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"This beautiful allegory," adds Mr. Taylor, | wise. The most of what Mr. Taylor has writ requires no illustration; but it constitutes ten on Schiller, on Goethe, and the new Literaone of the reasons for suspecting that the ture of Germany, a reader that loves him, as younger may eventually be the victorious we honestly do, will consider as unwritten, or Muse." We hope not, but that the generous race may yet last through long centuries. Tuiskone has shot through a mighty space, since this Poet saw her: what if she were now slackening her speed, and the Britoness quickening hers?

Mr.

written in a state of somnambulism. He who has just quitted Kotzebue's Bear-garden, and Fives-court, and pronounces it to be all stimulant and very good, what is there for him to do in the Hall of the Gods? He looks transiently in; asks with mild authority, "Arian or Trinitarian? Quotidian or Stimulant?" and receiving no answer but a hollow echo, which almost sounds like laughter, passęs on, muttering that they are dumb idols, or mere Nürnberg waxwork.

If the Essay on Klopstock is the best, that on Kotzebue is undoubtedly the worst, in this book, or perhaps in any book written by man of ability in our day. It is one of those acts which, in the spirit of philanthropy, we could wish Mr. Taylor to conceal in profoundest It remains to notice Mr. Taylor's Translasecrecy; were it not that hereby the "stimu- tions. Apart from the choice of subjects, lant" theory, a heresy which still lurks here which in probably more than half the cases is and there even in our better criticism, is in unhappy, there is much to be said in favour some sort brought to a crisis, and may the of these. Compared with the average of sooner depart from this world, or at least from British Translations, they may be pronounced the high places of it, into others more suitable. of almost ideal excellence; compared with the Kotzebue, whom all nations, and kindreds, and best translations extant, for example, the Gertongues, and peoples, his own people the fore-man Shakspeare, Homer, Calderon, they may most, after playing with him for some foolish still be called better than indifferent. One hour, have swept out of doors as a lifeless great merit Mr. Taylor has: rigorous adbundle of dyed rags, is here scientifically ex- herence to his original; he endeavours at amined, measured, pulse-felt, and pronounced least to copy with all possible fidelity the turn to be living, and a divinity. He has such pro- of phrase, the tone, the very metre, whatever lific " invention," abounds so in "fine situa- stands written for him. With the German tions," in passionate scenes, is so soul-har-language he has now had a long familiarity, rowing, so stimulant. The Proceedings at Fow Street are stimulant enough; neither is prolific invention, interesting situations, or soul-harrowing passion wanting among the Authors that compose there; least of all if we follow them to Newgate, and the gallows: but when did the Morning Herald think of inserting its Police Reports among our Anthologies? Taylor is at the pains to analyze very many of Kotzebue's productions, and translates copiously from two or three: how the Siberian Governor took on when his daughter was about to run away with one Benjowsky, who however, was enabled to surrender his prize, there on the beach, with sails hoisted, by 'looking at his wife's picture;" how the people "lift young Burgundy from the Tun," not indeed to drink him, for he is not wine but a Duke; how a certain stout-hearted West Indian, that has made a fortune, proposes marriage to his two sisters, but finding the ladies reluctant, solicits their serving-woman, whose reputation is not only cracked, but visibly quite rent asunder, accepts her nevertheless, with her thriving cherub, and is the happiest of men ;-with more of the like sort. On the strength of which we are assured that, "according to my judgment, Kotzebue is the greatest dramatic genius that Europe has evolved since Shakspeare." Such is the table which Mr. Taylor has spread for pilgrims in the Prose Wilderness of Life: thus does he sit like a kind host, ready to carve; and though the viands and beverage are but, as it were, stewed garlic, Yarmouth herrings, and blue-ruin, praise capital letters. The concluding lines ar them as "stimulant," and courteously presses these: the universe to fall to.

66

What a purveyor with this palate shail say to Nectar and Ambrosia, may be curious as a question in Natural History, but hardly other

and, what is no less essential, and perhaps still rarer among our translators, has a decided understanding of English. All this of Mr. Taylor's own Translations: in the borrowed pieces, whereof there are several, we seldom, except indeed in those by Shelley and Coleridge, find much worth; sometimes a distinct worthlessness. Mr. Taylor has made no conscience of clearing those unfortunate performances even from their gross blunders. Thus, in that "excellent version by Miss Plumptre," we find this statement: Professor Müller could not utter a period without introducing the words with under, "whether they had business there or not;" which statement, were it only on the ground that Professor Müller was not sent to Bedlam, there to utter periods, we venture to deny. Doubtless his besetting sin was mitunder, which indeed means at the same time, or the like, (etymologically, with among,) but nowise with under. One other instance we shall give, from a much more important subject. Mr. Taylor admits that he does not make much of Faust: however, he inserts Shelley's version of the Mayday Night; and another scene, evidently rendered by quite a different artist. In this latter, Margaret is in the Cathe dral during High-Mass, but her whole hought: are turned inwards on a secret shame and sor row: an Evil Spirit is whispering in her ear the Choir chant fragments of the Dies ira; she is like to choke and sink. In the original, this passage is in verse; and, we presume, in the translation also,-founding on the

"MARGARET.

