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." handsome 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.

Heyne was interred with all public solemnities: 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 authority, 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 beyond our province, and at any rate superfluous here. By the general consent of the learned in all countries, he seems to be acknowledged as the first among recent scholars; his immense reading, his lynx-eyed skill in expo

In another respect, we must also reckon him fortunate; that he lived till he had completed all his undertakings; and then departed peace-sition and emendation are no longer here confully, 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 lith 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.

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 classics; to read in the writings of the ancients, not the language alone, or even their detached opinions and records, but their spirit and character, 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 carefully 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 carried the torch of philosophy towards, if not into, the mysteries of old time. What Winkel. 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 was resting in his chair, exhausted by the fatigue 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 distinction, line of study, and rugged enthusiasm of chaelder daughter was with him,) he talked cheer-racter, were at one time, while both as yet were under fully, and at his usual time retired to rest. In the horizon, brought into partial contact. "An acthe night, the servant girl, that slept under his quaintance of another sort," says Heeren, "the young Heyne was to make in the Brühl Library, with a perapartment, 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 certain not sleep. However, he had again gone to almost wholly unknown man, whose visits could not he specially desirable for the librarians, such endless labour bed. Soon after five, he arose, as usual; he did he cost them. He seemed insatiable in reading; and

praise, surely; yet, as we must think, one not | perhaps, is not very singular among commen unfounded, and which, indeed, in all parts of tators. Europe, is becoming more and more confirmed.

For the rest, Heeren assures us, that in prac So much, in the province to which he de- tice Heyne was truly a good man; altogether voted his activity, is Heyne allowed to have just; diligent in his own honest business, and accomplished. Nevertheless, we must not as-ever ready to forward that of others; comsert that, in point of understanding and spi-passionate; though quick-tempered, placable; ritual endowment, he can be called a complete, friendly, and satisfied with simple pleasures. or even, in strict speech, a great man. Won-He delighted in roses, and always kept a bouderful perspicuity, unwearied diligence, are not quet of them in water on his desk. His house denied him; but to philosophic order, to clas- was embowered among roses; and in his old sical adjustment, clearness, polish, whether in days he used to wander through the bushes word or thought, he seldom attains; nay, many with a pair of scissors. Farther, says Heeren, times, it must be avowed, he involves himself in spite of his short sight, he was fond of the in tortures, long-winded verbosities, and stands fields and skies, and could lie for hours readbefore us little better than one of that old schooling on the grass. A kindly old man! With which his admirers boast that he displaced. strangers, hundreds of whom visited him, he He appears, we might almost say, as if he had was uniformly courteous; though latterly, bewings but could not well use them. Or, in- ing a little hard of hearing, less fit to converse. deed, it might be that, writing constantly in a In society he strove much to be polite; but dead language, he came to write heavily; work- had a habit (which ought to be general) of ing for ever on subjects where learned armor- yawning, when people spoke to him and said at-all-points cannot be dispensed with, he at nothing. last grew so habituated to his harness that he On the whole, the Germans have some reawould not walk abroad without it; nay per- son 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. the Scaligers, the Bentleys, and old illustrious As a man encrusted and encased, he exhi-men, who, though covered with academic dust bits 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 bardness, 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,

and harsh with polyglot vocables, were true men of endeavour, and fought like giants, with such weapons as they had, for the good cause? To ourselves, we confess, Heyne, highly interesting for what he did, is not less but more so for what he was. This is another of the proofs, which minds like his are from time to time sent hither to give, that the man is not the product of his circumstances, but that, in a far higher degree, the circumstances are the product of the man. While beneficed clerks and other sleek philosophers, reclining on their cushions of velvet, are demonstrating that to make a scholar and man of taste, there must be co-operation of the upper classes, society of gentlemen-commoners, and an income of four hundred a year;-arises the son of a Chemnitz weaver, and with the very wind of his stroke sweeps them from the scene. Let no man doubt the omnipotence of Nature, doubt the majesty of man's soul; let no lonely unfriended son of genius despair! Let him not despair; if he have the will, the right will, then the called for so many books, that his reception there grew power also has not been denied him. It is but rather of the coolest. It was Johann Winkelmann. Me-the artichoke that will not grow except in garditating his journey for Italy, he was then laying in preparation for it. Thus did these two men become, if not confidential, yet acquainted; who at that time, both still in darkness and poverty, could little suppose, that in a few years, they were to be the teachers of cultivated Sarope, and the ornaments of their nation."

dens; the acorn is cast carelessly abroad into the wilderness, yet it rises to be an oak; on the wild soil it nourishes itself, it defies .he .empest, and lives for a thousand years.

