencal singers, carried to many lands, and alive in many ages even until now, thrilled the 1 Bibliothek der deutschen Klassiker, 128 GERMAN LITERATURE. spirit of that knight in the solitary Thuringian fast- ness, and there he wrought toward a noble -*nd beautiful result. Wolfram's work is variously judged. Though full of grace, it is certainly of wearisome length, . and so entangled with episode and incident that to give the story, even in abstract, is far from easy. Parzival, the hero, spends his youth isolated from the world, of whose ways he learns nothing. A high yearning drives him forth to adventures. The guardianship of the Holy Grail has been destined for him ; he reaches Montsalvage and beholds its splendor, but, in ignorance, misses his destiny. Purified and exercised in long trials, in his manly ripeness he becomes capable of the sublime office, attaining at last the Grail and the highest bliss. 1 I find the Parzival characterized as a psychological J. / O epic, representing the purifying of a soul through battle with the world and itself. A mystic symbol- ism runs through it, such as belongs to the writers of the "Romantic School,'' a class to be hereafter considered, who flourished in the first years of the nineteenth century, and whom Wolfram surprisingly resembles. Taking the story of Arthur as a type of cheerful worldly life, connecting it with the story of the Grail, a symbol of spiritual life, he illustrates the parallels and contrasts of the t\\'o directions. So he sought to penetrate into the depths of the spiritual world and find mystical relations, losing himself sometimes in a haze of unintelligibility. 1 "Wackernagel. THE MINNESINGERS. 129 Yet it is right to say that he surpasses all the poets of his class in fulness and depth of thought ; that he possesses a noble moral earnestness, a fine sensi- bility toward things high and beautiful, the most ^ <_? - humane impulses. Many a page is radiant with po- etic splendor. The "Romantic School," in modern times, has accorded to him the highest praise, its founder and leader l calling him the greatest of Ger- man poets. Arriving at Eisenach from the north, I spent the night at the "Anker," and in the morning of a bright July day went out for my first view of the Wartburg. There it hung, upon the summit of the swelling hill, six hundred feet above the town, the winding path trodden by such multitudes of historic men leading to it through the forest. There, in 1817, met the high-hearted German youth, assembling from the universities to demand of the temporizing princes of the Holy Alliance the fulfil- ment of their pledges, pledges made in the great "Freedom War," to win the help of the people, and which, now that the end was gained, they had no desire to fulfil. Up this path again, three hun- dred years before, hurried the friendly captors of great Martin Luther, with pretended roughness hal- ing their prisoner to the stronghold, there to reveal themselves to him, and bolt out in his behalf a hostile world, which reached for faggots to burn him. And, in a still older time, down the hill walked, on errands of mercy, the beautiful Saint 1 Friedrich Schlegel. 9 130 GERMAN LITERATURE. Elizabeth of Hungary, loveliest of saints, perhaps all the more attractive for her naive insincerities, in which, according to the story, Heaven was her ally. There are these associations, and others as interesting, none finer, however, than this : That the court here of the Landgrave Hermann, in the Ilohcnstauffen days, more than any spot of that world perhaps, was a centre of light ; the castle hall ringing ever with the sound of minstrelsy, the portcullis ever rising to admit the wandering singer, the hospitable roof sheltering many a busy brain, elaborating lyric and romance. In my pil- grimage 1 climbed the path to the castle, magnificent to-day as ever, for its princely owner has restored it entirely in the ancient taste. I stood in the hall in which the knights banqueted, where so much of the mediaeval poetry had its first rehearsal, after the flagons were filled, the landgrave and his knights sitting attentive. On the wall was painted the strife of the Minnesingers, of which, says the le- gend, the hall was the scene, the song-battle, in which the conquered were to suffer death, the figures of the Hungarian minstrel Klingsor, of Heinrich von Oftcrdingen, and Wolfram von Esch- enbach looking from the fresco into the broad spaces that had really known their figures in life. Where was it among the nooks of the castle that Wolfram dreamed and dictated? No one can tell the precise spot, but I could be sure, as from the castle height my eye went forth over Thu- ringia, the wooded hills heaving high, now and then from the valley a flash of li O O melody and sing like the cuckoo." Again, he says, " We must not ask the pedants how one should talk German, as the asses [meaning the Papists] do ; but we must ask the mother in the house, the chil- dren on the streets, the common men in the market ; look at them in the mouth, hear how they talk, and interpret them accordingly ; then they will un- derstand that one is talking German. When Christ says l Ex abundantia cordift, os loquitur,' if I fol- low the asses, I shall translate, " From the super- fluity of the immaterial part procecdeth the utter- ance.' Tell me, is that German? What German understands talk of that sort ? What is ' superfluity of the immaterial part' to a German? That will no German say. But thus speaks the mother in the house, and the common man, ' If the heart 's full, 1 Ludwig Hausser. LUTHER IN LITERATURE. 189 the mouth '11 out with it.' That is talking proper German, which I have worked after, not altogether successfully. It has sometimes happened that we have sought after a word a fortnight, or three or four weeks, and then sometimes have not found it. In Job, Melanchthon and I worked so that we some- times scarcely got through three lines in four days ; but now that it is all ready, everybody can read and master it. He slides along as over a smooth board, where we have had to sweat and fret to get the stumbling-blocks out of the way." Luther and Melancthon once strove over a passage in the New Testament. "All I care for," said Melancthon, " is the Greek." "And all I care for," said Lu- ther, " is the German." l He often went to market just to hear how the people talked, what idioms they used in such and such circumstances, and begged his friends to impart to him all the genuine popular phrases they could get hold of, saying, " Palace and court words I cannot use." Luther's Bible would be an immortal work for the purity and genuine German stamp of the language alone, but this is scarcely its greatest value. He comprehends with an admirable certainty the vari- ous spirit of different books, rendering in simple narrative style what is historical ; giving in fiery speech, now inspiring, now crushing, the great images of the prophets ; in the Song of Solomon rendering the glow, the rapture, the grief of the 1 "Es ist mir nur urns Griechische." " Und mir urns Deutsche," versetzte Luther. 190 GERMAN LITERATURE. lover, in truly Oriental color. In the Psalms his tone is most exalted, in the Gospels it is simplicity, in the Epistles lofty greatness and strength of con- viction. If he had translated only one book with this completeness it would be wonderful ; but the whole Bible, so great a number of the most vari- ous writings, to give these in their individuality, with such unsurpassable mastery, shows the richest talent, or, rather, such a reach of intellectual great- ness as seldom belongs to man. 1 In the twenty-four volumes of the edition of the last century the most complete of the works of Luther are contained sermons, dissertations, poems, letters. He could strike all chords with equal felicity. Sometimes he is quietly instructive and genial, sometimes an enthusiastic expounder, some- times he exhibits crushing power in sarcasm and mockery. In his polemical writings his strength, as has been considered, often becomes excessive rude- ness ; in particular against Henry VIII., the Ana- baptists, and the unhappy peasants, all bounds of moderation arc exceeded. He was thoroughly bold, and a man of the people, and often threatened the princes. The fulminations are sometimes full of genius, marvels of power, with which scarcely any- thing of the kind can be compared. As an orator he was the greatest of his century, gifted by nature with all the necessary qualities of body and intellect. The effect of his addresses was always great, often irresistible. He was clear, 1 Kun. * LUTHER IN LITERATURE. 191 warm, and strong, and often full of fire ; princes and peasants lie affected equally. Here are some examples of his vigorous, homely sense : " God be praised," he says, in his preface to his Household Sermons, 1 "the Bible is open, with rich and useful books of many learned men, wherein a Christian may well rejoice. As the saying is, ' The cow goes in grass up to her belly,' so we now are richly provided with pasture of the Divine Word. God grant that we may feed gratefully, and become fat and strong from it, before a drought comes ! " How could an advocate of compulsory education put his cause better than as follows : "I hold that the gov- ernment ought to compel subjects to send their children to school. If it can compel subjects who are equal to it to carry spear and musket when the wars come, how much more can, and ought, it to compel the children to go to school ; because a worse Avar is to be fought, that with the harmful devil, who goes around sucking at cities and king- doms until he draws out all the good people and leaves a mere worthless shell behind, with which, the yolk being gone, he can fool as much as he chooses." Here is his idea of the proper function of \voman : ""Women are adorned and graced with God's blessing and maternal honor, and we are all conceived, born, nourished, and brought up by them. I myself often feel great pleasure and en- tertainment when I see how women are adapted to the care of children. How skilfully do even little. 1 Hauspostille. 192 GERMAN LITERATURE. girls manage when they carry babies ! How moth- ers sport, with delicate, comforting gestures and movements, when they quiet a weeping child or lay it in the cradle ! Let a man undertake that now and he will be like a camel trying to dance." Never was given better doctrine for preacher or speaker of any kind than the following, from his Table-Talk, a collection of his sayings, made late in life, by men who were with him daily : " Cursed are all preach- ers that aim at high and hard things, neglecting the saving health of the poor, unlearned people, to seek their own honor ! When I speak, I sink myself deep down. I regard neither doctors nor magis- trates, but I have an eye to the multitude of children and servants. A true and godly preacher should talk for the simple sort, like a mother that stills her child, dandling it, giving it milk from her breast, and not needing malmsey or muscadine for it." Luther is never so lovable as when he writes for his intimate friends, and his wife and children. Here is the sweet letter to his little son, which, well- known as it is, may well be read again and again for its artless charm : "Grace and peace in Christ, my dear little son! I love to sec that you are learning well, and pray dil- igently. Go on in that way, my little boy. When I come home, I will bring you a pretty present. I know a pretty, cheerful garden. Many children go into it ; they have little golden coats on, and pick beautiful apples under the trees, and pears, and cher- ries, and plums; they sin;>(), that Gustavus Adolphus stepped upon the shore of North Germany, kneeling at once among his followers to pray for the blessing THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 213 of God upon his undertaking. His coffers were well filled with the gold of France, his ranks with Swedish manhood, and he became dangerous at once. Never was the foot of conqueror more speedy ; never was the acclaim fuller upon the progress of a de- liverer than that which at length went up for him. He smote the outposts, then Tilly, now sole cham- pion, at Leipsic, with utter overthrow. He was at once in the centre of Germany ; then, as if winged, in the South. "With another dart, the Rhine was passed, and the great imperial fortresses toppled and fell like a row of child's blocks. Tilly made one more effort, at the Lech, in Bavaria ; but his army fled, and he was carried dying from the field. Great was the tumult at the court of the emperor. Would injured Wallenstein come forth from the splendor of his palace, or was there no further help ? Humbly they approached him, withdrawn and ec- centric, and forth at once he came. His demand at once acceded to was that he was to be supreme in the host he should raise ; not even the emperor was to set foot within it, or prescribe to him a course. As he stepped forth there was no military power ; before the Swedes the armies had become fugitive. In a day, as it were, he became mighty. As the children of Hamelin followed the pied piper, so the recruiting; drums of the somewhat fantastic hero had o a spell to summon, hurrying from every corner of Europe, the wild spirits that swarm in times of disor- der. Gustavus turned to crush him ; no less prompt than the Swedo, "Wallenstein mot him face to face. At Nuremberg he held the fuming king in durance, 214 GERMAN LITERATURE. starving him slowly, refusing to draw out upon the field. Gustavus desperate hurled his force upon the impregnable lines of Wallenstein ; the latter kept rigidly to the defensive, satisfied thus far to repel, and not destroy. Gustavus withdrew, the un- conquered foe in his rear. Wallenstein marched suddenly northward, leaving his entrenchments ; Gustavus was instantly upon his track, seeking his opportunity. The former reaches Leipsig, the lat- ter Naumburg ; between the two lies the little Saxon village of Liitzen, and here let us take a closer look. I reached Leipsic on a day of doubtful weather, and went soon to the old tower of the Pleissenburg, the citadel of the town, and looked out from the summit into the wide plains. The castellan went with me to the top, and between the showers pointed out to me the memorable spots. Right here have taken place an astonishing number of the great bat- tles of the world. The field of Jena, where the French shattered the Prussian power in 1806, is not so far away that the cannon-thunder from there might not have been heard at Leipsic ; and Ross- bach perhaps Frederick's most memorable field where Prussia shattered France in 1757, is hardly out of sight. Ten miles away, again, is the village of Gross Gurschen, where, in the spring of 1813, Napoleon smote the Russians and Prussians, and did something to win back the prestige lost during the Russian campaign. All about the city, and within it, took place, in the fall of 181,3, the mighty "battle of the nations," in which seven hundred thousand THE THIRTY YEARS* WAR. 215 combatants took part. The environing fields where this was fought lay all in the deepest peace as I looked down upon them ; in the distance the rain- bows among the mist ; near at hand the broad levels, green and dripping with the abundant moisture. The grain stood everywhere, the country stretching, smooth and unbroken almost as natural prairie, to the verge of the horizon. A straight line of pop- lars or fruit-trees here and there marked a high- road ; now and then there was a clump of wood, or the compact roofs and steeple of a village. I could see the monument, surmounted by a cocked hat, where Napoleon stood on the decisive day, while Macdonald, Augereau and Regnier fought in front of him, outnumbered two to one ; and the castellan told how the cannonade (from, some say, two thou- sand pieces) sounded into his childish ears, coming muffled, as he sat shut up with his frightened mother in the city, his chin moving, as he represented the booming, like a man's whose teeth chatter with cold. Following the old man's pointing finger again, I saw, just beyond the city's suburbs, the steeple and windmill of Breitenfeld, where, in the Thirty Years' War, the Swede, Torstenson a cripple, who was carried about in a litter, and yet one of the most vigorous of commanders - defeated the army of the Austrian kaiser ; and where a few years before, on the same ground, fierce old Tilly first suffered de- feat, and Gustavus Adolphus fir.-t made his great- ness felt. To this hour, in old New England fami- lies, any piece of especial deviltry is "like old 216 GERMAN LITERATURE. Tilly ; ' ' and probably the phrase comes clear from the Puritans of 1631, who, like the rest of the Prot- estant world, were made to stand aghast by the sack of Magdeburg. But there is pathos as well as horror in the story of the unrelenting old tiger. He was brave and faithful and honest as he was cruel, and, \\\ spite of all his plundering, died poor. At Dresden you may see his baton, the pearl and gilding as tarnished as its former possessor's fame. A singular figure he must have been ; generally in a Spanish doublet of bright green satin, with slashed sleeves ; on his head a little cocked hat, from which a red ostrich feather hung down his back ; under this a long nose, withered cheeks, and a heavy white mustache, for he was past seventy. But it was more thrilling to me even than Breitenfeld, when, looking westward, I saw dimly through the mist the little steeple of Llitzen, ten miles distant, where Gustavus Adolphus fell. Leaving the tower of the Pleissenburg, I took the train to Markranstatt, a village in the suburbs, from which it was my plan to walk the league to Liitzen in the long summer twilight, crossing the battle- field on the way. The high-road runs as it did two hundred years ago, broad, white, and smooth. That evening it had been washed clean by the rain, and cherry-trees, full of ripening fruit, stood in fullest freshness on either hand. On the far-extend- ing fields each side the grain stood high, barley, wheat, rye, and oats rolled out in parallel strips. It was after sunset when the Liitzen " Eilwagcn " went past with its passengers ; the pedestrians disap- THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR, 217 peared one after another, and soon I was the solitary footman. The dusk kept deepening as I sauntered forward, my mind filled with thoughts of the strug- gle whose scene I was soon to behold. It was a dark day in November, 1632, when a heavy triple boom of cannon-thunder from Weissenfels, ten miles westward, apprised Wallenstein, lying at Leipsic, that the Austrian general at that outpost had caught sight of the advancing Swedes. Defoe, in the little- known " Memoirs of a Cavalier," has so photographed this stormy time that his story was long believed to come from an eye-witness. His hero then a cap- tive with Wallenstein in Leipsic says : "We that were prisoners fancied the imperial soldiers went unwillingly out, for the very name of the king of Sweden was become terrible to them. Rugged, surly fellows they were," he declared. "Their faces had an air of hardy courage, mangled with wounds and scars ; their armor showed the bruises of musket-bullets and the rust of the winter storms. I observed of them their clothes were always dirty, but their arms were clean and bright ; they were used to camp in the open fields and sleep in the frosts and rain ; their horses were strong and hardy, like themselves, and well taught their exercises." It is not hard to draw a picture of Gustavus' army as it advanced. It was a mixed host of twenty thousand. The best warriors were Swedes, men yellow-haired and florid, marching with the vigor of troops used to success and confident in their leader ; not a straggler, not a plunderer. They wore, some suits of leather, others of cloth. They carried pikes 2 18 GERMAN LITERATURE. or flint-lock muskets. One regiment was in buff, and so known as the yellow regiment ; others were in blue ; others in white. There was powerful cav- alry, the riders half-way between the steel-covered knight of former warfare and the modern horseman. The cannon (they were the first "field-batteries") were, singularly enough, composed of cylinders of iron, cast thin for lightness, then wound round tightly with rope, from breech to muzzle, and cov- ered at last with boiled leather. There were Ger- mans as well as Swedes, and among these rode as leader a young man of twenty-eight, who, however, for ten years already had been a warrior of fame, and was destined to be yet more famous. His portrait too hangs by that of his teacher in war and friend Gustavus at Coburg, the features most hand- some, and a profusion of curling brown hair falling upon the shoulders. His rusted sword too, with that of the king, hangs upon a pillar in the Wart- burg, by the side of the pulpit from which Luther used to preach. It was Duke Bernhard, of Saxe- Wcimar. There were also whole troops of English and Scotch, for the fame of the king drew recruits from every Protestant land, who no doubt, some- times among psalms, hummed the quaint recruiting- song, which antiquaries toll us had a great popu- larity at the period, and did much to stimulate en- listment : German!, Suedden, Denmark are smoking With a crew of brave lads, others provoking. Up, lads ! up, lads! up and advance. For honor is not gotten by a cringe or a dance. FEE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 619 Charge, lads ! fall in around, Till Caesar shall give ground! Hark! hark! our trumpets sound, Tan! ta-ra-ra! Vivat Gustavus Adolphus ! we cry, Here we shall either win honor or dy. The kino: himself had a wide-brimmed hat, in O which he sometimes wore a feather of green, and a suit made in great part from buff leather, with boots of wide, slouching tops. His nobles, Horn, Bauier, Torstenson famous then and afterwards, martial in aspect, but not splendid rode beside him. As he swept along the column, the blue-eyed youths from Smaland and Gothland, and the darker Finns, grave and self-willed, at that time his subjects,, looked at him with love and pride, and marched firmly along the muddy road, where they sank some- times to the knee. Here is a bit of graphic prose from the hand that gave us "Robinson Crusoe," that will let us into what had just before been the life of this army. Gustavus is about to cross the Lech, where Tilly receives his death-wound : " The king resolved to go and view the situation of the enemy. His majesty went out the second of April, with a strong party of horse, which I had the honor to command ; we marched as near as we could to the banks of the river, not to be too much exposed to the enemy's cannon, and having gained a little height, where the whole course of the river might be seen, the king halted and commanded to draw up. The king alighted, and, calling me to him, examined every reach and turning of the river 220 GERMAN LITERATURE. by his glass ; but finding the river run a long and almost straight course, he could find no place which he liked; but at last, turning him??lf north, and looking down the stream, he found the river, fetch- ing a long reach, double short upon itself, making a round and very narrow point. ' There's a point will do our business,' says the king, * and if the ground be good, I '11 pass there ; let Tilly do his worst.' " He immediately ordered a small party of horse to view the ground, and to bring him word particu- larly how high the bank was on each side and at the point. 'And he shall have fifty dollars,' says the king, ' that will bring me word how deep the water is.' I asked his majesty leave to let me go, which he would by no means allow of; but as the party was drawing out, a sergeant of dragoons told the king, if he pleased to let him go disguised as a boor, he would bring him an account of every- thing he desired. The king liked the notion well enough, and the fellow, being very well acquainted with the country, puts on a ploughman's habit and went away immediately, with a long pole upon his shoulder ; the horse lay all this while in the woods, and the king stood, undiscorned by the enemy, on the little hill aforesaid. The dragoon, with his long pole, comes boldly down to the bank of the river, and calling to the sentinels which Tilly had placed on the other bank, talked with them ; asked them if they could not help him over the river, and pre- tended he wanted to come to them. At last, being come to the point where, as I said, the river makes THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 221 a short turn, he stands parleying with them a great while, and sometimes pretending to wade over, he puts his long pole into the water ; then, finding it pretty shallow, he pulls off his hose and goes in, still thrusting in his pole before him, till, being gotten up to his middle, he could reach be- yond him, where it was too deep ; and so, shaking his head, comes back again. The soldiers on the other side, laughing at him, asked him if he could swim. He said no. 'Why, you fool, you,' says one of the sentinels, ' the channel of the river is twenty feet deep.' ' How do you know that? ' says the dragoon. ' Why, our engineer,' says he, 'meas- ured it yesterday.' This was what he wanted, but, not yet fully satisfied, 'Ay, but,' says he, 'maybe it may not be very broad, and if one of you would wade in to meet me till I could reach you with my pole, I'd give him half a ducat to pull me over.' The innocent way of his discourse so deluded the soldiers that one of them immediately strips and goes in up to the shoulders, and our dragoon goes in on this side to meet him ; but the stream took the other soldier away, and he, being a good swim- mer, came swimming over to this side. The dra- goon was then in a great deal of pain for fear of being discovered, and was once going to kill the fel- low and make off; but at last, resolved to carry on the humor, and having entertained the fellow with a tale of a tub, about the Swedes stealing his oats, the fellow, being cold, wanted to be gone ; and as he was willing to be rid of him, pretended to be very sorry he could not get over the river, and so makes off. 222 GERMAN LITERATURE. " By this, however, he learned both the depth and breadth of the channel, the bottom and nature of both shores, and everything the king wanted to knoAv. We could see him from the hill by our glasses very plain, and could see the soldier naked Avith him. Says the king, ' He will certainly be dis- covered and knocked on the head from the other side ; he is a fool,' says the king, * if he does not kill the fclloAV and run off;' but when the dragoon told his tale, the king was extremely well satisfied Avith him, gave him one hundred dollars, and made him a quartermaster to a troop of cuirassiers." This had taken place in April. It was noAv No- vember, and the army, the cool quartermaster no doubt, with his troop of cuirassiers unless the poor fellow was in the number of those who laid doAvn their lives at Nuremberg wa pressing on to meet a foe that had long eluded them. By nightfall that fifth of November the SAvedcs were at Liitzen ; and in the fields just beyond, the " rugged, surly fellows " of the host of Wallenstein lay waiting, the skirmishers, who had been watch- ing the Protestant march, retiring upon the main body. Gustavus led his army south of the A'illage in a circuit, until he had gained its eastern end, (IraAvinj? it un at last in two lines a few yards south O / of the high-road. In the centre stood the foot, upon which perhaps the king especially relied ; to the left were the Germans, under their Duke Bern- hard ; to the right he rode himself, at the head of the Swedish horse. In the rear Avas a reserve, com- manded by a Scotchman ; the artillery were placed THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 223 along the whole front. On the side of the imperial- ists, but a few rods removed beyond the road, in the darkness, there was sufficient vigilance. Wal- lenstein had made the ditches broader that lined both sides of the road, and filled them with skir- mishers. In the centre of his line, just north of the high-road, a battery of large guns was placed, the infantry close behind in large brigades. Op- posite Duke Bernhard, near a windmill, was a larger battery. At the other end of his line were cavalry, and a quantity of servants and camp-followers, whom Wallenstein compelled to arm and stand in the lines, that the Swedes might be deceived as to his strength. As Gustavus had Horn and Banier, so Wallenstein had as lieutenants, Piccolomini and Pappenheim ; though the latter had been despatched with a portion of the army on an expedition. Gus- tavus' army numbered twenty thousand; that of Wallenstein was at first less, and couriers were des- patched to recall Pappenheim, riding through the night as if for life. " The enemy is marching hith- erward," wrote Wallenstein. " Break up instantly with every man and gun, so as to arrive here early in the morning. P. S. He is already at the pass and hollow road." One may still see this note in the archives at Vienna, stained with the blood of Pappenheim, who had it on him when he received his mortal wound. The poets have filled the shadows of that night before the battle with ro- mance. The silent Wallenstein had consulted the stars before deciding to engage, and been assured by his astrologer that the planets threatened de- 224 GERMAN LITERATURE. struction to Gustavus in November. As he slept on the field, in the midst of the desultory firing of the outposts, he was visited by mysterious dreams. When the late daAvn came, the two armies lay wet and chilled, shrouded in a mist that was loath to rise ; and it was not until eleven in the forenoon that it was clear enough for the Swedes to see the imperialist position. Then at length the king, a head taller than those of his retinue, mounted his superb white charger, a creature of superior size and beauty, said to have been thrown in his way by his enemies, that he might become a more con- spicuous mark, and rode from troop to troop, clad simply in his suit of buff leather. I saw at Dresden the armor he left behind at Weissenfels, and which, had he worn it, might have saved his life. Plates of steel, brown in hue, the head-piece and corselet made to fit an ample brow and breast ; but these the king, too intrepidly, threw aside. He alighted, knelt before his whole army, who also knelt, and, with uncovered head, prayed. 