and costly furniture? To the great body of | ampton allowed him equal patronage with the mankind this were heavy news; for, of the thousand, scarcely one is rich, or connected with the rich; nine hundred and ninety-nine have always been poor, and must always be so. We take the liberty of questioning the whole postulate. We think that, for acquiring true poetic taste, riches, or association with the rich, are distinctly among the minor requisites; that, in fact, they have little or no concern with the matter. This we shall now endeavour to make probable.

ciple, as applicable either to himself or ano-tered Baron, who still hovers in our minds, ther? Is it not rather true, as D'Alembert has never did exist in such perfection, and is now said, that for every man of letters, who de- as extinct as our own Squire Western. His serves that name, the motto and the watchword descendant is a man of other culture, other will be FREEDOM, TRUTH, and even this same aims, and other habits. We question whether POVERTY and that if he fear the last, the two there is an aristocracy in Europe, which, taken first can never be made sure to him? as a whole, both in a public and private capacity, more honours art and literature, and does more both in public and private to encourage them. Excluded from society! What, we would ask, was Wieland's, Schiller's, Herder's, Johannes Müller's society? Has not Goethe, by birth a Frankfort burgher,been, since his twentysixth year, the companion, not of nobles but of princes, and for half his life a minister of state? And is not this man, unrivalled in so many far deeper qualities, known also and felt to be unrivalled in nobleness of breeding and bearing; fit not to learn of princes, in this respect, but by the example of his daily life to teach them?

the least knowing, of any of their rank I ever went among!" Nevertheless, let us arrogate to ourselves no exclusive praise in this particular. Other nations can appreciate the arts, and cherish their cultivators, as well as we.

We have stated these things, to bring the question somewhat nearer its real basis; not for the sake of the Germans, who nowise need the admission of them. The German authors are not poor; neither are they excluded from association with the wealthy and well-born. On the contrary, we scruple not to say, that, in both these respects, they are considerably better situated than our own. Their booksellers, it is true, cannot pay as ours do; yet, there as here, a man lives by his writings; and, to compare Jorden with Johnson and D'Isracli, somewhat better there than here. No case like our own noble Otway's has met us in their biographies; We hear much of the munificent spirit disBoyces and Chattertons are much rarer in Ger- played among the better classes in England; man, than in English history. But farther, and their high estimation of the arts, and generous what is far more important: From the num-patronage of the artist. We rejoice to hear it; ber of universities, libraries, collections of art, we hope it is true, and will become truer and museums, and other literary or scientific in-truer. We hope that a great change has taken stitutions of a public or private nature, we place among these classes, since the time when question whether the chance, which a merito- Bishop Burnet could write of them,-"They rious man of letters has before him, of obtaining are for the most part the worst instructed, and some permanent appointment, some independent civic existence, is not a hundred to one in favour of the German, compared with the Englishman. This is a weighty item, and indeed the weightiest of all; for it will be granted, that, for the votary of literature, the rela-Nay, while learning from us in many other tion of entire dependence on the merchants of literature, is, at best, and however liberal the terms, a highly questionable one. It tempts him daily and hourly to sink from an artist into a manufacturer; nay, so precarious, fluctuating, and every way unsatisfactory must his civic and economic concerns become, that too many of his class cannot even attain the praise of common honesty as manufacturers. There is, no doubt, a spirit of martyrdom, as we have asserted, which can sustain this too: but few indeed have the spirit of martyrs; and that state of matters is the safest which requires it least. The German authors, moreover, to their credit be it spoken, seem to set less store by wealth than many of ours. There have been prudent, quiet men among them, who actually appeared not to want more wealth,-whom wealth could not tempt, either to this hand or that, from their pre-appointed aims. Neither must we think so hardly of the German nobility as to believe them insensible to genius, or of opinion that a patent from the Lion King is so superior to "a patent direct from Almighty This hypothesis, therefore, it would seem, is God." A fair proportion of the German au- not supported by facts, and so returns to its thors are themselves men of rank: we mention original elements. The causes it alleges are only, as of our own time, and notable in other impossible: but, what is still more fatal, the respects, the two Stolbergs and Novalis. Let effect it proposes to account for has, in reality, us not be unjust to this class of persor s. It is no existence. We venture to deny that the a poor error to figure them as wrapt up in Germans are defective in taste; even as a ceremonial stateliness, avoiding the most gift-nation, as a public, taking one thing with anoed man of a lower station; and, for their own ther, we imagine they may stand comparison supercilious triviality, themselves avoided by with any of their neighbours; as writers, as all truly gifted men. On the whole, we should critics, they may decidedly court it. True, there change our notion of the German nobleman: is a mass of dulness, awkwardness, and falsc that ancient, thirsty, thickheaded, sixteen-quar-susceptibility in the lower regions of their lite

