By his inquiries into antiquity, especially by his laboured investigation of its politics and its mythology, Heyne is believed to have carried the torch of philosophy towards, if not into, the mysteries of old time. What Winkelmann, his great

contemporary, did, or began to do, for ancient Plastic Art, the other, with equal success, began for ancient Literature.1 A high praise, surely; yet, as we must think, one not unfounded, and which, indeed, in all parts of Europe, is becoming more and more confirmed.

So much, in the province to which he devoted his activity, is Heyne allowed to have accomplished. Nevertheless, we must not assert that, in point of understanding and spiritual endowment, he can be called a great, or even, in strict speech, a complete man. Wonderful perspicuity, unwearied diligence, are not denied him; but to philosophic order, to classical adjustment, clearness, polish, whether in word or thought, he seldom attains; nay many times, it must be avowed, he involves himself in tortuous longwinded verbosities, and stands before us little better than one of that old school which his admirers boast that he displaced. He appears, we might also say, as if he had wings but could not well use them. Or, indeed, it might be that, writing constantly in a dead language, he came to write heavily; working forever on subjects where learned armour-at-all-points cannot be dis

1‘It is a curious fact, that these two men, so singularly correspondent in their early sufferings, subsequent distinction, line of study, and rugged enthusiasm of character, were at one time, while both as yet were under the horizon, brought into partial contact. 'An acquaintance of another sort, says Heeren,' the young Heyne was to make in the Brühl Library; with a person whose importance he could not then anticipate. One frequent 'visitor of this establishment was a certain almost wholly unknown man, 'whose visits could not be specially desirable for the librarians, such end'less labour did he cost them. He seemed insatiable in reading; and called for so many books that his reception there grew rather of the coolest. 'It was Johann Winkelmann. Meditating his journey for Italy, he was then laying-in preparation for it. Thus did these two men become, if not 'confidential, yet acquainted; who at that time, both still in darkness and 'poverty, could little suppose, that in a few years they were to be the 6 teachers of cultivated Europe, and the ornaments of their nation.'

6

pensed with, he at last grew so habituated to his harness that he would not walk abroad without it; nay perhaps it had rusted together, and could not be unclasped! A sad fate for a thinker! Yet one which threatens many commentators, and overtakes many.

was.

As a man encrusted and encased, he exhibits himself, moreover, to a certain degree, in his moral character. Here too, as in his intellect, there is an awkwardness, a cumbrous inertness; nay, there is a show of dulness, of hardness, which nowise intrinsically belongs to him. He passed, we are told, for less religious, less affectionate, less enthusiastic than he His heart, one would think, had no free course, or had found itself a secret one; outwardly he stands before us cold and still, a very wall of rock; yet within lay a well, from which, as we have witnessed, the stroke of some Moses'-wand (the death of a Theresa) could draw streams of pure feeling. Callous as the man seems to us, he has a sense for all natural beauty; a merciful sympathy for his fellow-men: his own early distresses never left his memory; for similar distresses his pity and help were, at all times, in store. This form of character may also be the fruit partly of his employments, partly of his sufferings, and perhaps is not very singular among commentators.

For the rest, Heeren assures us, that in practice Heyne was truly a good man; altogether just; diligent in his own honest business, and ever ready to forward that of others; compassionate; though quick-tempered, placable; friendly, and satisfied with simple pleasures. He delighted in roses, and always kept a bouquet of them in water on his desk. His house was embowered among roses; and in his old days he used to wander through the bushes with a pair of scissors. 'Farther,' says Heeren, 'in spite of his short sight, he was

⚫ fond of the fields and skies, and could lie for hours reading 'on the grass.' A kindly old man! With strangers, hundreds of whom visited him, he was uniformly courteous; though latterly, being a little hard of hearing, less fit to con

verse. In society he strove much to be polite; but had a habit (which ought to be general) of yawning, when people spoke to him and said nothing.

