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nay often a and want of sense in short the muse herself it is said like a passionate and rather but tumultuous and but half civilized muse a at best we can only love her with a sort of e en she tears a passion to rags and state at german in her vehemence without meaning and to the o of all literary decorum now in all this there is a certain degree of truth if any man will upon taking s and s and the works of the younger and above all the everlasting as his specimens of german literature he may establish many things black forests and the glories of and horror the and the charmed shall not be wanting boisterous also with huge whiskers and the most cat o mountain aspect tear stained the man ghosts and the like suspicious characters will be found in abundance we are little read in this bowl and dagger but we do understand it to have been at one time rather diligently cultivated though at present it seems to be mostly as other forms of 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 among men perhaps not less than five hundred volumes of such stuff could still be collected from the book 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 labor under a degree of ignorance mental and read not but not to learn but to be amused but is this fact so very new to us or what should we think of a critic that selected his specimens of british literature from the castle mr s or even the mysteries of and or the modem or would he judge rightly of our dramatic taste if he took his from mr s tom and and told his readers as he might truly do that no play had ever enjoyed such on the english stage as this most classic performance t a we think not in like till some of ao merit shall so write uie and he approved of by critics of acknowledged merit among them or at least for himself some of or among the million we can prove nothing by such instances that there is so perverse an author or so blind a critic in the compass of german literature we have ao hesitation in but farther men of deeper views and with regard to works of really standard character we find though not the same a objection repeated s it is said and are full of bad taste also with respect to the taste in which they are written we shall have occasion to say somewhat er meanwhile we may be permitted to remark that the would have more force did it seem to from a more mature of the subject we have heard few english of such works in which the first condition of an approach to accuracy was complied with a 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 for passes with many of us for a mere tale of and art magic but it would scarcely be more to consider hamlet as depending for its main interest on the ghost that walks in it than to regard as a pro of this sort for the present therefore this ti m 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 taste is from ours than that it is worse nay with regard even to difference we should scarcely reckon it to be of moment two nations that agree in as the highest of all poets can differ in no essential principle if understood one another that relates to poetry this of our attained a certain degree of with itself one thing is thought to throw light on another nay a quiet theory been to explain the whole the cause of this bad taste we are assured lies in the condition of the authors these it seems are rally very poor the law of the country 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 apart from the truth of these and in respect of the theory itself we confess there is in the face of it that us is it then so certain that taste and riches are connected that truth of feel ing must ever be preceded by weight of purse and the eyes be dim for universal and eternal beauty till they have long rested on gilt and costly furniture to the great body of mankind this were heavy news for of the thou sand scarcely one is rich or connected with the rich nine kindred and ninety nine have always been poor and must always be so we take the liberty of questioning the whole we think that for acquiring true poetic taste or association with the rich are distinctly among the minor that in fact they have or no concern with the matter this we shall now endeavor to make probable taste if it mean anything but a paltry must a general to truth and a sense to discern and a heart to love and reverence all beauty order goodness or in whatsoever forms and they are to be seen surely as its chief condition not any given external rank or but a finely mind harmony with its into and of vision above all s kindled into love and generous is culture of this sort found exclusively among the	37
higher ranks we believe it proceeds less from without than thin 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 and self seeking be he poor or rich in all ages the humble a and lord of nothing but his harp and liis own free soul had of those glories while to the proud baron in his halls they were unknown nor is there still any aristocratic of judgment more than of genius and as to that science of 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 as the highest it becomes a vice this is an old truth yet ever new ion and 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 such is our of the case but how stands it with the facts are the and truth of sense manifested by the artist found in most instances to be to his wealth and elevation of acquaintance arc they found to have any perceptible relation either with the one or the other we imagine not whose taste in painting for instance is truer and finer than s and was not he a poor color outwardly the meanest of where again we might ask lay tb s tent and what generous peer him by the hand and unfolded to him the open secret of the universe teaching him that this was beautiful and that not so was he not a peasant by birth and by fortune something lower and was it not thought much even in the height of his reputation that allowed him equal patronage witli the and 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 and liis 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 modem times how stands it th the two parties with the gay triumphant men of fashion and the poor 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 might wish blotted from the first are there not in the others whole pages and scenes which with heart he would hurry into deepest night this too observe respects not their genius but their culture not their of beauties but their of 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 or other to fame the influence of rank has no exclusive or even special concern for men of action for public political writers the case may be different but of such we speak not at present neither do we speak of and the crowd of men to whom fashionable life sometimes gives an external s xi by a of we speak of men who from amid the perplexed and conflicting elements of their every day existence are to form themselves into 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 with all forms of mortal being to do it justice and to draw instruction from it but his light will come from a region or he for ever in darkness into a man of v rs de or at best to be a or a still less can we think that he is to be viewed as a that his excellence will be regulated by his pay sufficiently provided for from within he has need of little from without food and and an home will be given him in the land and with these while the kind earth is round him and the everlasting heaven is over him the world has little more that it can give is he poor so also were and so was samuel johnson so was john milton shall we reproach him with his poverty and infer that because he is poor h likewise be worthless god forbid that the time should ever come when he too shall esteem riches the of good the spirit of has a wide empire but it cannot and must not be worshipped in the holy of nay does not the heart of every genuine of literature however mean his sphere instinctively deny this principle as either to himself or another is it not rather true as d has said that for every man of letters who deserves that name the motto and the will be freedom truth and even this same poverty and that if he fear the last the two first can never be made sure to him we have stated these things to bring the question some of oe man what nearer its real basis not for the sake of the who need the admission of them the german au cure not poor	37
neither are they excluded from association with the wealthy and well bom on the contrary we scruple not to say that in both these respects they are considerably better situated than our own their it is true cannot pay as ours do yet there as here a man lives by his writings and to compare j with johnson and d somewhat better there than here no case like our own noble s has met us in their and are much in german than in english history but farther and what is far more important from the number of of art and other literary or scientific institutions of a public or private nature we question whether the chance which a man of letters has before him of obtaining some permanent appointment some independent existence is not a hundred to one in favor of the german compared with the englishman this is a item and indeed the of all for it will be granted that for the 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 him daily and to sink from an artist into a nay so precarious and every way unsatisfactory must his and concerns become that too many of his class cannot even attain the praise of common honesty as there is no doubt a spirit of as we have asserted which can sustain this too but few indeed have the spirit of 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 s writings appeared not to want more wealth whom wealth could not either to this hand or that from their pre ap pointed aims n her must we think so hardly of the german nobility as to believe them to genius or of opinion that a patent from the king is so superior to a patent direct from almighty god a fair proportion of the authors are themselves men of rank we mention only as of our own time and notable in other respects the two and let us not be unjust to this class of persons it is a poor error to figure them as up in avoiding the most man of a lower station and for their own themselves avoided by all truly men on the we should change our notion of the german nobleman that ancient thirsty sixteen baron who still in our minds never did exist in such perfection and is now as extinct as our own squire western his is a man of other culture other aims and other habits we question whether there is an aristocracy in europe which taken as a whole both in a public and private capacity more honors art and literature and does more both in public and private to encourage them excluded from society what we would ask was s s s s society has not by birth a been his year the companion not of but of princes and for half his life a minister of state and is not this man in so many far deeper qualities known also and felt to be in of breeding and bearing fit not to learn of princes in this respect but by the example of his daily life to teach them we hear much of the spirit displayed among the better classes in england their high estimation of the arts and generous patronage of the artist we rejoice to state op hear it we it is and will and we hope that a great change has place among since the time when bishop write of them they are for the most part the t instructed and the hast of any of their rank i ever went among nevertheless let us to ourselves no praise in this particular other nations the arts and cherish their as well as we nay while learning from us in many matters we suspect the might even teach us somewhat in regard to this at all events the pity which certain of our authors express for the civil of their brethren in tiiat country is from such a quarter a superfluous feeling nowhere let us rest assured is genius more devoutly honored than there by ranks of men from and hers up to and kings it was but last year at the diet of the empire passed an act in favor of one individual poet the final edition of s works was 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 a visit from the sovereign of in person to the same venerable man a mere ceremony perhaps but one which almost to us the era o the antique and the kings this therefore it would seem is not supported by facts and so returns to its original elements the causes it are impossible but what is still more fatal the it to account for has in reality no existence we to deny that the are in taste even as a nation as a public taking one thing with another we imagine they may stand comparison with any vol i i s writings of their as writers as may decidedly court it true there is a mass of awkwardness and false in the lower regions of their literature but is not bad taste in such regions of 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 with some of ambition which drives it into	37
and cultivated jew the history of is interesting in itself and of encouragement to all lovers of self improvement at thirteen he was a wandering beggar without health without home almost without ft language for the of broken hebrew and pro german he be called one at middle age he could write was a man of wealth and breeding and an the teachers of his age like pope he abode by his original creed though often to change it indeed the grand problem of his life was to better the inward and outward condition of his own ill fitted people for whom he actually accomplished much benefit he was a mild shrewd and worthy man and might well love and lor his own was he was a of s indeed a pupil fi r having accidentally met him at recognised the spirit that lay struggling under such and generously undertook to help him by teaching the poor jew a little greek he him fi m the and the the two were afterwards co in s the first german review of any character which however in the hands of himself it subsequently lost s works have mostly been translated into french i m s among ke ft aad popular of tke the case is the same and a multitude of lesser men whatever they might want certainly are not with bad ta e nay perhaps of all they are the least with it a certain ear light elegance of a higher nature than french elegance it might be yet to the of au very deep or genial qualities was the excellence they after and for the most part in a fair measure attained they writers o the same or perhaps an earlier period than any other foreigners apart from pope whose ence is enough un known perhaps to any of them might otherwise have seemed their models gk also would rank them perhaps in regard to true poetic genius at their for none of them has left us a of thou in regard to judgment knowledge general talent his place would scarcely be so high the same thing holds in general and with fewer draw backs of the somewhat later id more energetic race de the school in m the saxon to which and directly belonged and most of those others indirectly the two are m i whom might measure with his scale and as strictly as he pleased of we speak not here they are men of another stature and form of movement whom s scale and could not measure without difficulty or rather not at all to say that such m n wrote with taste of this sort were saying little for this forms not the but the basis in their tion of style a quality not to be as an excellence but to be understood as indispensable as there by necessity and like a thing of course of at re in truth for it must be spoken r are so widely y in this ths t their views of it are not only dim and perplexed but altogether imaginary and do it is proposed to school the in the bet of taste and the are already busied with their far from being behind other nations in the o of criticism it is a fact for which w refer to au competent judges that are and even considerably in advance we state vi hat is already known to a great part of europe to be true criticism has assumed a new form in germany it pro on other principles and to itself a higher aim the grand question is not now a question concerning the qualities of the of the fit ness of sentiments the general logical in a work of art as it was some half century ago among most critics neither is it a question mainly of a to be answered by discovering and the peculiar nature the poet from his poetry as is usual with the best of our own critics at present but it is not indeed exclusively but of those two other questions properly and ultimately a question on the essence and peculiar ufe of the poetry itself the first of these questions as we see it aa for instance in the of johnson and relates strictly speaking to the garment of poetry the second indeed to its and material existence a much higher point but only the last to its soul and spiritual ex 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 composed sentences and struck out but t what far finer and more mysterious organized his and gave life and individuality to his arid and his hamlet wherein lies that life how have ous they attained that shape and individuality whence that fire which their whole and at least in like a thing into all hearts are these of his not only but true nay truer than reality itself since the essence of reality is forth in them under more expressive what is this unity of theirs and can our deeper inspection discern it to be and existing by necessity because each work springs as it were from the general elements of all thought grows up into form and 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 eloquence creation and not figured passion these are the questions for the critic criticism stands like an between the inspired the between the j and those who hear the melody of his words and catch some glimpse of their material meaning but understand not their deeper import she to open for us this deeper import to clear our sense that it may discern the pure brightness of this eternal beauty and	37
recognise it as heavenly under all forms where it looks forth and reject as of the earth all forms be their material splendor what it may where no of that other shines through this is the task of criticism as the it and how do they accomplish this task by a vague clothed in gorgeous mystic by vehement tumultuous to the poet and his poetry by and drawn from and and all terrors and glories whereby in truth it is rendered clear both that the poet is an extremely great poet and also that the critic s of understanding by these has unhappily melted into in this manner state of literature do the proceed but by scientific inquiry by appeal to principles which whether correct or not have been patiently and by long investigation from the highest and regions of philosophy for this finer portion of their criticism is now also embodied in systems and standing so far as reach distinct and no less than on their much foundation the systems of and that this new criticism is a complete much more a science we are far from meaning to affirm the theories of vary in external aspect according to the varied habits of the individual and can at best only be regarded as to the truth or of it each critic representing it as it more or less perfectly with the other intellectual of his own mind and of different classes of minds that resemble his nor can we here undertake to inquire what degree of such i to the truth there is in each or all of these writers or in and the two who especially the latter have labored so in these various opinions and so successfully in and the best spirit of them first in their own country and now also in several others thus much however we will say that we reckon the mere circumstance of such a science being in existence a ground of the highest consideration and the best attention of all inquiring men for we should widely if we thought that this new tendency of critical science to germany alone it is a european tendency and springs from the general condition of intellect in europe we ourselves have all for the last thirty years more or less distinctly felt the necessity of such a science witness the neglect into which our and have silently fallen ur increased and increasing admiration not only of s miscellaneous but of all his and of all who e any portion of his spirit our whether pope was a poet and so much vague effort on the part of our best critics everywhere to express some still idea concerning the nature of true poetry as if they felt in their hearts that a pure glory nay a belonged to it for which they had as yet no name and no intellectual form but in italy too in france itself the same thing is visible their grand so hotly urged between the and the in which the are assumed much too loosely on all hands as the and of the latter shows us sufficiently what spirit is at work in that long literature doubtless this the elements will at length settle into clearness both there and here as in germany it has already in a great measure done and perhaps a more serene and genial poetic day is everywhere to be expected with some confidence how much the example of the may have to teach us in this particular needs no farther the authors and first of this new critical doctrine were at one time contemptuously named the new school nor was it till after a war of all the few good heads in the nation with all the many bad ones had ended as such wars must ever do that these critical principles were gen it began in s for the a series of philosophic by and descended there unexpectedly like a flood of ethereal fire on the german literary world all that was noble into new life but visiting the ancient empire of with astonishment and unknown pangs the agitation was extreme scarcely since the age of has there been such stir and strife in the intellect of germany indeed scarcely since that age has there been a if we consider its ultimate bearings on the best and noblest of literature adopted and their found to be no or new but the ancient primitive catholic of which all that had any living light in them were but members and subordinate modes it is indeed the most sacred article of this creed to preach and practice f literature of the world has been cultivated by the and to every literature they have studied to give due honor and no doubts occupy alone the station in the poetical but there is space in it for all true singers out of every age and and the of live in union with the and ancient story of the west the mystic gloom of the lurid fire of the light of the clear icy glitter of all are acknowledged and nay in the celestial fore court an abode has been appointed for the and that no spark of inspiration no tone of mental music might remain the study foreign nations in a spirit which deserves to be it is their hon t endeavor to understand each with its own peculiarities in its own special manner of existing not that they may praise it or censure it or attempt to alter it but simply that they may see this manner of existing as the nation itself sees it and so in whatever worth or beauty it has brought into being of all accordingly the german has the best as well as the most men like have not this task of there are three entire admitted to be good and we know interests of mankind so important as this which	37
