far-fetched a subject; to sport with sentiment we should not have suffered from it, and when the attempt is made by a serious person, a secret constraint always prevents him from appearing natural. We must reckon as belonging to the school of Klopstock, not as his disciples but as members of his poetical fraternity, the great Haller, who cannot be mentioned without respect, Gessner, and several others, who approached the English character with respect to truth of sentiment, and yet did not bear the truly characteristic stamp of German literature.

Klopstock himself did not entirely succeed in presenting to Germany an epic poem at once sublime and popular, as a work of that sort ought to be. Voss's translation of the Iliad and Odyssey made Homer as much known as a sketched copy can render a finished original; every epithet is preserved, every word is in its proper place, and the impression made by the whole is forcible, although we do not find in the German all the charms of Greek, which was the finest language of the South. The men of literature in Germany, who seize with avidity every new kind of writing, endeavored to compose poems with the Homeric color; and the Odyssey, containing in itself many details of private life, appeared more easy to imitate than the Iliad.

The first essay of this kind was an idyl in three cantos by Voss himself, entitled Luise: it is written in hexameters, which are generally acknowledged to be admirable; but the pomp of hexameters seems seldom to accord with the extreme naïveté of the subject. Were it not for the pure and religious emotions which animate the poem, we should interest ourselves but little in the very quiet marriage of the venerable pastor of Grünau's daughter. Homer, always just in the application of his epithets, constantly says, in speaking of Minerva, 'the blue-eyed daughter of Jupiter;" in the same manner Voss incessantly repeats, "the venerable pastor of Grünau” (der

Lerman Wieland is unmistakably legible.”—(G. H. Lewes, Goethe's Lif mnd Works, vol. i. p. 249.)-Ed.

shrwürdige Pfarrer von Grünau). But the simplicity of Homer produces so great an effect, merely because it forms a noble contrast with the dignified grandeur of his hero and of the fate which pursues him; but when the subject treated of is merely a country pastor, and a notable woman, his wife, who marry their daughter to the man she loves, its simplicity has less merit. In Germany, descriptions are greatly admired like those in Voss's Luise, on the manner of making coffee, of lighting a pipe, etc., and those details are given with much skill and exactness; it is a well-painted Flemish picture; but it appears to me that the common customs of life cannot well be introduced into our poems, as they were in those of the ancients; for those customs among us are not poetical, and our civilization has something citizen like in it. The ancients lived almost always in the open air, preserving their relations. with nature, and their manner of existence was rural, but never vulgar.

The Germans consider the subject of a poem as of little consequence, and believe that every thing consists in the manner of treating it. Now this manner can scarcely ever be transfused into a foreign language, and yet the general reputation of Europe is not to be despised; besides, the remembrance of the most interesting details is soon effaced, when it is not connected with some fiction which the imagination can lay hold of. That affecting purity which constitutes the principal charm of Voss's poem is most conspicuous, as it appears to me, in the nuptial benediction of the pastor, at the marriage of his daughter; addressing himself to her with a flattering voice, he says:1

"My daughter, may the blessing of God be with thee: amiable and virtuous child, may the blessing of God accompany thee, both on earth and in heaven. I have been young, and now am old; and in this uncertain life the Almighty has sent e much joy and much sorrow. May his holy name be blessed for both! I shall soon, without regret, lay my aged

1.-Ed.

