fold pang, beyond the puten of human feeling, | sidered in his private relations, such a man pierced through my soul! How did my limbs might well reckon himself fortunate. 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 anxiebes, 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!" 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 ne gotiator, 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 manag. ing the Library, the Royal Society, the Univer sity generally, and his incessant, and often rather complex correspondence with Münchhausen, Brandes, or other ministers, who presided over this department. Without detract ing 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 Ger many, 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 andivided heart to my duty; thou thyself milest approval on me!" Nay, it was not many months before a new marriage came on the anvil, in which matter, truly, Heyne condated 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 lile 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, cha ment of the University concerns, was there more splendid scale, continued, to the last, to also with a daughter; upon her, the projectors be of the same happy sort. By degrees, he east their eye. Heyne, being consulted, seems have comported himself like clay in the banis of the potter; father and fair one, in ise manner, were of a compliant humour, and thus was the business achieved; and on the 9th of April, 1777, Heyne could take home bride, won with less difficulty than most men have in choosing a pair of boots. Nevertheess, he proved an excellent wife to him; kept his house in the cheerfullest order; maaged her step-children, and her own, like a true mother; and loved, and faithfully assisted her husband in whatever he undertook. Con 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, ir tie rude times of he French war, by his skilful application, he joked with the girl when she asked him how ucceeded in procuring from Napoleon, not he had been over-night. She left him, to make only a protection for the University, but im- ready his coffee, as was her wont; and returnmunity from hostile invasion for the whole ing with it in a short quarter of an hour, she district it stands in. Nay, so happily were found him sunk down before his washing-stand, matters managed, or so happily did they turn close by his work-table. His hands were wet; of their own accord, that Göttingen rather at the moment when he had been washing gained than suffered by the war: Under Jerome them, had death taken him into his arms. One of Westphalia, not only were all benefices | breath more, and he ceased to live: when the punctually paid, but improvements even were hastening doctor opened a vein, no blood would effected; among other things, a new and very flow." nandsome 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. In another respect, we must also reckon him fortunate; that he lived till he had completed all his undertakings; and then departed peacefully, 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. Heyne was interred with all public solemni ties: 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 au thority, 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 be yond our province, and at any rate superfu ous here. By the general consent of the learn ed in all countries, he seems to be acknow. ledged as the first among recent scholars; his immense reading, his lynx-eyed skill in exposition and emendation are no longer here con 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 clas sics; to read in the writings of the ancients, not the language alone, or even their detached opinions and records, but their spirit and cha racter, 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 care fully 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 car ried the torch of philosophy towards, if not into, the mysteries of old time. What Winke mann, 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 ras resting in his chair, exhausted by the fague 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 fi tinction, line of study, and rugged enthusiasm of elder daughter was with him.) he talked cheer-racter, were at one time, while both as yet were unde fully, and at his usual time retired to rest. In the horizon, brought into partial contact. the night, the servant girl, that slept under his quaintance of another sort." says Beeren, "the foref Heyne was to make in the Brühl Library; with a per apartment, heard him walking up and down; son whose importance he could not then anticipate a common practice with him when he could One frequent visitor of this establishment was a rea not sleep. However, he had again gone to almost wholly unknown man, whose visits could not he specially desirable for the librarians, such endless lab bed. Soon after five, he arose, as usual; he did he cost them. He seemed insatiable in reading, a praise, surely; vet, as we must think, one not unfounded, and which, indeed, in all parts of Europe, is becoming more and more confirmed. So much, in the province to which he devoted his activity, is Heyne allowed to have accomplished. Nevertheless, we must not as sert that, in point of understanding and spiritual endowment, he can be called a complete, or even, in strict speech, a great man. Wonderful perspicuity. unwearied diligence, are not denied him; but to philosophic order, to classical adjustment, clearness, polish, whether in Ford or thought, he seldom attains; nay, many times, it must be avowed, he involves himself in tortures, long-winded verbosities, and stands before us little better than one of that old school 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 On the whole, the Germans have some reawould not walk abroad without it; nay person to be proud of Heyne; who shall deny haps it had rusted together, and could not be that they have here once more produced a unclasped! A sad fate for a thinker! Yet one scholar of the right old stock; a man to be which threatens many commentators, and over-ranked, for honesty of study and of life, with takes many. perhaps, is not very singular among commen tators. For the rest, Heeren assures us, that in prac. tice Heyne was truly a good man; altogether just; diligent in his own honest business, and ever ready to forward that of others; compassionate; though quick-tempered, placable; friendly, and satisfied with simple pleasures. He delighted in roses, and always kept a bouquet of them in water on his desk. His house was embowered among roses; and in his old days he used to wander through the bushes with a pair of scissors. Farther, says Heeren, in spite of his short sight, he was fond of the fields and skies, and could lie for hours reading on the grass. A kindly old man! With 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. As a man encrusted and encased, he exhibits 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, alled for so many books, that his reception there grew nter of the coolest. It was Johann Winkelmann. Meating bis journey for Italy, he was then laying in preration for it. Thus did these two men become, if not denttal, yet acquainted; who at that time, both still in darkness and poverty, could little suppose, that in a fyears, they were to be the teachers of cultivated Europe, and the ornaments of their nation." the Scaligers, the Bentleys, and old illustrious Let no man 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 Tertram, 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 Fortune and End.) A Tragedy, in five Acts. By F. Sappho A Tragedy, in five Acts. By F. Grillparzer. 