Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, By O. W. WIGHT, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMFANY CHAP. XXIX.-Of German Historians, and of J. Von Müller in partic- CHAP. X.-Influence of the new Philosophy on the Sciences.... CHAP. XI.-Influence of the new Philosophy upon the Character of CHAP. XIII.-Of Ethics founded on National Interest. CHAP. XIV. Of the Principle of Ethics in the new German Phi- 248 CHAP. XX.-Modern Writers of the Ancient School in Germany..... 275 CHAP. XXI.-Of Ignorance and Frivolity of Spirit in their Relations to APPENDIX A.-General Survey of German Literature to the close of the Eighteenth Century. By Max Müller, M A., Professor of European Languages and Literature at Oxford APPENDIX B.-Hegel and Recert German Philosophy. 410 425 PART II. ON LITERATURE AND THE ARTS. (CONTINUED.) CHAPTER XXV. VARIOUS PIECES OF THE GERMAN AND DANISH THEATRE. THE dramatic works of Kotzebue' have been translated into several languages. It would therefore be superfluous to employ ourselves in making them known. I shall only observe, that no impartial judge can deny him a perfect understanding of theatrical effects. The Two Brothers, Misanthropy and Repentance, The Hussites, The Crusaders, Hugo Grotius, Jane of Montfaucon, The Death of Rolla, etc., excite the most lively interest wherever they are performed. It must still be con 1 (6 August von Kotzebue, born at Weimar in 1761, was the son of a counsellor of legation, but lost his father before he was two years old. At sixteen he went to the university of Jena to study jurisprudence, and established himself as solicitor at Weimar. The law had, however, no attractions for him; he wrote several dramatic pieces, and had the gratification of seeing his productions favorably received by the public. But, having written some satirical poems against some ladies at Weimar, he found himself under the recessity of leaving the place. He went to Petersburg, where he was first engaged as private secretary to General Bauer of the engineers, and subsequently became director of the German theatre. Kotzebue was now in his true vocation; but when soon afterwards the general died, the empress named him a judge of the court of appeals at Reval. In the following year, in his twenty-third year, he married a daughter of the wealthy General Essen, a lady of great beauty and high mental attainments, and he was raised to nobility. He established a theatre of amateurs at Reval, for which he wrote several plays. His Menschenhass und Reus, known fessed, that Kotzebue knows not how to give to his personages either the color of the times in which they lived, or national features, or the character that history assigns them. These personages, to whatever age or country they belong, always to the English public by the title of the Stranger, and Die Indianer in EngLand, procured him great celebrity. His declining health about this time, induced him to return to Germany; he went to Weimar, where he had the misfortune to lose his wife after a union of six years. With the view of finding some relief in a change of scene, he went to Paris, and after some years returned to Esthland, and married a second time. He lived, however, retired from public life on his estate, and continued to write dramatic pieces. Two years after, he was invited to Vienna, to undertake the management of the Imperial theatre, which, however, he resigned after the expiration of the first year. He went again to Weimar, but some controversies with Goethe, who hated his obtrusive manners, and more particularly with the two Schlegels, caused him to return to Russia. Arrived here, he was, by order of the Emperor Paul, arrested, charged with being a spy, and exiled to Siberia, but after the lapse of two years restored to liberty, and created a privy counsellor. He again undertook the management of the theatre. After Paul's death he left Petersburg for Berlin, where he continued his literary labors for the stage. Here he published several of his larger works, and a collection of novels and tales; and began his Ancient History of Prussia. The war with France breaking out shortly after, he retired to Russia; upon the defeat of the French he followed the Emperor Alexander in the quality of privy counsellor, and edited in Berlin his Russo-German Gazette, in which his constant aim was to increase the hatred against the French. He was subsequently made Russian consul at Königsberg, but a few years afterwards recalled to Petersburg and desired by the emperor to fix himself at Weimar, in order to make from thence weekly reports upon new productions in the arts and sciences, both in Germany and France. But he had the mortification to find himself looked upon as a Russian spy; he was called a traitor to his country, and the hatred against him increased, when in a severe satire he declared himself an enemy to the then prevailing spirit of Germanism among the youths of Germany. In order to enjoy the society of some friends, he went to Manheim, and was preparing for his journey to Russia, where he intended to spend the remainder of his days in quiet and retirement, when, on the 23d of March, 1819, he was stabbed to death by Charles Sand, a German student. When requested to declare his motives for such a deed, Sand thus wrote: 'Kotzebue was the seducer of our youth, the calumniator of our history, and a betrayer of our country in the pay of Russia.' "Kotzebue's plays are most numerous. In most cases his principal attention is given to stage-effect. He had little conception of the ideal, but great shrewdness in discovering the foibles of the human heart. His chief care was to court the ephemeral applause of the day by pandering to the ritiated taste promoted by himself."-Ed. |