GERMAN PLAYWRIGHTS.*

[FOREIGN REVIEW, 1829.]

nuisance 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, metaphorically speaking, to breakfast and dine on it, have in fact nothing else to live on but that highly unnutritive victual. We ourselves are occasionally readers of German newspapers, and have often, in the spirit of Christian humanity, meditated presenting to the whole body of German editors a project, which, however, must certainly have ere now occurred to themselves, and for some reason been found inapplicable; it was, to address these correspondents of theirs, all and sundry, in plain language, and put the question: whether, on studiously surveying the Universe from their several stations, there was nothing in the Heavens 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 visible, then of course they must be left to continue in this strange state: prayers, at the same time, being put up for them in all churches.

The German Parnassus, as one of its own denizens remarks, has a rather broad summit: yet only two Dramatists are reckoned, within the last half century, to have mounted thither; -Schiller and Goethe; if we are not, on the strength of his Minna von Barnhelm and Emilie Galeotti, to account Lessing of the number. 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 of a man hung in chains! It is the figure of August von Kotzebue, and has swung there for many years, as a warning to all too audacious Playwrights, who nevertheless, as we

once the darling of theatrical Europe! This was the prince of all Playwrights, and could manufacture Plays with a speed and felicity surpassing even Edinburgh novels. For his muse, like other doves, hatched twins in the month; and the world gazed on them with an admiration too deep for mere words. What is all past or present popularity to this? Were not these Plays translated into almost every language of articulate-speaking men; acted, at least, we may literally say, in every theatre from Kamtschatka to Cadiz? Nay, did they not melt the most obdurate hearts in all countries; and, like the music of Orpheus, draw tears down iron cheeks? We ourselves have

However, leaving every able Editor to fight his own battle, we address ourselves to the task in hand: meaning here to inquire a very little into the actual state of the dramatic trade in Germany, and exhibit some detached fea-see, pay little heed to it. Ill-fated Kotzebue, tures of it to the consideration of our readers. For, seriously speaking, low as this province may be, it is a real, active, and ever-enduring province of the literary republic; nor can the pursuit of many men, even though it be a profitless and foolish pursuit, ever be without claim to some attention from us, either in the way of furtherance or of censure and correction. Our avowed object is to promote the sound study of foreign literature; which study, like all other earthly undertakings, has its negative as well as its positive side. We have already, as occasion served, borne testimony to the merits of various German poets, and must now say a word on certain German poetasters; hoping that it may be chiefly a re-known the flintiest men, who professed to have gard to the former which has made us take even this slight notice of the latter: for the bad is in itself of no value, and only worth describing lest it be mistaken for the good. At the same time, let no reader tremble, as if we meant to overwhelm him, on this occasion, with a whole mountain of dramatic lumber, poured forth in torrents, like shot-rubbish, from the play-house-garrets, where it is mouldering and evaporating into nothing, silently and without harm to any one. Far be this from us! Nay, our own knowledge of this subject is in the highest degree limited; and, indeed, to exhaust it, or attempt discussing it with scientific precision, would be an impossible enterprise. What man is there that could assort the whole furniture of Milton's Limbo of Vanity; or where is the Hallam that would think it worth his while to write us the

wept over them, for the first time in their lives. So was it twenty years ago; how stands it today? Kotzebue, lifted up on the hollow balloon of popular applause, thought wings had been given him that he might ascend to the Immortals: gay he rose, soaring, sailing, as with supreme dominion; but in the rarer azure deep, his windbag burst asunder, or the arrows of keen archers pierced it; and so at last we find him a compound-pendulum, vibrating in the character of scarecrow, to guard from forbidden fruit! O ye Playwrights, and literary quacks of every feather, weep over Kotzebue and over yourselves! Know that the loudest roar of the million is not fame; that the windbag, are ye mad enough to mount it, will burst, or be shot through with arrows, and your bones too shall act as scarecrows.

But, quitting this idle allegorical vein, let us

at length proceed in plain English, and as be- | to which he belongs in the genus Playwright. seems mere prose Reviewers, to the work laid out for us. Among the hundreds of German dramatists, as they are called, three individuals, already known to some British readers, and prominent from all the rest in Germany, may fitly enough stand here as representatives of the whole Playwright class; whose various craft and produce the procedure of these three may in some small degree serve to illustrate. Of Grillparzer, therefore, and Klingemann, and Mülner, in their order.