1 Then, accompanied stormily by the drums and trumpets of all the regi- ments, the thousands sang the great psalm of Luther, "Bin* feste Burg ist unser Gott," the powerful tones of the king ringing highest. Was it ever more memorably sung? Then followed a hymn which the king himself had written, "Fear not, little flock." Here is a verse of it, as given by Gfrorer : 1 According to Laurent, his exclamation on landing upon the short* of Germany was, ' La priere aide a, combattre ; bien prier, c'est 4 moiti6 vaincre." THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 225 Verzage nicht, du Hauflein klein! Obschon die Feinde "Willens sein Dich ganzlich zu zerspalten; Gott wird durch einen Gideon Den er wohl weiss, dir helfen schon, Dich und sein Wort erhalten. 1 Most simple and manly it was in its piety. The south wind then blowing carried the thunder of the soldiers' voices to the hostile lines. The hymn died away ; the voices of the priests too, who had been celebrating mass in the other host, became silent. Then came the shouts of the Swedish cap- tains commanding the assault. The cannon on both sides opened with fury, and over the stubble of the bare field, with pike and musket, the foot sprang forward. To the ditch it was only a few steps, and there the enemy met them with obstinacy. The king sprang from his horse, when the vigor of the attack appeared for a moment to slacken, caught a partisan from the hand of a soldier, and went himself to the front, chiding them as he hurried through their ranks, and bidding them " stand firm 1 at least some minutes longer, and have the curiosity to see your master die in the manner he ought, and the manner he chooses." At length the enemy were dislodged ; the host of men, pursuers and pur- 1 Fear not, O little flock! although Against thoe burst the furious foe, Thee quite to sunder aiming; For God shall, through some Gideon "Whom He well knows, with succor run, Thee and His word maintaining. Harte : Life of Gustuvus. 15 226 HERMAN LITERATURE. sued, streamed across the high-road into the farther field. The dark host of Piecolomini's cuirassiers charged toward them. " Grapple with these black fellows ! " cried the king to the colonel of the Fin- land horse. There was clash and tumult ; in an- other moment the smoking battery at Wallenstein's centre was in Swedish hands, and presently three of the brigades of infantry were in confusion. Wallenstein himself here came riding forward, on the red steed which he mounted as the fight became hot. His usual dress in the field which he prob- ably wore on this day was a coat of elk-skin, a red scarf, a richly-embroidered cloak of scarlet, a gray hat with red feathers, and about his neck the order of the Golden Fleece. Behind him galloped a body of chosen horse, who obeyed him as if he had been a demi-god. Wallenstein 's dress was again and again shot through. Step by step the Swedes were forced backward, the cannon recaptured. The battle be- came a wild iiii-Uc, where the intermingled combat- ants fought, for the most part, with pike and musket-butt, until at length the assailants were driven beyond the road once more, and stood at last a broken company, on the ground from which they had advanced. Liitzen, close bv, was now in flames, and Bernhard's (Jermans were sorely har- assed by the lire of the guns from the, windmill. The king, however, charging at the head of the Swedish 1 horse, threw into contusion the imperialist left : then, hearing of Bernhard's danger and the repulse of the centre, he set out on the gallop to THE THIRTY FEARS' WAR. 227 stay the reverse. His horse was powerful. He leaped the ditches at the roadside, the regiment of Smalanders galloping after him. His pace, how- ever, was so rapid that he left them behind, and only one or two of his retinue could keep up with him. He was near-sighted, and in his ardor went too near the enemy's line. " That must be one of their leaders," said an imperialist corporal; "fire upon him." There was shooting at close quarters, and a ball pierced the king's arm. Faint with pain, he reeled a little in the saddle. " The king is bleeding ! the king is bleeding ! ' ' cried the ap- proaching dragoons. Leaning upon the duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, Gustavus besought him to get him to one side. They avoided the press by a little detour, which, however, carried them again too near the enemy. There was further firing ; the pallid and tottering king gasped out, " My God ! my God ! " and fell from his horse, pierced through and through. His foot hung in the stirrup, and his horse, like- wise wounded, dragged him farther among the enemy, where he was again shot, exclaiming, as he gave up the ghost, "My God! my God! Alas, my poor queen!" A murderous fight took place over his body as he lay. Now the Croats were in possession, swarthy ruffians, such as one sees still in Austrian uniforms in the towns along the Danube, as he goes toward Vienna. Now the Swedes had the advantage, only to be driven off again, until the heap of bodies grew high above the king, and neither friend nor foe knew longer where he lay. The body had been stripped, how- 228 GERMAN LITERATURE. ever, and the doublet, pierced with bullet-holes and stained with blood, is still shown at Vienna. A turquoise of extraordinary size, which he wore attached to a chain, perhaps as a talisman, one of the crown jewels of Sweden, has never been re- covered. The white steed, covered with blood, and mad with his wounds, galloping along the line, gave the army the first intimation that misfortune had befallen the king. There was some talk of retreat, but Duke Bernhard, himself wounded in the arm, rode to the front. In the presence of the army for the moment appalled he ran through and through with his sword the commander of the Smalanders, who had guarded the king too neg- ligently. The Swedes, recovering heart in a moment, before the decision of the new leader, stormed madly forward ; the voice of the king's blood seemed to cry to them from the ground ; and German and Scot, Hollander and Englishman, were not far behind. Over the road again they poured in a torrent ; the battery, already taken and re- taken, smutched and heated with incessant dis- charge, was again in their hands. The guns at the windwill were captured ; troop after troop, put utterly to rout, fled toward Leipsic. In vain Pic- colomini exposed himself, until seven horses were killed under him, and lie was wet with his own blood. The spell of Wallenstein himself seemed broken. Wierd as a demon, he moved in the tumult, invulnerable to bullet and pike-thrust, as if he really were a shade, or smeared with the oint- ment of hell, which many believed he had at com- THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 229 mand. The powder-wagons in the rear roared into the air in a -sudden explosion, raining balls and bursting bombs in every direction. All was on the brink of utter rout, when, with galloping hoofs and corselets reflecting the late afternoon light, the horse of Pappenheim six fierce, fresh regiments rushed upon the field ; their leader rode ahead, a most impetuous chieftain, whose brow it was said, when he was on fire with battle, bore in deep crimson the mark of two sabres crossed. You may see at Dresden the baton which he carried as field-marshal; and now, no doubt, while the fighting sabres were flaming on his forehead, pointed forward to mark the path for his troopers. The Swedes were outnumbered and exhausted by their successes, but a fight of utter recklessness went for- ward. The ghost of the dead king seemed to hover in the battle-smoke. With a sort of demon gran- deur, Wallenstein, in his red attire, towered in the tumult, with an eye that burned upon the fray with as his host had some reason to think a supernatural flame. His retinue were all shot down ; a cannon- ball tore the spur from his heel ; several musket- balls were found to have lodged in the folds of his dress. It was a confusion of blood, shrieks, prayers, curses. " It was wonderful to see how (among the Swedes) the whole yellow regiment, after half an hour, in the same beautiful order in which it had stood living, lay dead by its arms," l and the Goth- land and Smaland blues had fought also to an exter- 1 Khevenhiiller. 230 GERMAN LITERATURE. mination as utter. The Swedes were driven back to their position of the morning. As -the twilight, however, was giving way to darkness, they advanced again, and fought until in the November black- ness friend could no longer be told from foe. Wallenstein, like a baffled goblin, withdrew silently in the gloom, without standards, without artillery, the soldiers almost without arms, bearing with him Pappenhcim, who had saved him, at the last gasp, from a mortal wound. In the darkness the Swed- ish Colonel Oehm hoard a voice commanding him to " follow to Lcipsic." It was a messenger from Wallenstein, who mistook his regiment for Hoff- kirk's imperialists ; and then first the Swedes knew that the foe had yielded. 1 One-fourth of all en- gaged had been slain outright ; and as to wounded, in the host of Wallenstein scarcely a man was un- hurt. The Swedes encamped close upon the field. They hunted with lanterns among the corpses, in the low-hanging gloom, until at length they found the king, face downward, close by a great stone, naked, gashed, trampled. The great stone on the plain of Liitzen, long before the time of the buttle, had had a notoriety, perhaps been an object of some rever- ence. It is a solitary bowlder, brought hither by natural forces, or perhaps by human hands, to lie here alone, whence and for what, no man can say. But since that day, mention of t lie " Schwedenstcin" comes in again and again in historv and poetry, coupled with solemn lamenting, until, through asso- 1 Harta. THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 231 elation, the words, to a German ear, have come to have almost the sound of moaning. The king's corpse was carried, by torch-light, accompanied by a little retinue of troopers, in an ammunition-wagon, to a village in the rear of the Swedish line, where it was laid before the altar of the little church. The village school-master tells the story; how a simple service took place, conducted by himself and a trooper yet covered with the dust and sweat of bat- tle ; then how, while the body lay at length on a table in a peasant's house, he made a plain coffin, in which the hero was borne to his weeping queen at Weissenfels. 1 I went alone over the plain of Liitzon, the twi- light deepening at every step, bearing in my mind the story I have told. The rattle of the wheels from the receding Eilwagen had long been hushed ; there was no footfall on the highway but my own. Between the rows of trees at length I saw dimly the buildings of Liitzen, and knew I had reached the spot. I waited in the road until the night had wholly set in. The moon, behind a thin cloud, gave n ghostly light ; there was now and then a light- ning flash in the horizon, and a sullen roll of thun- der, like the sound of distant cannon. I looked out upon the fields to the north, showing faint and mys- terious, those in which Wallenstein had lain when in the black darkness he dreamed, or awoke to deal with charms and incantations : whence on the mor- row, as the mist cleared, he looked across and be- 1 Gfrorer. 232 GERMAN LITERATURE. held the bareheaded Swedes upon their knees. There it was that he rode, stern and calm, with his invulnerable breast. I was now on the spot where the fight had been fiercest, on the broad level of the hirh-road, alone where those thousands had strug- o * o gled. I tried to call up a vision of the SAvarming Norsemen, yellow-haired and vigorous, with frames and courage exercised in the woods and fiords that had nursed the sea-kings before them. It must have been just here that the yellow regiment lay dead, all ranked as they stood ; and just here the blues. It was here that the cannon-wheels fur- rowed the sod ; and it was yonder that Pappen- heim burst in with his sweating horses and remorse- less sabres. I left the road and went down into the field to the south, in a spot where the grain had been reaped, and stood where the Protestant line stood when their hearts heaved as they prayed with the king, and shook the air with their manly chanting. Here it must have been that he flunaf himself from his O horse, and went forward, pike in hand, when the foot hesitated ; and now at length I came to the great stone at the foot of which they found the king's body. It rose in the plain, two feet or so above the soil, gray, indistinct under the moon, dumb, but eloquent. I thought of the stain that had lain among the lichens there ; the cold mist charged heavily with the sulphurous reek of the combat ; the S\vedes, weeping and wounded, search- ing wearily among the corpses with their lanterns ; then, at last, throwing their arms, stiff with smiting, THE THIRTY TEARS' WAR. 233 about their golden hero, 1 stretched, tall and noble, just in front. It was all wild and solemn as a scene in Ossian, the solitude, the low thunder, the dimness of the night, the sad moan of the wind, the lightning like the red blade of a war-god suddenly brandished. The moon, cold and pale, sinking toward the west, fell back in a faint, blue reflection from a little pool among the furrows, as if the great turquoise lay there that is said to have vanished from the earth with the king's life. It was a night for the phantoms to ap- pear and fight the battle over again. It was late when I went on, at last, into the deserted street of the little village. At the inn my mind was too full for quiet sleep ; if my eyes closed, 'twas to dream of smoking torches, in the hands of men covered with dust and blood, and shining on the king's body ; of the clatter of hammers driving coffin-nails ; and of Wallenstein, red and spectral, like the wild huntsman, swallowed up in the gloom and storm of the dismal night. If the ghosts of great men revisit the spots mem- orable to them during their earthly strivings, tower- 1112: shades they are that encounter one another on O that Liitzen high-road. Just here it was that Charles XII., that iron-sided Swede, pitched his camp when Northern Europe was his foot-ball. Here again, in 1757, marched an army in cocked hats, high black gaiters coming to the knees, and hair gathered in queues. With the vanguard rode a man straight 1 The Italians called him "Re d'Oro," from the color of his hair. 234 GERMAN LITERATURE. and stiff, with a steely eye, in which the light glit- tered cold and blue as on a bayonet. Nothing marked him as a leader but the star on his breast. It was Frederick the Great, about to deploy upon the field of Rossbach. Still again, in May, 1813, here was marching a column of Frenchmen, a slender line, stretching several leagues. It was struck sud- denly on the flank by the Russians and Prussians, and nearly cut in two. Thirteen thousand French died to prevent it ; for the long column, leaving the high-road, swept down into the fields toward the danger, and grappled with it long and doubtfully. The Imperial Guard had bivouacked at the great stone of Llitzen ; and it was precisely there that Napoleon, flat on his belly, studying a map, rose to listen to the sudden cannonade to the right ; then, presently after, his genius working at its brightest, galloped off into the fire. If such shades ever walk, they may well walk there. If precedence is given to him that was noblest, they will all yield to the lofty Swede who prayed as he fought. Close by the earth-shaking Corsican will move the wi/ard Bohemian, whose sword was Avielded as well, cut as keenly, swept as far, and might have completed the parallel by becoming also an imperial sceptre, but for the intervention of the assassin. In the careers of both Gustavus and Wall en stein, the battle of Liit/en is the crisis. To one it brought death ; to the other the fulness of fame and power. Moreover, in the battle of Liit/en we may see the whole of the Thirty Years' War. In Got he's theory of the metamorphosis of plants, we are taught that THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR, 235 every part of the plant is a repetition of one type, and that is the leaf. Bark and bough, stamen, pis- til, petal, are but modified leaves, the plant through- out and during its whole existence being made up of nothing else. By a very dismal morphology, such a leaf is Llitzen ; modify it and repeat it over and over again, and you have the Thirty Years' War. Now it was the horrible sack of a city, now the hurling from windows of obnoxious members in a parliamentary assembly, now some outburst of gloomiest fanaticism, anon an exhibition of noble piety and sacrifice. But Liitzen is the type of it all. The same persistence, the same awful hatred, the waste, the bloodshed, the hymns, the prayers, the blasphemies, raging forward from first to last during those terrible years, until the land was well-nigh consumed. It is worth while, then, to consider the event, as has been done, quite narrowly. Liitzen was scarcely more than a drawn battle ; the general- ship of Wallenstein was perhaps fully equal to that of Gustavus. Throughout the first part of the ac- tion the duke hold the king in check with perhaps scarcely more than half his number. When dark- ness came, 'it can hardly be said that the advan- tage was with the Protestants. Wallenstein indeed withdrew without artillery and standards, but the Swedes were too crippled to stir in pursuit, and the loss of the king was greater than that of a dozen armies. Oxenstiern, however, the great chan- cellor of Sweden, remained for the cabinet ; Bern- hard, Horn, Banier, and Torstenson for the field, pupils of the king, who did honor to their master. The end was not vet. 236 GERMAN LITERATURE. Wallenstein withdrew from Leipsic, making princely gifts to the captains and corps who had done well in the battle, and sternly punishing such as had been dilatory. During the winter he recruited and reformed his army, and in the spring, when he opened his last campaign, this was his pomp, as de- scribed by an eye-witness: "The train announced the man who, in power and splendor, vied even with the emperor himself. The procession consisted of fourteen carriages, each drawn by six horses ; twenty cavaliers of rank attended on Wallenstein' s own person, and a hundred and twenty liveried servants followed in the suite. All the court attendants were dressed in new scarlet and blue uniforms ; and ten trumpeters, sounding their silver-gilt trumpets,, opened the way. All the baggage-wagons were cov- ered with gilt leather ; the greatest order prevailed in the establishment, and every person, knew exactly what was his place and what were his duties. The duke himself was dressed in a horseman's buff coat ; and the entire scene resembled more a victor's tri- umph than the march of a lately baffled com- mander." A mystery hangs over the short remnant of Wal- lenstein's life which has never been penetrated. He was omnipotent in his army, trusted to the full by the emperor ; now that Gustavus was gone, opposed by no leader who could match him. Henceforth, however, his career has no glory ; his force gives way to supineness and vacillation. It was not decay of power; what was it? He was a puzzle even to the ablest and best-informed of his contemporaries. Oxenstiern declared that the motives of Wallenstein THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 237 were too mysterious for him to penetrate. He spared the Protestant Saxons ; played fast and loose in negotiations with the Swedes ; bore himself haughtily toward the imperial court, until the latter resolved upon his downfall. By secret machinations his host was taken from him ; and at length, while at Eger, a fortress on the frontier between Bavaria and Bohemia, in February, 1634, the end came. Through the agency of Colonel Buttler, an Irish mercenary, his confidants, Illo and Terzky, were slain at a banquet. A few moments later the ruf- fians burst into the solitary room where Wallenstein brooded, as usual, by himself, over his purposes. He deigned to utter no word of expostulation ; stand- ing in cold dignity, with arms extended, he received the halberd-thrust. He passed away, his life all un- explained, as incomprehensible as the sphinx. Wallenstein was dead. To excuse the deed, the imperial court declared that he had meditated trea- son ; that his purpose had been to lead his army over to the enemy, and, at the head of both, seize upon the sovereignty. This view is the one which has been generally entertained, many Protestant authorities believing that, in the reconstituted em- pire, he meant to exercise a tolerant rule, giving to all the blessings of peace. Forster, a writer of our own century, who had access to documents hereto- fore kept secret at Vienna, declared that he medi- tated no treason, but was sacrificed by the court simply because he had sickened of war, and baffled the ruthless policy which the court prescribed. Hurter, on the other hand, who writes in the in- 238 GERMAN LITERATURE. terest of the Catholics and the court of Austria, has drawn his character in the darkest colors, represent- ing him as the evil demon of Germany. 1 The first modern authority in historical investigation, Von Ranke, who has lately treated the subject, cannot he definite, and is forced to leave many important points undecided. "If one," he declares, "reads Forster and Hurter, he sees that we stand to-day, although somewhat better instructed, just as at first. What one maintains, the other denies." One is glad to think there is reason for consider- ing Friedland, at the last, at any rate in some ways noble as well as able. He was nursed in the warfare of his time, the instrument of cruelties which we can hardly endure to hear of. Perhaps he tried to mitigate the horrors of the warfare, dying at length in an effort to establish peace and a tolerance that was far before his time. I find him called the great- est figure of his time, and so set above Gustavus. It was indeed the case that the king was born abso- lute monarch of a race of brave men ; Wallenstein began in the ranks, or scarcely above, the son of a man poor and obscure. Weighted though he was, he confronted the king, at the height of his fame, as powerful as he. Such was his might that men said he had bought it of the devil, and paid for it with his own soul. It is not strange that romantic nat- ures have become absorbed in him, and that painters and poets have considered him an attractive sub- ject. Schiller has founded upon his story a tragedy Die Geschichto Wiillensteins. THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 239 which has been declared the greatest drama since the time of Shakespeare. 1 In a future chapter the trilogy of ' ' Wallenstein ' ' will be considered with some care. In the " Neue Pinacothek," at Munich, a picture that attracts the attention of all is the "'Death of Wallenstein." With outstretched arms, as he fell, lies the murdered leader, while over him stands his astrologer and bosom companion, Seni, whose pas- sionless face seems to say that it was fixed by fate, and that he has read it all beforehand in the courses of the stars. Still more powerful is another picture, to be seen elsewhere, in which Friedland is repre- sented as just entering the fortress of Eger on the eve of his assassination. It is by the artist Piloty, who has embodied in a wonderful manner in his work the tragical gloom of his hero's character and career. The circumstances are those of a magnifi- cent military cavalcade, and yet in some indescrib- able way they suggest the terrible. In the fore- ground is a church-yard, past which the procession is moving. From a yawning, half-finished grave the grave-digger seems to beckon to Wallenstein, sitting in his litter, with anxious face resting upon his hand. Through the sky, darkened by clouds, the ravens swoop, filling the air, as it were, with gloomy boding. The troopers who precede the litter in which the duke is borne, their backs only seen, seem indescrib- ably to betoken the averted favor of the world ; while the figure of Buttler, riding behind, though, 1 De Quincey. 240 GERMAN LITERATURE. if looked at, only that of a stern soldier of the pe- riod, is yet so rigid, so ominously dark in its fea- tures, that it irresistibly suggests an avenging fate. The leaders were gone, but the war raged for- ward. What became of the magnificent Germany of the old 'time, which Karl the Great had founded, which the Hohenstauffen had loved and ruled, and which had waxed gloriously forward until it was everywhere dotted with free cities among the well- tilled leagues ? From the rich river valleys up into the hills had swept the vineyards and corn-fields, and past them poured the great convoys of the mer- chants from foreign lands ; in the many-hued society had stood in full ranks the nobles, the sturdy burghers, the millions of the peasantry. Thirty years of devastation and the black forests were growing over it once more, from which a thousand years before it had been redeemed ; no longer the song of the laborers, but the bark of the wolves which had come back to tenant the new-made desert ; in place of towers and homes, ash-heaps that were full of skeletons ! That suit of armor at Dresden, left behind in Weissenfels, ten miles from Liitzen, because the pressure of the cuirass was somewhat heavy on an old wound ! Had Gustavus worn it, in- stead of the doublet of bulF leather, who knows what agony might have been saved the world ? So too, but for the pike-thrust of Buttler's ruffians, might AYallenstein have blocked the path of the heavy-footed horror. The literature of the period whose history we THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 541 have reviewed, from the death of Luther to the middle of the eighteenth century, requires only brief consideration. At the death of the great reformer, there were not wanting in Germany writers of abil- ity. Ingenious minds at this period still threshed the straw of the scholastic philosophy ; but there were gifted men, in their lifetime persecuted as nec- romancers, who were beginning to break a path for modern physical science, the most famous repre- sentative of whom was Paracelsus. There were no poets better than certain honest but dreary Master- singers, excepting that now and then, from some earnest Protestant pastor, came a devout hymn. A historian sometimes appears a little better than a bare annalist. Above all, the minds of men were agitated upon questions of theology, and vast li- braries were written for and against dogmas for which the world has ceased to care. The dreamer Bohme must be mentioned, like the Nuremberg Masters! nger,' a cobbler, whose name has come to be reverenced by all mystical think- ers. Little of the literary work of this time was done in German. The centres of culture at first the monasteries, then the courts of princes, then the cities were now the universities, which, with the revival of learning, had been founded in many parts of the land. To a lanre extent we must ascribe it to <^ pedantry that poor vanity of scholars which leads to a display of attainments that the learned men turn their backs upon their wholesome, honest mother-tongue. To be sure, a certain convenience came from the circumstance that since Latin was 16 242 GERMAN LITERATURE. recognized as the only language fit for scholars, the refined men of different lands could, through this, make themselves intelligible to each other. But it is very plain that those who should have been guides and teachers seemed to take an unworthy pleasure in separating themselves from the world of plain men and women, by writing and talking in a lan- guage unintelligible to them, showing a spirit, in this respect, as far as possible from that of Luther, whom they in most things professed to reverence. The affectation went so far that it was the fashion to be ashamed even of their plain German names, which must be exchanged for,t>r modified into, Greek or Latin designations. Hondt, Turmair, Von Ho- henheim, Schwarzerd, became Canisius, Aventinus, Paracelsus, Melanchthon. They were sometimes men of power, and worked with industry, but their accomplishment was stored up in the dead tongue. For a judgment upon them, oblivion has buried most of them, while the poetic shoemakers and vagabond lampooners, whom they utterly despised, are remembered, and sometimes held in honor. At the end of the century appears a man who must be mentioned more at length. To Johann Fischart the high praise is accorded of mirroring in himself the intellectual life of the last half of the sixteenth century, as Luther the first. 