fold pang, beyond the pitcn of human feeling, pierced through my soul! How did my limbs tremble as I approached this holy spot! Here, then, reposes what is left of the dearest that heaven gave me; among the dust of her four children she sleeps. A sacred horror covered the place. I should have sunk altogether in my sorrow, had it not been for my two daughters that were standing on the outside of the church-yard; I saw their faces over the wall, directed to me with anxious fear. This called me to myself; I hastened in sadness from the spot where I could have continued for ever: where it cheered me to think that one day I should rest by her side; rest from all the carking care, from all the griefs which so often have embittered to me the enjoyment of life. Alas! among these griefs must I reckon even | her love, the strongest, truest, that ever inspired the heart of woman, which may be the happiest of mortals, and yet was a fountain to me of a thousand distresses, inquietudes, and cares. To entire cheerfulness perhaps she never attained; but for what unspeakable sweetness, for what exalted, enrapturing joys is not Love indebted to Sorrow? Amidst gnawing anxieties, with the torture of anguish in my heart, I have been made even by the love which caused me this anguish, these anxieties, inexpressibly happy! When tears flowed over our cheeks, did not a nameless, seldom felt delight stream through my breast, oppressed equally by joy and by sorrow!"

|sidered in his private relations, such a man might well reckon himself fortunate.

In addition to Heyne's claims as a scholar and teacher, Heeren would have us regard him as an unusually expert man of business and negotiator, for which line of life he himself seems indeed to have thought that his talent was more peculiarly fitted. In proof of this, we have long details of his procedure in managing the Library, the Royal Society, the University generally, and his incessant, and often rather complex correspondence with Münchhausen, Brandes, or other ministers, who presided over this department. Without detracting from Heyne's skill in such matters, what struck us more in this narrative of Heeren's was the singular contrast which the “ Georgia Augusta," in its. interior arrangement, as well as in its external relations to the Government, exhibits with our own universities. The prime minister of the country writes thrice weekly to the director of an institution for learning! He oversees all; knows the character, not only of every professor, but of every pupil that gives any promise. He is continually purchasing books, drawings, models; treating for this or the other help or advantage to the establishment. He has his eye over all Germany; and nowhere does a man of any decided talent show himself, but he strains every nerve to acquire him. And seldom or ever can he succeed; for the Hanoverian assiduity seems nothing singular; every state in Germany has its minister for education, as well as Hanover. They correspond, they inquire, they negotiate; everywhere there seems a canvassing, less for places, than for the best men to fill them. Heyne himself has his Seminarium, a private class of the nine most distinguished students in the university; these he trains with all diligence, and is in due time most probably enabled, by his connections, to place in stations fit for them. A hundred and thirty-five professors are said to have been sent from this Seminarium during his presidency. These things we state without commentary: we be'lieve that the experience of all English, and Scotch, and Irish university-men will, of itself, furnish one.

The state of education in Germany, and the structure of the establishments for conducting it, seems to us one of the most promising inquiries that could at this moment be entered on.

But Heyne was not a man to brood over past griefs, or linger long where nothing was to be done, but mourn. In a short time, according to a good old plan of his, having reckoned up his grounds of sorrow, he fairly | wrote down on paper, over against them, his "grounds of consolation;" concluding with these pious words, "So for all these sorrows | too, these trials, do I thank thee, my God! And now, glorified friend, will I again turn me with undivided heart to my duty; thou thyself smilest approval on me!" Nay, it was not many months before a new marriage came on the anvil, in which matter, truly, Heyne conducted himself with the most philosophic indifference; leaving his friends, by whom the | project had been started, to bring it to what issue they pleased. It was a scheme concerted by Zimmerman, (the author of Solitude, a man little known to Heyne,) and one Reich, a Leipzig bookseller, who had met at the Prymont But to return to Heyne: We have said, that Baths. Brandes, the Hanoverian Minister, in his private circumstances, he might reckon successor of Münchhausen in the manage-himself fortunate. His public relations, on a ment of the University concerns, was there also with a daughter; upon her, the projectors cast their eye. Heyne, being consulted, seems to have comported himself like clay in the hands of the potter; father and fair one, in like manner, were of a compliant humour, and thus was the business achieved; and on the 9th of April, 1777, Heyne could take home a bride, won with less difficulty than most men have in choosing a pair of boots. Nevertheless, she proved an excellent wife to him; | kept his house in the cheerfullest order; managed her step-children, and her own, like a true mother; and loved, and faithfully assisted her husband in whatever he undertook. Con

