Homer to Sophocles and Shakespeare, and these to every one else. He demanded Poetry for men, not for women and boys. Very characteristic it is that in those days of enthusiasm for Ossian, who was placed beside, when not above, Homer, Lessing never once mentions him.

We are touching the weak place in thus touching on the strong; we approach the defect in indicating the great quality of his mind. Lessing's intellect was clear, strong, healthy, but it was not impassioned, it was not winged with powers which could carry it to the height of genius. He knew it well; he confessed himself no poet; confessed he was a Thinker in whom was wanting that enthusiasm which is the flower of genius. It is as a critic therefore that he lives, and it is owing to the clearness of his intellect rather than the force of his genius, that his plays are of 'eternal substance.'

The enthusiasm, sentimentalism, and rhetoric which Lessing wanted are to be found in Herder (born 1744), who is the next great critical name in German literature. Herder is the lineal descendant of Lessing, imitating his revolutionary efforts, helping to disseminate his ideas, and succeeding in carrying them further by reason of the very qualities which distinguished him from Lessing. The works published about this period, namely, Fragmente zur Deutschen Literatur, 1767; the Kritische Wälder, 1769; and Von Deutscher Art und Kunst, 1773, show Lessing's influence as the groundwork, with Hamann's and his own rhetorical, and theologico-poetical tendencies, as variations. If Lessing is now best known by his Laokoon and Nathan, Herder is almost exclusively known by his Ideas towards a History of Mankind: the contrast between these works is all the greater, because of the evident parentage. Herder had something of the Hebrew Prophet in him, but the Hebrew Prophet fallen upon Deistical times, with

Spinoza and Lessing for teachers. To complete the contrast between Lessing and Herder, it may be added that both were Critics rather than Poets; but the clear rational poetry of Lessing survives, while the rhetoric of Herder is altogether forgotten. Both greatly influenced their nation, Herder perhaps more than Lessing at the time; but as the waves of time roll on they leave Herder more and more behind, scarcely washing anything away of the great Lessing.

Herder's merit, according to Gervinus, is that he gave an impulse to poetic activity, less through his own example than through his union of Imagination and Fancy with æsthetical criticism, thus throwing a bridge over from criticism, to poetry. From youth upwards there was something in him solitary, visionary and sensitive; he was never seen to leap and play like other boys, but wandered lonely with his thoughts. A vast ambition, resting on a most predominating vanity, made him daring in Literature, bitter, and to many unendurable, in intercourse. His sensitive nerves forbidding the study of Medicine, he chose that of Theology. He became one of Germany's most renowned preachers; but although his loved wife weaned him from the early freethinking,' he never to the last became what could be called orthodox; he was, so to speak, a rhetorical Spinoza' in orders.'

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Although Herder was not more a poet than Lessing, he had more of the poetical element in his nature; but it was confused, and instead of ripening into fruit, ran to seed in rhetoric. This fault, which was also a quality, brought him nearer to his age and nation. It gave a charm to his teaching. It roused enthusiasm. It aided his efforts towards the dissemination of Ossian, Hebrew Poetry, and old German Literature, especially old ballads.

It was in this agitation and revolution that Goethe made his appearance, to sum up all the tendencies of his age, and to express them, not in critical disquisitions, but in works of genius. His success was instantaneous, for he performed what others prescribed. He was not an imitator, but he walked on the paths which had been prepared. As he wisely says: In der wahren Kunst giebt es keine Vorschule, wohl aber Vorbereitungen.* What preparations had been made for him, he used, but he used them as an original genius uses the materials at hand.

Goethe was by nature a Realist, and his relation therefore to the Idealism of his nation must at all times have been equivocal. As a child of the age he could not escape its tendencies, but as a man organically opposed to those tendencies, he could only write as a Greek born in Germany during the later half of the eighteenth century, and treat Idealism in a thoroughly realistic style: and this he did. Had he been pure Greek he would not so have moved his nation; had he not expressed the tendencies of his age he must have been dumb. In Götz and Werther the clear objective spirit is as visible as in Iphigenia or Hermann und Dorothea. The true poetic Idealist is Schiller. But at the time now spoken of, Schiller was a boy of fifteen. Coincident with his rise into eminence, is the open rupture of Goethe with the Sturm und Drang school. When Schiller comes to represent Idealism, Goethe has proclaimed himself the representative of Realism: and the two great Leaders have their separate camps. The nation felt it, and felt, as Gervinus remarks, that these two alone were the independent representatives of German poetry, for while

*In true Art there is no school where Art can be learned, but simply Preparations.' Here, as so often occurs, I am forced to content myself with a poor paraphrase.

Klopstock was called our Milton, Wieland our Voltaire, and Jean Paul our Sterne, and others in the same way, Goethe and Schiller were never other than themselves.'

In Goethe we see united the two great tendencies of Realism and Idealism, and the two essential conditions of National Art- the treatment of national material, and the perfect art of that treatment.

Ecl.63.

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RETURNING from this digression, we find Goethe now at the perilous juncture in an author's career, when, having just achieved a splendid success, he is in danger either of again snatching at laurels in presumptuous haste, or of suffering himself to repose upon the laurels he has won, talking of greatness, instead of learning to be great. Both perils he avoided. He neither traded on his renown, nor conceived that his education was complete. Wisely refraining from completing fresh important works, he kept up the practice of his art by trifles, and the education of his genius by serious studies.

Among these trifles are Clavigo, the Jahrmarktsfest zu Plundersweilern, and the Prolog zu Bahrdt's Neuesten Offenbarungen. For the composition of Clavigo we must retrace our steps a little, and once more see him in the Frankfurt circle during the summer of 1774, that is, before the publication of Werther, which was delayed till October. In his sister's pleasant circle we have already noticed Anna Sybilla Münch, who was fascinating enough to fix his attentions. They were accustomed to meet once a a week, in picnics and pleasure parties; at one of these it was agreed to institute a marriage lottery. He thus speaks of it: Every week lots were drawn to determine the couples who should be symbolically wedded; for it

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