believed; the foreign nation is now once for all understood, decided on, and registered accordingly; and dunce the thousandth writes of it like dunce the first. With the aid of literary and intellectual intercourse, much of this falsehood may, no doubt, be corrected: yet even here, sound judgment is far from easy; and most national characters are still, as Hume long ago complained, the product rather of popular prejudice than of philosophic insight. That the Germans, in particular, have by no means escaped such misrepresentation, nay, perhaps, have had more than the common share of it, cannot, in their circumstances, surprise us. From the time of Optiz and Flemming, to those of Klopstock and Lessing,—that is, from the early part of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century,-they had scarcely any literature known abroad, or deserving to be known: their political condition, during this same period, was oppressive and every way unfortunate externally; and at home, the nation, split into so many factions and petty states, had lost all feeling of itself as of a nation; and its energies in arts as in arms were manifested only in detail, too often in collision, and always under foreign influence. The French, at once their plunderers and their scoffers, described them to the rest of Europe as a semi-barbarous people; which comfortable fact the rest of Europe was willing enough to take on their word. During the greater part of the last cen- | tury, the Germans, in our intellectual survey of the world, were quietly omitted; a vague contemptuous ignorance prevailed respecting them; it was a Cimmerian land, where, if a few sparks did glimmer, it was but so as to testify their own existence, too feebly to enlighten us.* The Germans passed for apprentices in all provinces of art; and many foreign craftsmen scarcely allowed them so much. Madame de Staël's book has done away with this; all Europe is now aware that the Germans are something; something independent and apart from others; nay, something deep, imposing, and, if not admirable, wonderful. What that something is, indeed, is still undecided; for this gifted lady's Allemagne, in doing much to excite curiosity, has still done little to satisfy or even direct it. We can no longer make ignorance a boast, but we are yet far from having acquired right knowledge; and cavillers, excluded from contemptuous negation, have found a resource in almost as contemptuous assertion. Translators are the same faithless and stolid race that they have ever been the particle of gold they bring us over is hidden from all but the most patient eye, * So late as the year 1811, we find, from Pinkerton's Geography, the sole representative of German literature to be Gottshed, (with his name wrong spelt,) "who first introduced a more refined style."--Gottsched has been dead the greater part of the century; and, for the last fifty years, ranks among the Germans somewhat as Prynne or Alexander Ross does among ourselves. A man of a cold, rigid, perseverant character, who mistook himself for a poet and the perfection of critics, and had skill to pass current during the greater part of his literary life for such. On the strength of his Boileau and Batteux, he long reigned supreme: but it was like Night, in rayless majesty, and over a slumbering people. among shiploads of yellow sand and sulphur. Gentle Dulness too, in this as in all other things, still loves her joke. The Germans, though much more attended to, are perhaps not less mistaken than before. Doubtless, however, there is in this increased attention a progress towards the truth; which it is only investigation and discussion that can help us to find. The study of Germar literature has already taken such firm root among us, and its spreading so visibly, that by and by, as we believe, the true character of it must and will become known. A result, which is to bring us into closer and friendlier union with forty millions of civilized men, cannot surely be otherwise than desirable. If they have precious truth to impart, we shall receive it as the highest of all gifts; if error, we shall not only reject it, but explain it and trace out its origin, and so help our brethren also to reject it. In either point of view, and for all profitable purposes of national intercourse, correct knowledge is the first and indispensable preliminary. Meanwhile, errors of all sorts prevail on this subject: even among men of sense and liberality we have found so much hallucination, so many groundless or half-grounded objections to German literature, that the tone in which a multitude of other men speak of it cannot appear extraordinary. To much of this, even a slight knowledge of the Germans would furnish a sufficient answer. But we have thought it might be useful were the chief of these objections marshalled in distinct order, and examined with what degree of light and fairness is at our disposal. In attempting this, we are vain enough, for reasons already stated, to fancy ourselves discharging what is in some sort a national duty. It is unworthy of one great people to think falsely of another; it is unjust, and therefore unworthy. Of the injury it does to ourselves we do not speak, for that is an inferior consideration: yet surely if the grand principle of free intercourse is so profitable in material commerce, much more must it be in the commerce of the mind, the products of which are thereby not so much transported out of one country into another, as multiplied over all, for the benefit of all, and without loss to any. If that man is a benefactor to the world who causes two ears of corn to grow where only one grew before, much more is he a benefactor who causes two truths to grow up together in harmony and mutual confirmation, where before only one stood solitary, and, on that side at least, intolerant