stock and the of a and a were silently by the style of the edifice which lent them its concealment man has lost liis dignity but art has saved it and preserved it for him in expressive truth still lives in fiction and from the copy the original will be restored but how is the artist to guard himself from the of his time which on every side him by its let him look upwards to his dignity and the law not down state of literature wards to his and his want free alike from the activity that to impress its traces on the fleeting and from the spirit of enthusiasm that measures hy the scale of perfection the meagre product of reality let him leave to mere understanding which is here at home the province of the actual while he hy the possible with the necessary to produce the ideal this let him and express in fiction and truth it in the sport of his imagination and the earnest of his actions it in all sensible and spiritual forms and cast it silently into everlasting time still higher are s notions on this subject or rather expressed in higher terms for the central principle is the same both in the philosopher and the poet according to there is a divine idea the visible universe which visible universe is indeed but its symbol and sensible having in itself no meaning or even true existence independent of it to the mass of men this divine idea of the world lies hidden yet to discern it to seize it and live wholly in it is the condition of all genuine virtue knowledge freedom and the end therefore of all spiritual effort in every age literary men are the appointed of this divine idea a perpetual we might say standing forth generation generation as the and living types of god s everlasting wisdom to show it and it in their writings and actions in particular form as their own particular times require it in for each age by the law of its nature is different from every other age and demands a different representation of this divine idea the essence of which is the same in all so that the literary man of one century is only by and re interpretation to the wants of another but in every century every man who labors be it in what die des on the education of man s miscellaneous writings province he may to teach others must first have possessed himself of this divine idea or at least be with his whole and his whole soul striving after it if without possessing it or striving after it he abide diligently by some material practical department of knowledge he may indeed still be says in his usual rugged way a useful but should he attempt to deal with the whole and to become an he is in of language nothing he is an between the possessor of the idea and the man who feels himself supported and carried on by the common reality of things in his fruitless endeavor after the idea he has neglected to acquire the craft of taking part in this reality and so between two worlds without to either elsewhere he adds there is still from another point of view another division in our notion of the literary man and one to us of immediate application namely either the literary man has already laid hold of the whole divine idea in so far as it can be comprehended by man or perhaps of a special portion of this its part which truly is not possible without at least a clear of the whole he has already laid hold of it penetrated and made it entirely clear to himself so that it has become a possession at all times in the same shape to his view and a part of his personality in that case he is a completed and literary man a man who has studied or else he is still struggling and striving to make the idea in general or that particular portion and point of it from which he for his part means to penetrate the whole entirely clear to himself detached of light already spring forth on him from all sides and disclose a higher world before him but they do not yet unite themselves into an whole they vanish from his view as as they came he cannot yet bring them under obedience to his freedom in that case he is a and self literary man a student that it be actually the idea which is possessed or after is common to both should the striving aim merely state of german at the outward form and the o learned culture is then produced when the circle is gone round the completed when it is not gone round the the latter is more tolerable than the former for there is still room to hope in continuing his travel he may at some future point be seized by the idea but of the first all hope is over from this bold and principle the duties of the literary man are with scientific precision and stated in all their and grandeur with an austere more impressive than any s theory may be called in question and readily enough but the sublime of his sentiments will find some response in many a heart we must add the conclusion of his first discourse as a farther illustration of his manner in of the sort like ours of to day which all the rest too must resemble the are wont to censure first their severity very on the good natured supposition that the speaker is not aware how much his must us that we have but frankly to let him know this and then doubtless he will himself and soften his statements thus we said above that a man	37
who after literary culture had not arrived at knowledge of the divine idea or did not strive towards it was in strict speech nothing and down we said that he was a this is in the style of those expressions by which philosophers give such offence now looking away firom the present case that we may front the in its general shape i remind you that this species of character without decisive force to all respect for truth seeks merely to bargain and something out of her whereby itself on easier terms may attain to some consideration but truth which once for all is as she is and cannot alter aught of her nature goes on her way and there remains for her in regard to those who desire her not y des on the nature of the literary man y a course of lectures delivered at in s miscellaneous because she is true nothing else bat to leave them standing as if they had never addressed her then farther of this sort are wont to be as unintelligible thus i figure to myself you gentlemen but some completed literary man of the second species whose eye the here entered upon chanced to meet as coming forward doubting this way and that and at last exclaiming the idea the divine idea that which lies at the bottom of appearance what pray may this mean of such a i would inquire in turn what pray may this question mean investigate it strictly it means in most cases nothing more than this under what other names and in what other do i already know this same thing which thou by so strange and to me so unknown a symbol and to this again in most cases the only suitable reply were thou this thing not at all under this nor under any other name and thou arrive at the knowledge of it thou must even now begin at the beginning to make study thereof and then most under that name by which it is first presented to thee with such a notion of the artist it were a strange did criticism show itself or in the of his art for light on this point we might refer to the writings of almost any individual among the german critics take for instance the t f the two a work too of their younger years and say whether in depth clearness minute and patient fidelity these characters have often been surpassed or the import and poetic worth of so many poets and poems vividly and accurately brought to view as an instance of a much higher kind we might refer to s criticism of hamlet in his this truly is what may be called the poetry of criticism for it is in some sort also a art at least to under a different shape the existing product of the poet painting to the intellect what already lay painted to the heart and the imagination nor is it poetry alone that criticism watches with of literature such loving the the the musical arts all modes of representing or addressing the highest nature of man are acknowledged as younger sisters of poetry and with like care s history of art is known by to all readers and of those who know it by inspection many may have wondered why such a work has not been added to our own literature to instruct our own and painters on this subject of the arts we cannot withhold the following little sketch of s as a specimen of criticism in what we consider a superior style it is of an imaginary landscape painter and his views of scenery it will bear to be studied for there is no word without its meaning he in representing the cheerful repose of lake prospects where houses in friendly themselves in the clear wave seem as if bathing in its depths shores encircled with green hills behind which rise forest mountains and icy peaks of the tone of in such scenes is gay clear the distances as if with softening which from watered hollows and river valleys up and and their no less is the master s art to be praised in views from valleys lying nearer the high where slope down overgrown and fresh streams roll hastily along by the foot of rocks with exquisite skill in the deep shady trees of tlie he gives the character of the several species satisfying us in the form of the whole as in the structure of the branches and the details of the leaves no less so in the fresh green witli its manifold where soft airs appear as if us with breath and the lights as if thereby put in motion in the middle ground his lively green tone grows fainter by degrees and at last on the more distant mountain tops passing into weak violet itself with the blue of the sky but our artist is above all happy in his paintings of high regions in seizing the simple greatness and stillness of their character the s miscellaneous wide on the where sc stand from the grassy carpet and from high foaming rush down whether he relieve his with cattle or the narrow winding rocky path with and laden pack horses he all with equal truth and richness still introduced in the proper place and not in too great they and these scenes without interrupting without peaceful solitude the execution a master s hand easy with a few sure strokes and yet complete in his later pieces he employed glittering english permanent on paper these pictures accordingly are of blooming tone yet at the same time strong and his views of deep mountain where round and round nothing fronts us but dead rock where in the abyss by its bold arch the wild stream are indeed of less attraction than the former yet their truth us we admire	37
the great effect of the whole produced at so little cost by a few expressive strokes and masses of local colors with no less accuracy of character can he represent the regions of the where neither tree nor any more appears but only amid the rocky teeth and snow a few sunny spots clothe themselves with a soft and and inviting as he colors spots he has here wisely to introduce herds for these regions give food only to the and a perilous employment to the wild we have extracted this passage from s last novel the perusal of his whole works would show among many other more important facts that criticism also is a science of which he is master that if ever any man had studied art in all its branches and bear the poor wild hay man of the whose trade is on the brow of the abyss to the common grass from and shelves to which the cattle dare not climb s teu state of german literature from its origin in the depths of the spirit to its finish on the of the painter on the lips of the poet or under the finger of the he was that man a nation which such studies nay requires and rewards them cannot wherever its defects be in judgment of the arts but a question still remains what has been the fruit of this its high and just judgment on these matters what has criticism it to the bringing forth of good works how do its poems and its poets correspond with so lofty a standard we answer that on this point also germany may rather court investigation than fear it there are poets in that country who belong to a nobler than most nations have to show in these days a class entirely unknown to some nations and for the last two centuries rare in all we have no hesitation in stating that we see in certain of the best german poets and those too of our own time something which associates them or nearly we say not but which does associate them with the masters of art the saints of poetry long since departed and as we thought without from the earth but in the hearts of all generations and yet living to all by the memory of what they did and were glances we do seem to find of that ethereal glory which looks on us in its full brightness from the of from the tempest of and in broken but purest and still heart piercing beams struggling through the gloom of long ages from the of and the of the this is that heavenly spirit which best seen in the of poetry but spreading likewise over all the thoughts and actions of an age has given us in court and camp in policy in divinity in philosophy and and in song all s mi writings hearts that know this know it to be the highest and that in poetry or elsewhere it alone is true and in that any however feeble of this divine spirit is in german poetry we are aware that we place it above the existing poetry of any other to prove this bold assertion logical arguments were at all times and in the present circumstances of the c more than usually so neither will any extract or specimen help us for it is not in parts but in whole poems that the spirit of a true poet is to be seen we can therefore only name such men as and above all and ask any reader who has learned to admire wisely our own literature of queen elizabeth s age to these writers also to study them till he feels that he has understood them and justly estimated both their light and darkness and then to pronounce whether it is not in some degree as we have said are there not tones here of that old melody are there not glimpses of that serene soul that calm harmonious strength that smiling earnestness that love and faith and humanity of nature do these foreign of ours still exhibit in their characters as men something of that sterling that union of majesty with which we must ever in those our spiritual fathers and do their works in the new form of this century show forth that old not consistent only with the science the precision the of these days but wedded to them with them and shining through them like their life and soul might it in truth almost seem to us in reading the prose of as if we were reading that of milton and of milton writing with the culture of this time french clearness with old english depth and of his poetry may it indeed be said that it is poetry and yet the poetry of our own generation an ideal world and yet state of german literature the world we even now live in these questions we must leave candid and to answer for themselves only that the secret is not to be found on the surface that the first reply is likely to be in the but with of this sort by no means likely to be the final one to ourselves we confess it has long so appeared the poetry of for instance we reckon to be poetry sometimes in the very highest sense of that word yet it is no but something actually present and before us no looking back into an antique fairy land divided by from the real world as it lies about us and within us but a looking round upon that real world itself now rendered to our eyes and once more become a solemn temple where the spirit of beauty still dwells and under new to be worshipped as of old with the of days pass only for what they are we have no or magic in the common	37
with the of this now of that occupied the whole popular literature of germany till near the end of the last century these were the the chivalry play writers and other gorgeous and outrageous persons as whole pleasantly the literally n they dealt in mysterious of frenzy and they with to the ages many a keep and man at arms for in reflection as in action they studied to be strong vehement rapidly of battle tumult love madness heroism and despair there was no end this literary period is called the und the storm and stress period for great indeed was the woe and fury of these power men beauty to their mind seemed with strength all passion was poetical so it were but fierce enough their head moral virtue was pride their beau of manhood was some of milton s devil they s plan and instead of providence did directly the opposite raging with extreme animation against fate in general because it free virtue and with clenched hands or sounding defiance towards the vault of heaven these power men are gone too and with few exceptions save the three above named their works have already followed them the application of all this to our own literature is too obvious to require much have we not also had our power men and will not as in to us likewise a a clearer and a truer time come round our was in his youth but what and had he oi in theirs yet the author of wrote and and he who began wi the robbers ended with tell with longer life all things were to have been hoped for from for he loved truth in his inmost heart and would have discovered at last that his and were not true it was otherwise appointed but with one man all hope does not die if this way is the right one we too shall find it the poetry of germany meanwhile we cannot but regard as well deserving to be studied in this as in s miscellaneous of view it is distinctly an advance beyond any other known to us whether on the right path or not may be still uncertain but a path selected by and and by and is surely worth serious examination for the rest need we add that it is study for self instruction for purposes of imitation that we recommend among the of poetical sins is imitation for if every man must have his own way of thought and his own way of expressing it much more every nation but of danger on that side in the country of and milton there seems little to be feared we come now to the second grand objection against german literature its in treating of a subject itself so vague and dim it were well if we tried in the first place to settle with more accuracy what each of the two parties really means to say or to contradict regarding it is a word in the mouths of all yet of the hundred perhaps not one has ever asked himself what this epithet signified in his mind or where the boundary between true science and this land of was to be laid down examined strictly in most cases will turn out to be merely with not understood yet surely there may be haste and here for it is well known that to the understanding of anything two conditions are equally required in the thing itself being no whit more indispensable than intelligence in the of it i am bound to find you in reasons sir said johnson but not in brains a speech of the most shocking yet truly enough expressing the state of the case it may throw some light on this question if we remind our readers of the following fact in the field of human investigation there are objects of two sorts first the i state of german literature including not only such as are material and may be seen by the bodily eye but all such likewise as may be represented in a san before the mind s eye or in any way pictured there and secondly the or such as are not only unseen by human eyes but as cannot be seen by any eye not objects of sense at all not capable in short of being pictured or in the mind or in any way represented by a shape either without the mind or within it if any man shall here turn upon us and assert that are no such invisible objects that whatever cannot be so pictured or meaning is nothing and the science that relates to it nothing we shall regret the circumstance we shall request him however to consider seriously and deeply within himself what he means simply by these two words and own and whether he finds that visible shape and true existence are here also one and the same if he still persist in denial we have nothing for it but to wish him good speed on his own separate path of inquiry and he and we will agree to differ on subject of as on so many more important ones now whoever has a material and visible object to treat be it of natural science political philosophy or any such and sensibly existing department may represent it to his own mind and convey it to the minds of others as it were by a direct more complex indeed than a but still with the same sort of precision and provided his be complete and the same both to himself and his reader he may reason of it and it with the clearness and in some sort the certainty of itself if he do not so reason of it this must be for want of comprehension to image out the whole of it or of distinctness to convey the same whole to his reader the of the two	37
are different the conclusions of s miscellaneous the one from those of the other and the obscurity here provided the reader be a man of sound judgment and due results from on the part of the writer in such a case the latter is justly regarded as a of imperfect intellect he more than he can carry he what with ordinary faculty might be rendered clear he is not a mystic but what is much worse a another matter it is however when the object to be treated of belongs to the invisible and class cannot be pictured out even by the writer himself much less in ordinary set before the reader in this case it is evident the difficulties of comprehension are in an hundred fold here it will require long patient and skilful effort both from the writer and the reader before the two can so much as speak together before the former can make known to the latter not how the matter stands but even what the matter i which they have to investigate in concert he must devise new means of explanation describe conditions of mind in which this invisible idea the false that it the false shows that may be mistaken for it the glimpses of it that appear elsewhere in short strive by a thousand well devised methods to guide his reader up to the perception of it in all which moreover tlie reader must and with him if any fruit is to come of their mutual endeavor should the latter take up his ground too early and affirm to himself that now he has seized what he still has not seized that this and nothing else is the thing aimed at by his teacher the consequences are plain enough darkness and contradiction between the two the writer has written for another man and this reader after long provocation quarrels with him finally and him as a mystic nevertheless after all these we shall not hesitate to admit that there is in the german mind a tendency german literature to m in properly so called as perhaps there is unless carefully guarded against in all minds tempered like theirs it is a fault but one hardly from the we admire most in them a simple tender and devout nature seized by some touch of divine truth and of this perhaps under some rude enough symbol is with it into a of unutterable thoughts wild of splendor dart to and fro in the eye of the but the vision will not abide with him and yet he feels that its light is light from heaven and precious to him beyond all price a simple nature a george fox or a jacob ignorant of all the ways of men of the dialect in which they speak or the forms by which they think is laboring with a poetic a religious idea which like all such ideas must express itself by word and act or the heart it dwells in yet how shall he speak how shall he pour forth into other souls that of which his own soul is full even to bursting he cannot speak to us he knows not our state cannot make known to us his own his words are an inexplicable a speech in an whether there is meaning in it to the speaker himself and how much or how true we shall never ascertain for it is not in the language of men but of one man who had not learned the language of men and with himself the key to its full interpretation was lost from amongst us these are men who either know not clearly their own meaning or at least cannot put it forth in of thought whereby others with whatever difficulty may apprehend it was their meaning to themselves of it will yet shine through how and unconsciously it may have been delivered was it still wavering and obscure no science could have delivered it wisely in either case much more in the last they merit and obtain the name of to they are a ready and cheap prey but sober s miscellaneous persons understand that pure evil is as unknown in this lower universe as pure good and that even in of an honest and deep feeling heart there may be much to and of the rest more to pity than to mock but it is not to for or or the school of and flood that we have here undertaken neither is it on such persons that the charge of brought against the mainly rests is little known am ng us much as he deserves knowing not at all nor is it understood that in their own country these men rank higher than they do or might do with ourselves the chief in germany it would appear are the philosophers and with these is the chosen seat of these are its from which it doth ray out darkness over the earth among a certain class of does a frantic exaggeration in sentiment a crude fever dream in c anywhere break forth it is directly as and the moon struck is for the time silenced and put to shame by this epithet for often in such circles s philosophy is not only an but a wickedness and a horror the pious and peace ful sage of passes for a sort of and in his doctrine is a region of boundless gloom too broken here and there by of fire and tempting people it and hovering over hang gay and gorgeous air castles into which the traveller is to enter and so sinks to rise no more if anything in the history of philosophy could surprise us it might well be this perhaps among all the writers of the century including and themselves there is not one that so ill meets the conditions of a mystic as this same a state of german quiet clear sighted man	37