I feel imprison'd. The thick pulars gird me.
The vaults low'r o'er me. Air, air, I faint.

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-Your what?-Angels and ministers of grace defend us!" Your Drambottle." Will Mr. Taylor have us understand, then, that "the noble German nation," more especially the fairer half thereof,. (for the "Neighbour" is Nachbarin, Neighbouress,) goes to church with a decanter of brandy in its pocket? Or would | he not rather, even forcibly, interpret Flüschchen by vinaigrette, by volatile-salts ?-The world has no notice that this passage is a borrowed one, but will, notwithstanding, as the more charitable theory, hope and believe so.

We have now done with Mr. Taylor; and would fain, after all that has come and gone, part with him in good nature and good will. He has spoken freely, we have answered freely. Far as we differ from him in regard to German Literature, and to the much more important subjects here connected with it; deeply as we feel convinced that his convictions are wrong and dangerous, are but half true, and, if taken for the whole truth, wholly false and fatal, we have nowise blinded ourselves to his vigorous talent, to his varied learning, his sincerity, his manful independence and self-support. Neither is it for speaking out plainly that we blame him. A man's honest, earnest opinion is the most precious of all he possesses: let him communicate this, if he is to communicate any thing. There is, doubtless, a time to speak, and a time to keep silence; yet Fontenelle's celebrated aphorism, I might have my hand full of truth, and would open only my little finger, may be practised also to excess, and the little finger itself kept closed. That reserve, and knowing silence, long so universal among us, is less the fruit of active benevolence, of philosophic tolerance, than of indifference and weak conviction. Honest Skepticism, honest Atheism, is better than that withered, lifeless Dilettantism and amateur Eclecticism, which merely toys with all opinions; or than that wicked Machiavelism, which, in thought denying every thing, except that Power is Power, in words, for its own wise purposes, loudly believes every thing: of both which miserable habitudes the day, even in England, is wellnigh over. That Mr. Taylor belongs not, and at no time belonged, to either of these classes, we account a true praise. Of his Historic Survey we have endeavoured to point out the faults and the merits: should he

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reach a second edition, which we hope, per haps he may profit by some of our hints, and render the work less unworthy of himself and of his subject. In its present state and shape, this English Temple of Fame can content no one. A huge, anomalous, heterogeneous mass, no section of it like another, oriel-window alternating with rabbit-hole, wrought capital on pillar of dried mud; heaped together out of marble, loose earth, rude boulder-stone hastily roofed in with shingles,-such is the Temple of Fame; uninhabitable either for priest or statue, and which nothing but a continued suspension of the laws of gravity can keep from rushing ere long into a chaos of stone and dust. For the English worshipper, who in the meanwhile has no other temple, we search out the least dangerous apartments; for the future builder, the materials that will be valuable.

And now, in washing our hands of this alltoo sordid but not unnecessary task, one word on a more momentous object. Does not the existence of such a Book, do not many other indications, traceable in France, in Germany, as well as here, betoken that a new era in the spiritual intercourse of Europe is approaching; that instead of isolated, mutually repulsive National Literatures, a World-Literature may one day be looked for? The better minds of all countries begin to understand each other; and, which follows naturally, to love each other and help each other; by whom ultimately all countries in all their proceedings are governed.

Late in man's history, yet clearly at length, it becomes manifest to the dullest, that mind is stronger than matter, that mind is the creator and shaper of matter; that not brute Force, but only Persuasion and Faith is the king of this world. The true Poet, who is but the inspired Thinker, is still an Orpheus whose Lyre tames the savage beasts, and evokes the dead rocks to fashion themselves into palaces and stately inhabited cities. It has been said, and may be repeated, that Literature is fast becoming all in all to us; our Church, our Senate, our whole Social Constitution. The true Pope of Christendom is not that feeble old man in Rome; nor is its Autocrat the Napoleon, the Nicolas, with his half million even of obedient bayonets; such Autocrat is himself but a more cunningly-devised bayonet and military engine in the hands of a mightier than he. The true Autocrat and Pope is that man, the real or seeming Wisest of the past age; crowned after death; who finds his Hierarchy of gifted Authors, his Clergy of assiduous Journalists; whose Decretals, written not on parchment, but on the living souls of men, it were an inversion of the Laws of Nature to disobey. In these times of ours, all Intellect has fused itself into Literature: Literature, Printed Thought, is the molten sea and wonderbearing Chaos, into which mind after mind casts forth its opinion, its feeling, to be molten into the general mass, and to work there; Interest after Interest is engulfed in it, or embarked on it: higher, higher it rises round all the Edifices of Existence; they must all be