and hostile. In dealing with the host of objections which front us on this subject, we think it may be convenient to range them under two principal heads. The first, as respects chiefly unsoundness or imperfection of sentiment; an error which may in general be denominated Bad Taste. The second, as respects chiefly a wrong condition of intellect; an error which may be designated by the general title of Mysticism. Both of these, no doubt, are partly connected; and each, in some degree, springs from and returns into the other: yet, for present purposes, the divisions may be precise enough. They awoke, before his death, and hurled him, perhaps the Germans have a radically bad taste. This First, then, of the first: It is objected that 00 in dignantly, into his native Abyss and Jerry; and told his readers, as he might truly do, that no play had ever enjoyed such currency on the English stage as this most classic performance? We think not. In like manner, till some author of acknowledged merit shall so write among the Germans, and be approved of by critics of acknowledged merit among them, or at least secure for himself some permanency of favour among the million, we can prove nothing by such instances. That there is so perverse an author, or so blind a critic, in the whole compass of German literature, we have no hesitation in denying. is a deep-rooted objection, which assumes if he took his extracts from Mr. Egan's Tom many forms, and extends through many ramifications. Among men of less acquaintance with the subject of German taste, or of taste in general, the spirit of the accusation seems to be somewhat as follows: That the Germans, with much natural susceptibility, are still in a rather coarse and uncultivated state of mind; displaying, with the energy and other virtues of a rude people, many of their vices also; in particular, a certain wild and headlong temper, which seizes on all things too hastily and impetuously; weeps, storms, loves, hates, too fiercely and vociferously; delighting in coarse excitements, such as flaring contrasts, vulgar horrors, and all sorts of showy exaggeration. Their literature, in particular, is thought to dwell with peculiar complacency among wizards and ruined towers, with mailed knights, secret tribunals, monks, spectres, and banditti; on the other hand, there is an undue love of moonlight, and mossy fountains, and the moral sublime then we have descriptions of things which should not be described; a general want of tact; nay, often hollowness, and want of sense. In short, the German Muse comports herself, it is said, like a passionate, and rather fascinating, but tumultuous, uninstructed, and but half-civilized Muse. A belie sauvage at best, we can only love her with a sort of supercilious tolerance; often she tears a passion to rags; and, in her tumid vehemence, struts without meaning, and to the offence of all literary decorum. But farther: among men of deeper views, and with regard to works of really standard character, we find, though not the same, a similar objection repeated. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, it is said, and Faust, are full of bad taste also. With respect to the taste in which they are written, we shall have occasion to say somewhat hereafter: meanwhile, we may be permitted to remark that the objection would have more force, did it seem to originate from a more mature consideration of the subject. We have heard few English criticisms of such works, in which the first condition of an approach to accuracy was complied with;—a transposition of the critic into the author's point of vision, a survey of the author's means and objects as they lay before himself, and a just trial of these by rules of universal application. Faust, for instance, passes with many of us for a mere tale of sorcery and art-magic: but it would scarcely be more unwise to consider Hamlet as depending for its main interest on the ghost that walks in it, than to regard Faust as a production of this sort. For the present, therefore, this objection may be set aside; or at least may be considered not as an assertion, but an inquiry, the answer to which may turn out rather that the German taste is different from ours, than that it is worse. Nay, with regard even to difference, we should scarcely reckon it to be of great moment. Two nations that agree in estimating Shakspeare as the highest of all poets, can differ in no essential principle, if they understood one another, that relates to poetry. Now, in all this there is a certain degree of truth. If any man will insist upon taking Heinse's Ardinghello, and Miller's Siegwart, and the works of Veit Weber the younger, and, above all, the everlasting Kotzebue, as his specimens of German literature, he may establish many things. Black Forests, and the glories of Lubberland; sensuality and horror, the spectre nun, and the charmed moonshine, shall not be wanting. Boisterous outlaws, also, with huge whiskers, and the most cat-o'-mountain aspect; tear-stained sentimentalists, the grimmest man-haters, ghosts, and the like suspicious characters, will be found in abundance. We are little read in this bowl-and-dagger department; but we do understand it to have been at one time rather diligently cultivated; though at present it seems to be mostly relinquished as unproductive. Other forms of Unreason have taken its place; which in their turn must yield to still other forms; for it is the nature of this goddess to descend in frequent avatars among men. Perhaps not less than five hundred volumes of such stuff could still be collected from the book-stalls of Germany. By which truly we may learn that there is in that country a class of unwise men and unwise women; that many readers there labour under a degree of ignorance and mental vacancy, and read not actively but passively, not