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they really are. They assign to him a very reasonable man for his governor, to bring him back to the positive knowledge of life. One fine day in summer he is walking abroad with his pupil in a beautiful wood, while the birds are heard to sing, the wind gently stirs the leaves, and animated nature seems, on all side, to be addressing a prophetic language to man. The governor perceives in these vague and multiplied sensations nothing but noise and confusion; and when he returns to the palace, he congratulates himself on seeing the trees converted into household furniture, all the productions of nature rendered subservient to utility, and artificial order instead of the tumultuous movement of natural existence. The courtiers are reassured when, on his return from his travels, Prince Zerbino, enlightened by experience, promises to concern himself no longer about the fine arts, poetry, and exalted sentiments, or any thing else, in short, but what tends to the triumph of selfishness over enthusiasm.

What the generality of men are most afraid of, is the being taken for dupes, and who think it much less ridiculous to appear wrapped up in themselves, under every circumstance, than deceived even in one. There is, therefore, wit, and a noble employment of wit, in turning incessantly into ridicule. all personal calculation; enough of it will always remain to keep the world in motion, while, one of these days, the very remembrance even of a nature truly elevated, may vanish altogether.

In Tieck's comedies is to be found a gayety arising out of characters, and not consisting in witty epigram, a gayety in which the imagination is inseparable from the pleasantry; but sometimes this very imagination sets comic humor at a distance, and brings back lyrical poetry into scenes where we expect to find only the ridiculous in motion. Nothing is so difficult to the Germans as to abstain from abandoning themselves, in all their works, to reverie; and yet comedy, and the theatre in general, are hardly proper for it, for of all impressions, reverie is precisely that which is the most solitary; we can hardly communicate its inspirations to the most intimate

friend: how is it possible, then, to associate with them an assembled multitude?

Among these allegorical pieces, must be reckoned the Tr umph of Sentimentality, a little comedy of Goethe's in which he has very ingeniously availed himself of the double absurdity of affected enthusiasm and real inanity. The principal personage in this piece seems to be prepossessed with all the ideas which imply a strong imagination and a profound intellect; and yet he is in truth only a prince well educated, highly polished, and very obedient to the rules of propriety; he has taken it into his head to add to all this a sensibility at command, the affectation of which continually betrays him. He thinks he loves the gloom of forests, the moonlight, and starry nights; but, as he is afraid of cold and fatigue, he has scenes painted for him to represent these various objects, and never travels without being followed by a great wagon, in which all the beauties of nature are carried after him.

This sentimental prince also fancies himself in love with a woman, whose wit and genius have been highly extolled to him. This woman, to try him, puts in her place a veiled puppet, which, as we may suppose, says nothing in the least degree improper, and whose silence passes for the reserve of good taste, and the melancholy thoughtfulness of a tender soul.

The prince, enchanted with this companion, according to his wishes, asks the puppet in marriage, and only at last discovers that he is unhappy enough to have chosen a mere doll for his wife, while his court afforded him such a number of women, who might have united in themselves all the principal advantages of such a partner.

It cannot, however, be denied, that ingenious ideas are not enough to make a good comedy, and the French, in the quality of comic writers, have the advantage over all other nations. The knowledge of men, and the art of making use of that knowledge, secures to them the highest rank in this department; but we might perhaps sometimes wish, even in Molière's best pieces, that reasoning satire held less place, and

that imagination had more scope in them. The Festin de Pierre is, among all his comedies, that which has the nearest resemblance to the German system: a prodigy that makes one shudder, serves as the moving principle to the most comic situations; and the greatest effects of the imagination are mingled with the most lively shades of pleasantry. This subject, equally witty and poetical, is borrowed from the Spaniards. Bold conceptions are very rare in France; in literature, they like to work in safety: but whenever a fortunate circumstance has encouraged them to risk themselves, taste directs boldness with wonderful address; and a foreign invention, thrown into method by the art of a Frenchman, will always be a first-rate production of genius.

CHAPTER XXVII.

OF DECLAMATION.

THE art of declamation, leaving only recollections behind it, and being incapable of erecting any durable monument, it has followed that men have reflected but little upon what it is composed of. Nothing is so easy as the moderate exercise of this art, but it is not unjustly that in its perfection it excites so high a degree of enthusiasm, and, far from depreciating this impression as a transient emotion, I think that regular causes may be assigned to it. We seldom attain, in life, to penetrate the secret thoughts of men; affectation and falsehood, coldness and modesty, exaggerate, vary, restrain, or conceal whatever passes at the bottom of the heart. A great actor puts in evidence the signs of truth in sentiments and in characters, and discovers to us the certain marks of real inclinations and emotions. So many individuals pass through life without considering the danger of their passions and their strength, that the theatre often reveals man to man, and inpires him with a holy dread of the tempests of the soul. In 'act, what words are capable of painting them like an accent,

a gesture, a look! Words tell us less than accent, accent less than physiognomy, and the inexpressible is precisely that with which a sublime actor brings us acquainted.