depths of Time, is a subject for prophetic con jecture, wherein brightest hope is not un mingled with fearful apprehension and awe at the boundless unknown. The more cheering is this one thing which we do see and

molten into it, and anew bodied forth from it, or stand unconsumed among its fiery surges. Wo to him whose Edifice is not built of true Asbest, and on the everlasting Rock; but on the false sand, and of the drift-wood of Accident, and the paper and parchment of anti-know-That its tendency is to a universal quated Habit! For the power, or powers, exist not on our Earth, that can say to that sea, roll back, or bid its proud waves be still.

European Commonweal; that the wisest in all nations will communicate and co-operate; whereby Europe will again have its true Sacred College, and Council of Amphictyous; wars will become rarer, less inhuman, and, in the course of centuries, such delirious ferocity in nations, as in individuals it already is, may

What form so omnipotent an element will assume; how long it will welter to and fro as a wild Democracy, a wild Anarchy; what Constitution and Organization it will fashion for itself, and for what depends on it, in the | be proscribed, and become obsolete for ever.

TRAGEDY OF THE NIGHT-MOTH.

Magna Ausus.

[FRASER'S MAGAZINE, 1831.]

"I' is placid midnight, stars are keeping
Their meek and silent course in heaven;
Save pale recluse, all things are sleeping,
His mind to study still is given.

But see! a wandering Night-moth enters,
Allured by taper gleaming bright;

A while keeps hovering round, then ventures
On Goethe's mystic page to light.

With awe she views the candle blazing;
A universe of fire it seems

To moth-savante with rapture gazing,

Or fount whence Life and Motion streams. What passions in her small heart whirling, Hopes boundless, adoration, dread; At length her tiny pinions twirling,

She darts and-puff!-the moth is dead! The sullen flame, for her scarce sparkling, Gives but one hiss, one fitful glare; Now bright and busy, now all darkling, She snaps and fades to empty air.

Her bright gray form that spread so slimly,
Some fan she seemed of pigmy Queen;
Her silky cloak that lay so trimly,

Her wee, wee eyes that looked so keen,
Last moment here, now gone for ever,
To nought are passed with fiery pain;
And ages circling round shall never

Give to this creature shape again?

Poor moth! near weeping I lament thee,
Thy glossy form, thy instant wo;

"T was zeal for "things too high" that sent thee From cheery earth to shades below.

Short speck of boundless space was needed
For home, for kingdom, world to thee!
Where passed unheeding as unheeded,
Thy slender life from sorrow free.

But syren hopes from out thy dwelling,

Enticed thee, bade thee Earth explore,-
Thy frame, so late with rapture swelling,
Is swept from Earth for evermore!

Poor moth! thy fate my own resembles:
Me too a restless asking mind
Hath sent on far and weary rambles,

To seek the good I ne'er shall find.
Like thee, with common lot contented,
With humble joys and vulgar fate,

I might have lived and ne'er lamented,
Moth of a larger size, a longer date!
But Nature's majesty unveiling,
What seemed her wildest, grandest charms,
Eternal Truth and Beauty hailing,

Like thee, I rushed into her arms.

What gained we, little moth? Thy ashes,
Thy one brief parting pang may show:
And withering thoughts for soul that dashes
From deep to deep, are but a death more slow

CHARACTERISTICS.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1831.]

THE healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the Physician's Aphorism; and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it. We may say, it holds no less in moral, intellectual, political, poetical, than in merely corporeal therapeutics; that wherever, or in what shape soever, powers of the sort which can be named vital are at work, herein lies the test of their working right, or working

wrong.