1 He pos- sessed extraordinary power, various and thorough knowledge, and an excellent purpose. Whether he was born in Mainz or Strassburg is a matter of uu- 1 Kurz. THE THIRTY YEARS 1 WAR. 243 certainty. He travelled widely, and toward the end of his life lived in Speyer, as an advocate of the im- perial court. Soon after his death he was almost forgotten, although during his lifetime he had at- tained a high celebrity. His great significance has found recognition only in our o\vn day. Ho was not only a well-read man, like Hans Sachs, but a great scholar; his nature was thoroughly noble, freedom being the watchword of his life. He showed great ability in satire. It is plain that he loves his race, though he uncovers unsparingly human weaknesses and defects. His greatness and many-sidedness are most apparent in his prose , though his position as a poet is honorable. While the armies were clashing at the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, a certain versifier, Martin Opitz von Boberfeld, appeared, becoming the centre of a group of mediocre poets known as the " First Silesian School." Opitz deserves this praise: that he loved his native tongue, sought to improve it, while making it the vehicle of his own thoughts, and used all his influence which came to be considerable to bring it into honor. 1 Lohenstein and Hoffmans- waldau, a little later, are centres of the " Second Sile- sian School," whose characteristics may be summed up in the one word " worthlessness." It is pleas- ant to turn from this barrenness to a department of poetry in which the sad years during and following the Thirty Years' War show a really rich yield. From the long agony of the German nation were wrung a body of the noblest hymns. It has been well said that the most significant fact of the period See Appendix, note A. 244 GERMAN LITERATURE. is that its truest literary achievements are in a de- partment in which no other Aryan people has ex- celled, and which is really as alien to the German as to the French and English intellect. 1 The hymns of Paul Flemming, and especially of Paul Gerhardt, surpass even those of their English contemporaries, George Herbert and Vaughan, deserving to be classed with those of Luther, and only inferior to the great Hebrew outbursts. Gerhardt, a Lutheran pastor, long resident in Berlin, losing his place through his opposition to certain plans of the Great Elector, was a model of piety. He wrote one hun- dred and twenty songs, which are outpourings of the truest devoutness, almost without exception fault- less examples of the poetry of religion. The prose of the seventeenth century offers still less that is worthy of attention than the poetry. Those who wrote, in large majority, preferred to use Latin, even when their knowledge of that lan- guage was most imperfect ; where German was the medium, it was so interlarded with foreign expres- sions that it became scarcely recognizable as Ger- man, the mongrel result receiving from Leibnitz the name of " Misch-masch." If it were the history of philosophy, instead of belles-lettres, that was our subject,. a large space would be needed for the great name of Leibnitz. Like the scholars of his time in general, however, he turned his back on his native tongue, writing little except in Latin and French. It deserves to be mentioned that lie did so unwill- 1 Sime's Life of Leasing. THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR. 245 ingly, in the idea that circumstances forced him to it. A paper in German, in which he criticised se- verely the " Misch-masch " of his time, and pleaded earnestly for the culture of his native language, is one of the light streaks amid the darkness. Other such streaks are that his disciple Wolf thought it worth while to spread abroad his master's theories in German ; and that a bold professor at Halle (Thomasius) ventured, amid the execrations of the learned world, to lecture to his students in their mother tongue. The two hundred years from the death of Luther to the middle of the eighteenth century are a time of night, not absolutely rayless, but full of gloom most oppressive. England saw meanwhile the Eliza- bethan period, France the age of Louis XIV. But the land so long silent and dark was to be glorified in its turn by the sun-burst. PART II -THE SECOND PERIOD OF BLOOM. CHAPTER X. LESS ING. We have considered the dreariness of the Thirty Years' War, and the long period of exhaustion which followed, during which, in literature, so few names appear deserving of mention. We have now reached the eighteenth century. In one state of Germany, at least, a strong man has appeared as ruler whose work has done something toward lifting the Germans from their depression. The great elector, at the end of the seventeenth century, has laid the foundations of the power of Prussia, giving place, at his death, to the first king, who in turn gives way to the memorable Frederick William I. The reader of Carl vie' s Frederick will retain forever the vivid portrait of the coarse, rugged, eccentric sometimes almost insane old monarch, who yet possessed a certain heroism, and set in some ways, for a corrupt time, an example of honesty. When the sceptre falls from his hand it is grasped by the great Frederick, a soul no less marked for com- mand than the mightiest leaders. With him Prussia becomes great ; the rest of Germany, however, con- tinues to languish, a figure with noble traits, like that of Maria Theresa, and Karl August of Weimar, now and then appearing, but the rulers for the LESSING. 247 most part the most despicable of their class, devoid of patriotism, rotten with vices, unscrupulous in tyranny, to the extent of selling their subjects for foreign wars like sheep for the shambles. France, towering to the west, subordinates everything. When the glory of Louis XIV. is extinguished, the prestige of the foreigner is undiminished ; for the most part, in the hundred petty courts of Ger- many, we behold a world of apes, whose talk, whose dress, whose manners, whose revolting vices, are patterned after those of the riotous society which was ground to pieces at length for its sins between the jaws of a monster, the French revolution. 1 Before the middle of the eighteenth century a critic and poet appears in Leipsic Gottsched who, although himself an imitator, and seeing no possibilities for German literature except by fol- lowing in the track of France, was in several ways helpful ; perhaps he was most so as an obstacle to be striven against by the champions who needed some such gymnastic to help them in the acquisition of strength, champions destined to bring in a bet- ter time. In opposition to Gottsched who was of sufficient importance to become the centre of a considerable school stood certain Swiss writers living at Zurich, Bodmer and Breitinger ; also men who came to have many adherents, who liked Eng- lish models, as Gottsched liked the French, and who also brushed the dust off of some of the long-forgot- ten treasures, holding them up to be admired and 1 Vehse : Geschichte der europaischen Hofe. 248 GERMAN LITERATURE. imitated ; in particular they brought to light the Ions-lost Nibelunsjen Lied. We must not forget the O o o real deserts of these pioneers, discredited and superseded though they were as time went on. Through Gottsched the fantastic unnaturalness of the Second Silesian School was overcome. The effort of these affected writers after pompous and learned periods had produced a style than which nothing could be worse ; in opposition to which the Leipsig critic, though with a theory in some ways quite erroneous, strove for purity, and a dignity that should not be stilted. The great writers of the age of Louis XIV. had but just passed away, and it was natural that Gottsched should have seen in them the best models for the writers of his own race. He found little in English literature worthy of notice, and felt, with Voltaire, that even Shakespeare was a wild barbarian, whose genius could not atone for his rudeness. The Swiss, on the other hand, Bod- merand Brcitinger, liked the English. They estab- lished a periodical after the plan of the " Spec- tator ; " they found fault with French writers as too formal and artificial, and demanded nature. All this Gottsched fought valiantly ; he was really a stalwart character, having in him the stuff of a sol- dier ; indeed, he had to flee from home in his youth to avoid the recruiting officers, who saw in him ma- terial for a grenadier, lie declared that English poets would never receive recognition in Germany, much less be imitated, sounding all the time the praises of the French. Before giving up Gottsched I must quote from the autobiography of Gothe an LBSSIN& 249 amusing account of a visit paid by him in his youth to Gottsched, when the prestige of the literary mag- nate was as yet unbroken : * "I shall never forget our introduction at Gott- sched' s ; it was characteristic of the man. He lived in a handsome first-floor at the ' Golden Bear.' The old book-seller had given him these apartments for life, in consideration of the benefits arising to his business from the works of his guest, We were announced. The servant told us his master would be with us immediately, and showed us into a spa- cious room. Perhaps we did not comprehend a sign he made us. AVe thought he was directing us into an adjoining chamber, on entering which we be- held a whimsical scene. Gottsched appeared at the same instant, at an opposite door. He was enormously corpulent. He wore a damask dressing- gown lined with red taffeta. His monstrous bald head was bare, contrary to his intention, for his ser- vant rushed in at the same instant, by a side door, with a long wig in his hand, the curls of which de- scended below the shoulders. He presented it to his master w r ith a trembling hand. Gottsched, with the greatest apparent serenity, took the wig with his left hand, with which he dexterously fitted it to his head, while with his right hand he gave the poor fellow a most vigorous box on the ear, which sent him to the door in a pirouette, like a valet in a play, after which the old pedagogue, turning to us with an air of dignity, requested us to be seated, and Dichtung und Wahrheit. 250 GERMAN LITERATURE. conversed with us very politely for a considerable time." The bluff old autocrat played a part somewhat similar to that of his contemporary in England, Dr. Samuel Johnson, whom he seems to have resembled in his person and some of his traits. Unlike his English counterpart, however, the German potentate was dethroned and set aside, even in his lifetime, in a way that is pathetic. In the middle of the century, however, his prestige was unbroken, and there was no thought in literature or social life but of servilely following the French precedents. In 1750, Voltaire, writing from Potsdam, just after his arrival in Prussia, could say, " I find myself in France here. Our language alone is spoken. Ger- man is only for soldiers and horses ; it is only neces- sary for the journey." A young man just in that year twenty-one years old was already beginning to break a path for something better. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born at Kamenz, in Saxony, descended on both sides from lines of Lutheran pastors, men Avho had fought in the stern battle of the faiths during the years of trial, the while wrestling in mind with many a theological subtlety, transmitting at last an extraordinary sharp- ness and stoutness to the boy Gotthold. His father was a man of decided intellectual power. His mother, unlike the mothers of most distinguished men, was a person not at all remarkable in mind or character. At twelve he was sent to a school endowed from the funds of a suppressed monastery, LESSINO. 251 where his brightness was so apparent that the mas- ter said he was a horse that must have double fodder. He seized upon everything within his reach, Latin, Greek, several modern languages, and mathematics, in which latter study he was especially proficient. At seventeen he went to the University of Leipsic. His father, the pastor of Kamenz, his mother, who, like the Scotch good- wife, could appreciate no eminence except that her son " should wag his pow in a pu'pit," wished him to study theology, but for this he had slight inclina- tion, giving himself with great zeal to the study of general literature. He early began to struggle out of the limits within which his friends desired to con- fine him. In the society of Leipsic in which, as a brilliant youth, he soon became somewhat known he grew conscious of awkwardness, and, for the sake of bodily training, took lessons in riding, fenc- ing, and dancing. It was a still further departure from what seemed propriety in the family of a Lutheran pastor of those davs when he began to J. / CJ associate with the members of a theatrical troupe. The drama attracted him in fact bevond everything;. */ v c; In his boyhood he had read Plautus and Terence with especial delight. He aspired himself to dra- matic authorship, and believing that a successful playwright must know the stage thoroughly, he sought the theatre. The trouble of the parents was further aggravated when they learned, besides, that there was among his associates a certain free-think- ing youth, a few years the senior of Gotthold, who had left Kamenz in bad repute. The son was sum- 252 GERMAN LITERATURE. moned home, but made it soon appear that he had not been wasting his time. The pastor was really learned and discriminating, and soon discovered in the boy rich treasures of thorough and manifold knowledge. They had been gained iii somewhat unusual ways, but Gotthold easily got permission to return to Leipsic. Even thus early he was rising into fame, Leipsic, the home of Gottsched, was the seat of much literary activity. The young men of the university were encouraged to write, and Lessing's contributions to journals had attracted attention. We presently find him in Berlin; then, to please his father, in Wittenberg, which had a more orthodox reputation ; but the place was cramped, and his life became intolerable there. Berlin was again sought, where we soon find him joined in close friendship destined to last through life with a company of brilliant young men, several of whom rose Avith him into fame. The most notice- able one among them was a certain young clerk in a silk factory, with whom he often played chess, who afterwards was known as one of the best thinkers and purest characters of his time, Moses Mendels- sohn. Lessing's course was somewhat erratic, not through instability of character, but force of cir- cumstances. Now he is for a time at Leipsic, now again in Berlin, now accompanying a young mer- chant on a journey, in the course of which they reach Holland. He is constantly busy ; his powers of acquirement are extraordinary ; his memory is wonderful. He provides for himself the " double LESSING. 253 fodder ' ' which his old teacher foresaw was a neces- sity for him, and develops into commensurate intel- lectual stature and strength . Meantime his fame con- stantly grows as the master of remarkable erudition, and a style as remarkable in force and point. His papers are sometimes critical, sometimes fables, poems, dramas. His life no doubt shocked the con- ventionalities of those days, and caused much anxi- ety in the parsonage at home. Some of his lyrics written at this time are lawless to the verge of license. His impulses, however, were noble, and his work for the most part directed to worthy ends. No son was ever more dutiful and generous, pinched though he was himself by great poverty. At length, during the Seven Years' War, he appears at Breslau, in Silesia, secretary of Tauentzien, the general in command, a position of responsibility, and not at all a literary one, in which he remains five years, showing good capacity for aifairs, and creating the impression that he has forsaken the life of a scholar and Avriter. There was indeed little enough encour- agement in that direction. Prussia was a camp merely ; Austria little better ; Silesia and Saxony lying between, war-worn regions, any one of whose plains might see to-morrow the shock of contending armies. It marks grandly the superiority of Les- sing that in the turmoil, although recognizing the powers and respecting the harsh virtue of Frederick, no narrow considerations affect him. His sympa- thies are broad as the world, and he labors to melt into brotherly feeling the national and class prejudices everywhere rife about him. He was far 254 GERMAN LITERATURE. enough from having given up his old pursuits. At the beginning of his Breslau life he wrote, " I will for a time spin round myself like an ugly cater- pillar, that I may be able to come to light again as a brilliant butterfly." That he spun to some pur- pose will presently appear. Note must be made here of what is the worst blot upon his fame. At Breslau he developed a passion for gambling, which became so excessive that Mendelssohn almost gave him up for lost ; and even Tauentzien, a frank and manly soldier, expostulated. Without attempting to excuse the fault, it is right to say that in the so- ciety of the last century gaming was regarded with quite different eyes from at present. What Lessing sought was excitement, no sordid end. He might easily have grown rich in his office, but was too honest. When the war is done, Lessing promptly resumes his old career, although it offers him little hope of emolument, indeed of a bare livelihood, and presently appear two masterpieces, each in a differ- ent field, which he has silently elaborated during his years at Breslau. The butterfly bursts forth from its cocoon. The one is "Minna von Barnhelm," the first proper German comedy, the other " Lao- koon," the best work of German criticism. By these his position was established as the first writer of Germany. In those days there was no reading public, which, by buying an author's books, could make him in- dependent. In Germany, as in England, only such writers could keep their heads above water as could LESSING. 255 secure the patronage of the great. The fine inde- pendence of character of Lessing made impossible to him even the slight degree of complaisance which, with his conspicuous merits, would have secured him ease. He rejected the professorship of eloquence at Konigsberg because every year he must write a eulogy upon the king. Thrift would in all prob- ability have followed only a little fawning, all the easier for Lessing, since he really felt the monarch's greatness. But he adhered to his manhood and his poverty. It is a strange inconsistency in Frederick that, keen as he was, thorough German, and regen- erator of Germany too, he remained through life obstinately blind to the worth of the literature of his land, which, phoenix-like, before his very eyes, swept from its ashes with flight so majestic into the empyrean. The hope at Konigsberg failed. The fine prize of the librarianship at Berlin was most unworthily bestowed upon an obscure Frenchman. As the only thing that offered, the illustrious man went to Hamburg, where an association of rich mer- chants proposed to establish a theatre in Avhich the national drama should be fostered, and offered to Lessing the post of critic and director. The result was the "Hamburg Dramaturgy," a critical work of hardly less moment than the " Laokoon." But the enterprise was a failure. Lessing' s fame had grown, but he had barely bread to eat or clothes to wear. He was wanted in Mannheim, in Berlin, in Vienna, but everywhere his noble pride stood in the way. A little courtier-like fawning would have smoothed his path ; but nature had left his knees 256 GERMAN LITERATURE, unhinged. He stood neglected in his sturdy man- hood, hungry and threadbare, while sycophants caught the prizes. It is only natural that sometimes when they meddled with him he turned upon them savagely, as upon a certain pert young professor, Klotz, whom he extinguished with a polemic energy which ranks among the most impressive exhibitions of Lessing's power. At length the duke of Brunswick offered him the care of his library at Wolfe nbiittel, and was willing to comply with the condition which the threadbare independent demanded, that what he might choose to write should be submitted to no censorship. The library was extensive, but the situation was remote and unhealthy, and the salary very meagre. His fame was still wider through the publication of his second great play, "Emilia Galotti." But Lessing was plunged into dismal surroundings, without culti- vated companionship, poor, sick, the victim rather than the protege, of his master. He was valued only as giving prestige 1 to the little dukedom. The prom- ises made to him, scanty as they were, were never fulfilled ; but the duke's mistresses lived in splendor. His confinement was not unbroken. He went once to Vienna, and it is hard to understand how one could be at the same time so much esteemed and so much neglected. The great and wise of the cap- it:!! did him honor. Special representations of his plays took place in the court theatre, and Maria Theresa received him with all respect, consulting him deferentially upon various points. They felt that Lessing, with as sharp insight as was over LESSINQ. 257 granted to mortal, and such bold independence, was dangerous. They admired him, feared him, and let him suffer on. In the train of Prince Leopold of Brunswick he was enabled to visit Italy. The prince was a capable and enthusiastic youth, in whose companionship Lessing must have found much to enjoy. The great writer was received with all honor at Milan, Naples, and Rome. At forty-seven he was married to a woman worthy of him, much beloved, but for whom his poverty forced him to wait years. Even here he was beneath his baleful star. She died early, in child-birth, and a strange bitter- ness in Lessing' s letters tells the agony with which his soul was wrung. From the first, his labors at Wolfenblittel had been incessant. He discovered in the library valuable manuscripts which, had long been lost. By the publication of portions of a work by a radical thinker, Eeimarus the ' k Wolfenblittel Fragments" he called forth the ire of the more rigid Lutherans, with whose champion, the Pastor Gotze of Hamburg, he engaged in a controversy, in which he showed the power of a Demosthenes or a Junius. After the death of his wife he lingered three years, broken in body and soul, but with tri- umphant genius, producing work after work of power as remarkable as had belonged to the earlier works, of tone still loftier. To this time belong the "Education of the Human Race," the " Con- versations for Freemasons," and lastly the sublime play of " Nathan the Wise," which is characterized by a loftiness of sentiment for which the world is not yet ready, and has been called, after Gothe's 17 258 GERMAN LITERATURE. "Faust," the most peculiar and characteristic pro- duction of German genius. On the fifteenth of February, 1781 , at the age of fifty-three, when Gothe was approaching the fulness of his fame, and Schiller had just appeared with " The Bobbers," the dav advancing gloriously of which he had been the fc- O O / morning-star, Lessing died. Lessing was, before everything else, a critic, taking the term in a high sense, which I shall pres- ently explain. He himself confesses that he was not a true poet : " I do not feel in myself a living spring which wells up through its own force, shoot- ing forth in fresh, pure jets ; everything comes from me through pumps and conduits." l "With his crit- ical power, however, he h;rl asrertainod in poetry the essence, and it is a mark of his greatness that he could compel the working of his talents in fields which nature had made alien to him. To a certain degree only could he compel. His dramas have everything but the poetical breath, that indescrib- able peculiarity which streams out in every thought and word of genuine poetry. Lcssing's dramas are less the product of creative fancy than reflecting reason. Still, he was very great. Said Gothe, " Lessing wished to disclaim for himself the title of poet, but his immortal works testify against him- self." Of his earlier writings, no high place can be as- signed to his lyrics. Their philosophy was false, 1 Hamburgische Dramaturgic. LESSING. 259 and their tone sometimes hardly unobjectionable. Lessing himself urged in defence that their philos- ophy was not his own, but assumed. His some- what prudish elder sister once threw a parcel of the poems into the flames ; in revenge for which Les- sing, roughly playful, threw a handful of snow into her bosom, to cool her excessive zeal, as he said. They are best to be judged as the product of Les- sing' s time of fermentation, before the noble wine had run fairly clear. While at Wittenberg, Lessing wrote a series of papers called " Vindications," 1 the aim of which is best described in Lessing' s own words : " I can have no more agreeable occupation than to muster the names of famous men, examine their right to immortality, brush away from them undeserved spots, separate from their real greatness the result of their weaknesses, in short, do every- thing in a moral way which the superintendent of a picture-gallery does in a physical way." Lessing performed his work with acuteness, courage, and a fine sense of justice. To several great men of the past upon whom had fallen the shadow of an un- merited obloquy, he assigned due honor. He often appeared to advantage in his fables. One of the best of the collection is entitled " Zeus and the Horse." 2 "Father of beasts and men," said the horse, approaching the throne of Zeus, " they say I am one of the most beautiful creatures with which you have adorned the world, and my 1 Ketttmgen. J Taken from Sime's Life of Lessing, vol. I, p. 198. 260 GERMAN LITERATURE. self-love makes me believe it. But is there nothing in me that might be improved? " "And what dost thou think might be improved in thee?" said the kind god, smiling. " Perhaps," said the horse, " I might be more swift if my legs were higher and more slender. A long, swan's neck would not de- form me, a broader chest would increase my strength, and I might possess, ready-made, the saddle which the rider places upon me." " Good," replied Zeus. With serious face, he uttered the word of creation, and suddenly there stood before the throne the ugly camel. The horse looked and trembled with amazed horror. " Here," said Zeus, " are higher and more slender legs ; here is a long, swan's neck ; here is a broader chest ; here is the saddle ready-made. Dost thou wish, horse, that I should thus reshape thee?" The horse still trembled. " Go ! " continued Zeus ; "for this time be taught without being punished. But that thou mayest sometimes be reminded of thy presumption, continue to exist, thou new creature [and Zeus cast a preserving glance at the camel] , and may the horse never look at thee without shuddering ! " Through his dramas, Lessing first was recognized as the greatest writer of his time, and in this direc- tion "Minna von Barnhelm " first became famous. A critic of our own time, of high repute, speaks of "Minna von Barnhelm" as still the best Ger- man comedy. 1 Lessing gathered the materials for it during his life as government secretary at 1 Julian Schmidt LESSING. 261 Breslau, immediately after which, as has been nar- rated, it was published. It exercised an immense influence immediately upon its appearance, at once in Berlin making German plays fashionable and popular, whereas before only French plays had been considered tolerable. The time is just at the close of the Seven Years' War. Prussia and Saxony, neighbor states, have been hostile to one another.- Tellheim, a major of the Prussian army, has advanced to the magistrates of the Saxon dis- trict from which he is to exact a contribution the sum required, finding that they could not pay from their own means without prostrating the ter- ritory. The magnanimous deed makes such an im- pression on Minna von Barnhelm, a wealthy and high-born Saxon lady, that she seeks his acquaint- ance, desiring to become his wife. Tellheim recog- nizes her worth, and they are betrothed. The war ends, and the honorable Tellheim presently becomes an object of suspicion. He is accused of having been bribed by the Saxon magistrates whom he has obliged, and during the investigation falls into sad O ' d> <^ circumstances. At this time the piece begins. Tellheim is living at an inn, the host of which wishes to become rid of him as a moneyless encum- brance. In despair, Tellheim is forced to pawn his engagement ring, which is recognized by Minna von Barnhelm, who has just arrived at the inn at this juncture, searching for her lover. The lovers meet, but Tellheim holds it incompatible with his honor to continue his relations with her. He is cast off and suspected, crippled by wounds, a beg- 262 GERMAN LITERATURE. gar, and must not think of a union with the rich and honored gentlewoman. Since no representa- tions -avail to change his conclusion, Minna hits upon a stratagem, in which, it must be confessed, there is some sacrifice of truth. She represents to Tellheim that her love for him has caused her to be disinherited. She had known the high-hearted man well. Just as decided as he was to resign her when he thought her rich is he now that she shall trust herself to his protection. As his own misfortune struck him down, made him negligent and dispir- ited, her misfortune restores his manfulness. He looks freely about, and feels strong and willing to undertake everything for her. Meantime the major receives a letter from the king, in which his inno- cence is recognized, and he is summoned to take service again. Now Minna pretends *that she, on her side, must break off the relation, and cites all the reasons which he had before employed, even returning the engagement ring. Tellheim falls into despair again; but meantime appears Minna's uncle. Tellheim, who considers him her persecutor, thinks now only of protecting her ; Minna, however, drops her ru.se, and the uncle, upon his entrance, finds two happy people. So meagre a sketch has little value in giving one an impression of a play. It was a vivid artistic pre- sentment of contemporary life, a field now for the first time occupied by the German drama. It is evident that the plot of the play gives opportunities for both pathos and humor ; these are well improved, and certain subordinate characters the villainous LESSIN&. 