The same differences that exist between the tragic system of the Germans, and that of the French, are also to be found in their mode of declaiming; the Germans imitate nature as closely as they are able,-they have no affectation but that of simplicity; but even this may be an affectation in the fine arts. The German actors sometimes touch the heart deeply, and sometimes leave the spectator in a state of perfect frigidity; they then trust themselves to his patience, and are sure of not being deceived. The English have more of majesty than the Germans in their mode of reciting verses, but they nevertheless want the habitual pomp which the French nation, and above all French tragedy, require of their actors; our style will not admit of mediocrity, for it brings us back to the natural only by the very beauty of art itself. The second-rate actors in Germany are cold and quiet; they are often wanting in tragic effect, but are hardly ever ridiculous: it is the same on the German stage as in society; we meet with people who sometimes fatigue us, and that is all; while, on the French stage, we become impatient if our emotions are not excited: turgid and unnatural sounds then disgust us so entirely with tragedy, that there is no parody, however vulgar, which we do not prefer to the insipidity of mannerism.

The accessories of art, machinery, and decorations ought to be more attended to in Germany than in France, since these means are more frequently employed in the former nation. Iffland has been able to accomplish, at Berlin, all that can be desired in this respect; but at Vienna, they neglect even the necessary means or the good representation of the material parts of tragedy. Memory is infinitely more cultivated by the French than by the German actors. The prompter at Vienna used to furnish most of the actors with every word of their parts; and I have seen him following Othello from one side-scene to another, to prompt him with the verses which he had to pronounce at the bottom of the stage, on poniarding Desdemona.

1

The theatre at Weimar is infinitely better ordered in all re¿pects.1 The prince, himself an intelligent man, and the mar of genius, the connoisseur in the arts, who preside there, have found the means of uniting taste and elegance to that boldness which encourages new adventures.

1 "The Weimar School,' says Devrient,2 who is here speaking ex professo, and is worth attending to, although it demanded of the artist" to produce something resembling nature," nevertheless set up a new standard of nobleness and beauty, by which every phenomenon in the region of art was to be tested. The tendency hitherto dominant had by no means neglected the beautiful, but it had sought only a beautiful reality,—now, with subtle distinction, beautiful truth was demanded from it. Hitherto, living nature had served as the standard; now, an enlightened taste was to be the rule. The actors were to disaccustom themselves to the native German manner, and find a freer, a more universal conception; they were to raise themselves out of the narrow limits of the special, of the individual, to the contemplation of the general, of the Ideal.

"These were astoundingly new and hard demands on the actor. Hitherto a plain understanding, with vivid and sensitive feelings, had tolerably well sufficed to make this natural talent tell; for the problems lay within the actor's circle of vision. Now, appeal was principally made to his taste; he was required to have a refined instinct, and ennobled sentiments, which, to a certain degree, presupposed scientific and antiquarian culture; for, instead of nature, as hitherto, the antique was now the model of speech and feature. The actual culture of the histrionic class was not in the remotest degree adequate to these demands; what, then, was to be done? The Weimar School must content itself with training; it must seek to supply by external drilling what ought properly to have proceeded from a higher intellectual life, from an intrinsically ennobled nature. Nothing else remained to it. The spirit of our literature was pressing forward with unexampled power to that summit on which it could from thenceforth measure itself with that of all other nations; it carried along with it theatrical art, such as it was. If the attempt had been made to advance the culture of actors as far as was necessary, in order to bring it even with the victorious march of our literature, the moment would have been lost in which the stage could render immeasurable service to the national culture.

"Goethe and Schiller had essentially this mission: to elevate poetry; to carry the intellectual life of the nation into higher ideal regions; literature was their immediate object, the stage only a secondary one; nay, it was with them only a means to an end. To work with entire devotion to dramatic art, solely for it and through it, as Molière and Shakspeare did, hever occurred to them; nor would they imitate Lessing, who attached himself closely to art, to what it achieved, and could achieve. They placed

2 Geschichte der deutschen Schauspiel Kunst, p. 255.

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