who had become distinguished to the world in before he attempted philosophy who in his writings generally on this and other subjects is perhaps by no quality so much as precisely by the distinctness of his and the and iron with which he reasons to our own minds in the little that we know of him he has more than once recalled father in natural philosophy so piercing yet so sure so so still so simple with such clearness and composure does he mould the of his subject and so firm sharp and definite are the results he from it right or wrong as his may be no one that knows him will suspect that he himself had not seen it and seen over it had not meditated it with calmness and deep thought and studied throughout to it with scientific neither as we hear is there any faculty required to follow him we venture to assure such of our readers as are in any measure used to study that the der is by no means the hardest task they have tried it is true there is an unknown and forbidding to be mastered but is not this the case also with and and all other that deserve the name of science it is true a careless or unprepared reader will find s writing a riddle but will a reader of this sort make much of s or d s of variations he will make nothing of them perhaps less than nothing for if he trust to his own judgment he will pronounce them madness yet if the philosophy of mind is any philosophy wo have heard that the latin translation of his works is unintelligible the himself not having understood it also that is no safe guide in the study of him neither nor those latin works are known to us s at all and must be plain subjects compared with it but these latter are happy not only m the and simplicity of their methods but also in the universal acknowledgment of their claim to tliat prior and continual intensity of application without which all progress in any science is impossible though more than one may be attempted without it and blamed because without it they will yield no result the truth is philosophy not more widely from ours in the substance of its doctrines than in its manner of communicating them the class of named parlor fire philosophy in germany is there held in little estimation no right on anything it is believed least of ail on the nature of the human mind can be read unless the reader himself the blessing of sleep in such cases is denied him he must be alert and strain every faculty or it profits nothing philosophy with these men to be a science nay the living principle and soul of all and must be treated and studied or not studied and treated at all its doctrines should be present with every cultivated writer its spirit should every piece of composition how slight or popular but to treat itself would be a degradation and an impossibility philosophy dwells aloft in the temple of science the divinity of its inmost shrine her descend among men but she herself not would behold her must climb with long and laborious effort nay still linger in the till manifold trial have proved him worthy of admission into the interior it is the false notion respecting the objects aimed at and the manner of them in german philosophy that causes in great part this disappointment of our attempts to study it and the evil report of german which the disappointed naturally enough bring back with them let the reader believe us the critical philosophers whatever they may be are no and have no fellowship with what a mystic is we have said above but and are men of cool judgment and energetic character men of science and profound and universal investigation nowhere does the world in all its bearings spiritual or material or practical lie pictured in clearer or truer colors than in such heads as these we have heard estimated as a brother of as justly might we take sir a spiritual brother of count and s of the heavens for a to the vision of the new that this is no extravagant we appeal to man acquainted with any volume of s writings neither though s system stiu more widely from ours can we reckon a mystic he is a man evidently of deep insight into individual things speaks wisely and reasons with the accuracy on all matters where we understand his fairer might it be in us to say that we had not yet appreciated his truth and therefore could not appreciate his error but above all the of might astonish us the cold colossal spirit standing erect and clear like a major among men fit to have been the teacher of the and to have of beauty and virtue in the groves of our reader has seen some words of s are these like words of a mystic we state s character as it is known and admitted by men of all parties among the when we say that so robust an intellect a soul so calm so massive and immovable has not mingled in philosophical discussion since the time of we figure his motionless look had he heard this s miscellaneous writings charge of for the man rises before us amid contradiction and debate like a granite mountain amid clouds and wind ridicule of the best that could be commanded has been already tried against him but it could not avail what was the wit of a thousand wits to him the cry of a thousand that old cliff of granite seen from the summit these as they winged the air showed scarce so gross as and their cry was seldom even audible s opinions may be true or false but	37
his character as a can be slightly valued only by such as know it ill and as a man approved by action and suffering in his life and in his death he ranks with a class of men who were common only in better ages than ours the critical philosophy has been regarded by persons fa approved judgment and directly in the of it as distinctly the greatest intellectual achievement of the century in which it came to light august has stated in plain terms his belief that in respect of its probable influence on the moral culture of europe it stands on a line with the we mention as a man whose opinion has a known value among ourselves but the worth of s philosophy is not to be gathered from alone the noble system of morality the purer the lofty views of man s nature derived from it hay perhaps the very discussion of such matters to which it gave so strong an have told with remarkable and influence on the whole spiritual character of germany no writer of any importance in that country be he acquainted or not with the critical philosophy but breathes a spirit of and elevation more or less directly drawn from it such men as and cannot exist without effect in any literature or in any century but if one circumstance more than of s another has to forward their and in that higher tone into the literature of germany it has heen this system to which in wisely believing its results or even in wisely denying them all that was and pure in the genius of poetry or the son of so readily allied itself that such a system must in the end become known among ourselves as it is already becoming known in france and italy and over all no one acquainted in any measure with the character of t s matter and die character of en and will hesitate to doubtless it will be studied here and by heads adequate to do it justice it will be duly and thoroughly and settled in our minds on the footing which belongs to it and where thence forth it must ue the degrees of truth and error which will then be found to exist in s system or in the it has since received and is still receiving we desire to be understood as making no estimate and little qualified to make any we would have it studied and known on general grounds because even the errors of such men are instructive and because without a large of truth no can exist under such tions and become diffused so widely to judge of it we pretend not we are still in the mere outskirts of the matter and it is but inquiry that we wish to see promoted meanwhile as an advance or first step towards this we may state something of what has most struck ourselves as s system as it from every other known to us and chiefly from the philosophy which is taught in britain or rather which was taught for on looking round we see not that there is any such philosophy in existence at the present vol i s miscellaneous writings day the in direct contradiction to and all his followers of the french and english or scotch school from within and proceeds instead of from without and with various precautions and to proceed the ultimate aim of all philosophy must be to interpret appearances from the given symbol to ascertain the thing now the first step towards this the aim of what may be called or critical philosophy must be to find principle to fix ourselves on some basis to discover what the call the ihe primitive the name of is a name venerable to all europe and to none more dear and venerable than to ourselves nevertheless his writings are not a philosophy but a making ready for one he does not enter on the field to till it he only it with fences and drives away often fallen on evil days he is reduced to long arguments with the by to prove that it i a field that this so highly domain of his is in truth soil and substance not clouds and shadow we regard his on the nature of philosophic language and his efforts to set forth and guard against its as worthy of all acknowledgment as indeed forming the greatest perhaps the only true improvement which philosophy has received among us in our age it is only to a superficial observer that the import of these can seem trivial rightly understood they give sufficient and final answer to s and s and all other possible forms of the grand as we may rightly call it by which in all times the true worship that of the invisible has been and mr has written warmly against but it would surprise him te find how much of a he himself essentially is has not the whole scope of his labors been to reconcile what a would call his understanding with his reason j a noble but still too fruitless effort to the chasm which for all minds but his own his science from his religion we regard the study of his works as the best preparation for studying those of state or literature truth the necessarily absolutely and true this necessarily true this absolute basis of truth silently and and his followers with more tumult find in a certain modified experience and evidence of sense in the universal and natural persuasion of all men not so the they deny that there is here any absolute or that any philosophy whatever can be built on such a basis nay they go the length of asserting that such an appeal even to the universal of mankind gather them what precautions you may to a total of philosophy strictly so and renders not only	37
nation that can hear these tidings that has them written in fit characters to every eye and the solemn import of them present at all moments to every heart i that there is in these days no nation so happy is too clear but that all nations and ourselves in the van are with more or less of its nature struggling towards this happiness is the hope and the glory of our time to us as to others success at a distant or a nearer day cannot be uncertain s miscellaneous writings meanwhile the first condition of success is that in striving honestly ourselves we honestly acknowledge the striving of our that with a will in seeking truth we have a sense open for it and it may arise life and we t n s of life and writings of foreign review if the charm of fame consisted as has declared in being pointed at with the finger and having it said this is he few writers of the present age could boast of more fame than it has been the unhappy fortune of this man to stand for a long period incessantly before the world in a far stronger light than naturally belonged to him or could exhibit him to advantage twenty years ago he was a man of considerable note which has ever since been into the mystic the was known and partly esteemed by all students of poetry madame de we recollect allows him an entire chapter in her it was a much curiosity and in a much wider circle which the dissipated man by successive occasioned till at last the convert to the preaching came to figure in all newspapers and some picture von von und sketch of the life of by the editor of s life and remains die des the sons of the valley a dramatic poem part i die the in part ii die the brethren of the cross an der the cross on the a tragedy martin die der martin or the of strength a tragedy die der the mother of the a tragedy s miscellaneous s of him was required for all heads that would not sit blank and mute in the topic of every and tea in dim heads that is in the great majority the picture was of course into a strange and the original enough condemned but even the few who might see him in his true shape felt too well that nothing loud could be said in his behalf that with so many mournful if could not avail no complete defence was to be attempted at the same time it is not the history of a mere literary that we have here to do with of men whom fine talents cannot teach the prudence whose high feeling in noble action must lie with in their own bosom till their existence from without and from within becomes a burnt and blackened ruin to be sighed over by the few and stared at or trampled on by the many there is unhappily no want in any country nor can the unnatural union of genius with and degradation have such charms for our readers that we should go abroad in quest of it or in any case to dwell on it otherwise than with reluctance is something more than this a spirit struggling earnestly amid the new complex tumultuous influences of his time and country but without force to body himself forth from amongst them a keen adventurous towards high find distant but too weakly in so rough a sea for the currents drive him far astray and he sinks at last in the waves little for himself and leaving little save the memory of his failure to others a glance over his history may not be if the man himself can less interest us the ocean of german of european opinion still in wild to and fro with its movements and indicated in the history of such men every one of us u concerned life and of v our for this are wi so in as quality the life now known to he by of seems a very honest performance hut on the other hand it is much too and for our wants the features the man nowhere united into a but left for the reader to as he may a task which to most readers will be hard enough for the work short in compass is more than pro short in details of facts and s history much as an intimate friend must have known of it still lies before us in great part dark and unintelligible for what be has done we should doubtless thank our author yet it a pity that in this instance he had not done more and better a singular made him at the same tin companion of both and perhaps the two most and writers of bis day nor shall we deny that in performing a friend s duty to their memory he has done truth also a service his life of pretending to no of arrangement is rather than in but there at least the means of a correct judgment are t within our reach and the work ad usual with bears marks of the utmost and of an which we might almost call professional for the author it would seem is a legal of long standing and now of respectable rank and he and records with a certain too rare in of this sort so far as ho is concerned therefore we have reason to be satisfied in regard to however we cannot say so much here we should certainly have for more facts though it had been with fewer consequences drawn from them were these somewhat tions of s character exchanged for simple particulars of his walk and conversation the result would be vol i s miscellaneous writings much and especially to foreigners much more complete and luminous	37
as it is from repeated of this biography we have failed to gather any very clear notion of the man nor with perhaps more study of his writings than on other grounds they might have does his manner of existence still stand out to us with that distinct which puts ah end to doubt our view of him the reader will accept as an and be content to wonder with us and pause where we cannot altogether interpret was bom at in east on the of november his father was professor of his tory and eloquence in the university there and further in virtue of this c ce dramatic which latter procured young almost daily opportunity of visiting the theatre and so gave him as he says a greater acquaintance with the of the stage than even most players are possessed of a strong taste for the drama it probably enough gave him but this skill in stage may be questioned for often in his own plays no such skill but rather the want of it is evinced the professor and of whom we hear nothing in blame or praise died in the year of his son and the boy now fell to the sole chaise of his mother a woman whom he seems to have loved warmly but whose could scarcely be the best for him himself speaks of her in earnest as of a pure and heavily afflicted being however adds that she was and generally quite imagining herself to be the virgin mary and her son to be the promised had opportunity enough of knowing for it is a curious fact that these two singular persons were brought up under the same roof though at this time by reason of difference of age life and writings op being eight years older they had little or no acquaintance what a nervous and parent was by another unhappy coincidence had also full occasion to know his own mother parted from her husband lay helpless and broken hearted for the last seventeen years of her life and the first seventeen of his a source of painful influences which he used to trace through the whole of his own character as to the like cause he the of s how far his views on this point were accurate or exaggerated we have no means of judging of s early years the says little or nothing we learn only that about the usual age he in the university intending to himself for the business of a lawyer and with his professional studies united or attempted to unite the study of philosophy under his college life is by a single but too expressive word it is said to have been very his progress in as in all branches of learning might thus be expected to be small indeed at no period of his life can he even in the language of be called a man of culture or solid information on any subject nevertheless he contrived in his twenty first year to publish a little volume of poems apparently in very tolerable magazine and after some over germany having for a while at and longer at he himself to more serious business applied for and promotion as a man of law the employment which young look for in that country being chiefly in the hands of government consisting indeed of in the various or boards by which the provinces are managed in accordingly was made secretary a which he held in several stations s miscellaneous and last and longest in where a young man following the same profession first became acquainted with him in what the purport or result of s may have been or how he had himself in office or out of it we are nowhere informed but it is an ominous circumstance that even at this period in his year he had two wives the last at least by mutual consent and was looking out for a third with whom he seems to have formed a prompt and close intimacy gives us no full picture of him under any of his aspects i yet we can see that his life as naturally it might already wore somewhat of a shattered appearance in his own eyes that he was broken in character in spirit perhaps in bodily constitution and himself with the transient of so gay a city and so tolerable an appointment had all steady and rational hope either of being happy or of deserving to be so of unsteady and hopes however he had still abundance the fine enthusiasm of his nature by so many external nay to which perhaps these very had given fresh and undue excitement glowed forth in strange many colored brightness from amid the wreck of his fortunes and led him into wild worlds of speculation the more vehemently that the real world of action and duty had become so in his hands s early publication had sunk af er a brief provincial life into oblivion in fact he had then only been a and was now for the first time beginning to be a poet we liave one of those youthful pieces in this volume and certainly it a curious contrast with his subsequent writings both in form and spirit in form because unlike the first fruits of a genius it is cold and correct while his later works without exception are and writings of extravagant and full of gross in spirit no less because treating of his favorite theme religion it treats of it harshly and being indeed little more than a version of common as it may be found without in most and societies s secret history might form a strange chapter in for now it is clear his french had got with wondrous his mind was full of visions and cloudy glories and no occupation pleased him better than to in generous inquiring minds that very which he appears to have	37
once entertained in his own from s account of the matter this seems to have formed the strongest link of his intercourse with the latter was his senior by ten years of time and by more than ten years of unhappy experience the grand questions of immortality of fate free will fore knowledge absolute were in continual agitation between them and still remembers with gratitude these earnest against of life and so many ardent and not ineffectual to awaken in the passionate temperament of youth a glow of purer and fire some from says the in a thick wood close by the high banks of the lies the abbey of inhabited by a class of who in of discipline yield only to those of la to this solitude was wont to repair with his friend eveiy fine saturday of the summer of so soon as their occupations in the city were over in defect of any formal inn the two used to in the forest or at best to sleep under a temporary tent the sunday was then spent in the open air in about the woods sailing on the river and the uke till late night recalled them to the city on such occasions the younger of the party had ample room to his whole heart before his more mature and settled companion to advance his s miscellaneous writings i and objections against many theories which was already and so by exciting him contradiction to cause him to make them clearer to week after week these were carefully resumed from the point where they had been left indeed to it would seem this had unusual attractions for he was now busy a poem intended principally to convince the world of those very truths which he was striving to impress on his friend and to which the world as might be expected was likely to give a similar reception the character or at least the way of thought attributed to robert d the in the sons of the valley was borrowed it appears as if by regular from these with the result of the one sunday being duly entered in form during the week then on the sunday follow ing and so forming the text for further bliss ful days adds pure and innocent which doubtless also ever held in pleased remembrance the des composed in this rather questionable fashion was in due time the first part in the second about a year afterwards it is a drama or rather two at least in one particular in length each part being a play of six acts and the whole to somewhat more than eight hundred small pages to attempt any analysis of such a work would but fatigue our readers to little purpose it is as might be anticipated of a most loose and structure on all sides into vague and on the whole resembling not so much a poem as the rude materials of one the subject is the destruction of the order an event which has been more than once but on which notwithstanding we suppose may boast of being entirely original the fate of life and of and his brethren acts here but like a little and lucky were we could it the lump but it lies buried under such a mass of ma tradition and philosophy u no power could work into dramatic union the incidents are few and of little interest interrupted continually by shows and long for s sin that oi is here in decided action and so we wander in through scene after scene of or gloom till at last the whole rises before us like a wild cloud heaped on cloud painted indeed here and there with hues but nothing or at least not the subject but the author in this last point of view however as a picture of himself of other considerations this play of s may still have a certain value for us the strange nature of the man is displayed in it his and his audacity yet weakness of character his baffled loi but still ardent after truth and his search for them in far not on the beaten but through the of thought to call it a work of art would be a of names it is little more than a the of a passionate and mystic soul only half knowing what it and not ruling its own movements but ruled by them it is fair to add that such also in a great measure was s own view of the matter most likely the utterance of these gave him such relief that crude as they were he could not suppress them for it ought to be remembered that in this performance one condition at least of genuine inspiration is not wanting evidently thinks that in these his excursions he has found truth he has some s miscellaneous writings thing positive to set forth and he feels himself as if bound on a high and holy mission in preaching it to his fellow men to explain with any the articles of s creed as it was now fashioned and is here exhibited would be a task perhaps too hard for us and at all events un profitable in proportion to its difficulty we have found some passages in which under dark figures he has himself forth a vague likeness of it these we shall now submit to the reader with such as we gather from the or as german readers from the usual tone of speculation in that country are naturally enabled to supply this may at the same time convey as fair a notion of the work itself with its and and mere thunder and lightning as by any other plan our limits would admit let the reader fancy himself in the island of where the order of the still though the heads of it are already summoned before the french king and pope which	37