263 host, a ridiculous Frenchman, an honest old ser- geant, and Minna's lively waiting-maid stand in an effective contrast with their principals. Les- sing wrote the piece witkhigh aims. He wished to rebuke the disposition to ape the French ; to rebuke the ruling powers for their indifference to the sol- diers who had won the victories of the " Seven Years' War;" in particular, to extinguish the pro- vincial hate which had taken deep root during the hostilities in Prussia and Saxony. By the union of the Prussian Tellheim and the Saxon Minna he showed that the dislike was unnatural, and due only to sad political conditions, the national character be- ing everywhere the same. The lessons were noble, and most effectively given. Still grander was the teaching in Lessing's later dramas. Besides Minna von Barnhelm, there are two which count as masterpieces : "Emilia Galotti" and ' ' Nathan the Wise ; ' ' the others we need not notice. With regard to the "Emilia Galotti," we must pass it with a momentary glance, although it has been said to be still, artistically considered, the best German tragedy. 1 Its plot is somewhat repul- sive, resembling in some of its features the old Ro- man story of Virginia. Its design was to hold up to execration the baseness of the German princes, with which the land was full. The names and scenes were, indeed, Italian ; it was a thin veil, however, which the world at once penetrated ; corruption in high places heard and trembled at the bold, denounc- 1 Julian Schmidt 264 GERMAN LITERATURE. ing voice. The glorious "Nathan the Wise " we can best consider in connection with certain other works which are near it in spirit and date of com- position, the closing yeajrs of Lessing's life. At present we must consider him in another field. Madame de Stael has remarked * that perhaps it is in Germany alone that literature has derived its origin from criticism ; everywhere else criticism has followed the great productions of art, but in Ger- many it produced them. To a large extent the re- mark is true, and the critic whose words proved to be such Promethean fire was Lessinsr. If we would o describe Lessing in one word, that word would be "critic;" but we must understand the term in an elevated sense. He was sent into the world to judge, and we see him standing, in his century, part- ing, unerringly, the gold from the dross in various domains, in literature and art, in politics, morals, and religion. No man of Teutonic race has pos- sessed such a touchstone ; it is claimed that no mortal has ever surpassed him. 2 While his search for truth was constant, his battle with hypocrisy and lies was just as eager and constant ; nor did he know the sensation of fear. I find the expression applied to him, that he was logic become flesh. 3 In the language which he employed we may recognize the clearness and charm of his spirit. Every ex- pression is perspicuous, definite, and choice. With many German writers we must first vanquish the 1 L. Allemagne. * Gervinus. Kurz. LESSING. 265 presentation, in order to press to the thought which it mistily wraps. In Lessing, finely says a writer, the presentation is so clear, the thought at the first view springs so powerfully forth, it almost appears to have passed immediately out of the spirit of the thinker into ours, without being clothed at first in an exterior garment. His critical work consisted at first of judgments of particular men and books ; afterwards he treated comprehensive subjects in con- nected writings. He was a youth of twenty-two when he began. From the first independent, although inclined to the views of the Swiss school, he did not submit entirely to its authority. From the first there was love of truth, acuteness, refined taste. At length, with the " Laokoon," he enters upon his second and greater period. To a shallow student the merits of the ' ' Lao- koon " are not apparent, but it is perhaps right to say that it appears a work of power in proportion to one's intellectual insight. The greatest minds are those which have been most impressed by it. Ma- caulay said of it, that it filled him with wonder and despair, so far did it seem beyond his own power of accomplishment ; and Macaulay put no low estimate upon what he could do. Herder, in an afternoon and the night following, read it through with the greatest eagerness three times ; and although, in an elaborate criticism, he afterwards took exception to many of its positions, he paid a high tribute to its value. The whole literary career of Gothe was af- fected by it, and in his old age the poet glowingly acknowledged his obligation, in a passage to be here- after quoted. 266 GERMAN LITERATURE. The work treats of the boundary between poetry and the "formative arts," 1 a name by which Les- sing designates painting and sculpture, the arts which make presentations to the eye by means of sensible forms. It was the fruit of long years of labor and investigation, ripening slowly in Lessing's mind while he was government secretary at Breslau. Unfortunately, like several other of Lessing's finest works, it was never completed. It was important to the development of poetry in this way : that it drove completely out of view the notions which un- til then had been in vogue, substituting new ones, whose truth was immediately recognized, and which soon showed themselves fruitful and successful. The Swiss Breitinger 2 had claimed that poetry and painting were not separated in their essence ; that, as Simonides, the Greek poet, had already said, poetry was a speaking painting ; painting, a dumb poetry. By this principle the German poetry of that time was completely mastered. Lessing showed, on the other hand, in keen and close development, that poetry and the formative arts are different, as well in respect to the objects they should strive after as in respect to the effects they are adapted to produce. In Lessing's day lived a critic of art of the highest authority, for whom Lessing himself had the profoundest respect, and whom the world still holds in high esteem, Winckelmann. After hard struggles, the force of "YVinckelmaim's genius at length became apparent ; from Germany he had 1 Bildende Kiinste. 3 Kurz. LESSING. 267 gone to Rome, to a position in which he had the fairest opportunities for the study of antique art, and was now at the summit of his fame. A remark contained in a treatise by Winckelmann suggested the " Laokoon." The remark was that the univer- sal and salient distinction of Greek masterpieces in painting and sculpture was a certain noble simplicity and quiet greatness, as well in the pose of the fig- ures as also in their expression. By way of exam- ple, he cites the famous group of " Laokoon " and his two sons attacked by serpents. The poet Virgil represents "Laokoon" as crying; the unknown sculptor of the group, on the other hand, in a more dignified way, with lips just parted, and with no distortion of the features, as if uttering a groan ; the poet therefore, claims Winckelmann, stands far behind the sculptor. At the outset of his treatise Lessing steps forth in defence of the poet. The highest law of sculpture and painting, he claims, is beauty ; the object of these the formative arts is to satisfy the eye, which nothing but the beautiful can delight. In vain does the formative artist envy the poet the faculty of seizing and characterizing all objects, and of over- stepping the limits of the beautiful. The poet labors, not for the eye, the seeing faculty, but for some- thing broader, the imagination. The sculptor did not represent "Laokoon " as crying, with wide-open mouth, because crying distorts the face in a repul- sive way, and so offends beauty. Virgil, however, needed not to pay this heed, because he, as poet, was not forced to create a form which the eyes 268 GERMAN LITERATURE. should perceive, and which must remain fixed in the one situation chosen. The sculptor of the " Lao- koon " no doubt had in mind in his presentation the description of Virgil. "Whence does it come," says Lessing, " that the artist and poet have com- prehended and treated the subject in ways so differ- ent?" The critic goes on to shoAv and here ap- pears his great acuteness that the reason lies in the essential difference between the two arts. For- mative art painting and sculpture represents its object in space ; poetry represents its object in time ; formative art by means of shape and color ; poetry by articulate tones ; bodies, with their visible quali- ties, the particular objects of the first ; actions, of the second. To be sure, formative art can repre- sent actions, but only through hints in shapes ; and just so can poetry represent shapes, but only through hints in actions. In numerous examples Lessing shows how impossible it is for the poet to represent bodily shapes in all their particulars, showing how even great poets have failed. Homer, for whom Lessing had a veneration almost superstitious, never errs by attempting such representations. In the Iliad, events are fully narrated, but no long descrip- tions are given of objects. A ship is simply the " black ship," the ' hollow," or the " well-rowed, black ship." Of the stationary object, Homer says no more ; but when he speaks of an action, or a series of actions, connected with a ship, such as rowing, embarking, or landing, he tells the story fully. Nevertheless, the representation of bodily objects does not lie entirely without the domain of LESSING. 269 poetry. How it may be done, we see from watching Homer's method. When the poet would give us a notion of Agamemnon's dress, he makes the king clothe himself, putting on one garment after an- other, and, at last, grasping the sceptre ; so reduc- ing, as it were, the description of the magnificent object the king in his splendor to a description of events. 1 Again, in considering the shield of Achilles, Vulcan is represented as busy with its fab- rication ; one by one before our eyes, as he labors, appear the figures with which the shield is em- bossed. 2 " He wishes to paint the bow of Panda- rus, a bow of horn, of such and such length, well polished, and at both ends tipped with gold. What does he do ? Does he enumerate all these proper- ties, one after the other, thus dryly? By no means ; that would be to sketch such a bow, to write down its qualities, but not to paint it. He begins with the hunt of the wild goat 3 from whose horns the bow was made. Pandarus had waylaid it among the rocks and slain it ; the horns were of extraor- dinary size, therefore he destined them for a bow ; they come to the workshop ; the artist joins them, polishes them, tips them. And so, with the poet, we see gradually advance towards completion that which the painter could not treat except as com- pleted." 4 Such is the limitation of poetry. It has power in- I Iliad, x. II Iliad, xviii. 3 Iliad, iv. 4 From the Laokoon ; translated in Sime's Life of Lessing. 270 GERMAN LITERATURE. ferior to the formative arts in respect to the imita- tion of beauty, that which speaks to the eye ; on the other hand, its sphere is much broader than that of the formative arts, the whole immeasurable realm of nature standing open to its imitation. It can repre- sent the hateful, even the terrible and repulsive. All this is beyond formative art, which Lessing urges is bound by its highest law, that of beauty. It can show but one attitude, one expression, and what sculptor or painter would wish to select for that one phase what causes pain and disgust ? The poet, on the other hand, by passages of splendor, can redeem a spot of darkness ; indeed, by contrast with darkness, heighten the splendor. The two arts are sisters, then, but must always be clearly dis- tinguished. Poetry must narrate events ; painting and sculpture represent coexistent objects. In point of style, the " Laokoon " is excellent. It is refreshing enough, after a struggle with the lumbering, involved sentences in which so many of the German thinkers have put their ideas, to turn to the brief, clear periods in which Lessing " econo- mizes the attention " * of his readers. An immense range of learning in languages ancient and modern is indicated by the innumerable citations and refer- ences. Lessinij's knowledge of literature was much wider than of art. In the latter direction his op- portunities for accomplishment, up to the time of the composition of the "Laokoon," had been slight ; it follows naturally that the influence of the book 1 Herbert Spencer. LESSING. 271 upon literature has been more marked and valuable than in the other sphere. Is it right to say that beauty should be the sole object of the formative artist ? Lessing himself is forced to admit that even his perfect Greeks sometimes represented the re- pulsive, as when they delineated the countenances of the Furies, but saves himself by saying that such representations are not art, but religion. " Only when an artist is free to follow the impulses of his own mind is he truly an artist." What shall be said of the historical artist who, when putting on the canvas, or in marble, scenes and personages of the past, certainly makes beauty a secondary ob- ject, if he regards it at all? What shall be said of genre pictures, and those which have a humor- ous purpose, in which there is the same postpone- ment of this first essential ? If they are to be ex- cluded from works of art, how we are limiting our understanding of the term ! We should abbreviate the list of the world's masterpieces by taking away some of what have been held the finest examples. Take the " Laokoon " itself, from which Lessing's discussion proceeds, what can be our understanding of beauty when, in the tortured Trojan priest, we call the furrowed brow, the groaning lips, the writhing limbs, beautiful? The critics of Lessing object, and with reason, to his theory in this point. Lessino- is undoubted! v much nearer the truth in o / his consideration of the function of poetry : that since articulated tones arc its means, and its object must be represented in time, not shapes, but ac- tions that which is successive are its proper 272 GERMAN LITERATURE. concern. The development of the thought here is the most interesting and satisfactory part of the 4 ' Laokoon . ' ' The keen analysis seems to have pene- trated to one of the great secrets of Homer's power ; examples as instructive too could have been se- lected from Shakespeare. That long descriptions of stationary objects can hardly be otherwise than op- pressive is made clear in the development and the citations. But even here we should deprive our- selves of some of the precious things in poetry if we should cut off all such passages. I turned, And ere a star can wink, beheld her there ; For up the porch there grew an Eastern rose, That, flowering high, the last night's gale had caught, And blown across the walk. One arm aloft Gowned in pure white, that fitted to the shape Holding the bush, to fix it back, she stood. A single stream of all her soft brown hair Poured on one side ; the shadow of the flowers Stole all the golden gloss, and, wavering Lovingly lower, trembled on her waist, Ah, happy shade ! and still went wavering down; But ere it touched a foot that might have danced The greensward into greener circles, dipt, And mixed with shadows of the common ground! But the full day dwelt on her brows, and sunned Her violet eyes, and all her Hebe-bloom, And doubled his own warmth against her lips, And on the bounteous wave of such a breast As never pencil drew. Half light, half shade, She stood, a sight to make an old man young. 1 If Lessing had belonged to our generation, can we imagine him knitting his brow severely, and pro- 1 Tennyson : The Gardener's Daughter. LESSING. 273 nouncing the poet's work here a mere perversion, that he hud stepped beyond his sphere to undertake a task which only the painter or sculptor could dis- charge ? It is hard to believe ; yet with some abatement from the absoluteness of the statement, Lessing's theory will stand. Only the most coif- summate skill can succeed here. It is a usurpation of the functions of the formative artist for the poet to consider the stationary object ; usurpations, how- ever, are sometimes justifiable in art as well as politics, and in the domain of the arts great genius may authorize them. Lessing is right, neverthe- less, in saying that the safer and better way the natural way is to reduce the description of the object to an action ; the theory commends itself when stated, and when illustrated by the splendid Homeric examples, the pomp of Agamemnon, the bow of Pandarus, the shield of Achilles, w T e are convinced at once. The " Laokoon " is so fragmentary that many of its thoughts are barely hinted. For instance, ways in which different arts may be united in their opera- tion are considered. The connection of poetry and music is a natural one ; in the ordinary opera, says Lessing, music is principal, poetry is auxiliary; a connection can be conceived most fruitful in noble result in which poetry shall lie the principal, and music the auxiliary. In the few words in which the suggestion is thrown out 1 it is thought that Lessing anticipates one of the most remarkable 1 Sime. II 274 GERMAN LITERATURE. and characteristic aesthetic developments of the present century, the movement associated with the name of Richard Wagner. Every thoughtful student of the " Laokoon " will find himself again and again questioning its positions. No writer considers it without making objections ; Lessing himself often seems abundantly conscious that he lays himself open to attack. It is, how- ever, everywhere fertile in suggestions, a wonderful monument of learning, acuteness, and lucid state- ment. Its influence is plain upon all the subsequent literature of Germany, and no writer felt so deeply his obligation to Lessing as the one who towers as the greatest, Gothe. At the time of the publi- cation of the "Laokoon," 17(50, Gothe was a youth of seventeen, a student at Lcipsic. In his old age, recalling the impression made upon him by the book, 1 "One must be a youth," he said, " to realize the effect exercised upon us by Lessing' s " Laokoon," which transported us from the region of miserable observation into the free fields of thought. The so long misunderstood ' ut piclura poesis ' of Simonidcs was at once set aside ; the difference be- tween art and poetry made clear ; the peaks of both appeared separated, however near each other might be their bases. The former had to confine itself within the limits of the beautiful, while to poetry which cannot ignore the meaning of any kind of facts it was given to pass into wider fields. The former labors for external sense, which is satisfied "VVahrhcit und Dichtung, page 2, book 7, Sime's translation. LESSING. 275 only by means of the beautiful ; the latter for the imagination, which may occupy itself even with the ugly. As by a flash of lightning, all the conse- quences of this splendid thought were revealed to us ; all previous criticism was thrown away, like a worn-out coat." In many points in the " Laokoon " the truth was not reached, but every line shows plainly how eager was the impulse which drove the writer toward truth, and there are few books in the world that have stimulated others more powerfully in the effort to gain truth. Such a result is precisely what Lessing would have considered the highest suc- cess. "Not the truth," said he, in what is per- haps the most famous of his sayings, " of which a man believes himself to be possessed, but the sin- cere effort he has made to gain truth, makes the Avorth of a man." l Still further limitations of poetry are to be found in other writings of Lessing. In the treatise called "Pope as a Metaphysician," Lessing maintains that philosophical systems are no material for a poet. In fact, that a didactic poem is a mon- strosity. In the treatises upon the " Fables of ^Esop " again the same idea appears, the unsparing critic showing that, as it is not the function of poetry to teach philosophy, so it is no part of its function to teach morals. Let the philosophy and the morals be taught indeed, but by the sage and the saint, while the poet performs, as his sole function, only 1 Wolfenbiittel Fragments. 276 GERMAN LITERATURE the task of giving to the spirit of man a noble pleasure. This limitation of Lessing was in oppo- sition to the schools both of Leipsic and Zurich, but it became universally recognized, and has left important traces on subsequent literary history. With Lessing' s work as a critic of literature must be put what is known as the " Hamburg Dra- maturgy." From the sketch given of his life it is apparent that, even in his youth, the drama had for him the strongest attraction. He regarded it from the highest point of view, as an instrument of the utmost power in the promotion of human virtue and culture. He could not imagine a good dra- matic author who should not possess nobility of character. At the conclusion of his Breslau life, a company of rich merchants in Hamburg had asso- ciated themselves together to establish a national theatre of a high character. In the city was a superior troop of actors, among whom were some who realized even Lessing' s lofty ideal, both as artists and men. The post of dramatist and ad- viser in the new enterprise was offered to Lessing. He declined to write plays, but consented to take part in the undertaking as critic and counsellor. It was as if, in an American city, a body of well- meaning men of wealth should institute a theatrical enterprise to produce plays of the highest class, in the finest manner, establishing as critic and director James Russell Lowell or George William Curtis. Lessing began his work with enthusiasm. There was then almost no German drama ; Gothe was a boy of seventeen ; Schiller only seven ; Lessing' s LESSINO. 277 own " Minna von Barnhelm " had just appeared, - the only German comedy. The greatness of Shakes peare was just becoming known, through the efforts of Lessing himself, to the best among the Germans ; but there were no proper translations, and by the nation at large he was either unknown or regarded as the uncouth savage described by Voltaire. Lessing was to publish a bi-weekly sheet, which was to be a critical register of all the pieces produced, and to accompany every step of poet and actor. The enterprise soon proved unsuc- cessful, and Lessing' s connection with it brought him much unhappiness, but Germany gained some- thing of the greatest value. In his criticisms upon the plays he broke the path for the German drama. Except his own Minna, there was little to be repre- sented but the pieces of French authors. Lessing thought it necessary to destroy the prestige of the . */ J. O French theatre, because the founding of a German drama was impossible as long as this influence ruled the stage. It was bv no means a negative O / O strife which he waged. He developed his own views upon the drama, which were mainly founded upon the " Poetics " of Aristotle, and the thorough study "of the Greek masterpieces, as well as upon Shakespeare. He spoke severely of the French, and often went too far, but docs justice to the mas- terpieces. The "Hamburg Dramaturgy" is more fragmentary and imperfect in its arrangement than the " Laokoon." The hopes with which it was un- dertaken ended in disappointment, and Lessing, from the first, had in view detached considerations rather 2f$ GERMAN LITERATURE. than a connected work. But of the service which it has rendered the greatest minds testify. The performance of one play affords him opportunity to dwell upon the terrible and pathetic upon the stage. In connection with another he discusses historical tragedy. In another he lays down the limitations of comedy. In every contribution appears his mar- vellous power. There is not space to consider farther Lessing's work as a literary critic. Had it not been performed, the subsequent German development in art and liter- ature could not have taken place ; Go the and Schil- ler would have been impossible. But we have not yet seen Lessing at his greatest. He was a critic in a higher than the ordinary sense a judge, and of the loftiest kind. What he did for art and liter- ature appears almost trifling before what he might have done what he longed to do in departments yet nearer human interests. He accomplished much, but he was bound in on every side, and the mighty striver went to his grave thwarted to the end by his untoward circumstances. As his manhood went forward he appeared by turns in the fields ot politics, philosophy, and religion, bringing every- where his marvellous touchstone. Of his ideas of government, let me begin my con- sideration with this declaration of his, which per- haps will seem startling: "According to my way of thinking, the reputation of a zealous patriot is the very last that I would covet ; that is, of patriotism which teaches me to forget that I am a citizen of the world." It is startling; but if we develop the say- LESSING. 27$ ing, it will be found full of grandeur. Germany, in his day, was broken up into divisions, ruled for the most part by despots who despised the people they enslaved, their language, their manners, their lit- erature. Lessing was speaking to the poet Gleim, a man whose fame had been mainly gained by cele- brating the victories of Frederick in the Seven Years' War, and with whom patriotism meant a lim- itation of the sympathies within the boundaries of what was then Prussia. Lessing' s heart demanded something far broader. In the Germany of our time wherein the divisions are abrogated, and a government prevails in some degree respectful to its subjects, wise, and humane he would have found more to love. Yet even this, we may be sure from his declarations, could not have given scope to his soul. He loved to call himself a cosmopolite, citi- zen of the world, and any patriotism which inter- fered with the broadest and noblest humanity, love for the entire race, he felt to be vicious. He hated what he calls "the fatal thing denominated war," and sought to forget the fearful misery he beheld about him, which he was powerless to relieve, by burying himself in his studies. To speak, write, or act in any way for the rights of the people seemed, in Lessing' s day, almost madness. The time was not ripe, or receptive even, for such a reformatory influence as he might under other circumstances have exerted. He was far in advance of his age. The grandeur of his thoughts in- this direction is perhaps most apparent in a series of dialogues, whose title hardly gives a clue to the lofty nature of GERMAN LITERA TURE. the Contents, "Conversations for Freemasons." At the end of the last century there was in Europe a great love for secret societies ; there was no out- let for the energies of men in public life, and they were in a manner forced into clandestine action ; Freemasonry, in particular, was popular. In his youth Lessing had satirized it ; in his manhood, however, he became a Freemason. He considered Freemasonry, as it was, to be very trivial, but con- ceived that it admitted of a grand development. In the ' ' Conversations for Freemasons ' ' the high idea is expressed that, if each individual knew how to rule himself, government might be dispensed with. Really, it is an evil, in an imperfect world a neces- sary one ; but in proportion as we approach the ideal state it may be dropped. "Observe," says one of the interlocutors, "the ants and bees, what activity and what order ! Order can exist without government, if each individual can govern himself. The highest point humanity can reach is that of a society of developed men who stand in no need of laws, because they have absolute self-control." Lessing doubts whether this ideal condition can ever become real. Certainly, government is now neces- sary, but the thinker combats those who overrate its importance. In Greece the individual was sacri- ficed to the state ; no welfare of the state, however, can be separate from that of the individuals who compose it. The evils connected with the existence of states are shown. First, the world is divided into nations, and the patriotism fostered which is a mere expansion of selfishness, instead of a spirit of LESSIN&. 