stuff. In general cases, indeed, when the brains are out, the man will die: but it is a well-known fact in Journalistics, that a man may not only live, but support wife and children by his labours, in this line, years after the brain (if there ever was any) has been completely abstracted, or reduced by time and hard usage into a state of dry powder. What then is to be done? Is there no end to this brawling; and will the unprofitable noise endure forever? By way of palliative, we have sometimes imagined that a Congress of all German Editors might be appointed, by proclamation, in some central spot, say the Nürnberg Market-place, if it would hold them all: here we would humbly suggest that the whole Journalistik might assemble on a given day, and under the eye of proper marshals, sufficiently and satisfactorily horsewhip one another, simultaneously, each his neighbour, till the very toughest had enough both of whipping. and of being whipped. In this way, it seems probable, littlė or no injustice would be done; and each Journalist, cleared of gall for several months, might return home in a more composed frame of mind, and betake himself with new alacrity to the real duties of his office.

But, enough! enough! The humour of these men may be infectious: it is not good for us to be here. Wandering over the Elysian Fields of German Literature, not watching the gloomy discords of its Tartarus, is what we wish to be employed in. Let the iron gate again close, and shut-in the pallid kingdoms from view: we gladly revisit the upper air. Not in despite towards the German nation, which we love honestly, have we spoken thus of these its Playwrights and Journalists. Alas, when we look around us at home, we feel too well that the Germans might say to us: Neighbour, sweep thy own floor! Neither is it with any hope of bettering the existence of these three individual Poetasters, still less with the smallest shadow of wish to make it more miserable, that we have spoken. After all, there must be Playwrights, as we have said; and these are among the best of

the class. So long as it pleases them to manufacture in this line, and any body of German Thebans to pay them in groschen or plaudits for their ware, let both parties persist in so doing, and fair befall them! But the duty of Foreign Reviewers is of a twofold sort. For not only are we stationed

on the coast of the country, as watchers and spials, tọ report whatsoever remarkable thing becomes visible in the distance; but we stand there also as a sort of Tide-waiters and Preventive-service-men, to contend with our utmost vigour, that no improper article be landed. These offices, it would seem, as in the material world, so also in the literary and spiritual, usually fall to the lot of aged, invalided, impoverished, or otherwise decayed persons; but that is little to the matter. As true British subjects, with ready will, though it may be with our last strength, we are here to discharge that double duty. Movements, we observe, are making along the beach, and signals out seawards, as if these Klingemanns and Müllners were to be landed on our soil: but through the strength of heaven this shall not be done, till the 'most thinking people' know what it is that is landing. For the rest, if any one wishes to import that sort of produce, and finds it nourishing for his inward man, let him do so and welcome. Only let him understand that it is not German Literature he is swallowing, but the froth and scum of German Literature; which scum, if he will only wait, we can farther promise him that he may, ere long, enjoy in the new, and perhaps cheaper, form of sediment. And so let every one be active

for himself:

Noch ist es Tag, da rühre sich der Mann ;
Die Nacht tritt ein, wo niemand wirken känn.

APPENDIX.

I..

PREFACE, AND INTRODUCTIONS, TO THE BOOK CALLED "GERMAN ROMANCE."

THIS was a Book of Translations, not of my suggesting or desiring, but of my executing as honest journeywork in defect of better; produced at Edinburgh in 1827. The nature of which, and the Titles of the Pieces selected, will sufficiently appear as we go on. The Pieces selected were the suitablest discoverable on such terms: not quite of less than no worth (I considered), any Piece of them; nor, alas, of a very high worth any, except one only. Four of these lots, or quotas to the adventure, Musäus's, Tieck's, Richter's, Goethe's, will be given in the final stage of this Series: the rest we willingly leave, afloat or stranded, as waste driftwood, to those whom they may farther concern. (Note of 1857.)

PREFACE TO GERMAN ROMANCE.1
[1827.]

Ir were unhappy for me if the reader should expect in this Work any full view of so complex a subject as German Novelwriting, or of so motley a body as the German Novelwriters. The dead wall, which divides us from this as from all other provinces of German Literature, I must not dream that I have anywhere overturned: at the most, I may have perforated it with a few loopholes, of narrow aperture truly, and scanty range; through which, however, a studious eye may perhaps discern some limited, but, as I hope, genuine and distinctive features of the singular country, which, on the other side, 1 German Romance: Specimens of its chief Authors; with Biographical and Critical Notices. In Four Volumes. (Edinburgh, 1827.)

has long flourished in such abundant variety of intellectual scenery and product, and been unknown to us, though at our very hand. For this wall, what is the worst property in such walls, is to most of us an invisible one; and our eye rests contentedly on Vacancy, or distorted Fatamorganas, where a great and true-minded people have been living and labouring, in the light of Science and Art, for many ages.