matters, we suspect the Germans might even teach us somewhat in regard to this. At all events, the pity, which certain of our authors express for the civil condition of their brethren in that country, is, from such a quarter, a superfluous feeling. Nowhere, let us rest assured, is genius more devoutly honoured than there, by all ranks of men, from peasants and burghers up to legislators and kings. It was but last year that the Diet of the Empire passed an act in favour of one individual poet: the final edition of Goethe's works was guarantied to be protected against commercial injury in every state of Germany; and special assurances to that effect were sent him, in the kindest terms, from all the Authorities there assembled, some of them the highest in his country or in Europe. Nay, even while we write, are not the newspapers recording a visit from the Sovereign of Bavaria in person, to the same venerable man; a mere ceremony, perhaps, but one which almost recalls to us the era of the antique Sages and the Grecian Kings?

that "it is not the finding of truth, but the honest search for it, that profits." We confess, we should be entirely at a loss for the literary creed of that man who reckoned Lessing other than a thoroughly cultivated writer; nay entitled to rank, in this particular, with the most distinguished writers of any existing nation. As a poet, as a critic, philosopher, or controversialist, his style will be found precisely such as we of England are accustomed to admire most; brief, nervous, vivid; yet quiet, without glitter or antithesis; idiomatic, pure without purism, transparent, yet full of character and reflex hues of meaning. "Every sentence," says Horn, and justly, "is like a phalanx;" not a word wrong placed, not a word that could be spared; and it forms itself so calmy and lightly, and stands in its completeness, so gay, yet so impregnable! As a poet he contemptuously denied himself all merit; but his readers have not taken him at his word: here, too, a similar felicity of style attends him; his plays, his Minna von Barnhelm, his Emilie Galotti, his Nathan der Weise, have a genuine and graceful poetic life; yet no works known to us in any language are purer from exaggeration, or any appearance of falsehood. They are pictures, we might say painted not in colours, but in crayons; yet a strange attraction lies in them; for the figures are grouped into the finest attitudes, and true and spirit-speaking in every line. It is w th his style chiefly that we have to do here; yet we must add, that the matter of his works is not less meritorious. His Criticism and philosophic or religious Skepticism were of a higher mood than had yet been heard in Europe, still more in Germany: his Dramaturgie first exploded the pretensions of the French theatre, and, with irresistible conviction, made Shakspeare known to his countrymen; preparing the way for a brighter era in their literature, the chief men of which still thankfully look back to Lessing as their patriarch. His Laocoon, with its deep glances into the philosophy of Art, his Dialogues of Free-masons, a work of far higher import than its title indicates, may yet teach many things to most of us, which we know not, and ought to know.