summons they are now not without dreary enough preparing to obey the purport of this first part so far as it has any dramatic purport is to paint the situation outward and inward of that once pious and heroic and still magnificent and powerful body it is entitled the in but why it should also be called the sons of the valley does not so well appear for the brotherhood of the valley has yet scarcely come into activity and only before us in glimpses of so a sort that we know not fully so much as whether these its sons are of flesh and blood like ourselves or of some spiritual nature or of something and altogether for the rest it is a series of spectacles and the action cannot so and of much be said to advance as to on this occasion the are admitting two new members the have already passed their preliminary trials this is the chief and final one act fifth scene first interior tht temple backwards a deep of and on the hand tide of the a little chapel and in this an with the of st tlie scene is lighted very by a single which hangs before the mar in mantle or groping his in the dark waa it not at the altar of that i was bid to wait for the unknown here should it be but darkness with her veil the figures to the mar here is the fifth pillar yes this is he the how the glimmer of that faint lamp falls on his fading eye ah it is not the o th it is the pangs of hopeless love tliat burning thy heart poor comrade o my may not thy spirit in this earnest hour be looking on art hovering in that moon beam which struggles through tiie painted window and dies amid tiie s gloom or linger st thou behind pillars which ominous and black look down on me like horrors of the past upon the present and thy gentle form lest with thy thou too much me hide not pale shadow of my thou not thy lover hush hark was there not a father you s miscellaneous philip rushing in with wild looks yes but time is precious come my son my one sole come with me what would you in this solemn hour philip this hour or never leading to the hither know st thou t is saint philip because he would not his faith a tyrant had him murder d points to his head these too the rage of in thy old father s face my son my first bom child in this great hour i do thee wilt thou wilt thou obey me be it just i will philip then swear in this great hour in this dread presence here by thy s head made early gray by the remembrance of thy mother s agony and by the blossom of against tiie tyranny which sacrificed us bloody everlasting hate ha the all spoke through thee yes bloody shall my death torch burn in philip s heart i swear it philip with increasing vehemence and if thou break this oath and if thou reconcile thee to him or let his golden chains his his prayers life and of his moan itself thy dagger when th hour of vengeance comes shall this gray head thy mother s wail the last sigh of thy thee at the bar of the eternal so be it if i break my oath philip then man thee looking then shrinking together as with dazzled eyes ha was not that his lightning thee well i hear the footstep of the dreaded firm remember me remember this stem midnight hastily yes whom the of tiie lord sent hither to awake me out of sleep i will remember thee and this stem midnight and my spirit shall have vengeance enter an armed man he is from head to foot in black harness his is armed man pray bare he him to the and raises him on the ground and follow he leads him into the ba to a trap door on the right he himself and when followed him it scene second of the under the church the scene is lighted only by a lamp hangs down from hie ground are of deceased knights marked with crosses and bones in the background two colossal holding between them a large white book marked a red cross from the s miscellaneous end of ihe book a the book of only ihe cover it hat an in the skeleton on ihe right in its right hand a naked drawn sword hat on ihe holds in its left hand a turned wards on ihe right side of the stands a black open on ihe left a similar one with the body of a in dress of order on are in on each side nearer ihe background are seen the lowest of which lead up into the church above the not yet visible on the hand dreaded is the grave laid open voices yea armed man who a pause shows himself on the stairs shall he behold the o th concealed voices yea armed man with drawn sword ihe steps on right hand armed man to look down t is on thy life leads him to the open coffin what thou j an open empty coffin armed man t is tlie house where thou one day shalt dwell read th inscription no armed man hear it then thy wages sin is leads him to ihe opposite where the body is lying look down t is on thy life what thou show ihe life writings of a coffin with a man he is thy brother one day thou art as he read th	37
inscription no armed man hear corruption is the name of life now look around go forward move and act he towards the background of he stage the book ha here the book of seems as if th inscription on it might he read he reads it knock four times on the ground thou shalt thy loved one o heavens and may i see thee hastening dose to the book my for thee with ihe words he four times on the ground one two three pour tlie curtain hanging from the book rapidly up and covers it a colossal head appears between tjie two its form is horrible gilt has a huge golden crown a heart of the same in its brow rolling eyes instead of hair golden chains round its neck which is visible to the breast and a golden cross yet not a which rises over its right shoulder as if crushing it down tjie whole bust rests on four at sight of it starts back in horror and defend us armed man dreaded may he hear it concealed voices yea vol i s miscellaneous end of the book hangs a t e only u it has an in the an he right in right hand a that on he in its left hand a turned downwards on the right side of the stands a hack open on the left a similar one the body of a in dress of his order on both are in white on each side nearer the background are seen he lowest of tht stairs which lead up into the temple church above the not yet visible on the right hand stairs dreaded is the grave laid open concealed voices yea man who a shows himself on the stairs shall he behold the o th concealed voices yea armed man with drawn sword carefully down the steps on right hand armed man to look down t is on thy life leads him to the open coffin what thou an open empty coffin armed man t is the house where thou one day shalt dwell read th inscription na armed man hear it then thy wages sin is leads him to ie opposite coffin where the body is look down t is on thy life what thou shows the life and writings of a with a man he is thy brother one day thou art as he read th inscription no armed man hear corruption is the name of life now look around go forward move and act he towards background of ihe stage the book ha here the book of seems as if th inscription on it might be read he reads it knock four times on the ground thou shalt behold thy loved one o heavens and may i see thee hastening dose to the book my bosom for thee with ihe he four on the one two three four hanging from the book rolls rapidly up and covers it a colossal head appears between the two its form is horrible gilt has a huge golden crown a heart of the same in its brow rolling flaming eyes instead of hair golden chains round us neck which is visible to he breast and a golden cross yet not a which rises over its right shoulder as if crushing it down whole bust rests on four at sight of it starts back in horror and defend us armed man dreaded may he hear it concealed voices yea vol i f s miscellaneous under end of the book hangs a tim book q cover is has an in e he right holds in its right hand a sword that on the left holds in its left hand a turned down wards on the right side of the stands a hack open on the a similar one with the body of a in dress of his order on both are in white on each side nearer the background are seen the lowest of ik stairs which lead up into the temple church above vault not yet visible above on the right hand stairs dreaded is the e laid open voices yea man who a pause shows himself on the stairs shall he behold the o th concealed voices yea armed man sword leads carefully the steps on hie right hand armed man to look down t is on thy life leads him to the open coffin what thou an open empty coffin armed man t is the house where thou one day shalt dwell read th inscription na armed man hear it then thy wages sin is leads him to ie opposite coffin where the body is lying look down t is on thy life what thou shows the life and writings of a coffin with a corpse man he is thy brother one day thou art as he read th inscription na armed man hear corruption is the name of life now look around go forward move and act he him towards ihe background of ihe stage he book ha here the book of seems as if th inscription on it might he read he reads it knock four times on the ground thou shalt thy loved one o heavens and may i see thee hastening dose to the book my for thee ihe he four times on the ground one two three four tlie hanging from the book rolls rapidly up and covers it a colossal appears between the two its form is horrible has a huge golden crown a heart of the same in its brow rolling flaming eyes instead of hair golden chains round its neck which is visible to the breast and a golden cross yet not a which rises over its right shoulder as if crushing it	37
down tlie whole bust rests on four gilt at sight of it starts ba ik in horror and defend us armed man dreaded may he hear it concealed voices yea vol i i s miscellaneous writings under end of the book hangs a hie book of only the cover is visible has an in the skeleton on the tight holds in its right hand a naked drawn sword that on the left holds in its left hand a palm turned down on the right side of the stands a black open on the left a one with the body of a in fuu dress of his order on both are in white on each side nearer the background are seen the lowest of stairs which lead up into the temple church above the vault armed mai not above on the right hand stairs dreaded is the laid open concealed voices yea armed who o t on the stairs shall he behold the o th fathers concealed voices yea armed man drawn sword leads down the steps on hie right hand armed man to look t is on thy life leads him to the open coffin what thou an open empty coffin armed man t is the house where thou one day shalt dwell read th inscription na armed man hear it then thy wages sin is leads him to opposite coffin where me body is lying lock down t is on thy life what thou shows the life and writings of a coffin with a corpse armed man he is thy brother one day thou art as he read th inscription na armed man hear corruption is the name of life now look around go forward move and act he mm towards the of the stage the ha here the book of seems as if th inscription on it might be read he reads u knock four times on the ground thou shalt behold thy loved one o heavens and may i see thee hastening dose to the book my bosom for thee the following words he four times on the ground one two three four the hanging from the book rolls rapidly up and covers il a colossal head appears between the two its form is horrible his gilt has a huge golden crown a heart of the same in its brow rolling flaming eyes instead of hair golden chains round its neck which is visible to the breast and a golden cross yet not a which rises over its right shoulder as if crushing it down hie whole bust rests on four at sight of it starts back in horror and defend us armed man dreaded may he hear it concealed voices yea i vol i s miscellaneous writings er end of book a the book o only cover is has an in c the on the right in its right hand a naked sword that on the left holds in its left hand a turned down wards on the right side of the stands a n open on the left a similar one with the body of a in dress of his order on both are in white on each side nearer the background are seen the lowest steps of stairs f which lead up into the temple church above the armed mai not yet visible t on the right hand stairs dreaded is the laid open concealed voices yea armed who o himself on the stairs shall he behold the o th fathers concealed voices yea armed man with drawn sword carefully the steps on tlie right hand armed man to look down t is on thy life leads him to the open coffin what thou an open empty coffin armed man t is the house where thou one day shalt dwell read th inscription na armed man hear it then thy wages sin is leads him to opposite coffin u ike body is i lock down t is on thy life what thou shows the life and writings of a coffin with a man he is thy brother one day thou art as he read th inscription na armed man hear corruption is the name of life now look around go forward move and act he mm the background of the observing the book ha here the book of seems as if th inscription on it might be read he reads it knock four times on the ground thou shalt behold thy loved one o heavens and may i see thee hastening dose to the book my bosom for thee following words he four times on the ground one two three four the curtain hanging from he book rapidly up and covers il a colossal head appears between the two its form is horrible his gilt has a huge golden crown a heart of the same in us brow rolling eyes instead of hair golden chains round its neck which is visible to the breast and a golden cross not a which rises over its right shoulder as if crushing it down whole bust rests on four at sight of it starts back in horror and defend us armed man dreaded may he hear it concealed voices yea vol i s miscellaneous writings under end of tiie book hangs a the book of which only cover is has an in the on the right holds in its right hand a naked drawn sword that on holds in its left hand a palm turned downwards on the right side of the stands a open on the left a similar one the body of a in dress of his order on both art in white on each side nearer the background are seen the lowest steps of which lead up into the church above the vault armed mai yet above on right hand stairs dreaded is	37
i dare not i head with a more piteous tone o deliver me f taking off the chains poor fallen one i armed man now lift the crown from s head it seems so heavy writings op man touch it it grows light off and u ob he did the on the ground armed man now take the golden from off his brow it seems to bum man thou ice is warmer the from the brow shivering frost armed man take from his back the cross and throw it from thee how the s token head deliver o deliver me armed man this cross is not thy master s not that bloody one its is this throw t fix m thee u from the bust and laying ii ao on the the cross of the lord that died for me armed man thou no more believe in one that died thou henceforth believe in one that and never dies obey and question not step over it take pity on me armed man liim with his sword step s miscellaneous writings i do t with shuddering s and then looks head raises as a load how the figure and looks in gladness armed man him whom thou hast served till now deny struck deny the lord my god armed man thy god tis not the idol of tliis world deny him or pressing on him the sword in a threatening thou i deny armed man pointing to the head with ms sword go to the fallen kiss his lips and so on through many other pages how much of this is copied from the actual practice of the we know not with certainty nor what precisely either they or intended by this marvellous story of the fallen master to shadow forth at first view one might take it for an in language and truly no flattering of the catholic church and this on the cross which is said to have been actually on every at his to be a type of his secret to that institution and redeem the spirit of religion from the state of and under which it was there held it is known at least and was well known to that the heads of the entertained views both on life and n s of religion and politics which they did not think meet for communicating to their age and only imparted by degrees and under mysterious to the wiser of their own order they had even publicly resisted and succeeded in some measures of the french king in regard to his and this while it secured them the love of the people was one great cause perhaps second only to their wealth of the hatred which that sovereign bore them and of the savage doom which he at last executed on the whole body but on these secret principles of theirs as on s manner of them we are only enabled to guess for too has an doctrine which he does not except in dark to the as we are here seeking chiefly for his religious creed which forms in truth with its changes the main thread whereby his existence any unity or even in our thoughts we may quote another passage from the same first part of this which at the same lime will afford us a glimpse of his favorite hero robert d lately the darling the but now for some momentary of their rules cast into prison and expecting death or at best from the order is another in all points the reverse of robert act fourth scene first prison at the a table robert sword cap or man ue on one side of u who keeps by mm sitting at he other but how could st thou so far forget thou our pride the master s friend and ite s miscellaneous writings robert i did it thou st i how could a word of the old surly so provoke thee robert ask not man s being is a spider web the passionate flash o th soul comes not of him it is the breath of that dark genius which invisible along the threads a servant of eternal destiny it them from the vulgar dust which to press the net but fate gives sign the breath becomes a and in a moment to the thing we thought was woven for eternity yet each man shapes his destiny robert i small soul dost thou too know it has the i of force and free that the and guides the car of destiny i come down to thee dream st thou poor that thou and like of thee and ten times better than thou or i can lead the wheel of fate one hair s breadth from its everlasting track i too have had such dreams but fearfully have i been shook from sleep and they are fled look at our order has it spared its thousands of noblest lives the victims of its purpose and has it gained this purpose can it gain it look at our noble s hair the fruit of nights and days and of the broken yet still burning heart that mighty heart through sixty years t has beat in pain for nothing his creation life and writings of remains the vision of his own great soul it dies with hun and one day shall the pilgrim ask where his dust is lying and not learn but then the christian has the joy of heaven for in his flesh he shall see god robert in his flesh now fair the journey wilt it in behind by way of luggage when the angel comes to coach thee in to glory mind also that the memory of those fair hours when dinner smoked before thee or thou to dress thy or thy	37
rusty harness and such like noble business be not left behind ha self deceiving is it not enough the should at every step you that tooth ache head ache who knows what all at every moment the god of earth into a beast but you would take this mingle the of all the elements which by the light beam from on high that visits and dwells in it but shows its take this and all the which like spring forth o th blood and which by such fair names you call along with you into your heaven well be it so much good may t as by chance lights on meanwhile has asleep sound already there is a race for whom all serves as pillow even rattling chains are but a this robert d whose preaching has here such a virtue is destined ultimately for a higher office than to rattle his chains by way of he is from the order not however with disgrace and in anger but in s miscellaneous writings sad feeling of necessity and with tears and blessings from his brethren and the messenger of the valley a strange little like maiden gives him obscure encouragement before his departure to possess his soul in patience seeing if he can learn the grand secret of his course is not ended but only opening on a fairer scene robert knows not well what to make of this but sails for his native in darkness and as one who can do no other in the end of the second part which is represented as divided from the first by an interval of seven years robert is again summoned forth and the whole surprising secret of his mission and of the valley which it for him is disclosed this valley of peace it now appears is an immense secret association which has its chief seat somewhere about the roots of mount if we mistake not but in its the best heads and hearts of every country extends over the whole civilized world and has in particular a strong body of in paris and indeed a but seemingly very of rooms under the of that city here sit in solemn the heads of the establishment directing from their lodge in deepest concealment the principal movements of the kingdom for william of paris of being of their number the king and his other ministers within themselves the utmost freedom of action are nothing more than in the hands of this all powerful brotherhood which watches like a sort of fate over the interests of mankind and by mysterious forwards we suppose the cause of civil and religious liberty over all the world it is they that have doomed the and without malice or pity are sending their leaders to the and the stake that order once a favor life writings of ite minister of good has now fl m its purity and come to mistake its purpose having taken up politics and a sort of radical reform and so must now be broken and like a which can no do its appointed work such a magnificent society for the of vice may well be supposed to walk by the most philosophical principles these in fact profess to be a sort of church preserving in purity the sacred fire of religion which with more or less in the worship of every people but only with its clear lustre in the recesses of the valley they are on the on the on the they themselves to contemplation and the study have penetrated far into the mysteries of spiritual and physical nature they command the deep hidden virtues of plant and and their can the eye of the mind from its instruments and behold without type or material the essence of being their activity is all and calculated they rule over the world by the authority of wisdom over ignorance in the fifth act of the second part we are at length after many a hint and significant note of preparation introduced to the of this philosophical a strange cave this of theirs under the very of paris there are brazen folding doors and concealed voices and and lamps and all manner of wondrous furniture it seems moreover to be a sort of evening with them j for the old man of in garb with a long beard reaching to his is for a moment discovered reading in a deep monotonous voice the strong ones meanwhile are out in quest of robert d who by cunning s miscellaneous has been from his solitude in the hope of saving and is even now to be and equipped for his task a due allowance of robert is at last ushered in or rather dragged in for it appears that he has made a stout debate not to the customary form of being an essential preliminary it would seem till compelled by the necessity he is in a truly anger as is natural but by various and he is reduced to reason again finding indeed the of anything else for when lance and sword and free space are given him and he makes a thrust at adam of the master of the ceremonies it is to no purpose the old man has a quality in him which the arm and no death issues from the baffled sword point but only a small spark of electric fire with his prudence robert under these circumstances cannot but perceive that is best the people hand him in succession the cup of strength the cup of beauty and the cup of wisdom if we may judge from their effects with the highest stretch of art and which must have gone far to disgust robert d with his natural however excellent had that fierce drink been in use then he in a fine frenzy dies away in and then at last considers	37