In such an undertaking as the present, fragmentary in its very nature, it is not absolute, but only relative completeness, that can be looked for. German Novel writers are easily come at; but the German Novelwriters are a class of persons whom no prudent editor will hope to exhibit, and no reader will engage to examine, even in the briefest mode of specimen. To say nothing of what has been accumulated in past generations, the number of Novelists at present alive and active is to be reckoned not in units, but in thousands. No Leipzig Fair is unattended by its mob of gentlemen that write with ease; each duly offering his new novel, among the other fancy-goods and fustians of that great emporium. Lafontaine, for example, has already passed his hundredth volume. The inspirations of the Artist are rare and transient, but the hunger of the Manufacturer is universal and incessant. The novel, too, is among the simplest forms of composition; a free arena for all sorts and degrees of talent, and may be worked in equally by a Henry Fielding and a Doctor Polydore. In Germany, accordingly, as in other countries, the Novelists are a mixed, innumerable, and most productive race. Interspersed with a few Poets, we behold whole legions and hosts of Poetasters, in all stages of worthlessness; here languishing in the transports of Sentimentality, there dancing the St. Vitus' dance of hard-studied Wit and Humour; some soaring on bold pinion into the thundery regions of Atala, ou les Amours de deux Sauvages; some diving, on as bold fin, into the gory profundities of Frankenstein and The Vampyre; and very many travelling, contented in spirit, the ancient beaten highway of Commonplace.

To discover the grain of truth among this mass of falsehood, especially where Time had not yet exercised its separating influence, was no plain problem; nor can I flatter myself either that I have exhausted the search, or in no case been deceived in my selection. The strength of German Literature does not lie in its Novelwriters; few of its greatest minds have put forth their full power in this department; many of them, of course, have not attempted it at all. In the seventeenth century, and prior, there was nothing whatever to be gleaned; though Anton Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick Wolfenbuttel, had laid aside his sceptre, to write a novel,1 in six thousand 1 Die Durchlauchtigste Syrerin Aramena (Her Most Serene Majesty Aramena of Syria), 1669. On the whole, it is simple enough of our Magazines to inform us,

1

eight hundred and twenty-two pages. Klopstock, Herder, Lessing, in the eighteenth century, wrote no novels: the same might almost be said of Schiller; for his fragment of the Geisterseher (Ghost-seer), and his Magazine-story of the Verbrecher aus Verlorener Ehre (Criminal from Loss of Honour), youthful attempts, and both I believe already in English, scarcely form an exception. The elder Jacobi's Woldemar and Allwill I was forced, not without consciousness of their merits, to pass over as too abstruse and didactic; for a like reason of didacticness, though in a far different sense, Wieland could afford me nothing which seemed worthy of himself and our present idea of him; and Klinger's Faust, the product evidently of a rugged, vehement, substantial mind, seemed much too harsh, infernal, and unpoetical for English readers. Of Novalis and his wondrous fragments, I could not hope that their depth and wizard beauty would be seen across their mysticism. Other meritorious names I may have omitted, from ignorance. Maler Müller's I was obliged to omit, because none of his fictions were, properly speaking, novels; and unwillingly obliged, for his plays and idyls bespeak a true artist; and the English reader would do well, by the earliest opportunity, to substitute the warm and vigorous Adam's Awakening of Müller, for Gessner's rather faint and washy Death of Abel, in forming a judgment of the German Idyl.

A graver objection than that of omissions, is that, in my selections, I have not always fixed upon the best performance of my author; and to this I have unhappily no contradiction to give, nor any answer to make, except that it lay not in the nature of my task to avoid it; and that often not the excellence of a work, but the humble considerations of its size, its subject, and its being untranslated, had to determine my choice. In justice to our strangers, the reader will be pleased to bear this fact in mind: with regard to two of them, to Fouqué and Richter, it is especially necessary.

By a secondary arrangement, in surveying what seemed the chief names among the German Novelwriters, we have also obtained a view of the chief modes of German Novelwriting. The Mährchen (Popular Tale), a favourite, almost tritical topic among the Germans, is here twice handled; in what may be called the prosaic manner (by Musäus), and in the poetical (by Tieck). Of the Ritterroman (Chivalry Romance) there is also a specimen (by Fouqué); a short one, yet

that the literature, nay sometimes it is also the language, of Germany, began to be cultivated in the time of Frederick II. If the names of Hutten, Opitz, Lohenstein, &c. &c. are naturally unknown to us, we ought really to have heard of Luther. Nay, was not Jacob Böhme rendered into huge folios, with incomparable diagrams, in the time of James I.? And is not Hans Sachs known (by name at least) to all barbers?