But it is a universal feature of him that he attempts, by prosaic, and as it were mechanical means, to accomplish an end which, except by poetical genius, is absolutely not to be accomplished. For the most part, he has some knack, or trick of the trade, which by close inspection can be detected, and so the heart of his mystery be seen into. He may have one trick, or many; and the more cunningly he can disguise these, the more perfect is he as a craftsman; for were the public once to penetrate into this his slight of hand, it were all over with him,-Othello's occupation were gone. No conjuror, when we once understand his method of fire-eating, can any longer pass for a true thaumaturgist, or even entertain us in his proper character of quack, though he should eat Mount Vesuvius itself. But happily for Playwrights and others, the Public is a dim-eyed animal; gullible to almost all lengths,-nay, which often seems to prefer being gulled.

Franz Grillparzer seems to be an Austrian; which country is reckoned nowise fertile in poets; a circumstance that may perhaps have contributed a little to his own rather rapid celebrity. Our more special acquaintance with Grillparzer is of very recent date; though his name and samples of his ware have for some time been hung out, in many British and foreign Magazines, often with testimonials which might have beguiled less timeworn customers. Neither, after all, have we found there testimonials falser than other such are, Of Grillparzer's peculiar knack, and recipe but rather not so false; for, indeed, Grillparzer | for play-making, there is not very much to be is a most inoffensive man, nay positively said. He seems to have tried various kinds rather meritorious; nor is it without reluctance of recipes, in his time; and, to his credit be it that we name him under this head of Play-spoken, seems little contented with any of wrights, and not under that of Dramatists, them. By much the worst Play of his, that we which he aspires to. Had the law with regard to mediocre poets relaxed itself since Horace's time, all had been well with Grillparzer; for undoubtedly there is a small vein of tenderness and grace running through him, a seeming modesty also, and real love of his art, which gives promise of better things. But gods and men and columns are still equally rigid in that unhappy particular of mediocrity, even pleasing mediocrity; and no scene or line is yet known to us of Grillparzer's which exhibits any thing more. Non concessere, therefore, is his sentence for the present; and the louder his well-meaning admirers extol him, the more emphatically should it be pronounced and repeated. Nevertheless Grillparzer's claim to the title of Playwright is perhaps more his misfortune than his crime. Living in a country where the Drama engrosses so much attention, he has been led into attempting it, without any decisive qualification for such an enterprise; and so his allotment of talent, which might have done good service in some prose department, or even in the sonnet, elegy, song, or other outlying province of Poetry, is driven, as it were, in spite of fate, to write Plays, which, though regularly divided into scenes and separate speeches, are essentially monological; and though swarming with characters, too often express only one character, and that no very extraordinary one, the character of Franz Grillparzer himself. What is an increase of misfortune, too, he has met with applause in this career, which therefore

have seen, is the Ahnfrau (Ancestress); a deep tragedy of the Castle Spectre sort; the whole mechanism of which was discernible and condemnable at a single glance. It is nothing but the old Story of Fate; an invisible Nemesis visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation; a method almost as common and sovereign in German Art, at this day, as the method of steam is in British mechanics; and of which we shall anon have more occasion to speak. In his Preface, Grillparzer endeavours to palliate or deny the fact of his being a Schicksal-Dichter (Fate-Tragedian); but to no purpose; for it is a fact grounded on the testimony of the seven senses: however, we are glad to observe that, with this one trial, he seems to have abandoned the Fate-line, and taken into better, at least into different ones. With regard to the Ahnfrau itself, we may remark that few things struck us so much as this little observation of Count Borotins, occurring, in the middle of the dismalest night-thoughts, so unexpectedly as follows:

BERTHA.

Und der Himmel, sternelos,
Starrt aus leeren Augenhöhlen
In das ungeheure Grab
Schwarz herab!

GRAF.
Wie sich doch die Stunden dehnen!
Was ist wohl die Glocke, Bertha?

he is likely to follow farther and farther, let BERTHA (is just condoling with him, in these words) ~

nature and his stars say to it what they will.

The characteristic of a Playwright is that he writes in Prose, which Prose he palms, probably, first on himself, and then on the simpler part of the public, for Poetry: and the manner, in which he effects this legerdemain, constitutes his specific distinction, fixes the species

And the welkin, starless,

Glares from empty eye-holes,
Black down on that boundless grave!

COUNT.

How the hours do linger!
What o'clock is't, prithee, Bertha