word him the cup of faith and having drunk it look d up and saw the standing in the waters both hands the captive stretch d to grasp that but he fled so was d in heart but yet the word comfort giving him the patience there to lay head and having rested he his head and said wilt thou redeem me from the prison too then said the word wait yet in peace seven it may be nine until thy hour shall come and answer d lord thy will be done which when the mother saw it d her she called the rainbow up and said to him go thou and tell the word that he forgive the captive these seven and rainbow flew e he was sent and as he shook his wings there from them the oh of purity and this the word did gather in a cup and d with it the sinner s head and bosom then passing forth into his father s garden he breathed upon the ground and there arose a flow out of it like milk and rose bloom which having i ith the dew of rapture he crown d the captive s brow th n grasp d him life of with his right hand the rainbow with the left likewise with her mirror came and looked into it and saw wrote on the of the long forgotten name and the remembrance of his gleaming as in light of gold then fell there as if scales from s eyes he left the thought of being one and somewhat his nature melted in the mighty all like above came healing so that his heart for veiy bliss was bursting for chains and d him no more the garment he had changed to royal purple and of his chains were fashion d glancing jewels true still the from the waters yet came the spirit over him the lord turned towards him a gracious countenance and held him in her mother arms this is the last door and again the old man of the purport of this robert that he does not wholly understand an admission in which we suspect most of our readers and the old man of himself were he candid might be inclined to agree with him sometimes in the deeper consideration which are bound to bestow on such we have we could discern in this some of meaning scattered here and there like weak lamps in the darkness not enough to interpret the riddle but to show that by possibility it might have an interpretation was a typical vision with a certain degree of significance in the wild mind of the poet not an fever dream might not for example indicate generally the spiritual essence of man and this story be an emblem of his history he to be one somewhat that is he labors s miscellaneous writings under the very common complaint of cannot in the grandeur of beauty and virtue forget his own so beautiful and virtuous self but amid the glories of the majestic all is still haunted and blinded by some shadow of his own little me for this reason he is punished imprisoned in the element of a material body and has the four chains the four principles of matter bound round him so that he can neither think nor act except in a foreign medium and under conditions that and him the cup of fire is given him perhaps the rude barbarous passion and cruelty natural to all tribes but at length he the moon begins to have some sight and love of material nature and looking into her mirror forms to himself under gross a and sort of poetry in which if he still cannot behold the name and has forgotten his own both of which are blotted out and hidden by the element he finds some spiritual solace and more freely still however the cup of fire him till the salt intellectual culture is vouchsafed which indeed the raging of that furious and warlike strife but leaves him as mere culture of the understanding may be supposed to do frozen into and moral and farther from the name and his own original than ever then is the cup of a more merciful disposition and intended with the drops of sadness and the drops of longing to shadow forth that desolate yet softer and state in which mankind displayed itself at the coming of the word at the first of the christian religion is the rainbow the modem poetry of europe the chivalry the new form of the whole romantic feeling of these later days but who or what the au den from the waters may be we need life and of not hide our entire ignorance this being apparently a secret of the which robert d and and men of are in due time to show the world but unhappily have not yet succeeded in bringing to tight perhaps indeed our whole interpretation may be thought better than lost labor a reading of what was only and flourished not written a of gay castles and palaces from the sunset clouds which though mountain like and and golden of hue and together as if by arms are but adam of continues his in the most liberal way but through many pages of he does to satisfy us what was more to his purpose he partly in satisfying robert d who after due preparation being burnt like a martyr under the most promising and the pope and the king of france struck dead or nearly so sets out to found the order of st in his own country that of in spain and other of the hei land den elsewhere and thus to the great satisfaction of all parties the sons of the valley positively for the last time our reader may have already convinced himself that in this strange there are	37
not wanting indications of very high poetic talent we see a mind oi great depth if not of sufficient strength struggling with objects which though it cannot master them are essentially of richest had the writer only kept his piece till the ninth year meditating it with true diligence and will but the weak was not a man for such things he must reap the harvest on the morrow after seed day and so stands before ms at last as a man capable of much only not of bringing aught to perfection s miscellaneous of his natural dramatic genius this work ill as it is no specimen and may indeed have justified expectations which were never realized it is true he cannot yet give form and animation to a character m the genuine poetic sense we do not see any of his but only hear of them yet in some his endeavor though imperfect is by no means and here for instance philip and the like thou not living men have still as much life as many a and scarlet or whom we find for years with acceptance on the boards of his spiritual beings whom in most of his plays he too we cannot speak in they are of a nature neither rightly dead nor alive in fact they sometimes glide about like real though rather singular mortals through the whole piece and only vanish as ghosts in the fifth act but on the other hand in theatrical incidents and sentiments in shows and all manner of gorgeous frightful or machinery a copious invention and strong though feeling doubtless it is all crude enough all illuminated by an splendor not the soil peaceful brightness of sunlight but the red glare of however was still young had he been of a right spirit all that was and crude might in time have become ripe and clear and a poet of no ordinary excellence would have been out of him but as matters stood this was by no means the thing had most at heart it is not the degree of poetic talent manifested in the of the valley that he but the religious truth forth in it to judge from the of and s our readers may be disposed to hold his revelations on this subject rather cheap life and of nevertheless taking up the character of in its sense earnestly desires not only to be a poet but a prophet and indeed looks upon his merits in the formed province as altogether to his higher purposes in the latter we have a series of the most used and letters to who had now removed to setting forth with a singular simplicity the mighty projects was on this head he thinks that there ought to be a new creed a new body of established and that for this purpose not writing but actual preaching can avail he common under which he seems to mean a sort of or french he talks of jacob and and and a new of art religion and love all this should be sounded in the ears of men and in a loud voice that so their slumber the of spiritual death may be driven away with the utmost gravity he his correspondent to wait upon and others of a like spirit and see whether they will not join liim for his own share in the matter he is totally indifferent will serve in the meanest capacity and rejoice with his whole heart if in zeal and ability as poets and not some only but every one should infinitely him we suppose he had dropped the thought of being one and somewhat and now wished away by this divine purpose to be and all on the den this correspondence throws no further light what the new creed specially was which felt so eager to plant and we nowhere learn with any distinctness probably he might himself have been rather at a loss to explain it in brief compass his we suspect was still very much in and perhaps only the moral part of tliis system could s miscellaneous writings stand before him with some degree of clearness on this latter point indeed he is determined enough well assured of his and apparently waiting but for some vehicle in to convey them to the minds of men his principle of morals we have seen in part already it does not exclusively or belong to self being little more than that high of entire that of the me in the idea a principle which both in and christian is at this day common in theory among all german philosophers especially of the class has adopted this principle with his whole heart and his whole soul as the indispensable condition of all virtue he believes it we should say intensely and without compromise rather than softening or concealing its peculiarities he will not have happiness under any form to be the real or chief end of man this is but love of enjoyment disguise it as we like a more complex and sometimes more respectable species of hunger he would say to be admitted as an element in human nature but to be recognised as the hi est on the to be resisted and incessantly with till it become obedient to love of god which is only in the truest sense love of goodness and the of which lies deep in the inmost nature of man of authority superior to all sensitive impulses forming in fact the grand law of his being as to it forms the first and last condition of spiritual hearth he thinks that to propose a reward for virtue is to render virtue impossible he warmly seconds in declaring that even the hop of immortality is a consideration unfit to be introduced into religion and tending only to it and its strange as this may seem is firmly convinced of its importance and	37
has even enforced it in a passage of his des j life and writings of which he at the pains to and in his correspondence with here is another of that wondrous dialogue robert d and adam of in the of the robert and death so it on me death the doom that leaves of this me remaining may be perhaps the symbol of that self denial more perhaps i have it that ci think st not which but forth our paltry mb so thin and pitiful into that too must die this shallow self of ours we are not nail d to it we can we must be free of it and then d wanton in the force of all adam into the of the brethren he has himself has it o praised be light he sees the is d voices of the old men of the hail and joy to thee thou strong one force to thee from above and light the adam embracing come to my heart c o such was the spirit of that new faith which under m of and and from the waters and of art religion and love and to be preached abroad by the aid of and what was then called the new poetical school seriously like another to cast as good seed among the ruins of decayed and whether was still young to t his and applying miscellaneous writings to and for help and if so in what gestures of speechless astonishment or what of laughter they answered him we are not informed one thing however is clear that a man with so an imagination joined to so weak an understanding and so broken a who had plunged so deep into and still hovered so near the surface in all practical knowledge of men and their who shattered and degraded in his own private character could such was a man likely if he lived long to play fantastic tricks in abundance and at least in his religious history to set the world a wondering not to but if it so chanced to was a thing to be thought impossible nevertheless let his missionary zeal have justice from us it does seem to have been on no wicked or even motive tp all he not only believed what he professed but thought it of the highest moment that others should believe it and if the spirit which dwells in all men be allowed exercise even when it only what it errors still more should this be so when it what it truth and fancies itself not taking from us what in our eyes may be good but adding what is better meanwhile was not so absorbed in spiritual schemes that he altogether overlooked his own merely comfort in contempt of former failures he was now for himself a third wife a young of the highest personal attractions and this under difficulties which would have appalled an ordinary for the two had no language in common he not understanding three words of polish she not one of german nevertheless nothing by this circumstance nay perhaps in it an assurance against many a sorrowful curtain life and writings of lecture he his suit we suppose by signs and dumb show with such that he quite gained the fair mute wedded her in and soon after in her company quitted for where the helpless state of his mother required immediate attention it is from that most of his missionary to are written the latter as we have hinted above being now stationed by his official appointment in the sad duty of watching over his forsaken and dying mother appears to have discharged with true filial for three years she lingered in the most state under his nursing her death in seems notwithstanding to have filled him with the deepest sorrow this is an extract of his letter to on that mournful occasion i know not whether thou hast heard that on the th of february tlie same day when our excellent died in my mother departed here in my arms my friend god with an iron hammer at our hearts and we are than stone if we do not feel it and than mad if we think it shame to cast ourselves into the dust before the all powerful and let our whole so highly miserable self be in the sentiment of his infinite greatness and long suffering i wish i had words to paint how pitiful my des t ds appeared to me in that hour when after eighteen years of neglect i again went to partake in the communion this death of my mother the pure royal poet and martyr spirit who for eight years liad lain continually on a sick bed and suffered unspeakable things affected me much as for her sake and my own i could not but wish it with altogether feelings ah friend how heavy do my faults lie on me how much would i give to have my mother though both i and my wife have of late times lived wholly for her and had much to endure on her account how much would i give to have her back to me but one week that i might my heavy laden heart with tears ef repentance my beloved friend give thou no grief to thy parents ah no vol i s can i the dead and that is the first concern au else is secondary this affection for his mother forms as it were a little island of light and in s history ee amid so much that is dark and desolate one feels it pleasant to linger here was at least one duty perhaps indeed the only one which in a wasted life he discharged with fidelity from his towards this one being we may perhaps still learn that his heart er	37
by circumstances was not incapable of true interested love a rich heart by nature but its riches and to a pure with this one heart for it seems doubtful whether he e er loved another i his poor mother while alive was the haven of all his earthly and in after years from amid far scenes and crushing he of n looks back to her grave with a feeling to which all respond the date of became a memorable era in his mind as may appear from the title which he gave long afterwards to one of his most popular and productions die und the twenty fourth of february see for example the pre ce to his der written at in the tone of still but deep and sadness which runs through the whole of this piece be communicated in we quote only a half which except in prose we shall not to der und am i for whom the caresses of and all roses of joy withered away as the first with its mould sounded on the coffin of my mother life aim op event which left him in possession of a small but competent fortune returned with his wife to his post at by this time too had been sent back and to a higher post he was now married like wise and the two wives he says soon became as intimate as their husbands in a little while joined them a in s office and by him ere long introduced to and the other circle of men of law who in foreign capital formed each other s chief society and of course to one another more closely than they might have done elsewhere does not seem to have loved as indeed he was at all times rather shy in his and to his quick eye and more rigid fastidious feeling the lofty theory and low selfish practice the general nay of character the and solemn affectation too visible in the man could be hidden nevertheless he feels and the frequent charm of his conversation for many times could be frank and simple and the true humor and with which he often launched forth into bland satire on his friends and still oftener on himself for many of his and weaknesses probably the two could not have lived together by themselves but in a circle of common men where these elements were by a fair addition of wholesome and they even one another and indeed the whole social union seems to have stood on no footing for the rest itself was at this time a gay picturesque and stirring city full of resources for spending life in pleasant occupation either wisely or has that described the first aspect it presented to streets of stately breadth formed of palaces in the finest s it was here that in s an der cross on the was written a sort of half performance for which who to his gifts as a writer added perhaps still higher both as a and a painter composed the accompaniment he that in this matter was very ill to please a ridiculous scene at the first reading of the piece the same shrewd wag has re in his us that it is literally true and that himself was the main actor in the business our poet had invited a few friends to read to them in manuscript his an der of which they already knew some fragments that had raised their expectations to the highest planted as usual in the middle of the circle at a little miniature table on which two clear lights stuck in high were italian style and wooden huts which threatened every moment to rush down over the heads of their inmates in these pomp combined in strange union with an population forming the as in a perpetual long bearded jews in the garb of every order here veiled and deeply of discipline walking self secluded and apart there flights of young in silk of the brightest colors talking and over broad squares the venerable ancient polish noble with and red or yellow boots the new generation to the utmost pitch as with in ever changing throng add to this a police of inconceivable disturbing no lar sport so that little theatres dancing bears practised incessantly in open spaces and streets while the most elegant and the poorest of burden stood gazing at them further a theatre in the national language a good french company an italian opera german players of at least a very sort balls on a quite original but highly enter plan places for pleasure excursions all round the city c ac und b i s and the poet he had im the breast th huge box the blue checked handkerchief reminding yon of as in use for and other indispensable things lay in order before him deep silence on all sides not a breath heard the poet cuts one of those ever memorable altogether indescribable you have seen in and begins w you recollect at rising i die die are on the coast ef the and by calling on the over this so begins brief pause stare in the audience and from a fellow in the comes a small clear voice my dearest most valued my best of poets if thy whole dear opera is written in that cursed language no soul of us knows a syllable of it and i beg in the devil s name thou rather have the goodness to it first of this an der our limits will permit us to say but little it is still a fragment the second part which was often promised and we believe partly written having never yet been in some respects it appears to us the best of s there is a decisive in the plot such as we seldom find with him and	37
a a nervous in the dialogue which is equally rare here too the mystic dreamy which as in most of his pieces he has with the action more than usually with the spirit of the whole it is a wild subject and this helps to give it a corresponding of locality the first planting of christianity among the by the knights leads us back of itself into dim ages of antiquity of superstitious and stem zeal it is a scene hanging as it were in half ghastly on a ground of night where the cross and st come ui contact with the s b iv s ts sacred oak and the of we are not surprised that shapes peer forth on us from the gloom in and of characters indeed is still little better than a his persons in external figure differ too slightly in inward nature and no one of them comes forward on us with a rightly visible or living air yet in and incidents in what may be the general costume of his subject he has here a really superior excellence the savage with their fishing their bear hunting their bloody and energy are brought vividly into view no less so the polish court of and the german in their and battles as they live and here placed on the verge of as it were the of light in conflict with the of darkness the assault on by the where the handful of knights is overpowered but the city saved from ruin by the miraculous of the who now proves to be the spirit of st this with the scene which follows it on the of the where the dawn slowly breaks over doings of woe and horrid cruelty but of woe and cruelty for by immortal hope belong undoubtedly to s most successful efforts with much that is questionable much that is merely common there are touches from the true land of wonders indeed the whole is with a certain dim religious light in which its many and are softened into something which at least poetic harmony we give this drama a high praise when we say that more than once it has re minded us of the cross on the had been by for the theatre but the complex machinery of the piece the flames springing at intervals from the life and of heads of certain characters and the other supernatural ware with which it is were found te the of any merely stage the best actor m germany was himself a and man of talent but in all points from as a may differ om a man with the second secret over the in which the shrewd and must have found himself when he came to the flame nothing remained but to write back a refusal full of admiration and and wrote one which says passes for a master piece of theatrical in this one respect at least s next play was happier for it actually crossed the marsh of and reached though in a state the um of the boards and this o the great joy as it proved both of and all other parties interested we allude to the martin die der martin or the of strength s most popular performance which came out at in and soon spread over all germany catholic as well as being acted it would seem even in to overflowing and delighted if instant acceptance therefore were a measure of dramatic merit this play should rank high among that class of works nevertheless to judge from our own impressions the sober reader of martin will be far from finding in it such excellence it cannot be named among the best it is not even the best of s there is indeed much exhibition many a sentiment as the newspapers have it nay with all its mixture of here and there a glimpse of genuine dramatic inspiration but as a whole the work sorely us it is f so loose and mixed a structure and falls asunder in our thoughts s like the and the clay in the s dream then is an interest perhaps of no trivial sort awakened in the first act but unhappily it goes on declining till in the an ill natured critic might almost say it the story is too wide for s to gather into a besides the reader with him an image of it too fixed for being so boldly and too high and august for being ornamented with and accordingly the diet of worms furnished as it is with sc and continues a much scene in history than it is here in fiction with regard to the persons of the play excepting those of and the whom he can we find scope for praise nay our praise even of these two must have many though carefully enough depicted is in fact little more than a common tragedy queen with the the love and other stages which belong to that of with to himself it is evident that has put forth his strength in this i and trying him by common standards we are far saying that he has failed doubtless it is in some respects a significant and even sublime yet must we ask whether it is the of history or even the proper for this drama and not rather some ideal of himself is not this with his too playing his of three days visions of the devil at whom to the sorrow of the he resolutely throws his huge ink bottle by much too and a personage we cannot but question the dramatic beauty whatever it may be in history of that three df trance the hero must before this have been in want of mere and there as he us deaf and dumb with his eyes yet fi and life mm op w n staring are we not tempted less to admire than to s	37