rature: but is not bad taste endemical in such | but the battle; as indeed himself admits to us, regions of every literature under the sun? Pure Stupidity, indeed, is of a quiet nature, and content to be merely stupid. But seldom do we find it pure; seldom unadulterated with some tincture of ambition, which drives it into new and strange metamorphoses. Here it has assumed a contemptuous trenchant air, intended to represent superior tact, and a sort of allwisdom; there a truculent atrabilious scowl, which is to stand for passionate strength: now we have an outpouring of tumid fervour; now a fruitless, asthmatic hunting after wit and humour. Grave or gay, enthusiastic or derisive, admiring or despising, the dull man would be something which he is not and cannot be. Shall we confess, that, of these too common extremes, we reckon the German error considerably the more harmless, and, in our day, by far the more curable? Of unwise admiration much may be hoped, for much good is really in it: but unwise contempt is itself a negation; nothing comes of it, for it is nothing. To judge of a national taste, however, we must raise our view from its transitory modes to its perennial models; from the mass of vulgar writers, who blaze out and are extinguished with the popular delusion which they flatter, to those few who are admitted to shine with a pure and lasting lustre; to whom, by common consent, the eyes of the people are turned, as to its lodestar and celestial luminaries. Among German writers of this stamp, we would ask any candid reader of them, let him be of what country or what creed he might, whether bad taste struck him as a prevailing characteristic. Was Wieland's taste uncultivated? Taste, we should say, and taste of the very species which a disciple of the Negative School would call the highest, formed the great object of his life; the perfection he unweariedly endeavoured after, and, more than any other perfection, has attained. The most fastidious Frenchman might read him, with admiration of his merely French qualities. And is not Klopstock, with his clear enthusiasm, his azure purity, and heavenly, if still somewhat cold and lunar light, a man of taste? His Messias reminds us oftener of no other poets than of Virgil and Racine. But it is to Lessing that an Englishman would turn with the readiest affection. We cannot but wonder that more of this man is not known among us; or that the knowledge of him has not done more to remove such misconceptions. Among all the writers of the eighteenth century, we will not except even Diderot and David Hume, there is not one of a more compact and rigid intellectual structure; who more distinctly knows what he is aiming at, or with more gracefulness, vigour, and precision sets it forth to his readers. He thinks with the clearness and piercing sharpness of the most expert logician: but a genial fire pervades him, a wit, a heartiness, a general richness and fineness of nature, to which most logicians are strangers. He is a skeptic in many things, but the noblest of skeptics; a mild, manly, half-careless enthusiasm struggles through his indignant unbelief: he stands efore us like a toilworn, but unwearied and neroic champion, earning not the conquest

With Lessing and Klopstock might be joined, in this respect, nearly, every one, we do not say of their distinguished, but even of their tolerated contemporaries. The two Jacobis, known more or less in all countries, are little known here, if they are accused of wanting literary taste These are men, whether as thinkers or poets, to be regarded and admired for their mild and lofty wisdom, the devoutness, the benignity and calm grandeur of their philosophical views. In such, it were strange if among so many high merits, this lower one of a just and elegant style, which is indeed their natural and even necessary product, had been wanting. We recommend the elder Jacobi no less for his clearness than for his depth; of the younger, it may be enough in this point of view to say, that the chief praisers of his earlier poetry were the French. Neither are Hamann and Mendelsohn, who could meditate deep thoughts, defective in the power of uttering

them with propriety. The Phadon of the latter, in its chaste precision and simplicity of style, may almost remind us of Xenophon: Socrates, to our mind, has spoken in no modern language so like Socrates, as here, by the lips of this wise and cultivated Jew.*

that their views of it are not only dim and perplexed, but altogether imaginary and delusive. It is proposed to School the Germans in the Alphabet of taste; and the Germans are already busied with their Accidence! Far from being behind other nations in the practice or Among the poets and more popular writers science of Criticism, it is a fact, for which we of the time, the case is the same: Utz, Gellert, fearlessly refer to all competent judges, that Cramer, Ramler, Kleist, Hagedorn, Rabener, they are distinctly, and even considerably, in Gleim, and a multitude of lesser men, whatever advance. We state what is already known to excellences they might want, certainly are not a great part of Europe to be true. Criticism chargeable with bad taste. Nay, perhaps of has assumed a new form in Germany; it proall writers they are the least chargeable with ceeds on other principles, and proposes to itself it: a certain clear, light, unaffected elegance, a higher aim. The grand question is not now a of a higher nature than French elegance, question concerning the qualities of diction, the it might be, yet to the exclusion of all very coherence of metaphors, the fitness of sentideep or genial qualities, was the excellence ments, the general logical truth, in a work of they strove after, and, for the most part, in a art, as it was some half century ago among fair measure attained. They resemble Eng- most critics. Neither is it a question mainly of lish writers of the same, or perhaps an earlier a psychological sort, to be answered by discoverperiod, more than any other foreigners: aparting and delineating the peculiar nature of the from Pope, whose influence is visible enough, poet from his poetry, as is usual with the best Beattie, Logan, Wilkie, Glover, unknown per- of our own critics at present; but it is, not inhaps to any of them, might otherwise have al- deed exclusively, but inclusively of those two most seemed their models. Goldsmith also other questions, properly and ultimately a would rank among them; perhaps, in regard to question on the essence and peculiar life of true poetic genius, at their head, for none of the poetry itself. The first of these questions, them has left us a Vicar of Wakefield; though, as we see it answered, for instance, in the in regard to judgment, knowledge, general ta- criticisms of Johnson and Kames, relates, lent, his place would scarcely be so high. strictly speaking, to the garment of poetry; the second, indeed, to its body and material existence, a much higher point; but only the last to its soul and spiritual existence, by which alone can the body, in its movements and phases, be informed with significance and rational life. The problem is not now to determine by what mechanism Addison composed sentences, and struck out similitudes, but by what far finer and more mysterious mechanism Shakspeare organized his dramas, and gave life and individuality to his Ariel and his Hamlet, Wherein lies that life; how have they attained that shape and individuality? Whence comes that empyrean fire, which irradiates their whole being, and pierces, at least in starry gleams, like a liviner thing, into all hearts? Are these dramas of his not verisimilar only, but true; nay, truer than reality itself, since the essence of unmixed reality is bodied forth in them under more expressive symbols? What is this unity of theirs ; and can our deeper inspection discern it to be indivisible, and existing by necessity, because each work springs, as it were, from the general elements of all Thought, and grows up therefrom, into form and expansion, by its own growth? Not only who was the poet, and how did he compose; but what and how was the poem, and why was it a poem and not rhymed eloquence, creation and not figured passion? These are the questions for the critic. Criticism stands like an interpreter between the inspired and the uninspired; be tween the prophet and those who hear the melody of his words, and catch some glimpse of their material meaning, but understand not their deeper import. She pretends to open for us this deeper import; to clear our sense that it may discern the pure brightness of this eter nal Beauty, and recognise it as heavenly, under all forms where it looks forth, and reject, as