more splendid scale, continued, to the last, tc be of the same happy sort. By degrees, he had risen to be, both in name and office, the chief man of his establishment; his character stood high with the learned of all countries; and the best fruit of external reputation, increased respect in his own circle, was not denied to him. The burghers of Göttingen, so fond of their University, could not but be proud of Heyne; nay, as the time passed on, they found themselves laid under more than one specific obligation to him. He remodelled and reanimated their gymnasium (town-school), as he had before done that of Ilfeld; and whai was still more important, in the rude times of

the French war, by his skilful application, he succeeded in procuring from Napoleon, not only a protection for the University, but immunity from hostile invasion for the whole district it stands in. Nay, so happily were matters managed, or so happily did they turn of their own accord, that Göttingen rather gained than suffered by the war: Under Jerome of Westphalia, not only were all benefices punctually paid, but improvements even were effected; among other things, a new and very handsome extension, which had long been desired, was built for the library, at the charge of Government. To all these claims for public regard, add Heyne's now venerable age, and we can fancy how, among his townsmen and fellow-collegians, he must have been cherished, nay, almost worshipped. Already had the magistracy, by a special act, freed him from all public assessments; but, in 1809, on his eightieth birth-day, came a still more emphatic testimony; for the Ritter Franz, and all the public boards, and the faculties, in corpore, came to him in procession with good wishes; and students reverenced him; and young ladies sent him garlands, stitched together by their own fair fingers; in short, Göttingen was a place of jubilee; and good old Heyne, who nowise affected, yet could not dislike these things, was among the happiest of men.

joked with the girl when she asked him how he had been over-night. She left him, to make ready his coffee, as was her wont; and returning with it in a short quarter of an hour, she found him sunk down before his washing-stand, close by his work-table. His hands were wet; at the moment when he had been washing them, had death taken him into his arms. One breath more, and he ceased to live: when the hastening doctor opened a vein, no blood would flow."

Heyne was interred with all public solemnities: and, in epicedial language, it may be said without much exaggeration, that his coun try mourned for him. At Chemnitz, his birthplace, there assembled, under constituted authority, a grand meeting of the magistrates, to celebrate his memory; the old school-album, in which the little ragged boy had inscribed his name, was produced; grandiloquent speeches were delivered; and "in the afternoon, many hundreds went to see the poor cottage," where his father had weaved, and he starved and learned. How generous!

To estimate Heyne's intellectual character, to fix accurately his rank and merits as a critic and philologer, we cannot but consider as beyoǹd our province, and at any rate superfluous here. By the general consent of the learned in all countries, he seems to be acknowledged as the first among recent scholars; his immense reading, his lynx-eyed skill in expo

In another respect, we must also reckon him fortunate; that he lived till he had completed all his undertakings; and then departed peace-sition and emendation are no longer here confully, and without sickness, from which, indeed, his whole life had been remarkably free. Three months before his death, in April, 1812, he saw the last volume of his works in print; and rejoiced, it is said, with an affecting thankfulness, that so much had been granted him. Length of life was not now to be hoped for; neither did Heyne look forward to the end with apprehension. His little German verses, and Latin translations, composed in sleepless nights, at this extreme period, are, to us, by far the most touching part of his poetry; so melancholy is the spirit of them, yet so mild; solemn, not without a shade of sadness, yet full of pious resignation. At length came the end; soft and gentle as his mother could have wished it for him. The 11th of July was a public day in the Royal Society; Heyne did his part in it; spoke at large, and with even more clearness and vivacity than usual.

troverted; among ourselves his taste in these matters has been praised by Gibbon, and by Parr pronounced to be "exquisite." In his own country, Heyne is even regarded as the founder of a new epoch in classical study; as the first who with any decisiveness attempted to translate fairly beyond the letter of the classics; to read in the writings of the ancients, not the language alone, or even their detached opinions and records, but their spirit and character, their way of life and thought; how the world and nature painted themselves to the mind in those old ages; how, in one word, the Greeks and the Romans were men, even as we are. Such of our readers as have studied any one of Heyne's works, or even looked carefully into the Lectures of the Schlegels, the most ingenious and popular commentators of that school, will be at no loss to understand what

we mean.