1 We are obliged to content ourselves with a simple literal versio 1.—

head in the tomb of my fathers, for my daughter is happy; she is so because she knows that our souls are equally the care of our Heavenly Father in sorrow as in joy. What can be more affecting than the sight of this young and beautiful bride! In the simplicity of her heart, she leans on the arm of the friend who is to conduct her through the path of life; it is with him that in a holy union she will partake of happiness and of misfortune; it is she who, if it be the will of God, will wipe the last cold sweat from the forehead of her dying husband. My soul was also filled with presentiments when, on my wedding day, I brought my timid companion to this place; happy, but serious, I showed her at a distance the extent of our fields, the tower of the church, and the pastor's house, in which we have experienced so much good and so much evil. My only child! for thou alone remainest, the others whom God had given to me, sleep below under the church-yard turf; my only child, thou goest, following the path which led me hither. The chamber of my daughter will be deserted, her place at our table will be no longer occupied; in vain shall I listen' to hear her footsteps, the sound of her voice. Yes, when thy husband takes thee far from me, sobs will escape me, and my eyes, bathed in tears, will long follow thee; for I am a man and a father, and I love with tenderness this daughter who also loves me sincerely. But soon restraining my tears, I shall lift to heaven my supplicating hands, and prostrate myself before the divine will, which has commanded the wife to leave her father and mother and follow her husband. Depart then in peace, my child; forsake thy family and thy father's house; follow the young man who henceforth must supply to thee the place of those who gave thee birth; be in thy house like a fruitful vine, surround thy table with noble branches. A religious marriage is the purest of all earthly felicity; but if the Lord found not the edifice, how vain are the labors of man!"

This is true simplicity, that of the soul; that which is equaly suitable to the monarch and to his people, to the poor and to the rich, in short, to all the creatures of God. tired of descriptive poetry when it is applied to

We are soon objects which

have nothing great in themselves; but sentiments descend to us from heaven, and however humble be the abode which is penetrated with their rays, those rays lose nothing of their original beauty.

From the extensive admiration whica Goethe has acquired in Germany, his Hermann and Dorothea has obtained the name of an epic poem; and one of the most intelligent men of that or any other country, M. de Humboldt, the brother of the celebrated traveller, has composed a work on this subject, which contains several very philosophical and striking observations. Hermann and Dorothea is translated both into French and English, but we cannot in a translation have any idea of the charming effect produced by the original. From the first verse to the last, it excites a tender emotion, and there is also, in its minutest details, a natural dignity which would not be unsuitable to the heroes of Homer. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged, that the personages and events are of too little importance; the subject is sufficient to keep up the interest when we read it in the original, but in a translation that interest is destroyed. With respect to epic poems, it appears to me allowable to establish a certain literary aristocracy: "dignity, both of personages and of the historical recollections connected with them, can alone raise the imagination to a height equal to the composition of that species of poetry. An ancient poem of the thirteenth century, the Niebelungen Lied, of which I have already spoken, seems in its time to have possessed all the characters of the true epic. The great actions of the hero of northern Germany, Siegfried, assassinated by a king of Burgundy, and the vengeance inflicted on that

1 "To the Germans, this Niebelungen Song is naturally an object of no common love; neither if they sometimes overvalue it, and vague antiquarian wonder is more common than just criticism, should the fault be too heavily visited. After long ages of concealment, they have found it in the remote wilderness, still standing like the trunk of some almost antediluvian oak-nay, with boughs on it still green, after all the wind and weather of twelve hundred years. To many a patriotic feeling, which lingers 'ondly in solitary places of the Past, it may well be a rallying-point and Lovers' Trysting-Tree."-rlyle's Essays, p. 262.)-Ed

king in the camp of Attila by the followers of Siegfried, which put an end to the first kingdom of Burgundy, are the subject of the work. An epic poem is scarcely ever the work of one man; ages, if we may be allowed the expression, must labor to perfect it; patriotism, religion, in short, the whole exist ence of a nation, cannot be brought into action but by some of those singularly great events, which are not created by the poet, but which appear to him in greater magnitude seen through the obscurity of time. The personages of an epic poem ought to represent the primitive character of their nation. We should discover in them that indestructible mould from which all history derives its origin.

The pride and boast of Germany were its ancient chivalry, its strength, its loyalty, the union of goodness and simplicity for which it was famed, and that northern roughness, which was, however, connected with the most exalted sensibility. We also admire that Christianity which is grafted on the Scandinavian mythology; that untamed honor, rendered pure and sacred by faith; that respect for women, which became still more striking from the protection it afforded to the weak; that undaunted contempt of death, that warlike paradise which has now given place to the most humane of all religions. Such are the elements of an epic poem in Germany. Genius should avail itself of this, and, with the art of Medea, reanimate with new blood ancient recollections.

THE detached pieces of poetry among the Germans are, it appears to me, still more remarkable than their poems, and it is particularly on that species of writing that the stamp o originality is impressed; it is also true that the authors who have written most in this manner, Goethe, Schiller, Bürger,