to learn Apart from the truth of these assumptions, but to be amused. But is this fact so very and in respect of the theory itself, we confess new to us? Or what should we think of a there is something in the face of it that afflicis German critic that selected his specimens of us. Is it then so certain that taste and riches British literature from the Castle Spectre, Mr. are dissolubly connected? that truth of feeling Lewis's Monk, or even the Mysteries of Udolpho, must ever be preceded by weight of purse, and and Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus? Or the eyes be dim for universal and eternal would he judge rightly of our dramatic taste, Beauty, till they have long rested on gilt walls Nevertheless, this opinion of our opponents has attained a certain degree of consistency with itself; one thing is thought to throw light on another; nay, a quiet little theory has been propounded to explain the whole phenomenon. The cause of this bad taste, we are assured, lies in the condition of the German authors. These, it seems, are generally very poor; the ceremonial law of the country excludes them from all society with the great; they cannot acquire the polish of drawing-rooms, but must live in mean houses, and therefore write and think in a mean style. and costly furniture? To the great body of 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. Taste, if it mean any thing but a paltry connoisseurship, must mean a general susceptibility to truth and nobleness; a sense to discern, and a heart to love and reverence, all beauty, order, goodness, wheresoever, or in whatsoever forms and accompaniments they are to be seen. This surely implies, as its chief condition, not any given external rank or situation, but a finely gifted mind, purified into harmony with itself, into keenness and justness of vision; above all, kindled into love and generous admiration. Is culture of this sort found exclusively among the higher ranks? We believe it proceeds less from without than within, in every rank. The charms of Nature, the majesty of Man, the infinite loveliness of Truth and Virtue, are not hidden from the eye of the poor; but from the eye of the vain, the corrupted, and self-seeking, be he poor or rich. In all ages, the humble Minstrel, a mendicant, and lord of nothing but his harp and his own free soul, had intimations of those glories, while to the proud Baron in nis barbaric halls they were unknown. Nor is there still any aristocratic monopoly of judgment more than of genius: And as to that Science of Negation, which is taught peculiarly by men of professed elegance, we confess we hold it rather cheap. It is a necessary, but decidedly a subordinate accomplishment: nay, if it be rated as the highest, it becomes a ruinous vice. This is an old truth; yet ever needing new application and enforcement. Let us know what to love, and we shall know also what to reject; what to affirm, and we shall know also what to deny : but it is dangerous to begin with denial, and fatal to end with it. To deny is easy; nothing is sooner learnt or more generally practised: as matters go, we need no man of polish to teach it; but rather, if possible, a hundred men of wisdom to show us its limits, and teach us its reverse. ampton allowed him equal patronage with the zanies, jugglers, and bearwards of the time? Yet compare his taste, even as it respects the negative side of things; for in regard to the positive, and far higher side, it admits no comparison with any other mortal's,-compare it, for instance, with the taste of Beaumont and Fletcher, his contemporaries, men of rank and education, and of fine genius like himself. Tried even by the nice, fastidious, and in great part false, and artificial delicacy of modern times, how stands it with the two parties: with the gay triumphant men of fashion, and the poor vagrant link-boy? Does the latter sin against, we shall not say taste, but etiquette, as the former do? For one line, for one word, which some Chesterfield might wish blotted from the first, are there not in the others whole pages and scenes which, with palpitating heart, he would hurry into deepest night? This, too, observe, respects not their genius, but their culture; not their appropriation of beauties, but their rejection of deformities, by supposition, the grand and peculiar result of high breeding! Surely, in such instances, even that humble supposition is ill borne out. The truth of the matter seems to be, that with the culture of a genuine poet, thinker, or other aspirant to fame, the influence of rank has no exclusive or even special concern. For men of action, for senators, public speakers, political writers, the case may be different; but of such we speak not at present. Neither do we speak of imitators, and the crowd of mediocre men, to whom fashionable life sometimes gives an external inoffensiveness, often compensated by a frigid malignity of character. We speak of men, who, from amid the perplexed and conflicting elements of their everyday existence, are to form themselves into harmony and wisdom, and show forth the same wisdom to others that exist along with them. To such a man, high life, as it is called, will be a province of human life certainly, but nothing more. He will study to deal with it as he deals with all forms of mortal being; to do it justice, and to draw instruction from it: bu his light will come from a loftier region, or he wanders for ever in darkness; dwindles into a man of vers de societé, or attains at best to be a Walpole or a Caylus. Still less can we think that he is to be viewed as a hireling; that his excellence will be regulated by his pay. "SuffiSuch is our hypothesis of the case: But how ciently provided for from within, he has need stands it with the facts? Are the fineness and of little from without :" food and raiment, and