By his inquiries into antiquity, especially by his laboured investigation of its politics and its mythology, Heyne is believed to have carried the torch of philosophy towards, if not into, the mysteries of old time. What Winkelmann, his great contemporary did, or began to do, for ancient plastic art, the other, with equal success, began for ancient literature.* A high

Next day," says Heeren," was Sunday: I saw him in the evening, for the last time. He was resting in his chair, exhausted by the fatigue of yesterday. On Monday morning, he once more entered his class room, and held his Seminarium. In the afternoon he prepared his letters, domestic as well as foreign; among the latter, one on business; sealed them all but one, written in Latin, to Professor Thorlacius, in Copenhagen, which I found open, but finish- * It is a curious fact that these two men, so singularly ed, on his death. At supper, (none but his correspondent in their early sufferings, subsequent diselder daughter was with him,) he talked cheer-racter, were at one time, while both as yet were under tinction, line of study, and rugged enthusiasm of chafully, and at his usual time retired to rest. In the horizon, brought into partial contact. "An acthe night, the servant girl, that slept under his apartment, heard him walking up and down; a common practice with him when he could not sleep. However, he had again gone to bed. Soon after five, he arose, as usual; he

Heyne was to make in the Brühl Library; with a perquaintance of another sort, says Heeren, "the young son whose importance he could not then anticipate. One frequent visitor of this establishment was a certain specially desirable for the librarians, such endless labour almost wholly unknown man, whose visits could not be did he cost them. He seemed insatiable in reading; and

praise, surely; yet, as we must think, one not | perhaps, is not very singular among commenunfounded, and which, indeed, in all parts of tators. Europe, is becoming more and more confirmed. For the rest, Heeren assures us, that in pracSo much, in the province to which he de- tice Heyne was truly a good man; altogether voted his activity, is Heyne allowed to have just; diligent in his own honest business, and accomplished. Nevertheless, we must not as-ever ready to forward that of others; comsert that, in point of understanding and spi- passionate; though quick-tempered, placable; ritual endowment, he can be called a complete, | friendly, and satisfied with simple pleasures. or even, in strict speech, a great man. Won-He delighted in roses, and always kept a bouderful perspicuity, unwearied diligence, are not quet of them in water on his desk. His house denied him; but to philosophic order, to clas- was embowered among roses; and in his old sical adjustment, clearness, polish, whether in days he used to wander through the bushes word or thought, he seldom attains; nay, many with a pair of scissors. Farther, says Heeren, times, it must be avowed, he involves himself in spite of his short sight, he was fond of the in tortures, long-winded verbosities, and stands fields and skies, and could lie for hours readbefore us little better than one of that old schooling on the grass. A kindly old man ! With which his admirers boast that he displaced. He appears, we might almost say, as if he had wings but could not well use them. Or, indeed, it might be that, writing constantly in a dead language, he came to write heavily; working for ever on subjects where learned armorat-all-points cannot be dispensed with, he at last grew so habituated to his harness that he would not walk abroad without it; nay perhaps it had rusted together, and could not be unclasped! A sad fate for a thinker! Yet one which threatens many commentators, and overtakes many.

strangers, hundreds of whom visited him, he was uniformly courteous; though latterly, being a little hard of hearing, less fit to converse. In society he strove much to be polite; but had a habit (which ought to be general) of yawning, when people spoke to him and said nothing.

