new truths, but he dressed many old ones in sprightly apparel; and it ought to be remembered, that he kept himself unspotted from the errors of his time; a merit which posterity is apt to underrate; for nothing seems more stolid than a past delusion; and we forget that delusions, destined also to be past, are now present with ourselves, about us and within us, which, were the task so easy, it is pity that we do not forthwith convict and cast away. Musäus had a quick, vigorous intellect, a keen eye for the common forms of the beautiful, a fancy ever prompt with allusions, and an overflowing store of sprightly and benignant humour. These natural gifts he had not neglected to cultivate by study both of books and things; his reading distinguishes him even in Germany; nor does he bear it about him like an ostentatious burden, but in the shape of spiritual strength and plenty derived from it. As an author, his beauties and defects are numerous and easily discerned. His style sparkles with metaphors, sometimes just and beautiful, often new and surprising; but it is laborious, unnatural, and diffuse. Of his humour, his distinguishing gift, it may be remarked, that it seems copious rather than fine, and originates rather in the understanding than in the character: his heart is not delicate, or his affections tender; but he loves the ludicrous with true passion; and seeing keenly, if he feels obtusely, he can choose with sufficient skill the point of view from which his object shall appear distorted, as he requires it. This is the humour of a Swift or a Voltaire, but not of a Cervantes, or even of a Sterne in his best passages; it may produce a Zadig or a Battle of the Books; but not a Don Quixote or a Corporal Trim. Musäus is, in fact, no poet; he can see, and describe with rich graces what he sees; but he is nothing, or very little, of a Maker. His imagination is not powerless it is like a bird of feeble wing, which can fly from tree to tree; but never soars for a moment into the æther of Poetry, to bathe in its serene splendour, with the region of the Actual lying far below, and brightened into beauty by radiance not its own. He is a man of fine and varied talent, but scarcely of any genius.

These characteristics are apparent enough in his Popular Tales; they may be traced even in the few specimens of that work, by which he is now introduced to the English reader. As has been already stated, his Volksmährchen exhibit himself much better than his subject. He is not admitted by his critics to have seized the finest spirit of this species of fiction, or turned it to the account of which it is capable in other hands. Whatever was austere or earnest, still more, whatever bordered upon awe or horror, his riant fancy rejected with aversion the rigorous moral sometimes hid in these traditions, the grim lines of primeval feeling and imagination to be traced in them, had no charms for him. These ruins of the remote time he has not

attempted to complete into a perfect edifice, according to the first simple plan; he has rather pargetted them anew, and decorated them with the most modern ornaments and furniture; and he introduces his guests, with a roguish smile at the strange, antic contrast they are to perceive between the movables and the apartment. Sometimes he rises into a flight of simple eloquence, and for a sentence or two, seems really beautiful and affecting; but the knave is always laughing in his sleeve at our credulity, and returns with double relish to riot at will in his favourite domain.

Of the three Tales here offered to the reader, nothing need be said in explanation for their whole significance, with all their beauties and blemishes, lies very near the surface. I have selected them, as specimens at once of his manner and his materials; in the hope, that, conveying some impression of a gifted and favourite writer, they may furnish a little entertainment both to the lovers of intellectual novelty, and of innocent amusement. To neither can I promise very much: Musäus is a man of sterling powers, but no literary monster; and his Tales, though smooth and glittering, are cold; they have beauty, yet it is the beauty not of living forms, but of wellproportioned statues. Meanwhile, I have given him as I found him, endeavouring to copy faithfully; changing nothing, whether I might think it good or bad, that my skill enabled me to keep unchanged. With all drawbacks, I anticipate some favour for him but his case admits no pleading; being clear by its own light, it must stand or fall by a first judgment, and without the help of advocates.

FRIEDRICH DE LA MOTTE FOUQUÉ.

THE Baron Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué is of French extraction, but distinguished for the true Germanism of his character, both as a writer and a man; and ranks, for the last twenty years, among the most popular and productive authors of his country.

His family, expelled from France by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantz, appears to have settled at the Hague; from which this branch of it was transferred to Prussia by the fortunes of our Author's grandfather, whose name and title the present Baron has inherited. This first Friedrich, born in the early part of last century, had been sent in boyhood to the Court of Anhalt Dessau, in the character of Page: he soon quitted this station; entered the Prussian

11. Dumb Love; 2. Libussa; 3. Melechsala.

army as a private volunteer; by merit, or recommendation, was gradually advanced; and became acquainted with the Prince Royal, then a forlorn, oppressed and discontented youth, but destined afterwards to astonish and convulse the world, under the name of Frederick the Great. Young La Motte stood in high favour with Frederick; and seems likewise to have shown some prudence in humouring the jealous temper of the old King; for during the Prince's arrest, which had followed his projected elopement from paternal tuition, the royal Shylock, instead of beheading La Motte, as he had treated poor De Catt, permitted him to visit the disconsolate prisoner, and without molestation to do him kind offices. On his accession to the throne, Frederick the King did not fail, in this instance, to remember the debts of Frederick the Prisoner: the friend of his youth continued to be the friend of his manhood and age; La Motte rose rapidly from post to post in the army, till, having gained the rank of General, he had opportunity, by various gallant services in the Seven-Years' War, to secure the prosperity of his household, and earn for himself a place in the military history of his new country. With his Sovereign he continued in a kindly and honest relation throughout his whole life. His Letters, preserved in Frederick's Works, are a proof that he was not only favoured but esteemed: the imperious King is said to have respected his upright and truthful nature; and, though himself a sceptic and a scoffer, never to have interfered in word or deed with the piety and strict religious persuasions of his servant. The General became the founder of that Prussian family, which has since acquired a new and fairer distinction in the person of his grandson.