subsequently find him more than once arguing in of marriage altogether to our readers one other consideration may occur astonishment at the state of marriage law and the strange footing this must stand on throughout germany for a christian man at least not a to leave three behind him certainly wears a peculiar aspect perhaps it is saying much for german morality that so absurd a system has not by the from it already brought about its own of s further proceedings in except by we have little notice after the arrival of the french armies his ceased and now and in the summer of he felt himself he says by fate to indulge his taste for indulge it accordingly he did for he wandered to and fro many years nay may almost say to the end of his life like a perfect the various stages and of his travels he has himself recorded in a paper furnished by him for his own y in some dictionary great part of it but it is too long and too meagre for being quoted here was at everywhere received with open arms saw at in december for the first time the most life and writings op universal and the man of his age the man whose like no one that has seen him will ever see again the great nay only and under his introduction the pattern of princes the duke of and then after three ever memorable months in this society beheld at the triumphant entry of the pattern of european napoleon on the summit of the at sunrise he became acquainted with the crown prince now king of was by him introduced to the festival at and to the most intellectual lady of our time the de and must beg to be when after sufficient individual experience he can declare that the heart of this high and noble woman was at least as great as her genius for a while was his head quarters but he went to paris to t again to in short and hurried hither and thither as an and restless as the wandering jew on his mood of mind during all this period gives us no direct information but so an outward life of itself no inward repose and when we from other lights gain a transient glimpse into the s thoughts they seem still more than his footsteps his project of a new religion was by this time abandoned thinks his closer survey of life at had taught him the of such nevertheless we have in the foregoing sheets printed the name following the of similar german names on consideration we adopt the by the poet himself ah ed t it was here that saw him for the last time in found j through his means to a court festival in honor of and be still with gratification the spectacle of and that sovereign standing front to front engaged in the conversation vol i s the of religion in one shape or another nay of it in new by teaching and preaching had vanished from his meditations on the we that it still formed the master le of his soul the pillar of by day and the pillar of fire by night which guided him so far as he had any guidance in the desert of his now solitary barren and cheerless existence what his special opinions or prospects on the matter had at tliis period become we nowhere except indeed for if he has not yet found the dew he stiu cordially enough the old all his of cannot reconcile him to modem this he regards but as another and more hideous im of the spirit of the age nay as the triumph of which has now dressed itself in garb and even mounted the pulpit to preach in heavenly a doctrine which is altogether of the earth a curious passage from his preface to the cross on the we may quote by way of illustration after speaking of bu s miracles how his body when purchased from the for its weight in gold became light as he proceeds though these things may be justly doubted yet one miracle cannot be denied him the miracle namely that ail his death he has d firom this spirit of against in general which now replaced the old heathen and catholic spirit of persecution and almost as much as s body the admission that he knew what he wanted was what he wished to be was so wholly and therefore must have been a man at all points opposite both to that and to the culture of our day in a note he adds there is another however which in conduct what art is in speculation and which i reverence so highly that i ev i place it above art as conduct is above speculation at all but in this st and st are and if god life and writings of which i daily pray for i awaken to us the last day the task he would find in reject of that and would he in his somewhat rugged manner to protest against it a similar or perhaps still more reckless temper is to be traced elsewhere in passages of a gay as well as grave character this is the conclusion of a letter from in we have here which contain so many that you might use them instead of and have them read from beginning to end in the sunday schools likewise absolutely bursting with household felicity and nor of mind the genuine is dead and gone his ways but here too and superstition axe attacked in enlightened journals with such profit that the people care less for than even you in do and prize for instance the which has also been in and to chiefly for the multitude of liberal therein brought to light and regard the author	37
all his struggling to the as a secret or at worst an amiable in a word is determined without loss of time to overtake in the career of improvement and when i recollect that on her side carries s hymn hook with her in her to the shows in the and that the ray of faith deeper and deeper into your already by nature very deep i almost fancy that is one great and could find in my heart to pack up my goods and set off for italy to morrow morning not indeed that i might work there where follies enough are to be had too but that amid ruins and flowers i might forget all things and myself in the first place s to italy accordingly he went though with rather different objects and not quite so soon as on the morrow in the course of his wanderings a prince the von had settled a yearly s miscellaneous writings on him so that now he felt still more at liberty to go whither he in the course of a second visit to and which lasted four months madame de encouraged and assisted him to execute his favorite project he set out through and and on the th of december saw for the first time the capital of the world of his proceedings here much as we should desire to have minute details no information is given in this narrative and seems to know by a letter merely that he knelt with streaming eyes over the graves of st peter and st paul this little phrase says much appears likewise to have assisted at certain spiritual a new invention set on foot at rome for the devotion of the faithful consisting so far as we can gather in a sort of and prayer meetings conducted on the most principles the considerable band of being bound over to strict silence and secluded for several days with care from every sort of intercourse with the world the effect of these elsewhere declares was to an extreme degree at parting on the threshold of their holy all the brethren embraced each other as if with divine joy and each confessed to the other that throughout these precious days he had been as it were in heaven and now strengthened as by a soul bath was but to venture back into the cold world the next step from these if indeed it had not preceded them was a decisive one on the th of april had grace given him to return to the faith of his fathers the catholic here then the crowning mercy had at length arrived this passing of the determined the whole remainder of s life which had henceforth the merit at least of entire he forthwith set about the pro and t of then being in this he left italy in taking care however by the road to and certainly not in the help of the mother at and due preparation under the of his patron the prince yon had ordained a priest at in june r next from he hastened to and there with all his might his first b g the ck of the alliance which l d then just begun its venerable the novelty and ss he says nay originality of his fi secured him an extraordinary of hearers he was indeed a man worth hearing and see ing for his name abroad in sounding was filling all germany from the hut to the palace this he thinks might have affected head but he had a trust in god which bore him through neither did he seem anxious to stiu this of his judges least of au to his for already before arriving at he had published as a to his martin or the of strength a in entitled the of weakness wherein he himself to the whole world as an honest and of truth and takes occasion to his old of art religion aiid love love having now turned out to be a dangerous in such the writing of this der was reckoned by many a bold but measure a throwing down of the when the lists were full of tumultuous foes and the knight was but weak and his cause at best of the most questionable sort to reports and and and there was no limit what remains of this strange history may be up in few words accepted no special charge s miscellaneous writings in the but continued a private and priest preaching diligently but only where he himself saw good at but in summer over all parts of in and even everywhere he says the opinions of his hearers were violently divided at one time he thought of becoming and had actually entered on a sort of but he quitted the establishment rather suddenly and as he is reported to have said for reasons known only to god and himself by degrees his health grew very weak yet he still labored hard both in public and private writing or poems or dramatic preaching and as father in which last ity he is said to have been in great request of his poetical productions during this period there is none of any moment known to us except the mother of ike a tragedy of careful structure and apparently in high favor with the author but which notwithstanding need not detain us long in our view it is the worst of all his pieces a pale indeed quite affair for a cold breath as from a the heart in it there is no passion or interest but a certain martyr zeal or rather frenzy and this not so much as shrieking not loud and resolute but shrill hysterical and with ineffectual tears to read ft may well us it is a fit whose indicate not strength but the last decay of it his und bis and various	37
other pieces written in his wanderings we have not room to speak it is the less necessary as the and twenty fourth of february by much the best of these have already been forcibly and on the whole fairly by madame de l of the last named little work we might say with double emphasis it life and writings of was in fact drawing to his latter end his health had long been ruined especially of later years he had suffered much from of the lungs in he was thought to be ill and afterwards in when a journey to the partly restored him though he himself still felt that his term was near and spoke and acted like a man that was shortly to depart in january he was evidently dying his affairs he had already settled much of his time he spent in prayer was constantly cheerful at intervals even gay his death says was especially mild on the day of his disorder he felt himself particularly towards evening as if altogether light and well so that he would hardly consent to have any one to watch with him the servant whose turn it was did watch however he had sat down by the bedside between two and three next morning the th and continued there a considerable while in the belief that his patient was asleep surprised however that no breathing was to be heard he hastily aroused the household and it was found that had already passed away in imitation it is thought of be his pen to the treasury of the virgin at as a chief instrument of his his sins and his repentance he was at on the hill where a simple inscription composed by himself the wanderer to pray for his poor soul and expresses a trembling hope that as to mary because she loved much so to him also much may be forgiven we have thus in hurried movement travelled over s life and works noting down from the for has a deep and genuine tragic interest were it not so painfully protracted into the regions of pure horror s his his preface to d c are entirely unknown to us s miscellaneous writings such particulars as seemed most and from the latter some more curious passages less indeed with a view to their excellence than to their fitness for the man these scattered indications we must now leave our readers to interpret each for himself each will them into that combination which shall best with his own way of thought as a writer s character will occasion little difficulty a richly gifted nature but never wisely guided or resolutely applied a loving heart an intellect and inquisitive if not always clear and strong a gorgeous deep and bold imagination a true nay keen and burning sympathy with all high all tender and holy things here lay the main elements of no common poet save only that one was still wanting the force to cultivate them and mould them into pure union but they have remained too often struggling in wild disorder his poetry like his life is still not so much an k e as a had cast a look into perhaps the very deepest region of the wonderful but he had not learned to live there he was yet no of that mysterious land and in his visions its splendor is strangely mingled and with the flame or smoke of mere earthly fire of his we have already spoken and with much to praise found always more to censure in his pieces his shorter more poems we are better satisfied here in the rude vehicle of a certain and we of en find a strain of pathos and a deep though quaint significance his prose again is among the worst known to us degraded with nay yet obscure and vague into endless a well nigh inexplicable in its and seldom worth the trouble of he does not move through his subject and life and writings op arrange it and rule over it for the most part he but in it and laboriously it and at last sinks under it as a man the ill fated can still less content us his feverish and wasted life we have already looked at his determined well admits that in practice he was selfish out his best friends by the most a man of no dignity greedy at times in discourse with all his humor and apt to be and of a a blank which exposed him to incessant ridicule and manifold from people of the world nevertheless under all this rubbish the friendly there dwelt for those who could look more narrowly a spirit indeed in its beauty and in painful conscious oppression t never wholly forgetful of its original s soul was made for affection and as under his too rude with external things it was struck into and there was a tone which spoke of melody even in its a kind a sad and remembrance of his friends seems never to have quitted him to the last he not from warm love to men at large nay to awaken in them with such knowledge as he had a sense for what was best and highest may be said to have formed the earnest though weak and aim of his whole existence the truth is his defects as a writer were also his defects as a man he was feeble and without in life as in poetry his fell into confusion his character relaxed itself on all sides into his activity became gigantic endeavor followed by most performance the grand incident of his life his of the roman catholic religion is one on which we need not heap fur s miscellaneous writings ther censure for already as appears to us it is rather liable to be too harshly than to dealt with there is a feeling	37
in the popular mind which in well meant hatred of perhaps in general too y such changes it should be recollected had at all periods of his life a religion nay he and after truth in this matter as after the highest good of man a fact which of itself must in this respect set him far above the most consistent of mere in whose barren and soul perhaps is no such brilliant virtue we pardon genial weather for its changes but the of all is that of further we must say that strange as it may seem in s whole conduct both before and after his there is not visible trace of on the whole there are fewer genuine than men are apt to imagine surely indeed that must be a nature of who feels that in worldly good he can gain by such a step is the contempt the of all thai have known and loved us and of millions that have never known us to be weighed against a mess of or a piece g money we hope there are not many even in the rank of that would think so but for there was no gain in any way nay rather certainty of loss he enjoyed or sought no patronage with his own resources he was already independent though poor and on a footing of good esteem with all that was most in his country his little conferred on him at a prior date by a catholic prince was not continued after his except by the duke of a he became a mark for the butt at which every made his proof shot his character was more and than that of any other man what had he to gain insult and persecution and with these life and writings of as bids us believe the voice of his own conscience to judge from his writings he was far from of the change he had made his catholic faith evidently stands in his own mind as the first blessing of his life and he to it as to the anchor of his soul scarcely more than once in the preface to his der does he allude to the of that were in circulation against him it is in a spirit which without entirely concealing the of nature fails in the and endurance which became him as a christian here is a fragment of another paper published since his death as it was meant to be which him in a still clearer light the reader may or what will be better pity and with him but the structure of this strange piece surely anything but we it with all its breaks and fantastic as it stands before us inscription from a son c here follows a statement of his and birth with vacant spaces for the date of his death of the following lines submitted to all such as have more or less felt any friendly interest in his unworthy person with the request to take warning by lis example and to remember the poor sold of the writer before g d in prayer and good begun at on the th of september about eight in the evening amid the still distant sound of approaching thunder concluded when and where god will motto device and in death et v n r most humbly and earnestly and in the name of god does the author of this writing beg of such persons as may find it to e same in any suitable to public s writings ad v et est in te per et hie et ei ad se in the name of god the father son and holy ghost amen the thunder came hither and is still rolling though now at a distance the name of the lord he praised i begin this paper must needs be brief because the appointed term for my life itself may already be near at hand there are not wanting examples of important and unimportant men who have left behind them in writing the defence or even sometimes the accusation of their earthly life without such i am not minded to imitate it with trembling i reflect that i myself shall first learn in its whole terrific compass what properly i was when these lines shall be read by men that is to say in a point of time which for me will be no time in a condition wherein all experience will for me be too late qui me but if i do till that day when all shall be laid open draw a over my past life it is not merely out of shame that i so order it for though not free from this vice so i would willingly make known my guilt to all and every one my voice might reach could i hope by such confession to for what i have done or thereby to save a single soul from there are two motives however which forbid me to make such an open personal revelation after death the one because the of a grave may be dangerous to the health of the on the other because in my writings which may god forgive me a wilderness of poisonous weeds and there mc also be here and there a lying scattered from which poor to whom it might be would start back with shuddering did they know the soil on which it grew e and of so much however in regard to those good creatures as they call themselves namely to those feeble who of what they their good hearts so much must i say before god that such a heart alone when it is not checked and regulated by and is not only incapable of saving its possessor from destruction but is rather certain to hurry him full speed into that abyss where i have been whence i	37
perhaps by god s grace am snatched and from which may god preserve every reader of these lines quoted by p all this is melancholy enough but it is not like the writing of a or to above all things shows no thought of returning in allusion to a which had spread of his having given up he says in the preface already quoted a stupid falsehood i must reckon it since according to my deepest conviction it is as impossible that a soul in bliss should return back into the grave as tliat a man who like me after a life of error and search has found the jewel of truth should i will not say give up the same but hesitate to sacrifice for it blood and life nay many things perhaps far dearer with joyful h when the one good cause is concerned and elsewhere in a private letter i not only assure thee but i beg of thee to assure all men if god should ever so withdraw the light of his grace from me that i ceased to be a catholic i would a thousand times sooner join myself to or to tlie on the but to that most contradictory of never never never here perhaps there is a touch of of almost feminine vehemence for it is to a and an old friend that he writes but the conclusion of his preface shows him in a better light speaking of second parts and vol s mi writings that so many of his works were unfinished he adds but what specially comforts me is the prospect of our general second part where even in the first scene consolation that there au our works will be known may not indeed prove for us au but where through the strength of him that all works it will be granted to those whom he has saved not only to know each other but even to know him as by him they are known with my trust in christ whom i have not yet won i regard with the teacher of the all things but that i may win him and to him cordially and lovingly do i in life or at death commit you all my beloved friends and my beloved enemies on the whole we cannot think it doubtful that s belief was real and but how then our wondering readers may inquire if his belief was real and not pretended how then did he believe he who in style at the truths of by what did he succeed in into the harder and of of too the and gross of which he has so fiercely exposed in his tin and this moreover without or even softening his his in the very last edition of that drama to this question we cure far from pretending to have any answer that altogether ourselves much less that shall altogether satisfy others meanwhile there are two considerations which throw light on the difficulty for us these as some step or at least attempt towards a solution of it we shall not withhold the first lies in s individual character and mode of life not only was he bom a mystic not only had he lived from of old amid and all manner of and other he was also and had l been what is emphatically called a word which has now lost somewhat of its original force but which as and of applied here is still more just and significant in its than in its common he was a man that is by a long course of vicious and loosened asunder everywhere in s life and actions we discern a mind relaxed from its proper no longer capable of effort and resolute vigilance but floating almost with the current of its impulses in languid imaginative reverie that such a man should with sharp fearless logic between beloved errors and unwelcome truths was not to be expected his belief is likely to have been persuasion rather than conviction both as it related to religion and to other subjects what or how much a man in this way may bring himself to believe with such force and distinctness as he honestly and usually calls there is no but another consideration which we think should be omitted is the general state of religious opinion in germany especially among such minds as was most apt to take for his to this complex and highly interesting subject we can for the present do nothing more than allude so much however we may say it is a common theory among the that every creed every form of worship is a form merely the mortal and body in which the immortal and spirit of religion is with more or less completeness expressed to the material eye and made manifest and influential among the doings of men it is thus for instance that in his universal history to consider the law the creed of nay s and in short all other systems of faith which he scruples not to without praise or censure simply as modes of representation we could report equally singular things of and others belonging to the philosophic class nay of s miscellaneous writings a clergyman and even bearing high authority in the church now it is clear in a country where such opinions are openly and generally professed a change of religious creed must be comparatively a slight matter to are accordingly by no means unknown among the and the younger count von men as we should think of vigorous intellect and of character above suspicion were or rather of in this adventure and indeed formed part of his acquaintance at it is but they would say perhaps as if a inspired with harmony of inward music should choose this instrument in preference to that for giving voice to it the inward inspiration is the grand concern and	37