On the whole, the Germans have some reason to be proud of Heyne; who shall deny that they have here once more produced a scholar of the right old stock; a man to be ranked, for honesty of study and of life, with the Scaligers, the Bentleys, and old illustrious As a man encrusted and encased, he exhi-men, who, though covered with academic dust bits himself, moreover, to a certain degree, in his moral character. Here too, as in his intellect, there is an awkwardness, a cumbrous inertness; nay, there is a show of dulness, of hardness, which nowise intrinsically belongs to him. He passed, we are told, for less religious, less affectionate, less enthusiastic than he was. His heart, one would think, had no free course, or had found itself a secret one; outwardly he stands before us, cold and still, a very wall of rock; yet within lay a well, from which, as we have witnessed, the stroke of some Moses'-wand (the death of a Theresa) could draw streams of pure feeling. Callous as a man seems to us, he has a sense for all natural beauty; a merciful sympathy for his fellow-men: his own early distresses never left his memory: for similar distresses his pity and help were at all times in store. This form of character may also be the fruit partly of his employments, partly of his sufferings, and,

called for so many books, that his reception there grew rather of the coolest. It was Johann Winkelmann. Meditating his journey for Italy, he was then laying in preparation for it. Thus did these two men become, if not confidential, yet acquainted; who at that time, both still in darkness and poverty, could little suppose, that in a few years, they were to be the teachers of cultivated Europe, and the ornaments of their nation."

and harsh with polyglot vocables, were true men of endeavour, and fought like giants, with such weapons as they had, for the good cause? To ourselves, we confess, Heyne, highly interesting for what he did, is not less but more so for what he was. This is another of the proofs, which minds like his are from time to time sent hither to give, that the man is not the product of his circumstances, but that, in a far higher degree, the circumstances are the product of the man. While beneficed clerks and other sleek philosophers, reclining on their cushions of velvet, are demonstrating that to make a scholar and man of taste, there must be co-operation of the upper classes, society of gentlemen-commoners, and an income of four hundred a year;-arises the son of a Chemnitz weaver, and with the very wind of his stroke sweeps them from the scene. Let no man doubt the omnipotence of Nature, doubt the majesty of man's soul; let no lonely unfriended son of genius despair! Let him not despair; if he have the will, the right will, then the power also has not been denied him.. It is but the artichoke that will not grow except in gardens; the acorn is cast carelessly abroad into the wilderness, yet it rises to be an oak; on the wild soil it nourishes itself, it defies the lempest, and lives for a thousand years.

GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS.*

[FOREIGN REVIEW, 1829.]

| cal produce she yields considerably to France; and is, out of sight, inferior to Germany. Nay, do not we English hear daily, for the last twenty years, that the Drama is dead, or in a state of suspended animation; and are not medical men sitting on the case, and propound

quarterly, to no manner of purpose?—whilst in Germany the Drama is not only, to all appearance, alive, but in the very flush and heyday of superabundant strength; indeed, as it were, still only sowing its first wild oats! For if the British Playwrights seem verging to ruin, and our Knowleses, Maturins, Shiels, and Shees stand few and comparatively forlorn, like firs on an Irish bog, the playwrights of Germany are a strong, triumphant body, so numerous that it has been calculated, in case of war, a regiment of foot might be raised, in which, from the colonel down to the drummer, every officer and private sentinel might show his drama or dramas.

In this stage of society, the playwright is as essential and acknowledged a character as the millwright, or cartwright, or any other wright whatever; neither can we see why, in general estimation, he should rank lower than these his brother artisans, except perhaps, for this one reason: that the former, working in timbering their remedial appliances, weekly, monthly, and iron, for the wants of the body, produce a completely suitable machine, while the latter, working in thought and feeling, for the wants of the soul, produces a machine which is incompletely suitable. In other respects, we confess, we cannot perceive that the balance lies against him: for no candid man, as it seems to us, will doubt but the talent, which constructed a Virginius or a Bertram, might have sufficed, had it been properly directed, to make not only wheelbarrows and wagons, but even mills of considerable complicacy. However, if the public is niggardly to the playwright in one point, it must be proportionably liberal in another; according to Adam Smith's observation, that trades which are reckoned less reputable have higher, money-wages. Thus, one thing compensating the other, the playwright may still realize an existence; as, in fact, we find that he does: for playwrights were, are, and probably will always be; unless, indeed, in process of years, the whole dramatic concern be finally abandoned by mankind; or, as in the case of our Punch and Mathews, every player becoming his own playwright, this trade may merge in the other and older

one.