The same thing holds, in general, and with fewer drawbacks, of the somewhat later and more energetic race, denominated the Göttingen School, in contradistinction from the Saxon, to which Rabener, Cramer, and Gellert directly belonged, and most of those others indirectly. Hölty, Bürger, the two Stolbergs, are men whom Bossu might measure with his scale and compasses as strictly as he pleased. Of Herder, Schiller, Goethe, we speak not here: they are men of another stature and form of movement, whom Bossu's scale and compasses could not measure without difficulty, or rather not at all. To say that such men wrote with taste of this sort, were saying little; for this forms not the apex, but the basis, in their conception of style; a quality not to be paraded as an excellence, but to be understood as indispensable, as there by necessity, and like a thing of course.

In truth, for it must be spoken out, our opponents are so widely astray in this matter,

The history of Mendelsohn is interesting in itself, and full of encouragement to all lovers of self-improvement. At thirteen he was a wandering Jewish beggar, without health, without home, almost without a language, for the jargon of broken Hebrew and provincial German which he spoke could scarcely be called one. At middle age, he could write this Phædon; was a man of wealth and breeding, and ranked among the teachers of his age. Like Pope, he abode by his original creed, though often solicited to change it: indeed, the grand problem of his life was to better the inward and outward condition of his own ill-fated people; for whom he actually accomplished much benefit. He was a mild, shrewd, and worthy man; and might well love Phadon and Socrates, for his own character was Socratic. He was a friend of Lessing's: indeed a pupil; for Lessing having accidentally met him at chess, recognised the spirit that lay struggling under such incumbrances, and generously undertook to help him. By teaching the poor Jew a little Greek he disenchanted him from the Talmud and the Rabbins. The two were afterwards co-labourers in Nicolai's Deutsche Bibliothek, the first German Review of any character; which, however, in the hands of Nicolai himself, it subsequently lost. Mendelsohn's Works have mostly been translated into French.

of the earth earthy, all forms, be their mate- | urged, between the Classicists and the Roman

rial splendour what it may, where no gleaming of that other shines through.