The present Friedrich, our Author, was born on the 11th of February, 1777. Of his early history or habits we have no account, except that he was educated by Hülse; and soon sent to the army as an officer in the Royal Guards. In this capacity he served, during his nineteenth year, in the disastrous campaign of the Rhine. One of his brother-officers and intimates here was Heinrich von Kleist, a noble-minded and ill-fated man of genius, whom the mismanagement of a too impetuous and feeling heart has since driven to suicide, before the world had sufficiently reaped the bright promise of his early

years.

The misfortunes of his country drove Fouqué back into retirement while Prussia languished in hopeless degradation under the iron sway of France, he kept himself apart from military life; settled in the country, and hanging up his ineffectual sword, devoted himself to domestic cares and joys, and in the Kingdoms of Imagination sought refuge from the aspect of actual oppression and distress. Of a temper susceptible, lively and devout, his faculties had been quick

ened by communion with kindred minds; and still more by collision with the vast events which had filled the world with astonishment, and his portion of it with darkness and obstruction. At this juncture, while contemplating a literary life, it was doubtless a circumstance of no small influence on his future efforts that he became acquainted with August Wilhelm Schlegel. By Schlegel he was introduced to the study of Spanish Poetry; a fact from which a skil ful theoriser might plausibly enough deduce the whole psychological history of Fouqué; for it seems as if the beautiful and wondrous spirit of this literature, so fervent yet so joyful, so solemn yet so full of blandishment, with its warlike piety, and gay chivalrous pomp, had taken entire possession of his mind, and moulded his unsettled powers into the form which they have ever since retained. One thing, at all events, is clear without help of theory: An ideal of Christian Knighthood, whencesoever borrowed or derived, has all along, with more or less distinctness, hovered round his fancy; and this it has been the constant task not only of his pen to represent in poetical delineations, but also of his life to realise in external conduct. As to its origin, whether in the poetry of Spain, or in the perplexities of a suffering and religious life, or in the French Revolution and its reaction on a temper abhorrent of its material principles, or in any or all of these causes, it were unprofitable to inquire; for the problem is of no vital importance, and we have not data for even an approximate solution.

Fouqué published his first works under the pseudonym of Pellegrin he translated the Numancia of Cervantes; he wrote Sigurd, Alwin, The History of Ritter Galmy: a small volume of Dramatic Tales was published for him by his friend Schlegel. These performances are all of a chivalry cast; attempts to body forth the sentiment with which our Author's mind was already almost exclusively pervaded. Their success was incomplete; sufficient to indicate their object, but not to attain it. The models which he had in view seem still to have awed and overshadowed his poetic faculty; his productions have a southern exotic aspect; and in the opinion of his critics, it is only in glimpses that a genuine inspiration can be discerned in them. Der Held des Nordens (The Hero of the North), a dramatic work in three parts, grounded on the story of the Niebelungen Lied, was the first performance sent forth in his own name; and also the first which showed his genius in its own form, or produced any deep impression on the public. This work was acknowledged to be of true northern growth it found applauding readers, and had the honour to be criticised in the Heidelberger Jahrbücher, by no meaner a person than Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, who bestowed on the poet the surname of Der Tapfere, or The Valiant, in allusion to the quality which seemed

to be the soul of his own character, and of the characters which he portrayed.

The ground thus gained, La Motte Fouqué has not been negligent to make good and extend. Since the date of his first appearance, year after year has duly added its tribute of volumes to the list of his works; he has written in verse and prose, in narrative and representation; his productions varying in form through all the extremes of variety, but animated by the same old spirit, that of Knighthood and Religion. On the whole, he seems to have continued growing in esteem, both with the lower and the upper classes of the literary world. His Zauberring (Magic Ring) has lately been translated into English we have also versions of his Sintram and his Undine. The last little work, published in 1811, has become a literary pet in its own country; being dandled and patted not only by the soft hands of poetical maidens, but even by the horny paws of Recensents, a class of beings to the full as dire and doughty as our own Reviewers. Undine and Sintram are parts of a series or circuit of "Romantic fictions," entitled the Jahreszeiten (Seasons), which were published successively at four different periods it is from the same work, the Autumn Number of it, that Aslanga's Knight, the Tale which follows this Introduction, has been extracted.

The poet had now wedded and we figure him as happy in his own Arcadian seclusion; for his lady is a woman of kindred genius, and has added new celebrity to his name by various writings, partly of her own, partly in concert with her husband. In 1813, his poetic leisure was interrupted by the clang of battle-trumpets. Napoleon's star had begun to decline; and Prussia rose, as one man, to break asunder the fetters with which he had so long chained Europe to the dust. The knightly Baron was the first to rouse himself at the voice of his country; he again girded on his harness, and took the field at the head of a small troop of volunteers. His little band would seem to have been joined with the Jäger (or, as we call it, Chasseur) Regiment of Brandenburg Cuirassiers; in which squadron he served, first as Lieutenant, then as Rittmeister, with the devout and fervid gallantry, which he had so often previously delineated in his writings. Like the lamented Körner, he stood by the cause both with "the Lyre and the Sword." His arm was ever in the hottest of the battle; and his songs uplifted the triumph of victory, or breathed fresh ardour into the hearts of his comrades in defeat. These lyrical effusions have since been collected and published: for the future historian they will form an interesting memorial. At Culm, the poetical soldier was wounded; but the incompleteness of his cure did not prevent him from appearing in his place on the great day of Leipzig; and thenceforward following the scattered enemy to the banks of the Rhine.