rights of brotherhood which they have long deserved, and which it is we chiefly that suffer by withholding.

MUSEUS.

JOHANN AUGUST MUSEUS was born in the year 1735, at Jena, where his father then held the office of Judge. The quick talents, and kind lively temper of the boy, recommended him to the affection of his uncle, Herr Weissenborn, Superintendant at Allstadt, who took him to his house, and treated him in all respects like a son. Johann was then in his ninth year: a few months afterwards, his uncle was promoted to the post of General Superintendant at Eisenach; a change which did not alter the domestic condition of the nephew, though it replaced him in the neighbourhood of his parents; for his father had also been transferred to Eisenach, in the capacity of Councillor and Police Magistrate. With this hospitable relative he continued till his nineteenth year.

Old Weissenborn had no children of his own, and he determined that his foster-child should have a liberal education. In due time he placed him at the University of Jena, as a student of theology. It is not likely that the inclinations of the youth himself had been particularly consulted in this arrangement; nevertheless he appears to have studied with sufficient diligence; for in the usual period of three years and a half, he obtained his degree of Master, and what was then a proof of more than ordinary merit, was elected a member of the German Society. With these titles, and the groundwork of a solid culture, he returned to Eisenach, to wait for an appointment in the Church, of which he was now licentiate.

For several years, though he preached with ability, and not without approval, no appointment presented itself; and when at last a country-living in the neighbourhood of Eisenach was offered him, the people stoutly resisted the admission of their new pastor, on the ground, says his Biographer, that "he had once been seen dancing." It may be, however, that the sentence of the peasants was not altogether so infirm as this its alleged very narrow basis would betoken: judging from external circumstances, it by no means appears that devotion was at any time the chief distinction of the new candidate ;

and to a simple rustic flock, his shining talents, unsupported by zeal, would be empty and unprofitable as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. At all events, this hindrance closed his theological career: it came in good season to withdraw him from a calling, in which, whether willingly or unwillingly adopted, his history must have been dishonest and contemptible, and his gifts could never have availed him.

Musäus had now lost his profession; but his resources were not limited to one department of activity, and he was still young enough to choose another. His temper was gay and kindly; his faculties of mind were brilliant, and had now been improved by years of steady industry. His residence at Eisenach had not been spent in scrutinising the phases of church preferment, or dancing attendance on patrons and dignitaries: he had stored his mind with useful and ornamental knowledge; and from his remote watch-tower, his keen eye had discerned the movements of the world, and firm judgments of its wisdom and its folly were gathering form in his thoughts. In his twenty-fifth year he became an author; a satirist, and, what is rarer, a just one. Germany, by the report of its enemies and lukewarm friends, is seldom long without some Idol; some author of superhuman endowments, some system that promises to renovate the earth, some science destined to conduct, by a north-west passage, to universal knowledge. At this period, the Brazen Image of the day was our English Richardson; his novels had been translated into German with unbounded acceptance ;4 and Grandison was figuring in many weak heads as the sole model of a true Christian gentleman. Musäus published his German Grandison in 1760; a work of good omen as a first attempt, and received with greater favour than the popularity of its victim seemed to promise. It coöperated with Time in removing this spiritual epidemic; and appears to have survived its object, for it was reprinted in 1781.

The success of his anonymous parody, however gratifying to the youthful author, did not tempt him to disclose his name, and still less to think of literature as a profession. With his cool sceptical temper, he was little liable to over-estimate his talents, or the prizes set up for them; and he longed much less for a literary existence than for a civic one. In 1763, his wish to a certain extent was granted: he be

4 See the Letters of Meta, Klopstock's lady, in Richardson's Life and Corre spondence.

came Tutor of the Pages in the court of Weimar; which office, after seven punctual and laborious years, he exchanged for a professorship in the Gymnasium, or public school of the same town. He had now married; and amid the cares and pleasures of providing for a family, and keeping house like an honest burgher, the dreams of fame had faded still farther from his mind. The emoluments of his post were small; but his heart was light, and his mind humble: to increase his income he gave private lessons in history and the like, "to young ladies and gentlemen of quality;" and for several years took charge of a few boarders. The names of Wieland and Goethe had now risen on the world, while his own was still under the horizon: but this obscurity, enjoying as he did the kind esteem of all his many personal acquaintances, he felt to be a very light evil; and participated without envy in whatever entertainment or instruction his famed contemporaries could afford him. With literature he still occupied his leisure; he had read and reflected much; but for any public display of his acquirements he was making no preparation, and feeling no anxiety.