incline to ill of our enter indeed to our own eyes it already looks enough but the dainty little it would has become a subject of and truly wonderful speculation to our german neighbors of which also some vague seem now to have reached this country and these likely enough to awaken on all hands a curiosity which whether intelligent or idle it were a kind of good deed to in a journal of this sort what little light on such a matter is at our disposal may naturally be looked for like many of s works by no means carries its significance written on its forehead so that he who runs may read but on the contrary it is enveloped in a certain mystery under which to hasty readers may be not only obscure but altogether provoking and impenetrable neither is this any new thing with has he produced both in prose and verse which bring critic and into straits or even to a total some we have wholly some half these latter are occasionally studied by dull heads in the literal sense alone and not only studied but condemned for in truth the outward meaning seems unsatisfactory enough were it not that ever and anon we are reminded of a cunning manifold meaning which lies hidden under it and by capricious see for instance the no vii where an article stands headed with these words of trot and lord s to this more and more completely from its quaint concealment did we believe that adopted this mode of writing as q vulgar to confer on his poems the interest which might belong to so many we should hold it a very poor proceeding of this most readers of will know that he is incapable such and uncertain for distinction are a class of accomplishments to which he has never made any the truth is this style has in many cases its own certainly in all matters of business and science in all of fact or argument clearness and ready are a great often an indispensable object nor is there any man better aware of this principle than or who more to it or more happily it wherever it seems but in this as in many other respects science and poetry having separate purposes may have each its several law if an artist has conceived his subject in the secret shrine of his own mind and knows with a knowledge beyond all power of that it is true and pure he may choose his own manner of exhibiting it and will generally be the to choose it well one degree of light he may find will one quite a different degree of light another the face of was not painted but hidden in the old picture the veiled figure at was the most expressive in the temple in fact the grand point is to have a meaning a genuine deep and noble one the proper form for this the form best suited to the subject and to the author will gather round it almost of its own accord we profess ourselves to no mode of communicating truth which we rejoice to meet with in all shapes from that of the child s to the deepest poetical nay the itself may sometimes be the s miscellaneous truest part of the matter john we hope is our best neither unhappily is our most attractive science yet which of our and nay which of our and poems lives in such mild sunshine as the good old pilgrim s progress t in the memory of so many men under s management this style of composition has often a singular charm the reader is kept on the alert ever conscious of his own active light breaks on him and clearer and clearer vision by degrees till at last the whole lovely shape comes forth definite it may be and bright with heavenly radiance or fading on this side and that into vague expressive mystery but true in both cases and beautiful with nameless as the poet s own eye may have beheld it we love it the more for the labor it has given us we almost feel as if we ourselves had assisted in its creation and lies the highest merit of a piece and the proper art of reading it we have not read an author till we have seen his object whatever it may be as he saw it is it a matter of reasoning and has he reasoned and we should understand the circumstances which to his mind made it seem true or persuaded him to write it knowing that it was not so in any other way we do him injustice if we judge him is it of poetry his words are so many to which we ourselves must furnish the interpretation or they remain as in all minds the words of poetry ever do a dead letter indications they are barren in themselves but by following which we also may reach or approach that hill of vision where the poet stood beholding the glorious scene which it is the purport of his poem to show others a state in which the hill were brought under us not we obliged to mount it might indeed for the present be more convenient but in the end it could not be equally satisfying s ance of passive pleasure it should be forgotten is here as under all conditions of mortal existence an impossibility everywhere in life the true question is not what we gain but what we do so also in intellectual matters in conversation in reading which is more precise and careful conversation it is not what we but what we are made to give that chiefly contents and profits us true the mass of readers will object because like the mass of men they are too indolent but if any one affect not the active and watchful but	37
the passive and line of study are there not writers expressly fashioned for him enough and to spare it is but the smaller number of books that become more instructive by a second perusal the great majority are as perfectly plain as perfect can make them yet if time is precious no book that will not improve by repeated deserves to be read at all and were there an artist of a right spirit a man of wisdom conscious of his high of whom we could know beforehand that he had not written without purpose and earnest meditation that he knew what he had written and had embodied in it more or less the of a deep and noble soul should we not draw near to him reverently as to a and what task could there be more profitable than to read him as we have described to study him even to his for were not this to think as he had thought to see with his gifted eyes to make the very mood and feeling of his great and rich mind the mood also of our poor and little one it is under the consciousness of some such mutual relation that writes and his countrymen now reckon themselves bound to read him a relation singular we might say solitary in the present time but which it is ever necessary to bear in mind in his literary s writings to justify it ia this particular much more might be said were it our chief business at present but what mainly concerns us here is to know that such justified or not is the poet s manner of writing which also must for us a correspondent manner of studying him if ve study him at all for the rest on this latter point he nowhere expresses any undue anxiety his works have invariably been sent forth without preface without note or comment of any kind but left sometimes plain and direct sometimes dim and typical in what degree of clearness or obscurity he himself may have judged best to be and and md distorted as might please the innumerable multitude of critics to whose he has been for a great part of his life accused of listening with composure is no exception to that practice but rather among the strong instances of it this to presents itself abruptly under a character not a little so that at first view we know not well what to make of it and only after repeated will the scattered of significance begin to into continuous light and the whole in any measure rise before us with that greater or less degree of which it may have had in the mind of the poet nay after all no perfect clearness may be attained but only various to it hints and half glances of a meaning which is still in nay to the just of which this very was essential for the whole piece has a dream like character and in these cases no prudent will be altogether confident to our readers we must now endeavor so far as possible to show both the dream and its interpretation the former as it stands written before us the latter from our own private conjecture alone for of those strange german comments we yet know nothing except by the faintest s forms part of a to but for our present undertaking its with the latter work is much than might have been expected we say happily because though considerably talked of in appears still to be known we have made it our duty to inspect the english translation of as well as the which accompany s outlines and various and or on these two works but unfortunately have found there no cause to alter the above persuasion is emphatically a work of art a work in the depths of a vast and wonderful mind and forth with that truth and curious felicity of composition in which this man is generally admitted to have no living rival to such a work in another language to show it in its hard yet strength with those slight traits of pathos or of sarcasm those glimpses of solemnity or terror and so many and echoes of meaning which connect it in strange with the whole infinite of thought were business for a man of different powers than has yet attempted german translation among us in fact is to be read not once but many times if we would understand it every line every word has ts purport and only in such minute inspection will the essential significance of the poem display itself perhaps it is even chiefly by following these fainter traces and tokens that the true point of vision for the whole is discovered to us and we stand at last in the proper scene of a wild and region where in pale light tl e shapes of chaos as it were the foundations of being itself seem to loom forth dim and huge in the vague around us and the life and nature of man with its brief interests its misery and sin its mad passion and poor and its hour and vol i s miscellaneous writings overlooked by that ail of which it forms though so mean a he who would study all this must for a long time we are afraid be content to study it in the original but our of have been of a still more sort let any man fancy the discovered for the first time translated from an unknown greek manuscript by some ready writing and brought out at lane with new music made as make new by pouring out of one vessel into another then read the theatrical report in the morning papers and the magazines of next month was not the whole affair rather heavy how rent did the audience sit how little use was made of	37
the hand except by such as took snuff did not somewhat remind us of a and of a decayed confess that the plot was monstrous nay the marriage law of england highly on the whole what a singular deficiency of must this have labored under but probably he was excluded from the society of the influential classes for after all the man is not without indications of genius had we had the training of him and so through all the variations of the critical so might it have with the ancient for so has it with the only modern that writes in a this treatment of may deserve to be mentioned for various reasons not to be lamented over because as in much more important instances it is inevitable and lies in the nature of the case besides a better state of things is evidently enough coming rounds by and by the labors poetical and intellectual of the as of other nations will appear before us in their true shape and among the rest will have justice done it for ourselves it were s unwise presumption at any time to pretend opening the full poetical significance of nor is this the place for making such an attempt present purposes will he answered if we can point out some general features and bearings of the piece such as to exhibit its relations with by what this latter has been into it and how far the strange picture and the strange it is in correspond v the story of forms one of the most remarkable productions of the middle ages or rather it is the most striking of a highly remarkable belief which originated or prevailed in those ages considered strictly it may take the rank of a christian in the same sense as the story of of and the like are pagan ones and to our inspection it will disclose a no less impressive or characteristic aspect of the same human nature here bright joyful self confident smiling even in its there deep meditative awe struck austere in which bo i they and it took their rise to us in these days it is not easy to estimate how this story of invested with its magic and infernal horrors must have up the souls of a rude and earnest people in an age when its dialect was not yet and such with the principle of evil were thought not only in general but possible to every individual who here shuddered at the mention of them the day of magic has gone by has been put a stop to by act of parliament but the mysterious relations which it still continue the soul of man still fights with the dark influences of ignorance misery and sin still itself like a captive bird against the iron limits which necessity has drawn round it still follows false shows seeking peace and good on paths where no peace or good is to be found in this sense may still be considered as true nay as a truth of s miscellaneous writings the most impressive sort and one which will always remain true to body forth in modem a feeling so old and deep rooted in our whole european way of thought were a task not unworthy of the highest poetical genius la germany accordingly it has several times been attempted and with very various success has produced a romance of full of rugged sense and here and there not without considerable strength of yet on the whole of an essentially character dead or living with only a mechanical life coarse almost gross and to our minds far too of pitch and s which is a drama must be regarded as a much more genial performance so far as it goes the secondary characters the jews and students often remind us of our own and his main persons however and the devil are but is little more than self willed and alas the devils above all are savage and noisy besides the piece has been left in a state it can pass as the best work of s s which also is or more commonly called or is here so far as we know named for the first time to english readers nevertheless in any solid study of german literature this author must take of many hundreds whose reputation has travelled faster but has been unfortunate in his own country as well as here at an early age meeting with no success as a poet he quitted that art for painting and retired perhaps in disgust into italy where also but little seems to have awaited him his writings almost half a century of neglect were at length brought into sight and general estimation by at a time when the author might indeed say that he was old and not enjoy it solitary and could not impart it but not unhappily that he was known and did not want it for his fine genius yet made for itself no free amid so many s lately was a drama we have never seen and have only heard of it as of a and hollow article suited for immediate use and immediate oblivion we believe was the first who tried this subject and is on all hands considered as by far the most successful his manner of treating it appears to us so far as we can understand it peculiarly just and happy he the supernatural of the story but it with the consciousness on his and our part that it is a his art magic comes forth in doubtful twilight vague in its outline everywhere with light sarcasm as a real object but as a real shadow of an object which is also real yet lies beyond our horizon and except in its shadows cannot itself be seen nothing were than to look in this poem for a new satan s invisible world	37
tale or the other plays and tales that have been founded on it our and yet still noble will not end in the madness of horror but in peace on better knowledge whence that knowledge is to come what higher and world of art or religion may be hovering in the mind of the poet we will not try to perhaps in glimpses he may yet show it us transient and afar off yet clear with beauty as a land of wonders and new poetic heaven with regard to that part of the work already finished we must here say little more as it yet stands is in s miscellaneous writings deed only a stating of the difficulty but a stating of it wisely truly and with deepest poetic emphasis for how many living hearts even now imprisoned in the of doubt do these wild piercing tones of his withering agonies and fiery desperation speak the word they have long been waiting to hear a nameless pain had long over the soul here by some light touch it starts into form and voice we see it and know it and see that another also knew it this is as a for the mind a grove where the oaks and fountains to us of our destiny and murmur secrets how all this is managed and the poem so curiously fashioned how the insight is combined with the keenest feeling and the and wildest imagination by what soft and skilful finishing these so elements are blended in fine harmony and the dark world of spirits with its merely plays like a of strange mysterious shadows among the palpable oh of material life and the whole firm in its details and sharp solid as reality yet hangs before us melting on all sides into air and free and light as the fabric of a vision all this the reader can learn fully nowhere but by long study in the work itself the general scope and of it we have endeavored to sketch the few incidents on which with the aid of much dialogue and these have been brought out are perhaps already known to most readers and at all events need not be here has promised to himself that he will lead through the bustling of life but that its pleasures shall tempt and not satisfy him food shall before his eager lips but he shall beg for nourishment in vain hitherto they have travelled but a short way together yet so far the has kept s liis engagement well endowed with all earthly and many more than earthly advantages is still no nearer nay a brief season of and uncertain joy he finds himself sunk into deeper than ever an girl whom he loves but has betrayed is doomed to die and already in brain less for her own errors than for his in a scene of true pathos he would fain persuade her to escape with him by the aid of from prison but in the instinct of her heart she finds an invincible aversion to the she chooses death and rather than life and love if of his giving at her final refusal that she is judged a voice from above that she is saved the action and vanish from our sight as into boundless space and now after so long a preface we arrive at the romantic where these strangely altered by travel and in altogether different costume have again risen into sight our long preface was not needless for and though separated by some wide and marvellous interval are the characters may have changed by absence is no longer the same bitter and man but appears an composure with a silent energy a grave and as it were alone may retain somewhat of his old but still the past state of these personages must illustrate the present and only by what we remember of them can we try to interpret what we see in fact the style of is altogether new quiet simple joyful passing by a short from classic dignity into romantic pomp it has everywhere a full and sunny tone of not a tragedy but a gay gorgeous vol i s writings mask neither is s former history alluded to or any explanation given us of that may have it is a light scene divided hy and unknown distance from that country of gloom nevertheless the latter still in the background nay rises shutting out further view and our gay a new significance as it is painted on that of storm we question whether it ever occurred to any english reader of ty that the work needed a or even admitted one to the in deeper study of a favorite poem which also they have full means of studying this has long been no secret and such as have seen with what zeal most readers and how the younger of them will whole scenes of it with a vehemence resembling that of bias and his figure in the streets of may estimate the interest excited in that country by the following notice from the author published last year in his und in s character in the elevation to which latter refinement working on the old rude tradition has raised it represents a man who feeling impatient and imprisoned within the limits of mere earthly existence regards the possession of the highest knowledge the of the fairest blessings as even in the slightest degree to satisfy his longing a spirit accordingly which struggling out on all sides ever returns the more unhappy this form of mind is so with our modem disposition that various persons of ability have been induced to undertake the treatment of such a subject my manner of attempting it obtained approval distinguished men considered the matter and on my performance all which i observed at the same time i could not but wonder that none of those who undertook a and completion	37
of my fragment had lighted s en the which seemed so obvious that the composition of a second part must necessarily itself altogether away from the sphere of the first and conduct a man of such a nature into higher regions under circumstances how i for my part had determined to essay this lay silently before my own mind from time to time exciting me to some progress while from all and each i carefully guarded my secret still in hope of bringing the work to the wished for issue now however i must no longer keep back or in my conceal any further secret from the to which on the contrary i feel myself bound to submit my whole labors ev n though in a state accordingly i have resolved that the above named piece a smaller drama complete within itself but to the second part of shall be forthwith presented in the first portion of my works the wide chasm between that well known conclusion of the first part and the entrance of an antique heroine is not yet meanwhile as a my readers will accept what follows the old legend tells us and the play not to introduce the scene that in his imperious pride of heart required from tlie love of the fair of greece in which demand the other after some reluctance gratified him not to overlook so important a concern in our work was a duty for us and how we have endeavored to discharge it will be seen in this but what may have furnished the occasion of such an occurrence and how after manifold our old can have found means to bring back the individual in person out of into life must in this stage of the business remain for the present it is enough if our reader will admit that the real may step forth on antique tragedy before her primitive abode in we then request him to observe in what way and manner will presume to court favor from this royal all famous beauty of the world to manage so a courtship will be admitted to be no easy task for the mad hero s r must here s miscellaneous writings be fulfilled to its largest extent before the business proceed a step and the gods it is certain are not in the habit of time and space even to make two lovers happy our was not ignorant of this mysterious of s however he it over briefly and without the difficulty merely across the scene as an airy without speech or personality and makes the love sick philosopher immortal by a kiss probably there are not many that would grudge such immortality we at least envy him for who does not see that this in all human probability is no real but only some hollow attired in her shape while the true daughter of still dwells afar off in th of dis and not and hears not the most potent of black art another matter it is to call forth the frail fair one in very deed not in form only but in soul and life the same whom the son of wedded and for whose sake ceased to be for must behold this wonder not as she seemed but as she was and at his desire the past shall become present and the antique time must be new created and give back its persons and circumstances though so long since in the silence of the blank by gone eternity however is a cunning genius and will not start at common obstacles indeed he is enough to know that time and space are but not forms of the human soul laws of thought which to us appear independent but out of our brains have no existence whatever in which case the whole may be more of a logical than any actual material perplexity let us see how he it or cuts it the scene is greece not our poor oppressed but the old heroic for the sun again shines s oh and high stands here massive and entire among its mountains as when it wearied with his ten years of warfare and eight of sea appears in front of the palace with a chorus of captive maidens these are hut shades we know from e deep of and for th hut the has so managed it that they themselves have no consciousness of is their true and hi ly precarious state of existence the three years have heen or compressed into a point and these fair figures on the upper air entertain not the slightest suspicion that had ever left it or that anything special had hi save only that they had just from the ships and been sent forward by to provide for his which is shortly to follow all these indispensable it would appear has arranged with considerable success of the poor shades and their entire ignorance he is so sure that he would not scruple to cross question them on this very point so for his whole enterprise nay cannot forbear now and then throwing out malicious hints to herself and raise the strangest doubts as to her personal identity thus on one occasion as we shall see he reminds her of a scandal which had gone abroad of her being a double personage of her living with king in egypt at the very time when she lived with beau paris in and what is more extraordinary still of her having been dead and married to afterwards in the island of admits that it is the most inexplicable thing on earth can only conjecture that she a vision was joined to him a vision and then sinks into a reverie or in the arms of the chorus in this way can the world sport with the perplexed s writings beauty and by sly practice make show us the secret which is unknown to herself for the	37