In the Body, for example, as all doctors are agreed, the first condition of complete health is, that each organ perform its function unconsciously, unheeded; let but any organ announce its separate existence, were it even boastfully, and for pleasure, not for pain, then already has one of those unfortunate "false centres of sensibility" established itself, already is derangement there. The perfection of bodily wellbeing is, that the collective bodily activities seem one; and be manifested, moreover, not in themselves, but in the action they accomplish. If a Dr. Kitchener boast that his system is in high order, Dietetic Philosophy may indeed take credit; but the true Peptician was that Countryman who answered that, "for his part, he had no system." In fact, unity, agreement, is always silent, or soft-voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims itself. So long as the several elements of Life, all fitly adjusted, can pour forth their movement like harmonious tuned strings, it is a melody and unison; Life, from its mysterious fountains, flows out as in celestial music and diapason,-which also, like that other music of the spheres, even because it is perennial and complete, without interruption and without imperfection, might be fabled to escape the ear. Thus, too, in some languages, is the state of health well denoted by a term expressing unity; when we feel ourselves as we wish to be, we say that we are whole.

issued clear victorious force; we stood as in the centre of Nature, giving and receiving, in harmony with it all; unlike Virgil's Husbandmen, "too happy because we did not know our blessedness." In those days, health and sickness were foreign traditions that did not concern us; our whole being was as yet One, the whole man like an incorporated Will. Such, were Rest or ever-successful Labour the human lot, might our life continue to be: a pure, perpetual, unregarded music; a beam of perfect white light, rendering all things visible, but itself unseen, even because it was of that perfect whiteness, and no irregular obstruction had yet broken it into colours. The beginning of Inquiry is Disease: all Science, if we consider well, as it must have originated in the feeling of something being wrong, so it is and continues to be but Division, Dismemberment, and partial healing of the wrong. Thus, as was of old written, the Tree of Knowledge springs from a root of evil, and bears fruits of good and evil. Had Adam remained in Paradise, there had been no Anatomy and no Metaphysics.

But, alas, as the Philosopher declares, "Life itself is a disease; a working incited by suffering" action from passion! The memory of that first state of Freedom and paradisiac Unconsciousness has faded away into an ideal poetic dream. We stand here too conscious of many things: with Knowledge, the symptom of Derangement, we must even do our best to restore a little Order. Life is, in few instances, and at rare intervals, the diapason of a heavenly melody; oftenest the fierce jar of disruptions and convulsions, which, do what we will, there is no disregarding. Nevertheless, such is still the wish of Nature on our behalf; in all vital action, her manifest purpose and effort is, that we should be unconscious of it, and, like the peptic Countryman, never know that we "have a system." For indeed vital action everywhere is emphatically a means, not an end; Life is not given us for the mere sake of Living, but always with an ulterior external Aim: neither is it on the process, on the means, but rather on the result, that Nature, in any of her doings, is wont to intrust us with insight and volition. Boundless as is the domain of man, it is but a small fractional proportion of it that he rules with Consciousness and by Forethought: what he can contrive, nay, what he can altogether know and comprehend, is essentially the mechanical, small; the great is ever, in one sense or other, the vital; it is essentially the mysterious, and 2. Philosophische Vorlesungen, insbesondere über Philo- only the surface of it can be understood. But sophie der sprache und des Wortes. Geschrieben und vorgetragen zu Dresden im December, 1828, und in den Nature, it might seem, strives, like a kind ersten Tagen des Januars 1829. (Philosophical Lectures, mother, to hide from us even this, that she is a especially on the Philosophy of Language and the Gift mystery: she will have us rest on her beautiof Speech. Written and delivered at Dresden in De-ful and awful bosom as if it were our secure cember, 1828, and the early days of January, 1829.) By Friedrich von Schlegel. 8vo. Vienna, 1830.

Few mortals, it is to be feared, are permanently blessed with that felicity of "having no system:"nevertheless, most of us, looking back on young years, may remember seasons of a light, aërial translucency and elasticity, and perfect freedom; the body had not yet become the prison-house of the soul, but was its vehicle and implement, like a creature of the thought, and altogether pliant to its bidding. We knew not that we had limbs, we only lifted, hurled, and leapt; through eye and ear, and all avenues of sense, came clear unimpeded tidings from without, and from within

* 1. An Essay on the Origin and Prospects of Man. By Thomas Hope. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1831.

home ; on. he bottomless, boundless Deep

whereon all human things fearfully and won-
derfully swim, she will have us walk and build,
as if the film which supported us there (which
any scratch of a bare bodkin will rend asunder,
any sputter of a pistol-shot instantaneously burn
up) were no film, but a solid rock-foundation.
For ever in the neighbourhood of an inevitable
Death, man can forget that he is born to die;
of his Life, which, strictly meditated, contains
in it an Immensity and an Eternity, he can
conceive lightly, as of a simple implement
wherewith to do day-labour and earn wages.
So cunningly does Nature, the mother of all
highest art, which only apes her from afar,
"body forth the Finite from the Infinite;" and
guide man safe on his wondrous path, not more
by endowing him with vision, than, at the right
place, with blindness! Under all her works,
chiefly under her noblest work, Life, lies a
basis of Darkness, which she benignantly con-
ceals;
in Life, too, the roots and inward cir-
culations which stretch down fearfully to the
regions of Death and Night, shall not hint of
their existence, and only the fair stem with its
leaves and flowers, shone on by the fair sun,
disclose itself, and joyfully grow.