The British nation has its own playwrights, several of them cunning men in their craft: yet here, it would seem, this sort of carpentry does not flourish; at least, not with that preeminent vigour which distinguishes most other branches of our national industry. In hardware and cotton goods, in all sorts of chemical, mechanical, or other material processes, England outstrips the world: nay, in many departments of literary manufacture also, as, for instance, in the fabrication of novels, she may safely boast herself peerless: but in this mat.er of the Drama, to whatever cause it be owing, „ne can claim no such superiority. In theatri

* Die Ahnfrau. (The Ancestress.) A Tragedy, in five Acts. By F. Grillparzer. Fourth Edition. Vienna, 1823. König Ottokars Glück und Ende. (King Ottocar's Fortune and End.) A Tragedy, in five Acts. By F. Grillparzer. Vienna, 1825.

Sappho. A Tragedy, in five Acts. By F. Grillparzer. Third Edition. Vienna, 1822. 2. Faust. A Tragedy, in five Acts. By August Klingemann. Leipzig and Altenburg, 1815.

Ahasuer. A Tragedy, in five Acts. By August Klinge

mann. Brunswick, 1827.

3 Müllner's Dramatische Werke. Erste rechtmässige, vollständige, und vom Verfasser verbesserte Gesammt-Ausgabe. (Müllner's Dramatic Works. First legal collective Edition, complete and revised by the Author.) 7 vols. Brunswick, 1828.

To investigate the origin of so marked a superiority would lead us beyond our purpose. Doubtless the proximate cause must lie in a superior demand for the article of dramas; which superior demand again may arise either from the climate of Germany, as Montesquieu might believe; or perhaps more naturally and immediately from the political condition of that country; for man is not only a working but a talking animal, and where no Catholic Questions, and Parliamentary Reforms, and Select Vestries are given him to discuss in his leisure hours, he is glad to fall upon plays or players, or whatever comes to hand, whereby to fence himself a little against the inroads of Ennui. Of the fact, at least, that such a superior demand for dramas exists in Germany, we have only to open a newspaper to find proof. Is not every Literaturblatt and Kunstblatt stuffed to bursting, with theatricals? Nay, has not the "able Editor" established correspondents in every capital city of the civilized world, who report to him on this one matter and on no other? For, be our curiosity what it may, let us have profession of "intelligence from Munich," "intelligence from Vienna," intelligence from Berlin," is it intelligence of any thing but of greenroom controversies and negotiations, of tragedies and operas and farces acted and to be acted? Not of men, and their doings, by hearth and hall, in the firm earth; but of mere effigies and shells of men, and their doings in the world of pasteboard, do these unhappy correspondents write. happy we call them; for, with all our tolerance of playwrights, we cannot but think that there are limits, and very strait ones, within which their activity should be restricted. Here, in England, our "theatrical reports" are

Un

nuisance enough; and many persons who love | Constitutional History of a Rookery? Let the their life, and therefore "take care of their courteous reader take heart, then; for he is in time, which is the stuff life is made of," regu- hands that will not, nay, what is more, that larly lose several columns of their weekly cannot, do him much harm. One brief, shy newspaper in that way: but our case is pure glance into this huge bivouac of Playwrights, luxury, compared with that of the Germans, all sawing and planing with such tumult; and who, instead of a measurable and sufferable we leave it, probably for many years. spicing of theatric matter, are obliged, metaphorically speaking, to breakfast and dine on it, have in fact nothing else to live on but that highly unnutritive victual. We ourselves are occasionally readers of German_newspapers, and have often, in the spirit of Christian humanity, meditated presenting to the whole body of German editors a project, which, however, must certainly have ere now occurred to themselves, and for some reason been found inapplicable; it was, to address these corre spondents of theirs, all and sundry, in plain language, and put the question: whether, on studiously surveying the Universe from their several stations, there was nothing in the Heavens above, on the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth, nothing visible but this one business, or rather shadow of business, that had an interest for the minds of men? If the correspondents still answered that nothing was visible, then of course they must be left to continue in this strange state: prayers, at the same time, being put up for them in all churches.