881 love to all mankind. Second, difference of states has much to do with differences of religion. Third, the existence of states implies also a stratification of society. " How few evils there are in the world," he exclaims, " which have not their ground in this difference of ranks ! " As is said, however, Lessing regarded the existence of states as a necessity, feeling that the amelioration for which he so earnestly hoped could come only gradually. " We must accept the world as it is, and await quietly the rising of the sun, allowing such lights as there are to burn as long as they will and can. To extinguish the lights, and after they are extinguished to perceive that the stumps must be relighted, or other lights brought in, is folly." He expressly disclaimed all effort toward violence or revolution. "What costs blood," he said, "is certainly not worth blood." No single form of political constitution seemed to him abso- lutely the best. In some stages of culture an en- lightened despot is most fit ; in others, a republic ; in others, a constitutional monarchy. But the up- holders of all should be ready to make modifications, bringing the world gradually nearer to the point where every form of government can be dispensed with. In all forms of government arise things highly injurious to human happiness. It is the nec- essary smoke which we must take with the fire. To render the evils as harmless as possible, Lessing dreamed of a brotherhood of exalted minds. The wisest and best men in each state were to labor, not for the impossible absolute abolition, but for the possible alleviation of oppressive and injurious ele- 282 GERMAN LITERATURE. ments. Men above the prejudices of nationality, and who know where patriotism ceases to be a vir- tue, were to strive to do away with provincial preju- dices ; men not in thraldom to a hereditary relig- ion, who do not believe their own creed to be the only vehicle of truth, were to mitigate the preju- dices of religious intolerance ; men too high to be dazzled by social distinctions were to aim at equal- izing the differences of rank, and making them less oppressive. The energies of such men were not to be dissipated in isolation, but Lessing desired a fra- ternization of wise and good spirits of all nations, for the accomplishment of these beneficent ends. In his thought, Freemasonry might become such a bond. 1 These are the ideas of an elevated spirit, and we may hope that the world will see, some day, a con- federation of the purest, wisest spirits of all lands, held together according to the scheme of the high- hearted German, to raise the low, mitigate preju- dice, and bind the nations for love and peace. Les- sing's contemporaries sneered at it as the scheme of a visionary, or detected in it the breath of sedi- tion. It is melancholy to read that the promulga- tion of his great thought only brought upon him persecution, and that he was harshly forbidden to complete the work in which the idea was con- tained. Lessing' s political philosophy cannot be farther discussed, nor can I do more than glance at his work 1 Kurz. LBSSIXG. 563 as a speculative thinker. In this direction, what he has left is more broken and unsatisfactory than in any other. His influence was important in restoring to a place of due honor the name of Spinoza, whom he held in great reverence. The following words, which I find applied to him, are perhaps not exces- sive : "The harbinger of modern philosophy, and in this province an a\vakener and emancipator of the Germans." But even yet we have not touched upon Lessing's grandest utterances, those upon spiritual progress and religious tolerance. There are many in the Christian world to-day, as there were in Lessing's time, who will think he w^ent quite too far in his bold thinking. There are others who find in these writings declarations worthy of a prophet. "Whether we like or dislike, the sincerity, the bravery, the be- nevolence which he everywhere showed may cer- tainly be admired by all. Luther believed in the presence of the literal body and blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper. He would have shown no horror at the burning of a witch ; indeed, he found fault with magistrates for persecuting them with too little energy. Yet we can admire him. Let those who reject the opinions of Lessing treat him with similar candor, while regretting his mistakes, do honor to his manhood. In the department of theo- logical controversy there has been seldom a more violent tempest than that excited by the publica- tion of the " Wolfenbiittel Fragments." A manu- script volume, written by a free-thinking scholar, Reimarus, had fallen into Lessing's hands while at 234 GERMAN LITERATURE. Hamburg. During his life at "VVolfenbiittel he pub- lished extracts from this manuscript, accompanied by annotations. He carefully abstained from de- fending the positions of Reimarus, which were ex- tremely radical. Many of the ideas Lessing ex- pressly states that he does not accept, and in his notes makes an attempt to soften their baldness. He claims that his desire in giving to the world the extracts is to stimulate enquiry, and he contends for absolute freedom of discussion. The excitement which the publication caused in the religious world was immense. That Lessing had dared to make known such infidelity was condemned, and he was accused of drawing upon the stores under his guar- dianship only to disseminate poison. In spite of his disclaimers, it was plain that the bold ideas of Reimarus found some sympathy in the mind of Les- sing, and denunciations became violent. And now began the most memorable controversy in which Lessing was ever engaged. The champion of the orthodox party, in the storm which the " Wolfen- biittel Fragments," had caused, \vas Gotze, a pastor of Hamburg, a man of scholarship and po\ver, with whom Lessing had been well acquainted, but who now showed unreasonable violence. On Lcssing's side the controversy was undertaken when he was utterly crushed by the death of his wife. He sought relief in the strife from the melancholy into which he was plunged. It cannot perhaps be said that his vehemence went too far, but never since the time of Luther had such a fierce polemic energy been displayed ; the papers of Lessing can be LESSINO. 285 matched only among the finest masterpieces of de- nunciatory eloquence. Lessing's controversy with Gotze forced him into a plainness of speech upon religious subjects from which he would have shrunk in his earlier years. Among his latest writings appeared the " Education of the Human Race," whose tone was of the boldest. Lessing declares in this that the Old Testament contains a revelation from God, but, at the same time, that it is not necessary to think that revelations must set forth absolute truth. We must rather consider them as adapted to the par- ticular stages of progress at which they are given. Through revelation man obtains nothing which he o o could not gain from his own reason. In giving a revelation to a chosen poople, God did not tell them all. The Old Testament is only suited for rude minds ; a better teacher must come to supplement the instruction ; and so, in the fulness of time, ap- peared Christ. Like other faiths, Christianity, although for a certain stage all-sufficient, is destined to be superseded, though Lessing here counsels the extremest caution. " Refrain, thou who dost stamp and rage at the last page of this elementary book, from letting thy weaker fellow-pupils perceive what thou dost suspect, or hast begun to see. Until they have overtaken thee, these weaker fellow-pupils, turn rather once more to this elementary book, and examine whether that which thou deemest only turns of method, makeshifts of dialectic, is not something better. 1 " Lessing was strongly opposed 1 Sime's Translation. 286 GERMAN LITERATURE. to those who, in his time, represented Christianity as the invention of priests, and harmful. Not only Christianity, but all positive religions, he taught, are, or have been, beneficial in their time. " "Why shall we not rather recognize in positive religions the di- rection in which the human understanding has alone been able to develop itself in various places than either smile or scowl at any of them." l The reader is so accustomed to the mention of the incompleteness of Lessing's work, it almost goes without saying that the " Education of the Human Race" is but a fragment. Thrown off, as it was, during the decay of his powers, close upon the end of his life, no work of his is perhaps more imper- fect, scarcely more than a jotting down of hints upon the greatest of topics. The number is not small, however, of those who attach a greater value to it than to anything the thinker has left. Though much that it contains will be repugnant to multi- tudes, there are now and then glimpses of great thoughts which must powerfully impress all. For instance, what can be finer than Lessing's law of progress? Men obey the moral law, he says, first, to avoid unpleasant consequences in this world ; second, in the world to come ; and, third, they choose virtue for its own sake. In the first and second instances, selfishness is at the root of action ; in the first instance, at its coarsest. In the third, men arc drawn by pure love, and we reach the time of the " new eternal gospel." The masterpiece of Lessing is the peerless play 1 Sime'3 Translation. LESSING. ' 287 of " Nathan the "Wise." It was written late in life, when his philosophy had ripened, and when his spirit, sorely tried in every way, had gained from the sad experience only sweeter humanity. Judged by rules of art, it is easy to find fault with it. The story is involved, the speeches of the charac- ters often too long, the action not always natural ; it is what Lessing himself condemned, a didactic poem. The moral elevation of the piece, how- ever, is so noble, one is impatient at any attempt to measure it by such a trivial standard. Let it violate rules of art as it may, it is thrilled from first to last by a glowing, God-sent fire, such as has appeared rarely in the literature of the world. It teaches love to God and man, tolerance, the beauty of peace. Nathan, a Jew, who has suffered at the hands of the crusaders the extremest affliction, the loss of his wife and seven children, is not embittered by the experience. He adopts a Christian child, Recha, and christens her as his own. She grows to woman- hood, and at length, during Nathan's absence, nearly loses her life in the burning of the house. She is saved from the danger by a young Templar. The consequence of the rescue is mutual love and a be- trothal. Meantime the Sultan Saladin, pressed for money, sends for Nathan. The Mahometan, not less than the Jew, is noble. Nathan tells the sul- tan the famous story of the rings, and the two are drawn together in friendship. At length it appears that the Templar and Recha are really brother and sister, children of a crusader who has been a friend of Nathan. A still stranger revelation comes 288 GERMAN LITERATURE. to pass. When once the young Templar had fallen into the power of Saladin, the sultan spared his life because he resembled a brother, lost many years before. It comes to light that the father of the Templar and Recha is no other than the lost brother of the sultan, who, forsaking his faith, became a Christian, married a Christian wife, and at length lost his life fighting for the cross. It is perhaps the greatest artistic blemish of the plot that the lovers prove at last to be in this way brother and sister, into which relation they subside with an equanimity quite exasperating to the critics. Rccha clings with true filial love to Nathan ; Saladin extends warm affection to the children of his brother. The three leading figures, therefore'; Nathan, Saladin, and the Templar, stand bound together in a close in- timacy. They are all examples of nobleness, though individualized. In Nathan, severe chastening has brought to pass the finest gentleness and love ; Saladin is the perfect type of chivalry, though im- petuous and over-lavish through the possession of great power ; the Templar is full of the vehemence of youth. So they stand, side by side, impressive patterns of manhood, yet representatives of creeds most deeply hostile. Thus, in concrete presentment, Lessing teaches impressively what he had often elsewhere inculcated in a less vivid way, one of the grandest of lessons, that nobleness is bound to no confession of faith ; that it is false to declare this or that religion the one alone worthy, stigmatizing the confessors of other faiths as accursed of God. In days of yore, says the famous story of the LESSINQ. 289 ring, the parable in which the lesson of the play is contained, there lived an Oriental who possessed a priceless ring, which had power to make its owner beloved by God and by mankind. He bequeathed it to his best-loved son, and so arranged that it should go down evermore, falling in each generation to the favorite. At length in the transmission it fell to a father who had three sons, all equally dear to his heart. To each son in turn he promises the ring, as each, for the time being, seems dearest to him. In perplexity, at last he has two other rings made, such counterparts of the true one that when they are placed side by side he himself cannot distin- guish it. To each son then he gives a ring, and dies. Disputes break out among the children, each claiming to be the possessor of the true ring. The wise judge to whom the question is submitted finds it impossible to decide. " Let each one of you," he says, " deem his own true, and make it true by trying who can display most gentleness, forbearance, charity, united to heartfelt resignation to God's will. If, after a thousand thousand years, the virtues of the ring continue to show themselves in your children's children, perhaps one wiser than I will sit on this judgment-seat, who can decide." No ring, Lessing would say, gives one the power to dominate over the rest; so of religions, no one is the exclusive religion of the world. It was his thought, as has been seen, that every historic re- ligion is in some sense divine, a necessary evolu- tion from the conditions under which it originates. Let each, then, allow his neighbors to live in their 19 290 GERMAN LITERATURE. own way, convinced that theirs is as good for them as his for him. What a man believes is a matter of utter indifference if his life is not good. "If it is said," wrote Lessing, after completing it, "that this piece teaches that among all sorts of people there have long been men who have disregarded all revealed religions, and have yet been good men ; if it is added that my intention has evidently been to represent such men in a less repulsive light than that in which the Christian mob has usually looked upon them, I should not have much to urge against that view." There are many in the world to-day as there were in Lessing's own time to whom he will seem to have gone far astray. Few indeed are those whom he will carry with him in all his teach- ing. He himself in fact seems often conscious of inconsistency, and prepared to modify his views ; this in all the departments which he touched, literature, art, politics, philosophy, religion. A searcher after truth, not a teacher of truth, is the character he claimed for himself; and in all that he wrote his effort w r as, not to impress upon men cer- tain views, but to incite them to seek for truth themselves. " Not the truth," he says in the pas- sage which has been already partly quoted, " not the truth in whose possession a man is, or believes himself to be, but the earnest efforts which he has made to attain truth, make the worth of the man. For it is not through the possession, but through the search for truth, that his powers are strength- ened, in which alone his ever-growing perfection LESSIXG. 291 exists. Possession makes him calm, indolent, proud. If God held all truth in His right hand, and in His left the ever-living desire for truth ; if He said to me, Choose, I should, even though with the condition that I should remain forever in error, humbly incline towards His left, and say, Father, give ; pure truth is for Thee alone." 1 " His form was compact and vigorous, of more than ordinary size, and had a symmetry developed bv physical exercise of every kind to the freedom of noble, natural deportment. The head was ele- gantly poised upon a powerful neck ; the face was Avell-defined, of a naturally healthy complexion, illumined by the intellectual brilliancy of large, dark-blue eyes, whose glance, not too piercing, was yet resolute and ingenuous. The thick, long hair, of a beautiful light-brown, even in his latest years was sprinkled with only a few silver threads. He was always careful in deportment, nothing in his outward mien betraying the sedentary scholar. His clothing was always neat, his manners noble, his voice rich, vibrating between baritone and tenor." 2 His life is a profoundly sad one ; a constant struggle with poverty and misappreciation ; a suc- cession of disappointments ; suspected in his fa- ther's house, suspected and persecuted throughout his career, the happiness finally granted him in his union with the woman he loved closing within one 1 The Wolfenbiittel Fragments, quoted in Zimmern's Life of Lea- sing- 292 GERMAN LITERATURE. short year in the bitterest sorrow. The end came in 1781, when he was but fifty-two. " On the fifteenth of February he rose in the afternoon, and caused himself to be dressed. It seemed as though he wished, like the Roman emperor, to die standing. Towards evening, when it was announced that friends were in the ante-room, desiring to see him, the door opened and Lessing entered, a most sad and heart-rending object to look upon ! The noble countenance, damp with the dews of death, shone as in a celestial transfiguration. Silent, and with an Unspeakably affectionate look, he pressed the hand of his weeping daughter, and uncovering his head, bowed kindly to the others present. But the feet refused their office ; he is borne to a couch, and immediately afterwards, at nine o'clock in the even- ing, an apoplectic fit terminated his life." 1 It is easy to make the pilgrimage to the spots made sacred by the memory of Lessing. His life passed, almost without break, in a little group of towns which lie within a short ride of each other. Wittenberg has a greater association than with his name even ; yet he was worthy to walk there, even in the footsteps of Luther, in his vigorous young manhood, when he was enthusiastic to rescue from obloquy the fame of great men of the past, un- worthily condemned." It lends a new interest to Leipsic that he lived there in his unconstrained, Bohemian days. Brunswick, which grudgingly of- 1 Stahr. " Die Rettungon. L&&&ING. 693 fered him an asylum, does him honor in a bronze statue which is the finest ornament of the city ; and Wolfenbiittel, which almost smothered him with its dreariness, guards carefully every trace of his sojourn. But it was in Berlin, I remember, that the pathos of his baffled career came home to me most powerfully. The great capital of United Ger- many resembles very little the inconsiderable town of the last century from which it has grown, and which Lessing knew. Here he suffered some of his bitterest disappointments ; here he enjoyed some of his most precious friendships ; here did some of his manliest work. Changed though the city is, its suggestions in some ways are what they were in Lessing' s time, and as one goes through its streets he can make real to himself what must have been the mood of the humane cosmopolite. In his time, the days of Frederick, there was something martial at every turn. It was the city of men whose main business had come to be war- fare, in whose breasts there was no broader feeling than a love for Prussia. It is scarcely different now. It was already evening of one of the long days at the end of May when I saw, for the first time, the great sand plains which one must cross between Dresden and Berlin. Nature has done little to make the region attractive, but the spirit of strife has lent it tragic associations. There is scarcely an acre that has not drunk blood in some historic con- test, or at least been jarred by cannon-thunder from some great battle-field close by. Towards midnight the glare of the lights of the capital 294 HERMAN LITERATURE. began to whiten the heavens to the northward. Going out early the next morning, I stood presently in a broad avenue. In the centre ran a wide prom- enade, lined by rows of tall, full-foliaged trees ; on each side a crowded road-way, bordered by stately buildings. Close by towered up, till the head of the rider was on a level with the eaves of the houses, a colossal equestrian figure in bronze, in cocked hat, booted and spurred ; the skin tense over the muscles of the bridle-hand, as it reined in the charger ; the wrinkles plain, made by care, in the rider's face ; life-like, as if the bronze warrior might dismount any moment, if he chose. In the distance, down the long perspective of trees, was a lofty gate, supported by Corinthian columns, on the top a figure of Victory in a chariot drawn by horses. Close at hand again, under the porch of a square, strong structure, stood two straight sentinels. A handsome officer came down the pavement, his sword rattling on the stones. In- stantly the two sentinels stepped back in concert, as if the same clock-work regulated their move- ments, brought their shining pieces with perfect precision to the " present," stood for an instant as if hewn from stone, the spiked helmets above the blonde faces inclining backward at exactly the same angle, then precisely together fell into the old posi- tion. The street was " Unter den Linden;" the huge statue was the memorial of Frederick the Great ; the gate down the long vista was the Brandenburger Thor, surmounted by the charioted Victory which Napoleon carried to Paris after Jena, LESSING. 296 and which came back after Waterloo. The solid building was the palace of the kaiser, and when the clock-work sentinels went through their salute with such straight precision, the first sight was gained of that famous Prussian discipline against which, before that summer was finished, 1 supple France was to crush its teeth all to fragments, like a viper incautiously biting at a file. v O The whole aspect of Berlin is military. Near by lies a great tract of country, fenceless and houseless, reserved exclusively for reviews ; in every quarter tower the garrisons for the troops. The statues and public memorials are mostly in honor of great sol- diers and victories. In one place stands old Bliicher, muffled in his cloak, and glaring over his shoulder as if he saw a French column marching round the corner by the opera-house close by. At his right stands Yorck, at his left Gneisenau, and across the street are Scharnhorst and Billow. The great elec- tor towers in another place, on horseback; else- where are the old Dessauer, who helped Marlboro at Malplaquet, and Schwerin in queue and knee- breeches, the black-eagle banner in his hand, as he fell charging a gray-beard of eighty at Kollin ; these and many more. There are tall columns too to commemorate a victory here, or the crushing out of revolutionary spirit somewhere else ; far more rarely a statue to a poet or statesman, or a civilian in any department. On " Unter den Linden" the sentinels are always before the king's palace, the 1 1870. 296 GERMAN LITERATURE. palace of the crown prince, at the arsenal, at the main guard-house, almost all the way from the old castle on the Spree, at one end, to the Brandenburger Thor at the other. Groups of grenadiers are in every street and garden. Each cafe and promenade has its elegant officers. Batteries of artillery roll by at any time, obedient to their bugles ; squadrons of Uhlans ride up to salute the kaiser. Each day at noon swells through the roar of the streets mar- tial music, first a sound of trumpets, then a deafen- ing roll from a score of brazen drums. A heavy detachment of infantry wheels out from some barracks ranks of strong, brown-haired men, stretching from sidewalk to sidewalk, perfectly ap- pointed in every thread and accoutrement, dropping at intervals, section after section, to do the un- broken guard duty at the various posts. Meantime to the main guard-house gather the officers on duty at Berlin, in flashing uniform, the acme of military splendor. Such constant suggestions of war are painful, such apparatus for blood-shedding, such application of energy to the work of destruction, such blunting of the finer nature. The city has grown, but the spirit of the place cannot be far different from what it was in the days of Leuthen and Kiinersdorf. The Prussian still prefers war-songs to the holy melodies of love. The shout of Thor, rushing on to crush his enemies with his hammer, charms him more than any gentler faith, with its utterance of peace. There is more pomp and evidence of power ; the narrow patriotism which had no love beyond Prussia has LESSING. 297 broadened so that it includes all Germany. But the temper is no milder, nor has the patriotism become the wide-reaching sentiment embracing all mankind. Here, then, walked the man of lofty spirit who hated the "fetal thing called war," and said that " what cost blood was certainly not worth blood." For snch words the ears of those days had no hos- pitality ; he who uttered them had scarcely a place to lay bis head. But the man was too great to be forgotten entirely. The recognition which has been accorded him here among the soldiers is thoroughly characteristic. Frederick sits mounted among the tree-tops of " Unter den Linden," and about the pedestal are crowded the life-size figures of the men of his age whom Prussia holds most worthy of re- membrance. At the four corners ride the duke of Brunswick and cunning Prince Heinrich, old Ziethen the Hussar, and Scydlitz, who threw Soubise into rout at Rossbach. Between are a score or more of soldiers of lesser note, the Scotchman Keith, who fell in the early morning twilight at Hochkirch, and, more interesting than all, Tauentzien, Lessing's friend, only soldiers, spurred and girt with sa- bres, except on the very back of the pedestal, and there just at the tail of the king's horse, in the most undistinguished place, stand Kant, peer of Plato and Bacon, and at his side the noble presence of Lessing. Just standing-room for them among the horses and uniforms, at the tail of Frederick's steed ! The statue of Lessing rises serene, tall, un- bending, with gaze fixed as if upon some far-off pleasant prospect, as if he saw the day when, in 298 GERMAN LITERATURE. the long education of the human race, his time -should come. The sculptor buildcd perhaps wiser than he knew, the back of the king turned so squarely upon the figure of the great writer, the hoofs of the war-horse within easy striking distance. So was he regarded by the great and powerful of the land of which he was the most illustrious ornament. He was the prophet of change . Like prophets in general, there were feet ready to trample on him, and he was only saved by his extraordinary strength. "The influence of his life," said Gothe, "cannot perish through long ages." In literature, in art, in politics and philosophy, we see in Lessing the dawn of a new day. And in religion? Did he go utterly astray? " Thou, Luther," he once wrote, "great man, ill understood, thou hast freed us from the yoke of tradition ; who will free us from the more intolerable yoke of the letter ? " l In answer to the enquiry, a man of genius exclaims, " I say Lessing continued Luther's work. When Luther had freed us from tradition, the letter ruled as tyrannically as tradition had done. In freeing men from this ty- rannical letter, Lessing has done 1 most. His voice is loudest in the battle. Here lie swings his sword most joyfully, and it lightens and slays." 2 The world may yet set the two mi^htv strivers side bv */ / ~ .. ^ side. Into the gems of the priestly breast-plate, in that ancient Hebrew tale, the breast-plate worn by 1 Anti-Gotze in Zimmern's Life. '' Heinrich Heine : Ueber Deutschland. LESSING. 299 Aaron and his sons, it was believed that God Him- self from time to time descended, filling them with supernal splendor, thus making known his purposes and helping Israel to decision. So, in the Bible's words, " They bore judgment on their hearts before the Lord continually." It seems to me that this leader of men was not without some such inspira- tion the Urim and Thummim that he received in his soul more abundant measure of " the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world," and so, in a noble sense, " bore judgment ! " CHAPTER XI. KL OPS TOOK, W IE LAND, AND HERDER. Turning from the great figure of Lessing, who stands like Moses among his people, guiding them to things beautiful, but himself dying before the day of glory is reached, we have now to consider three men of importance, Klopstock, Wieland, and Herder, one of whom, Herder, is scarcely less great than he who so nobly " bore judgment," although his greatness was of a different kind. All were young men when Lessing' s influence began to become paramount, coming forward into eminence with him, or while he sat supreme ; when he died, holding for a moment the immortal light, until it was transferred at length to the true, torch-bearers of the gods, the transcendent men from whom the literature of Germany was to receive its noblest illumination. As has been seen, the two rival schools of criti- cism, that of Gottsched and his followers, at Leip- sic, on the one hand, that of Bodmer and Breitinger, at Zurich (known as the Swiss), on the other, battled stoutly over many points. As Gottsched liked the French, the Swiss liked the English ; they blamed French writers as being formal and artifi- cial, demanded nature, and loved Shakespeare and KLOPSTOCK, WIELAND, HERDER. 