world to speak about us. Taste in poetry depends on nature, and, like nature, should be creative; the principles of this taste are therefore quite different from those which depend on our social relations.

It is by confounding these two kinds of taste that we find such opposite judgments formed on subjects of literature; the French judge of the fine arts by the rules of social fitness and propriety, and the Germans judge of these as they would of the fine arts: in the relations of society we must study how to defend ourselves, but in those of poetry, we should yield ourselves up without reserve. If you consider surrounding objects as a man of the world, you will not be sensible to the charms of nature; if you survey them as an artist, you will lose that tact which society alone can give. If we are to subiect the arts to the regulations of good company, the French alone are truly capable of it; but greater latitude of composition is necessary, in order strongly to affect the imagination and the soul. I know it may be objected to me, and with reason, that our three best dramatic authors are elevated to the most sublime height, without offending any established rule. Some men of genius, reaping a field before unculti vated, have indeed rendered themselves illustrious in spite of the difficulties they had to conquer; but is not the cessation of all progress in the art, since that time, a strong proof that there are too many obstacles in the road which they followed?

"Good taste in literature is in some respects like order under despotism; it is of consequence that we should know at what price we purchase it." In a political point of view, M. Necker said: The utmost degree of liberty should be granted which is consistent with order. I would change the maxim, by saying, that in literature, we should have all the taste which is consistent with genius; for if in a state of society the 'chief object be order and quietness, that which is of most impor tance in literature is, on the contrary, interest, curiosity, and

1 Suppressed by authority.

that sort of emotion which taste alone would frequently disapprove.'

A treaty of peace might be proposed between the different modes of judgment adopted by artists and men of the world,

1 "Taste, if it mean any thing but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean A general susceptibility to truth and nobleness; a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever, or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments they are to be seen. This surely implies, as its chief condition, not any given external rank or situation, but a finely gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision; above all, kindled into love and generous admiration,

"We venture to deny that the Germans are defective in taste; even as a pation, as a public, taking one thing with another, we imagine they may stand comparison with any of their neighbors; as writers, as critics, they may decidedly court it. True, there is a mass of dulness, awkwardness, and false susceptibility in the lower regions of their literature; but is not bad taste endemical in such regions of every literature under the sun? Pure Stupidity, indeed, is of a quiet nature, and content to be merely stupid. But seldom do we find it pure; seldom unadulterated with some tincture of ambition, which drives it into new and strange metamorphoses. Here it has assumed a contemptuous, trenchant air, intended to represent superior tact and a sort of all-wisdom; there a truculent atrabilious scowl, which is to stand for passionate strength; now we have an outpouring of tumid fervor; now a fruitless, asthmatic hunting after wit and humor. Grave or gay, enthusiastic or derisive, admiring or despising, the dull man would be something which he is not and cannot be. Shall we confess, that, of these too common extremes, we reckon the German error considerably the more harmless, and, in our day, by far the more curable? Of unwise admiration much may be hoped, for much good is really in it: but unwise contempt is itself a negation; nothing comes of it, for it is nothing. "To judge of a national taste, however, we must raise our view from its transitory modes to its perennial models; from the mass of vulgar writers, who blaze out and are extinguished with the popular delusion which they flatter, to those few who are admitted to shine with a pure and lasting lustre; to whom, by common consent, the eyes of the people are turned, as to its lodestar and celestial luminaries. Among German writers of this stamp, we would ask any candid reader of them, let him be of what country or what creed he might, whether bad taste struck him as a prevailing characteristic. Was Wieland's taste uncultivated? Taste, we should say, und taste of the very species which a disciple of the Negative School would call the highest, formed the great object of his life, the perfection he unweariedly endeavored after, and, more than any other perfection, has attained. The most fastidious Frenchman might read him with admiration of his merely French qualities. And is not Klopstock, with his clear enthusiasm, his azure purity, and heavenly, if still somewhat cold and

by Germans and Frenchmen. The French ought to abstain from condemning even a violation of rule, if an energetic thought or a true sentiment can be pleaded in its excuse. The Germans ought to prohibit all that is offensive to natural taste;

lunar light, a man of taste? His Messias reminds us oftener of no other poets than of Virgil and Racine. But it is to Lessing that an Englishman would turn with the readiest affection. With Lessing and Klopstock might be joined, in this respect, nearly every one, we do not say of their distinguished, but even of their tolerated contemporaries. The two Jacobis, known more or less in all countries, are little known here, if they are accused of wanting literary taste. These are men, whether as thinkers or poets, to be regarded and admired for their mild and lofty wisdom, the devoutness, the benignity and calm grandeur of their philosophical views. In such, it were strange if among so many high merits, this lower one of a just and elegant style, which is indeed their natural and even necessary product, had been wanting. We recommend the elder Jacobi no less for his clearness than for his depth; of the younger, it may be enough in this point of view to say, that the chief praisers of his earlier poetry were the French. Neither are Hamann and Mendelsohn, who could meditate deep thoughts, defective in the power of uttering them with propriety. The Phadon of the latter, in its chaste precision and simplicity of style, may almost remind us of Xenophon. Socrates, to our mind, has spoken in no modern language so like Socrates, as here, by the lips of this wise and cultivated Jew.