2. Faust. A Tragedy, in five Acts. mann. Leipzig and Altenburg, 1815. Ahasuer. A Tragedy, in five Acts. mann. Brunswick, 1827. By August Klinge By August Klinge3 Müllner's Dramatische Werke. Erste rechtmässige, vollständige, und vom Verfasser verbesserte Gesammt-AusFabe. (Müllner's Dramatic Works. First legal collecfive Edition, complete and revised by the Author) 1 vols. Brunswick. 1828. To investigate the origin of so marked a su periority 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 supe rior demand for dramas exists in Germany, we have only to open a newspaper to find proof. Is not every Literaturblatt and Kunstblatt studed to bursting, with theatricals? Nay, has not the "able Editor" established correspondent in every capital city of the civilized world, who report to him on this one matter and ot no other? For, be our curiosity what it may. let us have profession of "intelligence from Munich," "intelligence from Vienna," intell gence from Berlin," is it intelligence of any thing but of greenroom controversies and nego tiations, of tragedies and operas and farces acted and to be acted? Not of men, and thir 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, o these unhappy correspondents write. happy we call them; for, with all our toler ance of playwrights, we cannot but think th there are limits, and very strait ones, with which their activity should be restricted Here, in England, our "theatrical reports" ar N し naisance 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, meta- The German Parnassus, as one of its own phorically speaking, to breakfast and dine on denizens remarks, has a rather broad summit: I have in fact nothing else to live on but that yet only two Dramatists are reckoned, within Lighly unnutritive victual. We ourselves are the last half century, to have mounted thither, occasionally readers of German newspapers, |—Schiller and Goethe; if we are not, on the and have often, in the spirit of Christian hu- strength of his Minna von Barnhelm and Emilie manity, meditated presenting to the whole body | Galcotti, to account Lessing of the number. of German editors a project, which, however, mast certainly have ere now occurred to themselves, and for some reason been found applicable; it was, to address these correondents of theirs, all and sundry, in plain guage, and put the question: whether, on studiously surveying the Universe from their several stations, there was nothing in the Heavers 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 isible, then of course they must be left to ntinue in this strange state: prayers, at the Khe time, being put up for them in all Corches. 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 However, leaving every able Editor to fight of a man hung in chains! It is the figure of hown battle, we address ourselves to the August von Kotzebue, and has swung there task in hand: meaning here to inquire a very for many years, as a warning to all too audae into the actual state of the dramatic trade cious Playwrights, who nevertheless, as we Germany, and exhibit some detached fea- see, pay little heed to it. Ill-fated Kotzebue, res of it to the consideration of our readers. once the darling of theatrical Europe! This Por, seriously speaking, low as this province was the prince of all Playwrights, and could may be, it is a real, active, and ever-enduring manufacture Plays with a speed and felicity province of the literary republic; nor can the surpassing even Edinburgh novels. For his porsuit of many men, even though it be a pro- muse, like other doves, hatched twins in the less and foolish pursuit, ever be without month; and the world gazed on them with an Cam to some attention from us, either in the admiration too deep for mere words. What is y of furtherance or of censure and correc-all past or present popularity to this? Were . Our avowed object is to promote the not these Plays translated into almost every and study of foreign literature; which study, language of articulate-speaking men; acted, at e all other earthly undertakings, has its ne- least, we may literally say, in every theatre ve as well as its positive side. We have from Kamtschatka to Cadiz? Nay, did they dy, as occasion served, borne testimony not melt the most obdurate hearts in all counthe merits of various German poets, and tries; and, like the music of Orpheus, draw how say a word on certain German tears down iron cheeks? We ourselves have asters; hoping that it may be chiefly a re-known the flintiest men, who professed to have and to the former which has made us take wept over them, for the first time in their lives. Seven this slight notice of the latter: for the bad So was it twenty years ago; how stands it toin itself of no value, and only worth de- day? Kotzebue, lifted up on the hollow balibing lest it be mistaken for the good. At loon of popular applause, thought wings had the rame time, let no reader tremble, as if we been given him that he might ascend to the ant to overwhelm him, on this occasion, Immortals: gay he rose, soaring, sailing, as a whole mountain of dramatic lumber, with supreme dominion; but in the rarer azure red forth in torrents, like shot-rubbish, deep, his windbag burst asunder, or the arrows the play-house-garrets, where it is mould- of keen archers pierced it; and so at last we ng and evaporating into nothing, silently find him a compound-pendulum, vibrating in ad without harm to any one. Far be this the character of scarecrow, to guard from for. mas! Nay, our own knowledge of this bidden fruit! O ye Playwrights, and literary ect is in the highest degree limited; and, quacks of every feather, weep over Kotzebue. red, to exhaust it, or attempt discussing it and over yourselves Know that the loudest th scientific precision, would be an impos-roar of the million is not fame; that the wind Nile enterprise. What man is there that bag, are ye mad enough to mount it, will burst, d assort the whole furniture of Milton's or be shot through with arrows, and your bones of Vanity; or where is the Hallam that too shall act as scarecrows. ould think it worth his while to write us the But, quitting this idle allegorical vein, let us |