After an interval of nineteen years, the appearance of a new idol again called forth his iconoclastic faculty. Lavater had left his parsonage among the Alps, and set out on a cruise over Europe, in search of proselytes and striking physiognomies. His theories, supported by his personal influence, and the honest rude ardour of his character, became the rage in Germany; and men, women and children were immersed in promoting philanthropy, and studying the human mind. Whereupon Musäus grasped his satirical hammer; and with lusty strokes defaced and unshrined the false divinity. His Physiognomical Travels, which appeared in 1779, is still ranked by the German critics among the happiest productions of its kind in their literature; and still read for its wit and acuteness, and genial overflowing humour, though the object it attacked has long ago become a reminiscence. At the time of its publication, when everything conspired to give its qualities their full effect, the applause it gained was instant and general. The author had, as in the former case, concealed his name: but the public curiosity soon penetrated the secret, which he had now no interest in keeping; and Musäus was forthwith enrolled among the lights of his day and generation; and courteous readers crowded to him from far and near, to see his face, and pay him the tribute of their

admiration. This unlooked-for celebrity he valued at its just price; continuing to live as if it were not; gratified chiefly in his character of father, at having found an honest means of improving his domestic circumstances, and enlarging the comforts of his family. The ground was now broken, and he was not long in digging deeper.

The popular traditions of Germany, so numerous and often so impressive, had attracted his attention; and their rugged Gothic vigour, saddened into sternness or venerable grace by the flight of ages, became dearer to his taste, as he looked abroad upon the mawkish deluge of Sentimentality, with which The Sorrows of Werter had been the innocent signal for a legion of imitators to drown the land. The spirit of German imagination seemed but ill represented by these tearful persons, who, if their hearts were full, minded little though their heads were empty: their spasmodic tenderness made no imposing figure beside the gloomy strength, which might still in fragments be discerned in their distant predecessors. Of what has been preserved from age to age by living memory alone, the chance is that it possesses some intrinsic merit: its very existence declares it to be adapted to some form of our common nature, and therefore calculated more or less to interest all its forms. It struck Musäus that these rude traditionary fragments might be worked anew into shape and polish, and transferred from the hearths of the common people to the parlours of the intellectual and refined. He determined on forming a series of Volksmährchen, or Popular Traditionary Tales; a task of more originality and smaller promise in those days than it would be now. In the collection of materials he spared no pains; and despised no source of intelligence, however mean. He would call children from the street; become a child along with them, listen to their nursery tales, and reward his tiny narrators with a dreyer apiece. Sometimes he assembled a knot of old women, with their spinning-wheels, about him; and amid the hum of their industrious implements, gathered stories of the ancient time from the lips of the garrulous sisterhood. Once his wife had been out paying visits: on opening the parlourdoor at her return, she was met by a villanous cloud of tobacco-smoke; and venturing forward through the haze, she found her husband seated. by the stove, in company with an old soldier, who was smoking vehemently on his black stump of a pipe, and charming his landlord, between whiffs, with legendary lore.

The Volksmährchen, in five little volumes, appeared in 1782. They soon rose into favour with a large class of readers; and while many generations of novels have since that time been ushered into being, and conducted out of it, they still survive, increasing in popularity rather than declining. This preeminence is owing less to the ancient materials, than to the author's way of treating them. The primitive tradition often serves him only as a vehicle for interesting description, shrewd sarcastic speculation, and gay fanciful pleasantry, extending its allusions over all things past and present, now rising into comic humour, now sinking into drollery, often tasteless, strained, or tawdry, but never dull. The traces of poetry and earnest imagination, here and there discernible in the original fiction, he treats with levity and kind sceptical derision: nothing is required of the reader but what all readers are prepared to give. Since the publication of this work, the subject of popular tradition has been handled to triteness; Volksmährchen have been written and collected without stint or limit; and critics, in admitting that Musäus was the first to open this mine of entertainment, have lamented the incongruity. between his subject and his style. But the faculty of laughing has been given to all men, and the feeling of imaginative beauty has been given only to a few; the lovers of primeval poetry, in its unadulterated state, may censure Musäus; but they join with the public at large in reading him.

This book of Volksmährchen established the character of its author for wit and general talent, and forms the chief support of his reputation with posterity. A few years after, he again appeared before the public with a humorous performance, entitled Friend Hein's Apparitions, in the style of Holberg, printed in 1785. Friend Hein is a name under which Musäus, for what reason his commentator Wieland seems unable to inform us, usually personifies Death: the essay itself, which I have never seen, may be less irreverent and offensive to pious feeling than its title indicates, and it is said to abound with "wit, humour and knowledge of life," as much as any of his former works. He had also begun a second series of Tales, under the title of Straussfedern (Ostrich-feathers): but only the first volume had appeared, when death put a period to his labours. He had long been in weakly health; often afflicted with violent headaches: his disorder was a polypus of the heart, which cut him off on the 28th of October