truth of sense manifested by the artist found, in an unviolated home, will be given him in the mos: instances, to be proportionate to his wealth rudest land; and with these, while the kind and elevation of acquaintance? Are they found earth is round him, and the everlasting heaven to have any perceptible relation either with the is over him, the world has little more that it one or the other? We imagine not. Whose can give. Is he poor? So also were Homer taste in painting, for instance, is truer and finer and Socrates; so was Samuel Johnson; so was than Claude Lorraine's? And was not he a John Milton. Shall we reproach him with his poor colour-grinder; outwardly, the meanest poverty, and infer that, because he is poor, he of menials? Where, again, we might ask, must likewise be worthless? God forbid that Lay Shakspeare's rent-roll; and what generous the time should ever come when he too shall peer took him by the hand and unfolded to him esteem riches the synonyme of good! The the "open secret" of the Universe; teaching spirit of Mammon has a wide empire; but it him that this was beautiful, and that not so? cannot, and must not, be worshipped in the Was he not a peasant by birth, and by fortune | Holy of Holies. Nay, does not the heart of something lower; and was it not thought much, every genuine disciple of literature, however -ven in the height of his reputation, that South- mean his sphere, instinctively deny this prin 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 capaWe have stated these things, to bring the city, more honours art and literature, and does question somewhat nearer its real basis; not more both in public and private to encourage for the sake of the Germans, who nowise need them. Excluded from society! What, we the admission of them. The German authors would ask, was Wieland's, Schiller's, Herder's, are not poor; neither are they excluded from Johannes Müller's society? Has not Goethe, by association with the wealthy and well-born. birth a Frankfort burgher, been, since his twentyOn the contrary, we scruple not to say, that, in sixth year, the companion, not of nobles but of both these respects, they are considerably better princes, and for half his life a minister of state? situated than our own. Their booksellers, it is And is not this man, unrivalled in so many far true, cannot pay as ours do; yet, there as here, deeper qualities, known also and felt to be una man lives by his writings; and, to compare rivalled in nobleness of breeding and bearing; Jorden with Johnson and D'Israchi, somewhat fit not to learn of princes, in this respect, but better there than here. No case like our own by the example of his daily life to teach them? 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 question whether the chance, which a meritorious man of letters has before him, of obtaining 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 relation 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 vi perso 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 ali 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 false that ancient, thirsty, thickheaded, sixteen-quar- susceptibility in the lower regions of their lite place among these classes, since the time when Bishop Burnet could write of them,—“ They are for the most part the worst instructed, and 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. Nay, while learning from us in many other 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 aimost 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 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 Galotri, 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 paint 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 commoned not in colours, but in crayons; yet a strange 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 With Lessing and Klopstock might be joinbut wonder that more of this man is not known ed, in this respect, nearly, every one, we do among us; or that the knowledge of him has not say of their distinguished, but even of their not done more to remove such misconceptions. tolerated contemporaries. The two Jacobis, Among all the writers of the eighteenth cen- known more or less in all countries, are little tury, we will not except even Diderot and known here, if they are accused of wanting David Hume, there is not one of a more com- literary taste These are men, whether as pact and rigid intellectual structure; who thinkers or poets, to be regarded and admired more distinctly knows what he is aiming at, for their mild and lofty wisdom, the devoutness, or with more gracefulness, vigour, and pre- the benignity and calm grandeur of their phicision sets it forth to his readers. He thinks losophical views. In such, it were strange if with the clearness and piercing sharpness of among so many high merits, this lower one of a the most expert logician: but a genial fire just and elegant style, which is indeed their pervades him, a wit, a heartiness, a general natural and even necessary product, had been richness and fineness of nature, to which most wanting. We recommend the elder Jacobi no logicians are strangers. He is a skeptic in less for his clearness than for his depth; of the many things, but the noblest of skeptics; a younger, it may be enough in this point of mild, manly, half-careless enthusiasm strug-view to say, that the chief praisers of his earlier gles through his indignant unbelief: he stands efore us like a toilworn, but unwearied and neroic champion, earning not the conquest attraction lies in them; for the figures are grouped into the finest attitudes, and 'rue and spirit-speaking in every line. It is wh 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. poetry were the French. Neither are Hamann and Mendelsohn, who could meditate deep thoughts, defective in the power of uttering |