not that it is any thing surprising: Milton, again, is more conscious of his faculty, which accordingly is an inferior one. On the other hand, what cackling and strutting must we not often hear and see, when, in some shape of academical prolusion, maiden speech, review article, this or the other well-fledged goose has produced its goose-egg, of quite measurable value, were it the pink of its whole kind; and wonders why all mortals do not wonder!

Foolish enough, too, was the College Tutor's surprise at Walter Shandy; how, though unread in Aristotle, he could nevertheless argue; and not knowing the name of any dialectic tool, handled them all to perfection. Is it the skilfullest Anatomist that cuts the best figure at Sadler's Wells? or does the Boxer hit bet ter for knowing that he has a flexor longus and a flexor brevis? But, indeed, as in the higher case of the Poet, so here in that of the Speaker and Inquirer, the true force is an unconscious one. The healthy Understanding, we should say, is not the Logical, argumentative, but the Intuitive; for the end of Understanding is not to prove, and find reasons, but to know and believe. Of Logic, and its limits, and uses and abuses, there were much to be said and examined; one fact, however, which chiefly concerns us here, has long been familiar; that the man of logic and the man of insight; the Reasoner and the Discoverer, or even Knower, are quite separable,—indeed, for most part, quite separate characters. In practical matters, for example, has it not become almost proverbial that the man of logic cannot prosper? This is he whom business people call Systematic and Theorizer and Wordmonger; his vital intellectual force lies dormant or extinct, his whole force is mechanical, conscious: of such a one it is foreseen that, when once confronted with the infinite complexities of the real world, his little compact theorem of the world will be found wanting; that unless he can throw it overboard, and become a new creature, he will necessarily founder. Nay, in mere Speculation itself, the most ineffectual of all characters, generally speaking, is your dialectic man-at-arms; were he armed cap-apie in syllogistic mail of proof, and perfect master of logic-fence, how little does it avail him! Consider the old Schoolmen, and their pilgrimage towards Truth: the faithfullest endeavour, incessant unwearied motion, often great natural vigour; only no progress: nothing but antic feats of one limb poised against the other; there they balanced, somersetted, and made postures; at best gyrated swiftly, with some pleasure, like Spinning Dervishes, and

However, without venturing into the abstruse, or too eagerly asking Why and How, in things where our answer must needs prove, in great part, an echo of the question, let us be content | to remark farther, in the merely historical way, how that Aphorism of the bodily Physician holds good in quite other departments. Of the Soul, with her activities, we shall find it no less true than of the Body: nay, cry the Spiritualists, is not that very division of the unity, Man, into a dualism of Soul and Body, itself the symptom of disease; as, perhaps, your frightful theory of Materialism, of his being but a Body, and therefore, at least, once more a unity, may be the paroxysm which was critical, and the beginning of cure! But omitting this, we observe, with confidence enough, that the truly strong mind, view it as Intellect, as Morality, or under any other aspect, is nowise the mind acquainted with its strength; that here as before the sign of health is Unconsciousness. In our inward, as in our outward world, what is mechanical lies open to us: not what is dynamical and has vitality. Of our Thinking, we might say, it is but the mere upper surface that we shape into articulate Thoughts ;-underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation; here, in its quiet mysterious depths, dwells what vital force is in us; here, if aught is to be created, and not merely manufactured and communicated, must the work go on. Manufacture is intelligible, but trivial; Creation is great, and cannot be un-ended where they began. So it is, so will it derstood. Thus if the Debator and Demonstrator, whom we may rank as the lowest of true thinkers, knows what he has done, and how he did it, the Artist, whom we rank as the highest, knows not; must speak of Inspiration, and, in one or the other dialect, call his work the gift of a divinity.

But on the whole, "genius is ever a secret to itself;" of this old truth we have, on all sides, daily evidence. The Shakspeare takes no airs for writing Hamlet and the Tempest, understands

always be, with all System-makers and builders of logical card-castles; of which class a certain remnant must, in every age, as they do in our own, survive and build. Logic is good, but it is not the best. The Irrefragable Doctor, with his chains of induction, his corollaries, dilemmas, and other cunning logical diagrams and apparatus, will cast you a beautiful horoscope, and speak reasonable things; neverthe less your stolen jewel, which you wanted him to find you, is not forthcoming. Often by some

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