301 Milton, whom they sought to make widely known. Their hearty effort the school of Gottsched as heart- ily opposed, declaring that English poets would never receive recognition, much less be imitated, in Germany. It was therefore a great triumph for the Swiss, when in 1748, three cantos of an epic poem appeared, called the "Messias," whose author had manifestly been influenced by Milton, a poem which brilliantly justified their views, and aroused among Germans immediate enthusiasm. It was the production of a youth scarcely beyond his twen- tieth year, a theological student at Jena, coming thither from Quedlinburg, in Saxony, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. His boyhood had been spent for the most part in the country ; he was a good classical scholar, also of sincere piety ; he plainly also knew the "Paradise Lost," although he fol- lowed his model in no servile spirit. The omens were unpropitious for Gottsched. If the "Messias " conquered its way to recognition, his prestige was lost ; he fought it with critical thunder, and what- ever other batteries he could influence opened with him to destroy the apparition. It was all in vain ; Gottsched' s real services were forgotten ; from the appearance of the "Messias" the prestige of the Leipsic school was broken, and Zurich triumphed. The "Messias" of Klopstock was important in other ways than as deciding the controversy between the cities. Though modelled upon Milton, as Mil- ton is thought by some to have derived some hints from the Anglo-Saxon poet, Ctedmon, it was the first great epic poem since the days of the Hohen- 302 GERMAN LITERATURE. stauffen in which the German spirit moved inde- pendently. In all other directions Germans had accomplished something. Lyrics had been written ; there was a dramatic literature of a certain kind ; some philosophy, and overmuch theology ; but the field of the epic had lain fallow. The nation considered that the gap was now nobly filled, and the young Klopstock was set beside the greatest poets. Bodmer at once invited him to Zlirich, where, however, he offended the over-severe mag- nate by a cheerfulness which seems to have been innocent enough, but which was thought inconsist- ent with the character of a religious poet. He was invited to Copenhagen, and a pension given him, that he might complete the " Messias." As is so often the case in the history of authorship, the first accomplishment of Klopstock was the best, or at least the most successful. The instalments of his epic, as they appeared at intervals during the fol- lowing years, met with a reception descending grad- ually from the first enthusiasm toward indifference. He lived to a great age, showing through life a strongly-marked character and sincere piety, never forfeiting the respect of his countrymen, although his fame was soon eclipsed by the greater figures that appeared upon the scene. It is for the "Messias" that Klopstock will be mainly remembered, but there was still another department of poetry in which his accomplishment was important. Besides religion, another great idea filled his soul, that of patriotism, and the time in which he appeared was a favorable one for the in- KLOPSTOCK, WIELAND, HERDER. 303 fluence of one so disposed and gifted to be felt to the utmost. In his young manhood the victories of Frederick the Great stirred the hearts of the nation, and prepared them to listen with enthusiasm to the tones of a lyre strung for the Fatherland.* At this time Klopstock sung the victories of Her- mann in the old day, and revived in the hearts of Germans an interest in the faith of their heathen ancestors. From Frederick himself he turned away, believing him to be a despot, directing his glance toward the past, for he felt there was no present Germany. He had a spirit that was full of love for freedom even-where. He was earnest in his sympathy for America in the struggle with George III. ; earnest too in behalf of France at the time of the revolution, until the excesses caused in him, as in so many others who at first hailed the uprising with joy, a terrified reaction. Since the " Messias " so surpasses in interest the other works of Klopstock, let us proceed to consider this more carefully, omitting further mention 'of the rest. Klopstock had the intention to represent po- etically the history of Jesus as given in the gospels. The simple choice of such a subject had much to do with the admiration felt for the poet by his contem- poraries. The cultivated world was then, in the main, religious, and rejoiced to have a German vent- ure forth in emulation of the much-praised Briton. Looking at the subject technically, 1 it is right to say that the story of Christ is not well adapted for 1 Kurz. 304 GERMAN LITERATURE. epic treatment. The facts are so few and simple that the poet is driven to inventions. Since it is necessary to introduce the Deity, the mightiest pict- ures seem trifling ; they must exist within the lim- itations of time and space,, and every limitation contradicts divinity. Just so with the world of spir- its, which must be introduced to mediate between God and man. Though Christianity includes a be- lief in angels, these beings reach no definite individ- uality ; they are abstractions, or figures of allegory. A great epic genius might perhaps be able to con- quer the hindrance, but it was beyond the power of Klopstoek. His angels are mere messengers of the Eternal, without distinction of character; they are never individuals ; indeed, his human figures are not firmly individualized. It is claimed indeed that in this epic all proper epic spirit is wanting. A felici- tous plan, an artistic ordering of events, the graphic representation of personalities, for all these we must search the " Messias " in vain. Judged, how- ever, as a succession of lyrical passages, poetic ex- pressions of lofty emotion, the verdict is different. In this direction Klopstoek is truly great. He first saw that an inspired mood must have an inspired ut- terance. He; considered the speech of the people un- poetic, and claimed that poetry must be distinguished from prose by tinuxualuess. lie might easily have fallen into pomposity, but was kept from this by his good sense and the influence exerted over him by the ancient simple writers, noticeably Luther. Strength and novelty characterize his lines. He reproduced old words, made new words, and in his management KLOPSTOCK, WIELAND, HERDER. 305 of the particles by means of which, in German as in Greek, a shading so delicate can be given to the expression of an idea, he is only surpassed by the greatest writers. His style had great nobleness, power, and point, making his presentations effective and exalting. When he represents the emotions of a Christian believer, the great bliss of the pious, or his absorption into eternal love ; when he lends words to enthusiastic devotion, or represents the soul tortured by doubt, conscience in despair, the heart smitten with anguish, then he is unsurpass- able. He writes almost with the dignity and power of the psalmist, and the reader is carried away as by a sounding storm. The parables are almost the only part of the "Messias" that can be called epic ; in these the first half is particularly rich. He some- times tries to express emotion where none really exists, and there are passages which are character- ized as sentimental, childish, sweetish, trivial ; but we may justly call him a great lyric poet, indeed, Herder pays him the tribute that, in place of the poetry of the intellect and wit which had existed before, he created that of heart and feeling. These words of Vilmar seem to be justly and finely said : "Let us enjoy his greatness, and forget, with the majority of his contemporaries who hung upon him in pious feeling, his detects. Let us rejoice in the gleaming morning-star which arose in him for our literature, and quarrel not with the morning-star that it became no sun. His grave, at Ottersen, under the linden, where he rests at the side of his wife, will remain a revered spot forevermore for 306 GERMAN LITERATURE. every German who has the courage to be at the same time a German and a Christian." The influence of Klopstock upon his generation was profound, winning over to a respect for Ger- man literature a multitude of the best and most sober- ninded, so preparing the way in this class for a good reception of the mightier spirits who were to follow him. Noticeable among his disciples were the young men of the Hain-Bund, the "Grove Fraternity," certain students of the University of Gottingen, who, meeting in a grove of oaks near that town by moonlight, covered themselves ro- mantically with chaplets, devoting themselves to patriotic poetry, and vowing to celebrate the birth- day of Klopstock as their leader. There are names among the members of the Hain-Bund that, in a work less general than the present, should have at- tentive consideration, particularly the translator Voss, and the ballad-writer Burger, but I must content myself with a mere mention of their names. Side by side with Klopstock lived a writer differ- ing much from that earnest Puritan in gifts and char- acter, whom \vc must briefly estimate, Christoph Martin Wieland. He was a few years younger than / / O Klopstock ; at the beginning, a precocious, impres- sible boy, vacillating between pietism and free- thinking, according to the influences that surrounded him. lie wrote religious and patriotic poems, through which, like his famous leader, he drew the attention of the veteran Bodmer, and in his turn was hospitably invited to Zurich. Bright and re- KLOPSTOCK, WIELASD, HERDER. 307 ceptive, he studied here for two years, becoming accomplished especially iii Greek and English, and drawing to himself the notice of the world by a sharp critique of an amiable writer, conceived in a spirit of pietism, and quite unjust. The paper drew the notice of Lessing, who, while recognizing the ability of the writer, sought, by a stinging reply, to lead him from his errors, and at the same time de- fend a man unjustly judged. The means Was ef- fective. The scales fell from Wieland's eyes, and he came soon after to a recognition of the path for which his powers really fitted him. The patronage of certain dignitaries gave him opportunity to be- come acquainted with the world of fashion and rank. The Duchess Amalie of "Weimar selected him to be the tutor of her sons, and henceforth most of his long life was spent in an illustrious circle, of which presently there will be much to say. At twenty-five he wrote his poem called " Musarion," which established his fame and proved that he had found his work. What Sterne is in English liter- ature is WielaiiAJn_Jjej:imi, except thatwxTThay say perhaps that the German is a somewhat more solid entity. "Wieland had a blooming fancy, lively wit, great sensibility, good taste, and acuteness. He was a story-teller full of ease and delicate grace, borrowing his materials generally from the " Mar- chen Welt," the world of fairy tales ; and it is one of his chief titles to distinction that he first wrought in this vein, the pioneer of a multitude of men of genius who in times after him made themselves famous here, the last and best known in the list, 308 GERMAN LITERATURE. perhaps, Hans Christian Andersen. As a poet his verse is most harmonious, with a rhythm full of easy freedom and variety, strongly in contrast with Klopstock's mighty, high-sounding line. His ease and grace were gained only by hard labor. "It ought to be reckoned as a slight desert," he says characteristically, " that I was never tired of licking my bears into shape as they were born, and making them as presentable as I could." He was wanting in power of invention, but had a happy faculty of elaborating what might be furnished to him. His greatest and most complete work is " Oberon," of which GiJthe said: "As long as poetry remains poetry, gold gold, and crystal crystal, it will be loved and admired as a masterpiece of poetic art." The story of Oberon. is taken from an old French romance, " Huon of Bordeaux," and has its scene in the East and fairy-land. The real and fanciful world are well blended together, the one depending upon the other. The adventures of the mortal hero and heroine are skilfully united \viththe story of the quarrel and reconciliation of Oberon and Titania, something in the manner of the "Midsummer- Xight's Dream " of Shakespeare, and all is made clear and symmetrical. In his romances, Wieland in no way reaches the artistic height of his poems. He is prolix, full of long digressions, so that the unity of his works is much injured ; but even when garrulous he is bright and charming. His scenes are almost always in Greece, or the far East, but the personages are Germans or French of Wieland's time. Often the delineations, like Swift's Lillipu- KLOPSTOCK, WIELAND. AND HERDER. 309 tians and Brobdignagians in Gulliver, are made the vehicles of fine satire. Sometimes his gaiety stoops to licentiousness ; and here too, as in so many other respects, he resembles his English contempo- rary, Sterne. Among the romances the Abderites is particularly witty and pleasant, in which he employs an assumed antiquity to veil a satire on the petty incidents and foibles of life in a provincial town. The Abderites are a people ironically styled wise ; they erect a fountain, with costly sculptures, and forget, until all is done, that there is not water enough to moisten the nose of a single dolphin ; they place a beautiful statue of Venus a masterpiece of which they are very proud on a pedestal so high that the statue becomes well-nigh invisible, the idea being that in this way it may be well seen by all travellers ap- proaching the city. But the long account of the great lawsuit in Abdera is the most amusing part of the story. In the city there was only one dentist, who had an extensive practice in the neighborhood, and travelled from place to place. On one occasion he had an ass and its driver to carry his baggage across a wide heath. It was a hot and bright sum- mer's day, and the weary dentist was glad to sit down and rest awhile in the shadow cast from the figure of the ass. Against this appropriation of a shade the driver, who was also the owner of the ass, protested, saying that nothing had been said in the bargain about anv such use of the shadow. The dentist must therefore either come out of the shade, or pay something extra for its use. He refused 310 GERMAN LITERATURE. to do so, and a lawsuit was the result ; the best lawyers of Abdera were employed on each side, and the whole population of the town was soon divided into parties styled respectively "Asses" and "Shadows." So bitter was their enmity that an "ass" would not .sit down at the same table with a "shadow." It was a biting and effective satire upon prevailing forms of litigation. Wieland, then, following the influence of Klop- stock, and at first taking a direction for which he was not fitted, at length discovered his true path, and had an important influence in rectifying a cer- tain one-sidedness in the views of his former teacher. Klopstock, as we have seen, had breathed into the language strength, majesty, and poetic life, given it a power such as it had not before possessed for the expression of exalted emotions, like patriotism and religion. With the advantage came a certain turgid stiffness a departure from simplicity which was ill adapted especially to the representa- tion of things cheerful and charming, and even to the ordinary relations of life. Wieland showed that German could deal also with the light and sportive, was available for merry jest as well as dignified sobriety ; and while lie did so, touched sometimes upon the frivolous and immoral. Klopstock and Lessing had won the religious and intellectual classes ; so Wieland gained unbounded popularity with the world of elegant fashion, whom the greater writers were too grave to reach. Here- tofore the elegant "world had recognized no culture but the French, and not believed in the possibility KLOPSTOCK, WIELAND, HERDER. 311 of a readable German book. To "Wi eland belongs the credit of winning from them some respect for their despised mother-tongue, and he may, there- fore, be mentioned with the grander names who were preparing for the new day, trifling though he may be in comparison. His popularity was immense ; Napoleon gave him the ribbon of the Legion of Honor ; Alexander of Russia made him a noble. He wrought his vein with true German patience, doing some of his best work beyond his seventieth year, showing to the world at last forty-two solid / O *- volumes of accomplishment. His sunny, amiable nature made him a favorite, and one is drawn toward him more strongly than toward many of his greater contemporaries, when we read that he was singularly free from envy and unmanly sensitive- ness. It should be reckoned among his deserts that he appreciated and translated Shakespeare. Following Wieland, after an interval of a decade, contemporary, but making his influence felt a little later, appears a figure greater than either, and only second to the mightiest, that of Johann Gott- fried Herder. At Mohrungen, among the Poles, in East Prussia, he was born, the son of a poor villager who combined the office of teacher of the girls' school with that of bell-ringer and singer in the choir. From the first the boy was pious, and interested in books and music, and when he was sixteen the dean of the parish, seeing his intelli- gence, took him into his household, where he found opportunity to study. From the first he had re- 8 12 GERMAN LITERATURE. markable power of impressing himself. The sur- geon of a Russian regiment, temporarily in the vil- lage, offered to take him to Konigsberg to study medicine, and afterwards to St. Petersburg. Her- der had no inclination in this direction, but accepted the offer as likely to lead out into a broader oppor- tunity for culture. We soon find him a student of theology, filling his mind with extraordinary avidity, and becoming a favorite with Kant, then rising into fame. Kant's strictly philosophical lectures appear to have pleased him less than those in astronomy and physics, although the thinker possessed at that time his youthful eloquence, and used a much clearer language than his later scholastic technicalities. Kant encouraged him, and often gave him his own manuscripts to criticise. At Konigsberg lived also a mystical thinker named Hamann, a man of many ideas, but with no faculty of clear expression, from whom Herder caught an enthusiasm for English writ- ers, particularly Shakespeare and Ossian, and gained many notions which affected his subsequent career. At twenty we find him in the city of Riga, making himself even then famous as a teacher and preacher, and publishing writings which go beyond the local circles. Soon after, he sets out upon travels, for those days extensive, seeing, besides Germany, the Netherlands and France, where he spends some months in Paris, getting rid of provincial preju- dices and broadening his culture by visits to thea- tres, libraries, and art collections. The prince of Holstein Oldenburg takes him as a tutor, in which position he has still further opportunities. KLOPSTOCK, WIELAND, HERDER. 313 At length at Strassburg, in 1770, where he goes temporarily for surgical help for a trouble of the eye, he makes an acquaintance, for him the most important of his life, and full of consequence to the world. It was at the Hotel do 1' Esprit. It is well to give a particular picture of so memorable an in- terview, and fortunately we have the means of do- ing so in the account of one of the personages con- cerned. Herder one day stood at the foot of the staircase, about to ascend to his room. He was tall ; his face was round, his forehead large and com- manding ; his nose somewhat short ; although his lips were rather too thick, his mouth was agreeably formed. His eyes, heavily shaded by black eye- brows, were piercing, the effect not destroyed by the inflammation to which one of them was subject. He wore his hair curled and dressed ; his coat was black, and over it was thrown a long silk cloak of the same color. The costume was elegant, and, together with a certain delicacy and decorum in his bearing, seemed to mark him as a clergyman. He was now twentj^-seven years old. As he began the ascent to his room he was accosted by a 3~outh of twenty-one, of the most striking appearance. He was above the middle size, and superbly formed, the ideal of symmetry and strength in every limb. His face was beautiful as that of an antique divinity, the eyes in particular, having pupils uncommonly large, and all alive with an extraordinary ardor. He was dressed in the costume of a student, and accosted Herder with the nonchalance of that class, as if he were an old acquaintance. Herder was pleased with the 314 GERMAN LITERATURE. young man's open manner, and responded civilly. Out of the chance meeting a conversation arose, which became animated, and when the two parted the student requested permission to come again, which Herder granted with pleasure. The hand- some student was the young Gothe. 1 They came together again and again, and Gothe, in his autobiography, gives us the particulars of the intimacy. Herder liked the student, but seems to have had no appreciation then of the extraordi- nary genius he possessed, describing him in a letter as somewhat too light and sparrow-like. Gothe, on his part, was strongly drawn toward Herder. He was at this time all at sea as to his career, a dab- bler in medicine, in art, in literature ; full of animal spirits, giving frequent scandal to his decorous friends by his wild escapades. Herder inspired him through his powerful character and great attain- ments. Gothe told him unreservedly of his pur- suits and aspirations, and although often treated with imperious harshness, a fault which Herder never lost, submitted himself in a wonderful* way to his influence. In the hope of receiving benefit in his infirmity, Herder underwent painful surgical operations, Gothe standing at his side. The experi- ence cemented their friendship, the one admiring the great fortitude with which the suffering was en- countered, the other grateful for the sympathy shown. " Such of my elders," says Gothe, " as I had hitherto associated with had tried to improve 1 Lewes' Life of Gothe. KLOPSTOCK, WTELAND, HERDER. 315 me by too great indulgence. But as to Herder, his approbation was never to be reckoned upon, no matter in what way it might be sought. My strong attachment to and respect for him, the dissatisfac- tion with myself he excited in me, kept me in a state of internal contention which I had never before ex- perienced. * * * I found myself initiated, on a sudden, into all the attempts and views of our lit- erary men, in which he himself appeared to take an active part. * * * From Herder I learned to look upon poetry from a new point of view, with which I was much pleased. That of the Hebrews, the popular songs, the primitive examples of poetry everywhere, all proved, in his opinion, that poetry was not the privilege of a few individuals, polished by careful cultivation, but an inherent faculty in the human mind. I engaged with eagerness in all the studies, and my avidity to learn equalled the gener- ous zeal of my instructor." 1 In short, it maybe said that the acquaintance while for Herder it changed the course of his life, in ways which will be spoken of presently, for Gothe, w T as one of the most important turning-points of his career, deciding him perhaps to adopt literature as his calling, and giving him views which prevailed with him through life. The power of Herder's character, running out sometimes into arrogance, but still very impres- sive, is shown in the way in which he dominated even so remarkable a man as Gothe. " Herder, Herder!" bursts out the superb youth, "if I am Dichtung und "Wahrheit. 316 GERMAN LITERATURE, destined to be only your satellite, so will I be, and willingly and truly, a friendly moon to your earth. But you must feel that I would rather be a planet, Mercury even, the smallest of the seven, to re- volve with you about the sun, than the first of the five which turn around Saturn." It was the influence of Herder which turned Gothe to literature ; Gothe, in turn, shaped the whole life- course of Herder. A few years more follow, of astonishing acquirement and constant writing, dur- ing which Herder rises more and more upon the world. At length, when thirty-two, at Gothe's sug- gestion, he is invited to Weimar, to a high eccle- siastical position, which he accepts, becoming at last the head of the church in the grand duchy. He discharges with zeal the duties of his place, and accomplishes, as will be seen, wonders in work of a more general character. At one time he sees Italy ; for the most part he remains in Weimar, reverenced by great and humble, subduing those who surround him by an extraordinary personal power, affecting all Europe through his pen, leading a life blameless and fruitful for good, until he dies, in 1803, at the age of fifty-six. Both in poetry and prose the work and influence of Herder have been of immense importance. Like Lessing, he had really little original poetic talent, but had a power, never equalled before or since, of receiving into his mind all poetic life, and repro- ducing it again with perfect truth. 1 He taught 1 Kurz. KLOPSTOCK, WIELAND, HERDER. 317 that in poetry it wa.s not enough that the form should be artistic ( preceding critics had been satis- fied to speak merely of rhyme and metre) ; ante- cedent to this must come the poetic comprehension of life and its phenomena, that this was the living spring, the same in all times and lands, and that it is to be found at its purest in the folk-song, the poetry of the people. He taught that poetry was as necessary a human expression as language ; that however manifold the forms might be, the source was always the same. This theory, again and again enunciated, he illustrated by multitudes of exam- ples. He sought a knowledge of the folk-songs of all times and races. He first introduced to Germans the Oriental literatures, making known the Hindoo Sacontala, imitating from the Persian, as well as translating from the Hebrew. He was fully at home with the songs of Greece and Rome, called attention to the value of the old German memorials, and penetrated to the four corners of the earth, while he sought what he loved in all modern literatures. For Bishop Percy's " Reliques " he felt extraordi- nary enthusiasm, and knew as well the ballads of Spain and Russia. One is filled with awe at the research of this su- perb enthusiast, so catholic, so tireless, with sense so unerring in the hunt for pearls near and far away ! In his heaping volumes, w^e are now in the Rose-garden of Saadi ; now striving with the Moors in splendid elaborations of the Spanish ballads of the Cid ; now it is Horace and Persius ; now some Brahminic outpouring. On one page flows an idyl 318 GERMAN LITERATURE. of Theocritus ; on another aLupland lover sings to his mistress, or we hear the passion of a Persian maid. Now we are swept on by the artless power of a Scotch ballad ; now by the holy pulsing of a psalm. Here it is the wild rhyme of a Norse scald ; here a breath from Sicily, calling up orange groves upon opal seas ; a Chinese ditty, or an Indian war- song. They are reproductions, not translations. Herder himself best describes his method. Speak- ing of his renderings from one poet, where he did as always, he says: "I followed the spirit of his muse, not every one of his words and pictures. In his lyrics I kept the peculiar tone of each in my ear, the import and outline of the same in my eye. I have not lent him beauties, but perhaps done away with blemishes, because I honored his great genius too much to expose him here. Where his poem ap- peared to want something in distinctness, I deepened the outlines with a light hand, as with an old draw- ing. Generally speaking, I was more occupied with the spirit which breathes in his poems than with the clothing, although this charmed me much." Thus, with the rarest learning, he collected grains of gold from a thousand books, preserving the peculiarities of the different times and lands, of different characters and conditions, marking the o finest transitions; the delicate shadings the most subtle coloring stamped in with perfect truth and fidelity. lie had little creative fancy. His own poems, when compared with his renderings, seem far inferior. His gift was that of appropriating the foreign, fathoming and reproducing again the most KLOPSTOCK, WIELAND, HERDER. 319 concealed 'beauties and sense. Of the many vol- umes in which his labors in this direction are con- tained, the work called the " Spirit of Hebrew Poetry" has, perhaps more than any other, gained the admiration of his countrymen and the world. There, in psalm and prophetic rhapsody, the pas- sion is of the sublimest, and. like a marvellous con- duit, the soul of Herder pours it all forth in floods as warm, as abundant, as quickening. The prose writings of Herder are as numerous as his poetical labors. He first gained attention by pieces of literary criticism contributed to the pe- riodicals of the time, and while still very young wrote a treatise on the " Origin of Language," which was crowned by the Berlin Academy. The- ology and philosophy received attention from his prolific mind ; he was also the first preacher of his day. 1 Passing over the briefer labors, let us turn at once to his magnum opus, the " Ideas for a Philos- ophy of the History of Humanity," a vast work, superb in every way, of extraordinary erudition and wonderful grasp, a work deserving a place among the mightiest accomplishments of the human mind. We cannot say that Herder created the philosophy of history. Bossuet, in France, had preceded him ; so too the profound Italian, Vico, and later still, Voltaire. Herder proceeded, however, upon an original plan, which he developed with most extra- ordinary elaboration. " When I was quite young," he says in his preface, " when the fields of knowl- 1 Kurz. 320 GERMAN LITERATURE. edge yet lay before me in all their morning beauty, from which the mid-day sun of our life draws so much, the thought often occurred to me whether, when all in the world has its philosophy and science, that which touches us most closely, the history of humanity, ought not to have a philoso- phy and science. Everything called this to my mind, metaphysics and ethics, physics and nat- ural history. The God who in nature has arranged everything according to measure, number, and weight ; who has ordered the essence of things accordingly, their forms and associations, their course and maintenance, so that from the great world-building to the dust-grain, from the power that holds sun and earth to the thread of a spider- web, only one wisdom, goodness, and power rules ; He who in the human body, and in the powers of the human soul, has considered everything so won- derfully, so divinely, that if we venture to think after the Omniscient we lose ourselves in an abyss of His thoughts, how, said I to myself, should this God, in determining and creating OUR RACE, have departed from His wisdom and goodness, and have had here no plan? Or did He want to conceal it from us, since He showed us in the lower crea- tion, which little concerns us, so many of the pre- scriptions of His eternal law? " Long before his great work appears, then, its ideas were occupying him. Of the twenty-five books projected, twenty only were finished, the remainder existing only in plan ; but as I give you the sketch, you will not wonder they were left in- KLOPSTOCK, W 'IE LAND, HERDER. 