On the whole, the Germans have some reason to be proud of Heyne: who shall deny that they have here once more produced a scholar of the right old stock; a man to be ranked, for honesty of study and of life, with the Scaligers, the Bentleys, and old illustrious men, who, though covered with academic dust and harsh with polyglot vocables, were true men of endeavour, and fought like giants, with such weapons as they had, for the good cause? To ourselves, we confess, Heyne, highly interesting for what he did, is not less but more so for what he was. This is another of the proofs, which minds like his are from time to time sent hither to give, that the man is not the product of his circumstances, but that, in a far higher degree, the circumstances are the product of the man. While beneficed clerks and other sleek philosophers, reclining on their cushions of velvet, are demonstrating that to make a scholar and man of taste, there must be coöperation of the upper classes, society of gentlemen-commoners, and an income of four hundred a-year; arises the son of a Chemnitz weaver, and with the very wind of his stroke sweeps them from the scene. Let no man doubt the omnipotence of Nature, doubt the majesty of man's soul; let no lonely unfriended son of genius despair! Let him not despair; if he have the will, the right will, then the power also has not been denied him. It is but the artichoke that will not grow except in gardens.

The acorn is cast care

lessly abroad into the wilderness, yet it rises to be an oak; on the wild soil it nourishes itself, it defies the tempest, and lives for a thousand years.

GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS.1

[1829.]

In this stage of society, the playwright is as essential and acknowledged a character as the millwright, or cartwright, or any other wright whatever; neither can we see why, in general estimation, he should rank lower than these his brother artisans, except perhaps for this one reason: that the former working in timber and iron, for the wants of the body, produce a completely suitable machine; while the latter, working in thought and feeling, for the wants of the soul, produces a machine which is incompletely suitable. In other respects, we confess we cannot perceive that the balance lies against him for no candid man, as it seems to us, will doubt but the talent which constructed a Virginius or a Bertram, might have sufficed, had it been properly directed, to make not only wheelbarrows and waggons, but even mills of considera

:

1 FOREIGN REVIEW, No. 6.-1. Die Ahnfrau (The Ancestress). A Tragedy, in five Acts. By F. Grillparzer. Fourth Edition. Vienna,

1823.

König Ottokars Glück und Ende (King Ottocar's Fortune and End). A Tragedy, in five Acts. By F. Grillparzer. Vienna, 1825.

Sappho. A Tragedy, in five Acts. By F. Grillparzer. Third Edition. Vienna, 1822.

2. Faust. A Tragedy, in five Acts. By August Klingemann. Leipsig and Altenburg, 1815.

Ahasuer. A Tragedy, in five Acts. By August Klingemann. Brunswick, 1827.

3. Mülners Dramatische Werke. Erste rechtmässige, vollständige vr? vt

Verfasser verbesserte Gesammt-Ausgabe. (Müllner's Drama arly lose

First legal collective Edition, complete and revised by the. vols. Brunswick, 1828.

that way:

ble complicacy. However, if the public is niggardly to the playwright in one point, it must be proportionably liberal in another; according to Adam Smith's observation, that trades which are reckoned less reputable have higher money wages. Thus, one thing compensating the other, the playwright may still realise an existence; as, in fact, we find that he does: for playwrights were, are and probably will always be; unless, indeed, in process of years, the whole dramatic concern be finally abandoned by mankind; or, as in the case of our Punch and Mathews, every player becoming his own playwright, this trade may merge in the other and older one.

The British nation has its own playwrights, several of them cunning men in their craft: yet here, it would seem, this sort of carpentry does not flourish; at least, not with that preëminent vigour which distinguishes most other branches of our national industry. In hardware and cotton goods, in all sorts of chemical, mechanical, or other material processes, England outstrips the world; nay, in many departments of literary manufacture also, as, for instance, in the fabrication of Novels, she may safely boast herself peerless: but in the matter of the Drama, to whatever cause it be owing, she can claim no such superiority. In theatrical produce she yields considerably to France; and is, out of sight, inferior to Germany. Nay, do not we English hear daily, for the last twenty years, that the Drama is dead, or in a state of suspended animation; and are not medical men sitting on the case, and propounding their remedial appliances, weekly, monthly, quarterly, to no manner of purpose? Whilst in Germany the Drama is not only, to all appearance, alive, but in the very flush and heyday of superabundant strength; indeed, as it were, still only sowing its first wild oats! For if the British Playwrights seem verging to ruin, and our Knowleses, Maturins, Shiels and Shees stand few and comvely forlorn, like firs on an Irish bog, the Playwrights

ny are a strong, triumphant body; so numerous been calculated, in case of war, a regiment of