The German Parnassus, as one of its own denizens remarks, has a rather broad summit: yet only two Dramatists are reckoned, within the last half century, to have mounted thither; -Schiller and Goethe; if we are not, on the strength of his Minna vơn Barnhelm and Emilie Galeotti, to account Lessing of the number. On the slope of the Mountain may be found a few stragglers of the same brotherhood; among these, Tieck and Maler Müller, firmly enough stationed at considerable elevations; while, far [below, appear various honest persons climbing vehemently, but against precipices of loose sand, to whom we wish all speed. But the reader will understand that the bivouac we speak of, and are about to enter, lies not on the declivity of the Hill at all; but on the level ground close to the foot of it; the essence of a Playwright being that he works not in Poetry, but in Prose, which more or less cunningly resembles it. And here, pausing for a moment, the reader observes that he is in a civilized country; for there, on the very boundary line of Parnassus, rises a gallows with the figure of a man hung in chains! It is the figure of August von Kotzebue, and has swung there for many years, as a warning to all too audacious Playwrights, who nevertheless, as we see, pay little heed to it. Ill-fated Kotzebue, once the darling of theatrical Europe! This was the prince of all Playwrights, and could manufacture Plays with a speed and felicity surpassing even Edinburgh novels. For his muse, like other doves, hatched twins in the month; and the world gazed on them with an admiration too deep for mere words. What is all past or present popularity to this? Were not these Plays translated into almost every language of articulate-speaking men; acted, at least, we may literally say, in every theatre from Kamtschatka to Cadiz? Nay, did they not melt the most obdurate hearts in all countries; and, like the music of Orpheus, draw tears down iron cheeks? We ourselves have

However, leaving every able Editor to fight his own battle, we address ourselves to the task in hand: meaning here to inquire a very little into the actual state of the dramatic trade in Germany, and exhibit some detached features of it to the consideration of our readers. For, seriously speaking, low as this province may be, it is a real, active, and ever-enduring province of the literary republic; nor can the pursuit of many men, even though it be a profitless and foolish pursuit, ever be without claim to some attention from us, either in the way of furtherance or of censure and correction. Our avowed object is to promote the sound study of foreign literature; which study, like all other earthly undertakings, has its negative as well as its positive side. We have already, as occasion served, borne testimony to the merits of various German poets, and must now say a word on certain German poetasters; hoping that it may be chiefly a re-known the flintiest men, who professed to have gard to the former which has made us take wept over them, for the first time in their lives. even this slight notice of the latter: for the bad So was it twenty years ago; how stands it tois in itself of no value, and only worth de- day? Kotzebue, lifted up on the hollow balscribing lest it be mistaken for the good. At loon of popular applause, thought wings had the same time, let no reader tremble, as if we been given him that he might ascend to the meant to overwhelm him, on this occasion, Immortals: gay he rose, soaring, sailing, as with a whole mountain of dramatic lumber, with supreme dominion; but in the rarer azure poured forth in torrents, like shot-rubbish, deep, his windbag burst asunder, or the arrows from the play-house-garrets, where it is mould- of keen archers pierced it; and so at last we ering and evaporating into nothing, silently find him a compound-pendulum, vibrating in and without harm to any one. Far be this the character of scarecrow, to guard from forfrom us! Nay, our own knowledge of this bidden fruit! O ye Playwrights, and literary subject is in the highest degree limited; and, quacks of every feather, weep over Kotzebue, indeed, to exhaust it, or attempt discussing it and over yourselves! Know that the loudest with scientific precision, would be an impos-roar of the million is not fame; that the windsible enterprise. What man is there that could assort the whole furniture of Milton's Limbo of Vanity; or where is the Hallam that would think it worth his while to write us the

bag, are ye mad enough to mount it, will burs', or be shot through with arrows, and your bones too shall act as scarecrows.

But, quitting this idle allegorical vein, let us