321 complete. The first five books, which form the first part, contain the foundation of the work, partly in a general sketch of our dwelling-place, the material universe, partly in a review of the organizations which enjoy with us the light of the sun. He re- gards the earth at first as part of the universe with relation to the other worlds ; then in itself according to its constitution. He represents it as a great work- shop for the organization of very different beings, and examines the various kingdoms of nature an- imal, vegetable, and mineral in their relation to man. Pie dwells longest upon the animal kingdom, shows the nature of its creatures," their difference from man ; then passes to the consideration of man himself, his being and task. In part second, from book sixth to book tenth, he shows the organiza- tion of different races, according to their dwelling- places, so different in situation, climate, and soil, drawing the conclusion of the unity of the human race ; that while, to be sure, outward circumstances have the most decisive influence upon bodily and mental constitution, for men an inner power has been created, which everywhere appears the same, and must be regarded as the mother of all develop- ment. The particular form which the life-power has once impressed on the mind and activity of man, under the cooperation of outward circumstances, is transmitted through tradition and habit ; and so, among other things, forms of government and re- ligion are transmitted heritages. This leads him to the investigation of the question where the forming centre and oldest home of man is, and to the setting 322 GERMAN LITERATURE. forth of the Asiatic declarations about the creation of the earth, and the oldest written traditions of the origin of the human race. In the third part, from hook eleventh to book fifteenth, the historical de- velopment of particular races is treated. Proceed- ing from China, he gradually considers the most important Asiatic nations, and devotes two books, which are among the best of the work, to the Greeks and the Romans. In the fifteenth book, which was much praised by Gothe, Herder enthusiastically un- folds the course of human development from an- tiquity to modern times. Humanity is the aim of human nature, and to this end God has given into the hands of our race its own fate. All the destruc- tive powers in nature must not only, in course of time, submit to the maintaining powers, but also serve in the development of the whole ; and since reason and propriety, according to the laws of their inner nature, must always win more space among men, they must all the more further a permanent condition of the race, since at the same time a wise goodness rules in the fate of men. In the fourth part the Middle Ages are considered, the origin and course of Christianity are detailed, the influence of the papacy and Mahometanism discussed, their more important phenomena touched upon, as, the course of commerce, chivalry, the crusades, the geograph- ical discoveries. But here stopped the busy hand and brain. Upon its first appearance, the marvellous work encountered opposition. The science and philoso- phy even of that time found fault with the discus- KLOPSTOCK, WIELAND, HERDER. 323 sions of the first part. This book the whole work, indeed contained much which even then had to be rejected as without foundation, far more which our later progress has found untenable. Even what is purely historical is often faultily comprehended. Still, Herder's " Ideas for the Philosophy of His- tory " is a work significant and important, like the " Novum Organum " of Bacon, because it led the way to a profounder comprehension of history ; be- cause it showed that in particular phenomena a gen- eral, uniting thought lives, which expresses itself certainly never completely, often only very poorly, but guides the whole race of man. Most powerful has been the " Philosophy of History " in its influ- ence. Therein lies not merely many a germ which was developed later by others ; few books have so wrought upon the world's general culture as this. It passed over to such an extent into the possession of the cultivated that, as Gothe well says, " Only a few of those who now read it are instructed by it for the first time ; for through the hundredfold borrowings from it they have been fully instructed in other connections." l AVhat is true of Germans is true too of us. The great thoughts of Herder have passed into the consciousness of the race, become the very axioms and first principles upon which we act, believing them to be born with us. The "Philosophy of History" laid the foundation upon which scores of great thinkers since his time have builded. Here Karl Hitter found the germ 1 Eckermann's Gesprache. 324 GERMAN LITERATURE. which he developed into his Physical Geography ; hence Hegel and Humboldt took their starting-point. And not alone in Germany ; Guizot in France, Buckle and Lecky in England, Draper in Amer- ica, all in fact who grapple deeply with the prob- lem of human development, must owe their debt to the mighty Weimar preacher. Here are a few sentences which will perhaps help the reader to understand the grasp, the eloquent sweep, the noble humanity, of Herder's prose: * * * "Why was it denied thec, thou tran- scendent, magnificent Hannibal, to prevent the ruin of thy fatherland, and after the victory at Canna?, hasten straight to the den of thy wolf-like, hereditary foe ? " * * * " Whithersoever my look turns, it beholds destruction ; for everywhere did these conquerors of the world leave the same traces. Had the Romans been really the emancipators of Greece, under which magnanimous name they had themselves announced at the Isthmian games to this race, which had be- come childish, how differently they would have pro- ceeded ! But when Paulus yEmilius causes seventy cities of Epirus to be plundered, and a hundred and fifty thousand men to be sold as slaves, merely to reward his army ; when Metellus and Silanus de- vastate and rob Macedonia ; Mummius, Corinth ; Sulla, Athens and Delphi, as scarcely any other cities in the world have been maltreated ; when this ruin extends itself to the islands of Greece, and Rhodes, Cyprus, and Crete have no better fate than Greece itself, namely, to become toll-houses for tribute and places for plundering for the triumphs KLOPKTOrK. WIELAND, HERDER. 325 of Rome ; when the last king of Macedonia, with his sons, is first led about in triumph, then left to languish in the most wretched of dungeons ; when the last sparks of Grecian freedom in the ^Etolian and Achaian leagues are destroyed, and at length the whole land becomes a battle-field, on which the rapacious, devastating hordes of the triumvirs at last slay one another, O, Greece! what a fate does thy protectress bring upon thee thy instruc- tress, Rome, teacher of the world ! All that is left to us from thee is ruins, which the barbarians car- ried with them as booty of their triumph, that all of noble art which humanity had ever devised might utterly perish ! * * * "Of Gaul there is little to say, since we know of its subjugation only from the bulletins of its conqueror. For ten years it cost Caesar incred- ible toil and all the force of his great soul. Although he was more noble-minded than any Roman, he could not change his Roman nature, and won the sad renown k of having fought in fifty pitched bat- tles, besides the civil wars, and of having slain in arms eleven hundred and ninety-two thousand men.' Most of these were Gallic souls. Where are the many spirited and courageous races of this great land? Where was their force and bravery, their numbers and vigor, when, after centuries, wild hordes fell upon them and shared them as slaves? Even the name of this mighty people is extin- guished, its religion, culture, and tongue. Ye souls great and noble, Scipios and Cassar, what thought ye, what felt ye, when, as departed spirits, 326 GERMAN LITERATURE. from the starry heavens ye looked upon Rome, the robber cave, and the completion of your own murderous handiwork? How soiled, in your eyes, must your honor seem ; how bloody your laurels ; how brutal and inhuman your butcher skill. Rome is no more. Even while it endured must every noble citizen have confessed that curses and destruc- tion would heap themselves upon his fatherland, with all these monstrous victories of ambifion ! " l In addition to his literary greatness, Herder was one of the most impressive speakers of his time. Of oratory, as we understand it, the Germans, in the past and at present, know little. In Herder's time all free speech upon political questions was for- bidden, and at present the strong imperial govern- ment will suffer no sharp popular criticism. Foren- sic attack and defense, which in England and America have been the occasion of such displays of human power, have been out of the question in Germany. The pulpit and chair of the professor have always given to orators in Germany their best opportunity. Herder possessed a rare gift for imparting in con- versation the enthusiasm with which he overflowed. His physique was powerful and commanding ; of his great intellectual and moral strength he was fully conscious ; he possessed a self-assertion which, as we have seen, in a man of ordinary gifts would have been insufferable arrogance, and which, even in his case, was excessive. Even when in company with men of the greatest genius he asserted him- 1 Book xiv, ch. 3. Ideen zur Gcschichte der Menscheit. KLOP&TOCK, WIELAND, HERDER. &27 self disagreeably, as Gothe, Schiller, and "VVie- land complain. " The man," said Wieland, charac- teristically, " is like an electric cloud. From a distance the meteor has a splendid effect ; hut may the devil have such a meteor hanging over his head ! I would like to have a dozen Pyrenees between him and me." But if in social life he was an uncomfortable companion, in the pulpit, where, as head of the church of the land, he was entitled to speak with authority, he swayed, like reeds shaken by the wind, the hearts of low and high. In his early life his sermons were written ; later they were ex tempore, and of extraordinary richness. He de- manded that the pulpit orators should abstain from all art, and preach simply in popular language. Says one hearer: " You should have seen how, in a few moments, he chained all outbreaks of distrac- tion and curiosity to stillness. All hearts were opened, every eye hung upon him and enjoyed un- accustomed tears, while sighs of emotion rustled through the moved assembly. Over the gospel of the day he uttered himself with enthusiasm, with the clear, lofty simplicity which needs no word-fig- ures, no arts of the school. So, it seems to me, did the apostles preach." Schiller wrote of his preach- ing, upon an ordinary occasion: "Last Sunday I heard Herder preach for the first time. The noble sermon was extremely plain, natural, adapted for the people. No extravagant gestures, no play with the voice, a simple, earnest expression. One can- not fail to remark that he is conscious of his diir- 328 GERMAN LITERATURE. nity. The feeling too that he has universal esteem gives him self-possession and ease. He feels that he is a superior mind surrounded by minds of a lower order. His sermon pleased me better than any I have ever heard in my life." Of his address at the baptism of the hereditary prince of Weimar, Wieland wrote : "I know nothing purer, simpler, more heart-touching, more finely considered or felic- itously said, either in German or any other tongue." And of the same sermon, Gothe said: "Herder preached like a god." \Ve have indicated the foible of his character. It was the same possessed by Macaulay, Samuel Johnson ; greater yet, by Milton. From first to last he was full of a noble purity, and untiring in the application of his splendid gifts to the benefit of men. As a writer, his faults are diftuseness and a tendency to rhapsody, which, though natural and not offensive in him, when imitated by his thousand followers, worked injuriously against point and simplicity. As I think of an image which shall best typify the great son of tin' poor school-master of Mohruu- gen, I find it in the bee. His life was labor ; from himself he furnished nothing, but going restlessly from land to land, and through the ages of the past, with an unerring instinct he perceived where lav the honey ; gathered it and hived it with in- dustry untiring, that it might bless the world with its sweetness. Moreover, dusty with the pollen caught in his flight through a thousand fields, he swept with fructifying touch over the waiting minds of KL6PSPOCK, WIELAND, HERDER. 329 his contemporaries, impregnating them with a life which appeared, and still appears, in forms unnum- bered of beauty and fragrance ! Tranquil lies the little city of Weimar in the midst of its quietly sloping hills. On the hills waved the grain harvests of July when I ap- proached it. From the station I went down into the shade of the streets, among the modest, vener- able buildings, that possess more interest than met- ropolitan temples and palaces, because they have been the homes and haunts of genius. Presently I crossed the well-worn pavement about a plain, gray church. These were the walls which once echoed the eloquence of Herder, and as I gazed I thought of the tall, strong figure in the plain black robe, majestic through its associations, once worn by Luther, and established as the garb of the evan- gelical clergy of his country, towering before his congregation, speaking to them with the ardor and authority of a prophet. To help my fancy, close at hand stood Herder's figure in bronze, the noble head illumined, the brow heavy with thought, and beneath, the inscription, carved at the command of his ducal patron, "Light, Love, Life." Mighty he was among the sons of men, and yet there was to come after him a mightier, treading literally within his footsteps, in this very city of Weimar, while he erected a structure compared with which even the fame of Herder is an unpretentious fane ! CHAPTER XII. GOTHE THE MAN. In the world's literature of the last two hundred years, it is right, I think, to say there is no name so great as Gothe ; in many ways his life is the most interesting of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The family from which he sprung can be traced from the middle of the seventeenth century, at which time his great-grandfather lived as a 'farrier at Mansfeld, in Thuringia. With the generations that follow comes a gradual rise from this humble condition. The son of the farrier becomes a tailor, removes to Frankfbrt-on-the- Main, and, by a fortunate marriage with the landlady of a popular inn, acquires wealth. The ,son of the tailor and the landlady, Johann Cas- par Gothe, is well educated, and becomes accom- plished by travel in Italy. He reaches the dignity of imperial counsellor among the burghers of the free city, and marries, at length, the daughter of the chief magistrate. Here at last we have the parents of the poet. The father is cold and formal, but upright and truth-loving. From him Gothe in- herits a well-built frame, an erect carriage, and measured movement, and for spiritual qualities a certain orderliness and stoicism. The reader of GOTHE THE MAN. 331 Gothe's life respects the figure of the father as it is painted to us, but is not attracted by it. The figure of the mother, on the othor hand, is very charming. At her marriage she is a lovely girl, simple, hearty, joyous, and affectionate ; she is full of mother-wit, attractive to children, and with many accomplish- ments. She has health like iron. Later in life she becomes large and stately. She has always a circle of young girls about her, enthusiastic for her, and is also a favorite with poets and princes. There are many letters of hers extant, of which it is said, "There is no dead word among them." 1 While the father moves upon the scene, his figure always somewhat stern and cool, disappointed at his son's choice of a career, never cordially recognizing his success, the mother is always a most amiable personality, full of genius, sunshine, and sympathy, even in the deep old age which she at length reaches ; going almost hand in hand with her great son, to whom she gave birth when she was but eighteen, until he at last, himself an old man, bids her a heart-broken farewell. August twenty-eighth, 1749, was the date of the girl-mother's memorable travail. The air was full at the time of the free, bold spirit which, develop- ing, was destined, before the end of the century, to produce the French revolution. Frankfort, the centre of wide-extending traffic, was an appropriate birth-place for a cosmopolitan poet. His education, from first to last, was of a kind to lift him above 1 Hermann Grimm : Vorlesuno;en iiber Gothe. 332 GERMAN LITERATURE. all narrow limits. He was taught especially to ad- mire Italy. Going from the station at Frankfort, it is but a short walk to the old house in the Hirsch- graben, the memorial stone in whose front tells the stranger that it is the place of Gothe's birth. Though quite different from the fashion of our time, it has a look most solid and respectable, standing close upon the street, the upper stories projecting over the lower in a manner to suggest a beetling Olympian brow ; the many windows looking upon the passing back and forth of the human tide, as if, like the child it gave to the world, it was, before all that moved about it, wide-awake and impression- able. In Gothe's famous autobiography, written in age, the great man reverts affectionately to his earliest childhood, painting with lingering and vivid touch his child-life here, the dimly recalled pranks of infancy, the first beginnings to which memory goes back, the quarrels with the neighbors' chil- dven, the mother's story-telling, the pageants in the street, the first love. Read once the old poet's bright reminiscences, and you will long to see the house in the Ilirsch-graben, and Frankfort's quaint streets and squares. Got he was a precocious boy. Before he was eight years old he wrote German, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek ; many of his boyish exercises are still preserved. Tie earlv became the favorite of emi- nent artists, and tried ardently to become a painter. Perhaps the genius of no human being has come so near being universal, but it had its limitations, and this was one direction where they made themselves GOTHE THE MAN. 333 felt. As regards music too, though he faithfully tried, his accomplishments were but slender ; nor could he at this time, or later in his career, do much with mathematics, more, no doubt, through defect of inclination than power. In other directions his energy and success were extraordinary. He tells us himself minutely the circumstances that aided his development; his father's training, faithful but un- sympathetic, his mother's cherishing, and a thou- sand other influences. A French army it is dur- ing the Seven Years' War occupies the city, and his father's house becomes the headquarters of offi- cers of rank. These treat the boy kindly, and, dur- ing the time of their stay, surround him with a French atmosphere. He is impressible to an ex- traordinary degree, "like a chameleon, taking a hue from every object under which it lies." 1 He learns not only the language, but acquires a French culture, which, however, is far from absorbing him. He studies English and Hebrew as well, and in spite of all this occupation, by no means neglects his body, which he perfects by abundant exercise. Pre- cocious in everything, at fifteen comes a love affair, the tirst of a long series running through his life almost to his eightieth year. At sixteen it is felt that the boy needs the in- fluence of a broader world, and he is therefore sent to Leipsic. It was his father's wish that he should be a lawyer, but he soon turned in disgust from study of that kind, working in directions 1 Lewes' Life of Gothe. 334 GERMAN LITERATURE. which seemed unpromising enough to his father and the professors to whom he had been committed. He became interested in medicine and botany. He read Moliere and Corneille, and gave the rein to his theatrical taste. We find him performing in pri- vate theatricals, appearing as Tellhcim, in " Minna von Barnhelm ; " he even wrote dramas of his own, two of which are included in his works, the first- lings of his genius. At this time he was profoundly moved by the " Laokoon " of Lessing. Ho visited Dresden to see the great pictures of the gallery, pursued faithfully his drawing, and began also to learn engraving. His intercourse with society made him conscious of awkwardness. Moreover, there are indications enough that he saw a wild side of life ; but dissipation could not absorb him. With soul as sensitive as an iodized plate, his life at Leipsic does not pass without the reception of an impress from the figures of the maidens with whom he moves in society. After a two or three years' sojourn he returns to Frankfort, really vastly developed by experience and culture ; though not unnaturally, his father considers that he has begun his career most unpromisingly. The relations of the two become cold and unpleasant, and the son falling sick, his time passes drearily. When he is once more able to work, he turns his attention to alchemy, reading books of old magicians, which in those days, when as yet there was no science of chemistry, still had authority. Still another love affair, ardent and transitory as those that had preceded. At length, in 1770, when twenty years OOTHE THE MAN. 335 old, he is sent to make trial of the university at Strassburg, as before at Leipsic. "A more magnifi- cent youth never perhaps entered the Strassburg gates. Long before he was celebrated, he was likened to an Apollo. The features were large and liberally cut, as in the fine, sweeping lines of Greek art. The brow lofty and massive, from be- neath which shone large, lustrous, brown eyes of marvellous beauty, their pupils being of almost un- exampled size. The slightly aquiline nose was large and finely cut ; the mouth full, with a short arched lip, very expressive ; the chin and jaw boldly pro- portioned, and the head resting on a fine, muscular neck. In stature he was rather above the middle size ; although not really tall, he had the aspect of a tall man, and is usually so described, because his presence was so imposing. His frame was strong and muscular, yet sensitive ; he excelled in all active sports." 1 At Strassburg he was still the chameleon, singu- larly receptive of every impression. Falling into the society of students of medicine, he at once catches their interest ; electricity and optics also at- tract him. His intellectual activity was, as always, extraordinary, and yet he found time for much con- tact with life, where his course was often sufficiently unconventional, though it would be harsh to call it vicious. His force of character is in many ways apparent. To conquer undue sensitiveness, he com- pels himself to endure the dissecting-room ; to sub- 1 Lewes. 336 GERMAN LITERATURE. due a tendency to giddiness, he stands for long in- tervals upon the narrow space at the summit of the Strassburg spire. Marie Antoinette passes through the town, a lovely bride of fifteen, on her way to her career of calamity as queen of France. Strass- burg receives her with much pomp, for there she first sets foot upon the soil she is to rule. But among the rich hangings of her apartment is tapes- try chosen with bad taste, representing classic hero- ines sadly famous through unhappy marriages. The handsome young Gothe, regarding it as ominous, storms against the inappropriateness in a way to at- tract much attention ; as if he foresaw the blood and terror in which the life of the princess was at last to go down. He rode and fenced ; he made himself accomplished in dancing ; and in connection with this had a curious experience with the pretty daughters of the dancing-master, finely told in his old age in the autobiography, for which I long to make room, but must deny myself. The principal love idyl, however, of the Strass- burg life is the story of his connection with Fred- erika, among Gothe's innumerable affairs of the heart, perhaps the most charming. Still, from the high platform of the minster, eighteen miles away in the beautiful Alsatian landscape, may be seen the spire of Sesenheim, of which the father of Fred- erika was pastor. She was a girl of sixteen, every way lovely, whom Gothe met during an excursion from the city with a fellow-student. The story is too long to tell. The passion of the young poet was intense, and as warmly returned ; but, as was again GOTHE THE MAN. 337 and again the case with him, it subsided, enriching his experience, coloring magnificently the work which he afterward gave to the world, though so transitory. Frederika had a dangerous sickness af- ter Gothe's desertion. She was the first girl whose heart he broke, and to have broken the heart of such a girl say even his enthusiastic defenders was an inhumanity, although we can pardon him much. 1 The pastor's daughter lived forward, pa- tient in her maidenhood, sought again and again, but ever after unapproachable. "The soul which has once loved Gothe," she was accustomed to say, " can love no one else." The youth who crossed her path only to bring her torture, bestowed upon her, as we shall hereafter see, such an immortality as has fallen to the lot of few among the daughters of men. Of the year or so that Gothe spent at Strassburg, there are three influences under which he came that are reckoned as important. The idyl of which Frederika is heroine is one ; the second is that ex- ercised upon him by the great Herder, the first man whom Gothe had ever met whom he could call master. Herder was a few years Gothe's senior, and came to Strassburg during Gothe's student life, hoping to be cured of a disease of the eyes from which he suffered. In their intercourse Herder showed all his power, but was often characteris- tically overbearing and sarcastic ; Gothe was amiable and tolerant. Herder liked Gothe, though he did 1 Hermann Grimm. 22 338 GERMAN LITERATURE. not recognize his genius ; Gothe, on the other hand, was powerfully affected. Up to the interviews with Herder, it had been all uncertain whither the flood would pour itself. Was the sublime energy to be felt in the world of affairs, or books, in art, science, or literature? For all, by turns, the many-sided youth had shown a preference. Henceforth, how- ever, the path was determined. Gothe turned pas- sionately to the study of the Bible, Homer, Os- sian, above all Shakespeare, gathering in this way strength for the sublime leap that was to carry him to the summits. The third influence under which Gothe came was that exercised upon him by the beauty of the cathedral. We cannot feel the sway of Herder's spirit, and for two generations the charm of Fred- erika's presence has been hidden in the grave. The fascination of the cathedral, however, is a lasting possession, which only deepens as the years go by. In the same month of April, just one hundred years after Gothe entered the Strassburg gates, the course of my pilgrimage carried me thither. The old city, as has been seen, is perhaps the birthplace of Ger- man prose ; it cradled the art of printing ; the purest and noblest eloquence of the Middle Ages was heard within its squares and churches. In these associa- tions there is plenty to thrill the heart ; but how deep grows the interest of the thoughtful traveller when he stands before the cathedral's amazing front, or is subdued by the glorified light of the interior, when he climbs up through the meshes of the pet- rified net-work to the lofty platform, or from a dis- GOTHE THE MAN. 339 tance beholds upon the horizon the spectral spire, penetrated everywhere by the light, to think that he is beneath the sway of a power that wrought so upon the culture of Germany's greatest mind ! While Gothe had been maturing, in the thought- ful minds of Germany and France revolutionary in- fluences were more and more felt. It was now the period known from the title of a play in those days famous as that of the " Storm and Stress." * A war against the conventional, a liking for outlawry, a passion for the tempestuous, characterized the young writers who were giving tone to the period. Gothe was possessed with it to the full, so wild in his manners that his friends called him the bear and the wolf. He rambled in the open air until he almost lived upon the road. He was perfect in the sword exercise, and at home on the back of a gal- loping horse ; but he found for his stormy moods no such outlet as the exercise of skating. ' ' He was never tired. All day long, and deep into the night, he was to be seen whirling along, and as the full moon rose above the clouds over the wide, noc- turnal fields of ice, and the night wind rushed at his face, and the echo of his movements came with a ghostly sound upon his ear, he seemed to be of Ossian's world." 