Among the poets and more popular writers of the time, the case is the same: Utz, Gellert, Cramer, Ramler, Kleist, Hagedorn, Rabener, Gleim, and a multitude of lesser men, whatever excellencies they might want, certainly are not chargeable with bad taste. The same thing holds, in general, and with fewer drawbacks, of the somewhat later and more energetic race, denominated the Göttingen School, in contradistinction from the Saxon, to which Rabener, Cramer, and Gellert directly belonged, and most of those others indirectly. Hölty, Bürger, the two Stolbergs, are men whom Bossu might measure with his scale and compasses as strictly as he pleased. Of Herder, Schiller, Goethe, we speak not here; they are men of another stature and form of movement, whom Bossu's scale and compasses could not measure without difficulty, or rather not at all. To say that such men wrote with taste of this sort, were saying little; for this forms not the apex, but the basis, in their conception of style,--a quality not to be paraded as an excellence, but to be understood as in dispensable, as there by necessity, and like a thing of course.

"In truth, for it must be spoken out, our opponents are so widely astray in this matter, that their views of it are not only dim and perplexed, but altogether imaginary and delusive. It is proposed to School the Germans in the Alphabet of taste; and the Germans are already busied with their Accidence. Far from being behind other nations in the practice or science of Criticism, it is a fact, for which we fearlessly refer to all competent

all that retraces images repulsive to our feelings: no philo sophical theory, however ingenious it may be, can compensate for this defect; as, on the contrary, no established rule in literatute can prevent the effect of involuntary emotions. In vain do the most intelligent German writers contend, that, in order to understand the conduct of Lear's daughters towards their father, it is necessary to show the barbarity of the times in which they lived, and therefore tolerate the action of the Duke of Cornwall, who, excited by Regan, treads out the eye of Gloucester with his heel on the stage: our imaginations will always revolt at such a sight, and will demand other means of attaining the great beauties of composition. But, were the French to direct the utmost force of their literary criticisms against the prediction of the witches in Macbeth, the ghost of Banquo, etc., we should not the less feel, with the most lively emotion, the terrific effect which it is their endeavor to proscribe.

We cannot teach good taste in the arts as we can bon ton in society; for the knowledge of bon ton assists us to hide the points in which we fail, while in the arts it is above all things necessary to possess a creative spirit. Good taste cannot supply the place of genius in literature, for the best proof of taste, when there is no genius, would be, not to write at all. If we dared to speak our opinion on this subject, perhaps we should say, that in France there are too many curbs for coursers that have so little mettle, and that in Germany, great literary independence has not yet produced effects proportionably striking and brilliant.

judges, that they are distinctly, and even considerably, in advance. We state what is already known to a great part of Europe to be true. Criticism has assumed a new form in Germany; it proceeds on other principles, and proposes to itself a higher aim.”—( Carlyle's Essays, p. 20 et seq.)—Ed.

CHAPTER XV.

OF THE DRAMATIC ART.

THE theatre exercises a powerful influence over men; a tragedy which exalts the soul, a comedy which paints manners and characters, acts upon the mind of the people almost like a real event; but in order to obtain any considerable success upon the stage, it is necessary for the poet to have studied the public which he addresses, and the motives, of every description, on which its opinion is founded. The knowledge of mankind is even equally essential to the dramatic author with imagination itself; he must touch sentiments of general interest without losing sight of the particular relations which influence his spectators; a theatrical performance is literature in action, and the genius which it demands is so rare only because it exhibits the astonishing combination of the perfect knowledge of circumstances with poetical inspiration. Nothing then would be more absurd than an attempt to impose on all nations the same dramatic system; when the object is to adapt a universal art to the taste of each particular country, an immortal art to the manners of the passing moment, most important modifications are unavoidable; and from thence proceeds such a diversity of opinions as to what constitutes dramatic talent: in all other branches of literature men agree more easily.

It cannot, I think, be denied, that the French are the most expert nation in the world in the combination of theatrical ef fects; they bear away the prize from all others, likewise, in the dignity of situations and of tragic style. But, even while we acknowledge this double superiority, we may experience more powerful emotions from less regular works; the concep tion is often more bold and striking in the foreign drama, and