ticists, in which the Schlegels are assumed, much too loosely, on all hands, as the patrons This is the task of Criticism, as the Germans and generalissimos of the latter, shows us understand it. And how do they accomplish sufficiently what spirit is at work in that long this task? By a vague declamation clothed in stagnant literature. Doubtless this turbid gorgeous mystic phraseology? By vehement fermentation of the elements will at length tumultuous anthems to the poet and his poetry; settle into clearness, both there, and here, as by epithets and laudatory similitudes drawn in Germany it has already in a great measure from Tartarus and Elysium, and all intermedi- done; and perhaps a more serene and genial ate terrors and glories; whereby, in truth, it is poetic day is everywhere to be expected with rendered clear both that the poet is an ex- some confidence. How much the example of tremely great poet, and also that the critic's the Germans may have to teach us in this allotment of understanding, overflowed by these particular, needs no farther exposition. Pythian raptures, has unhappily melted into de- The authors and first promulgators of this liquium? Nowise in this manner do the Ger- new critical doctrine, were at one time conmans proceed: but by rigorous scientific in-temptuously named the New School; nor was it quiry; by appeal to principles which, whether till after a war of all the few good heads in the correct or not, have been deduced patiently, nation, with all the many bad ones, had ended and by long investigation, from the highest and as such wars must ever do,* that these critical calmest regions of Philosophy. For this finer principles were generally adopted; and their portion of their Criticism is now also embo- assertors found to be no School or new heretidied in systems; and standing, so far as these cal Sect, but the ancient primitive Catholic reach, coherent, distinct, and methodical, no Communion, of which all sects that had any less than, on their much shallower foundation, living light in them were but members and the systems of Boileau and Blair. That this subordinate modes. It is, indeed, the most new Criticism is a complete, much more a cer- sacred article of this creed to preach and practain science, we are far from meaning to affirm: tise universal tolerance. Every literature of the aesthetic theories of Kant, Herder, Schiller, the world has been cultivated by the Germans; Goethe, Richter, vary in external aspect, ac- and to every literature they have studied to give cording to the varied habits of the individual; due honour. Shakspeare and Homer, no doubt, and can at best only be regarded as approxima- occupy alone the loftiest station in the poetical tions to the truth, or modifications of it; each Olympus; but there is space for all true Singcritic representing it as it harmonizes more or ers, out of every age and clime. Ferdusi and less perfectly with the other intellectual per- the primeval Mythologists of Hindostan, live suasions of his own mind, and of different in brotherly union with the Troubadours and classes of minds that resemble his. Nor can ancient Story-tellers of the West. The waywe here undertake to inquire what degree of ward mystic gloom of Calderon, the lurid fire such approximation to the truth there is in of Dante, the auroral light of Tasso, the clear each or all of these writers; or in Tieck and icy glitter of Racine, all are acknowledged and the two Schlegels, who, especially the latter, reverenced: nay, in the celestial fore-court an have laboured so meritoriously in reconciling abode has been appointed for the Gressets and these various opinions; and so successfully in Delilles, that no spark of inspiration, no tone impressing and diffusing the best spirit of them, of mental music, might remain unrecognised. first in their own country, and now also in The Germans study foreign nations in a spirit several others. Thus much, however, we will which deserves to be oftener imitated. It is say: That we reckon the mere circumstance their honest endeavour to understand each with of such a science being in existence, a ground its own peculiarities, in its own special manof the highest consideration, and worthy the ner of existing; not that they may praise it, or best attention of all inquiring men. For we censure it, or attempt to alter it, but simply should err widely, if we thought that this new that they may see this manner of existing as tendency of critical science pertains to Ger- the nation itself sees it, and so participate in many alone. It is a European tendency, and whatever worth or beauty it has brought into springs from the general condition of intellect being. Of all literatures, accordingly, the in Europe. We ourselves have all, for the last German has the best as well as the most transthirty years, more or less distinctly felt the ne- lations; men like Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, cessity of such a science: witness the neglect Schlegel, Tieck, have not disdained this task. into which our Blairs and Bossus have silently Of Shakspeare there are three entire versions fallen; our increased and increasing admira- admitted to be good; and we know not how tion, not only of Shakspeare, but of all his contemporaries, and of all who breathe any por- It began in Schiller's Musenalmanch for 1793. The tion of his spirit; our controversy whether Xenien, (a series of philosophic epigrams jointly by Schiller and Goethe,) descended there unexpectedly, Pope was a poet; and so much vague effort like a flood of ethereal fire, on the German literary world; on the part of our best critics, everywhere, to quickening all that was noble into new life, but visiting the ancient empire of Dulness with astonishment and express some still unexpressed idea concerning unknown pangs. The agitation was extreme: scarcely the nature of true poetry; as if they felt in since the age of Luther, has there been such stir and their hearts that a pure glory, nay, a divine-strife in the intellect of Germany; indeed, scarcely since that age, has there been a controversy, if we consider its ness, belonged to it, for which they had as yet ultimate bearings on the best and noblest interests of no name, and no intellectual form. But in mankind, so important as this, which, for the time, Italy too, in France itself, the same thing is seemed only to turn on metaphysical subtilties, and matters of mere elgance. Its farther applications be visible. Their grand controversy, so hotly came apparent by degrees.