2 Stand on the bridge of Frank- fort ; there is the statue of Karl the Great, of which I have spoken, the ledges in the stream below thrusting themselves up, as they did a thousand Sturm und Drang. Lewes. 340 GERMAN LITERATURE. years ago, that they might be stepping-stones for his Franks, fording the broad Main on their way to conquest. You are almost in the shadow of the dark spire beneath which, during the ages, his im- perial successors have assumed the purple. There is another sovereign figure that one may well think of here, the king in the realm of German letters. The February day that I stood on the Frankfort bridge the Main was sheeted with ice, and reverber- ating to the. thrust of the skaters as in the day when the young Gothe found in the sport a vent for his supreme vitality. How fine is this account by his mother: "There skated my son, like an arrow, among the groups. The wind had reddened his cheeks, and blown the powder out of his brown hair. When he saw my cloak of crimson and fur, which had a long train and was closed in front by golden clasps, he came toward our carriage and smiled coaxingly at me. I took it off; he put it on, threw the train over his arm, and away he went over the ice like a son of the gods. I clapped my hands for joy. Never shall I forget him as he darted out from under one arch of the bridge and in again under another, the wind carrying the train behind him as he Hew." He stood now on the threshold of his first great success. He had already written though it was not given to the world until later his plav " Got/ von Berlichingen," founding the piece upon the chronicle of the old robber-knight of that name, the representative of a class whose quarrels and lawless spirit threw their time into confusion. There are, GOTHE THE MAN. 341 however, many picturesque traits in their story, and redeeming things poep through in the characters of some among them. Sir Walter Scott began his ca- reer as a writer by a translation of Gotz, turning then his attention to the medheval romance of his own land, to make immortal similar types. We can understand that in a "storm and stress" period such pieces would be full of attraction ; but the world knew Gothe first in another way than as the author of Gotz. In the little town of Wetzlar, where his fate placed him for a brief period, the susceptible genius became attracted toward an amiable girl, Charlotte Buff, who jived in her father's household, taking care of her younger brothers and sisters. To know such a person was, for Gothe, at once to love, and Lotte took her place on the list already becoming long of his flames. She, however, was betrothed to another, a manly fellow, Kestncr, of whose char- acter we have ample means of judging through his letters. Gothe' s relation to the two was a singular one. For Kestner his friendship was warm; for Lotte his love extreme. It was acknowledged and talked about with the utmost freedom among the three, during the months of Gothe' s stay. At the same time there also lived at Wetzlar a young stu- dent whom Gothe had formerly known at Leipsig, who was also suffering through hopeless love for a woman already married. Gothe at length was forced to leave Wetzlar, and shortly after, the young student, in a fit of despair, shot himself. Gothe, who had already shown such strong impressibility, 342 GERMAN LITERATURE. was now to show that he possessed as well a power for expression such as no mortal has ever surpassed. He was a self-registering thermometer, and the fifty volumes he left at death are, to a large extent, the minute record of the transitions of the ex- quisitely sensitive globule, his soul, as it sank and rose in the heat and cooling of its passion, along the scale of possible movement. The record of the "VVetz- lar experience is a memorable one, the famous " Sorrows of Werther." Gothe wrote it in a few weeks, combining in a romance his own experience and that of his friend. The story details, with ex- cessive elaboration, the passion of a youth for a woman betrothed to another, who at length shoots himself in despair. It will be referred to again. For the present it is enough to say tha-t, in our age, the experience which led to the book and the pages them- selves can hardly be treated seriously ; for such sen- timental extravagance the world has now nothing but ridicule. Gothe himself, long before the end of his career, regarded it as absurd. A hundred years ago, however, its appearance was one of the great events of the ccntuiy. Nothing ever hit more pre- cisely the taste of an age. It was read by high and low ; it spread to foreign lands, even to the confines of the earth ; it was the favorite of chambermaids ; Napoleon took it with him to Egypt, and read it seven times. At one step the youth of twenty-five had become the favorite writer of Europe. Scarcely had the curtain fallen for Gothe on the experience of "Wetzlar when, Lotte being already forgotten, a new intimacy with a woman came to GOTHE THE MAN. 343 pass, Maximiliane, the wife of an Italian of Frank- fort, and mother, afterwards, of the singular figure who appears with some prominence in connection with Gothe' s later career, Bettine. Although the husband became very jealous, the intimacy seems to have been innocent, and was of a kind usual enough in those days, though now it would be looked on as reprehensible. It was fleeting, like the rest ; and in quick succession just after we find him involved in two other ardent flirtations, the most noticeable one, that with "Lili," Anna Elizabeth Schone- mann, daughter of a Frankfort banker, for whom Gothe told Eckermann, the Bos well who recorded the poet's later conversations, he had felt a truer love than for any one else. Gothe needed only to feel that he had vanquished a heart in order to consider that the end was reached, and must be forsaken. 1 Betrothed in April, in May everything was over. Lili's friends opposed, Lili submitting, as Gothe thought, too easily. His passion was cooling, he spoke decidedly, and they separated without too many tears. She was a fresh, lively, open-hearted girl of sixteen, with nothing of Frederika's tender- ness, or the sensitiveness of Lotte. Among the thousand graphic pictures of the autobiography, one of the most vivid is of Gothe standing in the street O before the banker's house, in the evening. Through the window he sees Lili at the piano, in the midst of a party of friends, whom she entertains with a song written for her by the lover from whom she was just 1 Hermann Grimm. 344 GERMAN LITERATURE. separated, ' ' Why dost them draw me irresistibly ? " l That his just-abandoned bride entertained an in- different company by singing his song vexed him, but held him fast at the same time. Her unbroken self-centredness exercised a mighty charm upon him, and he was obliged to summon the whole force of his character to prevent himself from going in. Gothe is now a mature man. The capricious love- making, of which there has already been so much mention, we can smile at and pardon in a callow youth ; more sobriety, however, seems proper now, and in spite of the apologies of admirers, we cannot help reading impatiently, as one fickle attachment follows another, and feeling that the dignity of a character to which we would fain do reverence is much impaired. They cannot be passed over un- noticed, for his work, as has been said, was to a large extent a record of his emotions, of the changes between coolness and fever-heat, as his mercurial spirit sunk and rose. Of the passions just men- tioned, as of the others, the careful reader of Gothe can find the record that corresponds. Charlotte, without change of name, becomes the heroine of " Werther ;" from the love for Lili comes the charm- ing little poem of " Erwin and Elmire :" Frederika becomes the Gretchen of " Faust." ' 2 But just here begins a friendship which was thoroughly manly, and was to have most important results. At Mainz he meets a youth of noble birth, a few years younger 1 "Warum ziehst du mich unwiderstehlich?" ' 2 Grimm. GOTHE THE MAN. 345 than himself, who had come to feel for him a warm enthusiasm, Karl August, duke of Weimar, who invites him to live henceforth at the capital of his state. After a tour in Switzerland, Gothe, at the age of twenty-six, accepts the invitation, going to Weimar for a sojourn of nearly sixty years, his whole remaining life, in relations creditable to his patron and himself. Among the hundreds of states into which poor Germany was in the last century divided, Weimar occupied an intermediate place, not standing in the rank of the larger ones, like Austria and Prussia, nor yet among the most insignificant in extent and population, but nearer the latter than the former. The city itself contained seven thousand inhabi- tants ; the outlying duchy was scarcely more than a respectable county, but because it became the home of Gothe it was more famous than many greater lands. At Gothe' s coming, the city walls were standing, with battlement, portcullis, and all mediaeval circumstance. The beautiful park which the visitor now finds was not then in existence ; it owes its creation mainly indeed to Gothe, and is the most remarkable feature of Weimar. It be- gins southward from the palace, the land stretch- ing miles away without a barrier, magnificent plain and slope, dotted with trees as fine. Upon one of its paths stands the "garden house," the residence of Gothe for years, and not far off the house of bark, of which he was the archi- tect, in which the unconventional duke spent much of his time, throwing off restraint and appearing 346 GERMAN LITERATURE. as the child of nature. Karl August was by no means an ordinary figure. He was brusque and soldierly ; his tastes were homely, sometimes coarse ; he mingled freely with the people, putting on their dress and dancing with the peasant girls at the country festivals. He was a bold rider, sought excitement in wine, and was often wilful. With all his faults, he was in many ways an admirable character. His judgment of men and things was sound and keen ; his aims were really high. Only a remarkable character could have had the ambition he possessed to make his court intellectually illus- trious. He invited thither the most famous minds of Germany, Gothe, Schiller, Herder, Wieland, and others of note. At the university of Jena, only a few miles distant, which was under his patronage, were men hardly less famous, Gries- bach, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, the brothers Sclile- gel, the brothers Humboldt. Many of them he kept at his side in life-long intercourse and attach- ment. The relation between Gothe and Karl August was beautiful and manly. There was never an ignoble suspicion between them, and but one transitory quarrel. The poet stood at the side of the duke as a faithful mentor. Still more interesting than the duke was his mother, the Duchess Ainalie, who is described as the soul of the Weimar life. She was a niece of Frederick the Great, and had much of his power. She was left a widow with two sons before she was twenty, and at Gothe' s coming was still young. Her features were full of expression ; in particular, &OTHE THE MAN. 347 her eye had the same remarkable brightness to be seen in that of her uncle, whom she more and more resembled as her life advanced. She was well edu- cated, and had agreeable social qualities. What was more remarkable, she had a manly firmness and sense in matters of business and government. As a regent, she managed with real ability the affairs of her state in the difficult time of the Seven Years' War. Like a little shallop caught in the midst of fighting men-of-war, the duchy lay in the very track of the great contending powers. Austria, Prussia, Saxony were right at hand, and Weimar lay precisely in the path of France. She managed all, however, with great spirit and skill. As to Gothe, she saw at once the wisdom of inviting him to Weimar, and it is perhaps right to say it was mainly through her that he remained. In estimating the life of Gothe at Weimar, we must bear in mind the manners of the land and time, which permitted much that in better regulated modern society would be regarded as improper, even sinful. He has been reproached with living as a courtier and dependent, and a contrast easily sug- gests itself between him and Lessing, who turned his back upon princes in such proud independence. To me, indeed, Gothe is far enough from seeming possessed of such moral grandeur of character as his great precursor, yet let us try to do him strict justice. To live from the proceeds of authorship was, in those days, impossible ; dependence upon a prince was not deemed unmanly, even by the proudest. The pure Schiller accepted the duke's 348 GERMAN LITERATURE. pension, and Lessing himself was at last an attach^ of the court of Brunswick, though he took care to guard well his freedom. In return for his pension, which for long was only about one thousand dollars, Gothe rendered most ample service. He was always the adviser of his prince, and at length the president of his council. He was far enough from being the poet lost in dreams, or the retired author whom no one might disturb. His literary work was really a side occupation. He was busy constantly with mat- ters of law and administration, patient even with the pettiest details. As first official of the duke- dom, which he soon became, the discharge of the responsibilities of his great position seemed to his contemporaries the peculiar aim of his life. His design in going to Weimar was to devote his whole power to the service of the duke and his people ; this he fulfilled, giving only hours of leisure to literary work. 1 To the end of his life he was busy with plans of public benefit, trying in many ways to alleviate the condition of the people. 2 He opened mines ; we read of his instituting a fire department, Mild exposing himself in fighting a conflagration until his eye-brows became singed. He managed the finances, was constantly active for the higher culture of the people, and directed the affairs of war as well as of peace. With his extraordinary vigor, these public employments were far enough from absorbing him. He turned, unwearied, from 1 Grimm. 2 Schiifer : Das Leben Gothes. GOTHE THE MAN. 349 them to literary production, and here too he was heartily supported by his noble patron. In his re- lations with the court he was not a sycophant ; he spoke his mind freely, and his intercourse with the duke was interrupted once, at least, by a quarrel. The bond between them was that of hearty friend- ship, in which the frank duke often appears as much the dependant as Gothe himself. 1 Many pictures of the life at Weimar are given, often picturesque and charming, not always edi- fying. At his coining he fascinated all by his un- constrained ways and splendid talents. In conver- sation he startled with paradoxes ; the next moment was waltzing round the room, with mad antics that made beholders roar with laughter. Wieland who had been sharply satirized by Gothe, and saw himself superseded by him, not only in the world of Weimar, but in Germany at large admired him with a generosity which does the highest credit to his character, and no tribute is more graceful than his. " How I loved the magnificent youth, as I sat beside him at table ! Since that morning my soul is as full of Gothe as a dew-drop of the morn- ing sun." " I catch strange glimpses of him, now darting across the ice ; now, with locks flowing over his shoulders, whirling around in a mad Bacchante waltz ; finally, standing in the market- place with the duke, by the hour together, crack- ing huge sledge-whips for a wager." Here too is a 1 Godeke. * Lewes. 350 GERMAN LITERATURE. story told by Gleim, a poet justly famous if for nothing else for spirited soldiers' songs during the Seven Years' War, and who protected and en- couraged younger poets of his time, showing in his fostering more kindness of heart than discernment : "Soon after Gothe had written < Werther,' I came to Weimar, and wished to know him. I had brought with me the last literary novelty, and read here and there a poem in the company in which I passed the evening. While I was reading, a young man, booted and spurred, in a short green shooting- jacket, thrown open, came in and mingled with the audience. I had scarcely remarked his entrance. He sat down opposite to me and listened attentively. I scarcely know what it was about him that par- ticularly struck me, except a pair of brilliant, dark, Italian eyes. But it was decreed I should know more of him. During a short pause, in which some gentlemen and ladies were discussing the merits of the pieces I had read, the gal hint young sportsman for such I took him to be rose from his chair, and, bowing with a most courteous and ingratiating air to me, ottered to relieve me from time to time in reading, lest I should be tired. I could do no less than accept so polite an offer, and immediately handed him the book. But oh ! Apollo, and all ye Muses, what was I then to hear. At first, indeed, things went on smoothly enough. All at once, however, it was as if some wild and wanton spirit had taken possession of the young reader, and I thought I saw the wild huntsman bodily before me. He read poems that had no existence in the book, GOTHE THE MAN. 351 broke out into all possible moods and dialects. Hexameters, iambics, doggerel, one after another, or blended in strange confusion, came tumbling out in torrents. Amidst all came magnificent thoughts. He put everybody present out of countenance in one way or another. In a little fable composed ex- tempore, in doggerel verses, he likened me, wittily enough, to a worthy and most enduring turkey-hen who sets on a great heap of eggs, of her own and other people, and hatches them with infinite patience, but to whom it happens sometimes to have a chalk egg put under her instead of a real one. ' That is either Gothe or the devil,' cried I to Wieland, who sat opposite me. ' Both,' he re- plied. ' He has the devil in him to-night, and at such times he is like a wanton colt that flings out before and behind, and you will do well not to go too near him.' ' One more anecdote of his wild time. He was fond of bathing, and often bathed at night. One evening, when the moon was calmly shining, a peasant, re- turning home, was crossing a bridge near by ; Gothe espied him, and, moved with the spirit of mischief which so often startled Weimar, uttered wild sepul- chral tones, raised himself half out of water, ducked under, and reappeared, howling, to the horror of the frightened peasant, who, hearing such sounds issue from a figure with long, floating hair, fled as if a le- gion of demons were at hand. 1 To this day there remains an ineradicable belief in the existence of 1 Lewes. 352 GERMAN LITERATURE. the water-sprite Avho howls among the waters of the Ilm. These stories of the ebullitions of his early man- hood are interesting as evidences of his joyous, abounding vitality. Karl August, who had associ- ated the poet so closely to himself, was only nine- teen years old, full of the exuberance of healthy youth. Gothe had not advanced so far toward ma- turity that he could not enter with the fullest 'zest into the escapades of his patron. The severe Klop- stock, hearing of the wild life which went forward at Weimar, wrote Gothe a censorious letter, the cause of a breach between the two, which was never fully healed. The fault-finding of the old poet seems to have been unreasonable. The gaiety was inno- cent, though perhaps -sometimes over-rough. At any rate, soon came a sober time ; but whether merry or sober, Gothe 's restless mind was always at work, its production reflecting faithfully the mood of the hour. We have to regard him as one who, beyond all the sons of men, experienced delicate emotions, having at the same time the gift of uttering them in poetic outbursts. It would be idle, therefore, to tell the story of his life without recording the stir- rings of his soul, stirrings, as \ve have already seen, not alwavs innocent or dignified, although the out- come to the world was so often a transcendent work of genius. Among the fascinating women of the court of Weimar was Charlotte von Stein, wife of the master of the horse, a woman older than Gothe by some vears, but of extraordinary fascinations, and fitted GO THE THE MAN. 353 by her genius to sympathize with Gothe in all his strivings. She touched his heart to its depths, this time in no transitory fashion, for his love lasted ten years, the sensitive globule in his breast meantime recording its elevation in outpourings full of all pos- sible ardor. It was another world than ours. The men and women who moved in the society of Wei- mar treated with little respect many social conven- tionalities, and not infrequently infringed upon the moral law. Jean Paul even went so far as to say of Weimar, " Marriages count for nothing ; " and one cannot read far in the recitals without coming upon evidences of a freedom of conduct quite at variance with modern notions of propriety. 1 Gothe' s passion for Charlotte von Stein was the most important of which he was ever the subject, and has been vari- ously judged. His latest German biographer 2 re- marks that Gothe's passions, before his Weimar life, have all something in common. " He meets a sim- ple, lovely girl ; his heart needs a goddess ; the whole fire of his own nature streams toward him from the glances of this girl, whose eyes, were they ever so beautiful, without Gothe himself would never have had this attractive power. Every time there is the same process. After a time of bloom comes a truce, then light ennui, then withering, then all is gone. In Charlotte von Stein, Gothe met, for the first time, a power that had its own fire. His letters to her are amonir the most beautiful and 1 Rudolph Gottschall : Der Musenhof zu "Weimar. 3 H. Grimm. 23 354 GERMAN LITERATURE. touching memorials in all literature. There is O abundant material for judging of their relation. It is not possible to characterize it otherwise than as a devoted friendship of the noblest sort. She was somewhat cool in temperament, and, from her youth up, accustomed to guard her conduct carefully. She had indeed never passionately loved her hus- band. He treats her, however, well ; she becomes the mother of several children, and always stands in the best relation with him. Gothe becomes seized by the most passionate reverence for her, which extends itself, in a measure, to the whole family, husband and children. He makes their interests his own, educates one son, and remains through life his venerated friend. This son becomes a sharp- sighted, energetic, not unimportant man. There was never any misunderstanding between Gothe and the husband, who often indeed is the messenger who carries the poet's letters ; yet Von Stein's honor was never doubted. Throughout Gothc's whole life we find an impulse to confess. There is no relation of his whose symbolical presentment may not somewhere be found. There is nothing, how- ever, to indicate that his relation with Charlotte von Stein was other than honorable. Gothe wrote to her an almost countless number of notes ; these reflect the lightest movements of his heart ; now and then occurs a poem ; when he or she is ab- sent from Weimar, the notes become letters or journals. In these letters Gothe's life goes on for ten years like a broad, unbroken melody. Trying to figure to ourselves the young Kurz. 382 GERMAN LITERATURE. first met' Christiane in Weimar, a girl in her finest bloom, his soul was full of Roman pictures. It is conjectured that she may have seemed to him to possess Roman characteristics, her portraits justi- fying such a supposition. " He surrounds her with all that adorned his life in Rome, in his recollection ; makes her pour wine in a vineyard, he being the guest dearest to her ; veils her figure with an Italian vapor, as he details their love experiences. Nothing written in modern times is so antique as the ' Ele- gies.' One would think Catullus, Tibullus, or Pro- pertius by metempsychosis had reached Weimar, tuned his lyre anew, become intoxicated in the pleasure of these later days, carried the old ac- customed wine to his lips, brought up again from the grave the primeval enjoyment of existence ! " 1 In the " Hymns," again, Go the rests upon a Greek antiquity; but here too with the same independence. The plain, earnest attitude ; the simple yet exalted tone, in many rising into the impetuosity of the dithy- ramb ; the vehement rhapsodies which have their name from a title of Bacchus ; the antique measures which move on with perfect harmony, so that the rhyme is in no way missed, all these characteristics remind us of the productions of the Greek lyric poets. And yet every thing is quite different. A thoroughly modern comprehension of the universe, and the whole fulness of Christian culture meet us. 3 It is right, perhaps, to say that the expression "di- 1 Grimm. ' Kurx. GOTHE THE POET. 383 dactic poetry" teaching poetry is a contradic- tion in terms. The best critics Coleridge, for in- stance, in England ; Lessing and Schiller, in Ger- many hold that the proper function of poetry is to please, and it is contrasted with science, whose func- tion is to teach. There are a few poems of Gothe .which trench upon the didactic. His scientific trea- tises upon the metamorphosis of plants and animals he put into rhythmical form ; but as didactic poetry is a perversion, so here his genius was not at his best. As a satirist, he composed a vast number of epi- grams, graphic, delicate, mocking, for the most part couplets or quatrains, much inferior in interest to his great works, but enough of themselves to found a fine poetic fame. In this department of poetry his most noteworthy accomplishment was that brought to pass in connection with Schiller, the great collection of epigrams known as the " Xenien." At the end of the eighteenth century the literary pub- lic of Germany seemed likely to go astray after false leaders. A certain incorrectness of taste was be- coming more and more apparent. Great poets were neglected, while mediocre productions were received with surprising favor. The name "Xenien" and the plan were taken from the Latin satirist, Martial. The undertaking was successful. The two poets combined their wit and knowledge ; the poetasters and false guides smarted under the lash, and at last were largely driven from the field, leaving the scene for those more worthy. In epic poetry by which the Germans under- stand, not simply the exalted verse in which move he- 384 GERMAN LITERATURE. roes and demigods, but narrative poetry, the ballad, and even the idyl or pastoral Gothe shows scarcely less variety and power than in the lyric. He is rarely below his standard ; all his attempts are models of their class. His ballads are among the best of the world. Following here again the example of Her- der, in throwing himself into the spirit of past ages and distant regions, he creates pictures in the taste of the greatest poets of antiquity and foreign lands, as they -only could have produced them had they lived in Gothe' s time and belonged to his race. At one time we are with Shakespeare, at another with the mastersinger Hans Sachs, at still other times with Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Homer. In the "Achilleis" he even attempted a continuation of the Iliad ; the one canto which he completed remains a magnificent torso. The old mediaeval poem " Reynard the Fox " he followed narrowly in his rendering, yet so transformed it as to give it the sense of an original work. He made it more artistic, more universal ; after a long oblivion, reha- bilitated, it became again a possession of the people. In the lovely idyl of "Hermann and Dorothea," however, we find Gothe's epical masterpiece. The scene is the broad plain of the Rhine ; the time his own ; the hero a young villager, in whose simple manhood we behold nothing of heroic stature ; the heroine a buxom Teutonic maid, meeting with homely virtue and courage calamities in which war has involved her. For the rest, we have an inn- keeper and his wife, an apothecary, a village magis- trate, a parson, figures and circumstances homely GOTHE THE POET. 385 to the last. But the poem has all the sweetness of the landscape through which it moves ; the charac- ter-drawing is as fine as if sovereigns and demi-gods were under delineation. The humble obstacles in the way of Hermann's wooing, the self-assertion of the host, the foibles of the pill-vender, the simple wisdom of the parson, the confusion and sorrow of the exiles driven forth by war, all are given with the patient detail of a Dutch painting, wearing the sweetest idyllic charm. And now let us see how the same versatile hand could outline the countenances of the Furies, sketch the unimpassioued features of the Parcai, render even the sublime converse of the archangels, as they gather at the throne of God. Already, in the labors of which an account has been given, it ini