present however there is no thought of such scruples and her maidens far from doubting that they are real of this world feel themselves in a deep embarrassment about its concerns from the dialogue in long or we soon gather that matters wear a threatening aspect her paternal and mansion in such style as may an wife returned from so an with charitable to her which indeed it would seem was nothing but the merest accident for she had simply gone to pay her vows according to sacred wont in the temple of when the robber seized her and further us that the still to her a future for seldom in our swift ship did my husband to look on me and word of comfort he none as if a brooding mischief there he silent sat until when into bending bay the first ships with their but kissed the land he rose and said as by the voice of gods inspired here will i that my warriors troop by troop i muster them in battle order on the ocean strand but thou go forward up sacred bank guiding the along the flower space till thou arrive on the fair plain where a broad fruit bearing field has piled its roofs amid the mountains and sends up the smoke of then enter thou the high palace call the maids i left at parting and the wise old with her inspect the treasures which thy father left and i in war or peace adding have heaped up thou all in order standing for it is the prince s privilege to see at his return each household item as it was and where it was for of himself the slave hath power to alter s it appears moreover that has given her directions to prepare for a solemn sacrifice the the the altar the axe dry wood are all to he in readiness only of the victim there was no mention a circumstance from which falls not to draw some rather alarming however reflecting that all issues rest with the higher powers and that in any case and will avail her nothing she at length on this grand enterprise of entering the palace to make a general review and enters accordingly but long before any such business could have been finished she hastily returns with a nay terrified aspect much to the astonishment of her chorus who inquire the cause who the door open not that jove s daughter shrink with common nor by the brief cold touch of fear be chilled and stunned yet the horror which ascending in the of night from of chaos rolls itself together many shaped like glowing clouds from out the mountain s fire throat in threatening may shake even heroes hearts so have the here to day appointed me a welcome to my native mansion such that fain from the ofl trod long wished for threshold like a guest that has took leave i would withdraw my steps for ay but no retreated have i to the light nor shall ye farther force me angry powers be who ye may new will i use then the blaze of the hearth may greet the mistress as the ihe discover noble queen to us thy that wait by thee in love what misery has befallen leader of the chorus s miscellaneous writings what i have seen ye too with your own eyes see if night have not already sucked her hack to the of her wonder bearing breast yet would ye know this thing i tell it you in words when bent on present duty yet with anxious thought i set foot in these high royal halls the silent vacant passages astounded me for tread of hasty footsteps nowhere met the ear nor bustle as of busy work the eye no maid comes forth to me no such as still wont with friendly welcome to salute ah guests but as alone advancing i approach the hearth there by the remnant of dim coals sits crouching on the ground up muffled some huge not as in sleep she sat but as in drowsy muse with ordering voice her rise doubting twas the the bang at parting hence had left but heedless shrunk together sits she motionless and as i at last outstretched her lean right arm as if she beckoned me from hall and hearth away turn indignant from her and hasten out forthwith towards the steps whereon aloft the adorned rises and near by it the treasure room when lo the wonder starts abruptly from the floor imperious my advance herself in haggard stature hollow eyes a shape of hideous strangeness to all sight and thought but i discourse to the air for words in vain attempt to body forth to sight the form that dwells in us there see herself she forward to the light i here we are masters till our lord and king shall come the ghastly of night beauty s friend back to their or enters on the threshold between the door posts chorus much have i seen and strange though the youthful and thick still wave round my temples s s a many war and its horrors witnessed i once in s night when it t the cloud covered din of warriors heard i th shouting in anger heard i s iron toned voice from without city wards ah the city yet stood with its safely yet but spreading from house over house the flame did us sea like red loud and hither thither as tempest floods over the death city flying saw i through heat and through gloom and glare of that fire ocean shapes of gods in their grim fierce and terrible giant high through the flame dusk of that did i see it or was it but terror of heart that fashioned forms so know can i never but here that i view this horrible thing with my own	37
eyes this of a believe i yea i could clutch t in my fingers did not from shape so dangerous fear at a distance keep which of old daughters then art thou for i compare thee to that generation i s writings art thou of gray born one eye and one tooth using alternate child or thou haggard close by such beauty fore the divine glance of display thee but display as it pleases thee for the ugly he not as his bright eye yet did look on a shadow but as mortals alas for it law of destiny burdens us with the unspeakable eye sorrow which such a sights detestable doth in lovers of beauty awaken nay then hear since thou com st forth us hear only curses hear all manner of out of the scornful lips of the happier that were made by the old is the saw but high and true remains its sense that shame and beauty ne er together hand in hand were seen pursue their journey over the earth s green path deep rooted dwells an ancient hatred in these two so that wherever on their way one to meet the other each on its adversary turns its back then forth the faster on its separate road shame all in sorrow beauty and light of mood till the hollow night of catches it at length if age and wrinkles have not tamed it long before so you ye hither from strange lands i find in tumult like the hoarse flight s that over our heads in long drawn sends down its creaking and the silent wanderer that he look aloft at them a moment but they go their way and he goes his so also will it be with us who then are ye that here in wise i e drunk ones ye dare uproar at this palace gate who then are ye that at the of the s house ye howl as at the moon the brood of dogs think ye t is hid from me what manner of thing ye are ye war fight bred feather headed crew crew as that waste in alike the soldier s and the s strength here seeing you gathered seems as a swarm had lighted covering the of the ye of other s ye greedy mouthed quick of fruits men gain by tedious toil cracked market ware bought and troop of slaves we have thought it right to give so much of these and in the words as far a might be of the parties themselves happy could we in any measure have the broad yet rich and simplicity of these long or the tone as we have done the of that song its rude earnestness and awkward looking strength as we have done its and the task was no easy one and we remain as might have been expected little contented with our efforts having indeed nothing to boast of except a sincere fidelity to the original if the reader through such can obtain any glimpse of itself he will not only pardon us but thank us to our own minds at least there is everywhere a strange quite peculiar charm in these of the old style a dash of the ridiculous if we might say so s miscellaneous writings is blended with the sublime yet blended with it softly and only to temper its for often so is the we could almost feel as if a vista were opened through the long gloomy distance of ages and we with our modem eyes and modem levity beheld afar off in clear light the very figures of that old grave time saw them again living in their old costume and and heard them audibly discourse in a dialect which had long been dead of all this no man is more master than as a modern antique his must be considered in poetry a similar thoroughly classical spirit will be found in this first part of yet the manner of the two pieces is essentially different we should say we are more reminded of perhaps of than of it is more rugged copious energetic a still more ancient style how very primitive for instance are and in their whole here how frank and downright in speech above all how minute and specific no glimpse of philosophical culture no such thing as a general idea thus every different object seems a new unknown one and requires to be separately stated in like manner what can be more honest and than the of the chorus with what they to the sack of and endeavor to convince themselves that they do actually see this horrible thing then lament the law of destiny which them to such unspeakable eye sorrow and finally break forth into sheer cursing to all which answers in the like free and fashion but to our story this hard tempered and so dreadfully ugly old lady the reader cannot help suspecting at first sight to be some cousin german of or indeed that great actor of all work himself which latter s suspicion the devilish nature of the by degrees into a moral certainty there is a malice in the wise old which cannot be mistaken meanwhile the chorus and the indulge still further in mutual abuse she them with their and wanton disposition they her extreme deficiency in personal charms however and the old pretending that she has not till now recognised the stranger to be her mistress herself into gentleness the greatest humility and even appeals to her for protection against the insolence of young ones but wicked is only waiting her still neither unwilling to wound nor afraid to strike to some unpleasant of doubt is her past history in concert with and that the latter had been appointed by on his return from his expedition to no sooner is mentioned than the with an air of helping out the story adds which thou	37
question much if one there be so as at pull many of our best heroes man devouring were i do respect his greatness and confide in him and for his tower this with your own eyes ye should see another thing it is than clumsy work such as our fathers nothing huddled up and like one rude on other rude tumbling in that tow r of theirs is and level all and done by square and rule look on it from without it on so strait so tight of joint and mirror smooth as steel to there nay even your very thought down and then within such courts broad spaces all around witli of every sort and use there have ye arches pillars galleries for looking out and in and coats of arms chorus of arms what mean st thou bore a twisted snake on his shield as ye yourselves have seen the seven also before bore carved work each on his shield devices rich and full of sense there saw ye moon and stars of the nightly heaven s vault and and heroes swords and dangerous tools such as in storm o good towns of like sort our heroes iso bear s there see ye claws and the and wings and roses tails t and gold and black and silver blue and such like are there in halls row after row in halls so large so lofty boundless as the world there mi t ye dance chorus ha tell us are there dancers there the best on earth a golden haired band they breathe of youth paris alone so breath d when to our queen he came too near thou quite dost lose the tenor of thy story say me thy last word wilt say it say in earnest audibly yes next moment i surround thee with that the st p is questionable for is not this a per son of the most suspicious character or rather is it not certain that she is a in grain and will almost of a go how it may turn good into bad and yet what is to be done a trumpet said to be that of sounds in the distance at which the chorus shrink together in increased terror coldly reminds them of with his nose as a small token of turn of thinking on these matters however that there is now nothing for it but to wait the issue and die with propriety has no wish to die either propriety or she though with a faltering resolve the yes a burst of joy breaks from the chorus thick fog rises all round in the midst of which as we learn from their wild tremulous they feel themselves hurried through the air is swept m sight s writings and the cry of swam away in die distance for now as we suppose high house with all its is hack into the depths of the past old has again new only with another name remains unchanged and the king of rivers among his quite a different race of than those of the mist is passing away hut yet to the horror of the chorus no clear daylight returns dim masses rise round them has vanished is it a castle is it a they find themselves in the interior court of the tower surrounded with rich fantastic buildings of the middle ages if hitherto we have moved along with considerable convenience over ground singular enough indeed yet the nature of it once understood affording firm footing and no unpleasant scenery we come now to a strange mi ed element in which it seems as if neither walking swimming nor even flying could rightly avail us we have i admitted and honestly believed that and her were shades but now they appear to be changing into m re ideas mere or poetic thoughts too for he j as every one sees must be lord of this fortress is much altered man since we last met him nay sometimes we could fancy he were only acting a part on this on were a mere representing not so much his own natural personality as some shadow and of his history not so much his own as the tion of s adventures and the genius of the people among whom this took its rise for indeed he has strange gifts of flying through the air and living in apparent friendship and contentment with mere and being reserved withal he becomes not a little in fact our whole changes its character s at this point the greek style passes into the at one bound we have left the seven before and got into the es the action too becomes more and more typical or rather we should say half typical for it will neither hold rightly together as n x as matter of t thus do we see ourselves hesitating on the verge of a wondrous region neither sea nor good dry land full of shapes and mu tones but all dim danger there is that the critic may require both oar and sail nay it will be well if like that other great traveller he meet not some vast where all unawares fluttering his vain down he drop ten thousand deep and so keep till the strong of some tumultuous cloud instinct with fire and hurry him as many miles meaning probably that he is to be blown up by and justly exasperated review nevertheless by these possibilities we venture forward into this and must endeavor to render such account of the sensible species and ghosts of bodies we may meet there as shall be satisfactory to the reader in the little notice from the author quoted above we were bid specially to observe in what way and manner would presume to court this world s beauty we must say his style of gallantry seems to us of the most high flown description	37
if indeed it is not a little in their own eyes and her chorus encircled in this court appear for some minutes no better than but suddenly issuing from galleries and and s descending the stairs in stately are seen a numerous of p whose gay and red cheeks are greatly admired by the chorus these bear with them a throne and with and cushions and every other necessary apparatus of the machine as we gather from the chorus is soon put together and being reverently beckoned into the same is thus forthwith constituted sovereign of the whole establishment to herself such still seems a little but no sooner have the in long train descended than appears above on the stairs in court dress of the middle ages and with deliberate dignity comes down astonishing the poor feather headed chorus with the of his and his more than human beauty he leads with him a in and by way of introduction explains to that this man has deserved death by ms but that to her as queen of the castle must the right of or of him the crime of is indeed of an extraordinary nature he was of the tower but now though gifted as his name with the keenest vision he has failed in warning that so august a was approaching and thus occasioned the most dreadful breach of politeness guilty quick sighted as a in usual cases he has been blinded with excess of light in this instance while looking towards the at the course of morning he noticed a sun rise wonderfully in the south and all his senses taken captive by such surpassing beauty he no longer knew his right from his or could move a limb or utter a word to announce her arrival under these peculiar sees room for extending the royal and after expressing regret at this so fatal influence of her charms over the whole sex the the s with a we must beg our readers to keep an eye on this for there may be meaning in him here is the pleading which produce i so fine an effect given in his own words let me kneel and let me view her let me live or let me die slave to this high woman truer than a bom am l watching o er the course of morning eastward as i mark it run rose there all the sky strangely in the south a sun draws my look towards those places not the valley not the height not the earth s or heaven s spaces she the queen of light truly hath been lent me like the on highest tree boots not for hath me do i dream or do i see knew aught or could i ever think of tow r or bolted gate a goddess comes in state eye and heart i must surrender drown d as in a radiant sea that high creature with her splendor blinding all hath blinded me i forgot the s duty challenge word of call chain me sure this beauty thy anger her save him accordingly she did but no sooner is he dismissed and has made a on the multitude of arrows which she is darting forth on all sides than l returns i s miscellaneous writings in a still humor re enter with a chest and men carrying other behind him see st me queen again advance the of thee one glance he look d at thee and feels e er since as beggar poor and rich as prince what was i what am i grown what have i meant or done or known what boots the force of eyes back from thy throne it baffled flies from eastward marching came we on and soon the west was lost and won a long broad army forth we pass d the foremost knew not of the last the first did the second stood the third d in with good and still the next had more forgot the thousands slain before we along we rushed the masters we from place to place and where i ruled to day to morrow another did rob and we look d our choice was quickly made this snatched with him the fairest maid that d the steer for burden bent the horses all and sundry went but t did love apart to spy the things could meet the eye er in others hands i saw that was me but and straw for treasures did i keep a look my keen eyes d to every nook into all pockets i could see transparent each strong box to me s and of i this w and precious stones of ray now where s the diamond meet to shine t is meet alone for like thine so let the pearl from depths of sea in string wave on thee the for some covert seeks t is d by of thy cheeks and so the richest treasure s brought before thy throne as best it ought beneath thy feet here let me lay the fruit of many a bloody so many we now do bear more i have and finer ware think me but to be near thee worth whole treasure i empty forth for scarcely art thou hither sent all hearts and wills to thee are bent our riches reason strength we must before the loveliest lay as dust all this i reckon d great and mine now small i reckon it and thine i thought it worthy high and good t is naught poor and misunderstood so what my glory was a heap of and withered grass what worth it had and now does lack o with one kind look give it back away away take back the bold d load not d indeed but also not rewarded hers is already er our tower of go heap me treasures on treasures yet with order let the blaze	37
of pomp unspeakable appear the vol i i s fretted like skies a paradise of lifeless life create before her feet quick let ry roll itself from carpet tliat her step may light on softness and her eye meet but splendor blinding only not the gods small is what lord doth say servants do it t is but play for o er all we do or dream will this beauty reign supreme is not all our host grown tame every sword is blunt and lame to a form of such a mould sun himself is dull and cold to the richness of face what is beauty what is grace loveliness we saw or thought all is empty all is and exit and we see no more of him we have said that we thought there might be method in this madness in fact the or at least fantastic and character of the whole action is growing more and more decided every moment we must conjecture is in the course of this her real historical with to pre ent at tlie same time some dim of art and its flight to the northern nations when driven by stress of war tom its own country s tower will in this case afford not only a convenient station for lifting over the neighboring district but a cunning though vague and emblem of the product of mind the science art institutions of the of whose spirit and genius he himself may in some degree become the representative in this way the extravagant homage and admiration paid to are not s without their meaning the manner of her arrival en ed as she was in thick clouds and frightened hy hostile trumpets may also have more or less propriety and who is the mad i we cannot hut suspect him of a philosopher or philosophy itself in disguise and that this wonderful march of his a covert allusion to the great march of intellect which did march in those old ages though only at ordinary time we observe the military one after the other all fell for like men must die but still uie next had more and forgot the thousands that had sunk in clearing the way for him however in his love of plunder did not take the fairest maid nor the steer fit for burden but rather jewels and other rare articles of value in which quest his high power of proved of great service to him better had it been perhaps to have done as others did and seized the fairest maid or even the steer fit for burden or one of the horses which were in such request for when he quitted practical science and the philosophy of life and himself to curious and what did it avail him at the first glance of the beauty he found that it was naught poor and misunderstood his extraordinary of vision s approach his narrow escape from death on that account at the hands of his pardon by the fair greek his subsequent to her and discourse with his master on the subject might give rise to various considerations but we must not questioning the strange shadows of that strange country who besides are apt to one our nearest business is to get across it we again proceed whoever or whatever and may be they are evidently fast rising into high favor with each other as s writings from so generous a gallant and so fair a dame was to be anticipated she him to sit with her on the throne so acquired by force of her to which graceful proposal he after kissing her hand in wise fails not to the courtship now advances the dialect of and how one word seemed to kiss the other for the as we saw speaks in and she cannot but wish that she also had some such talent her that nothing is more easy than this same practice of rhyme it is but speaking right from the heart and the rest follows of course withal he they should make a trial of it themselves the experiment to mutual tion for not only can they two build the in concert with all convenience but in the course of a page or two of such many love tokens come to light nay we find by the chorus that the has well nigh reached a happy end at least the two are sitting near and nearer each other shoulder on shoulder knee by knee hand in hand are swaying over the throne s which surely are promising symptoms such ill timed is abruptly disturbed by the entrance of now as ever a messenger of evil with tidings that is at hand with his whole force to storm the castle and his new injuries an immense explosion of from the towers of trumpets military music and the march of numerous armies the news however treats the matter coolly the of and summons his men of war who ac enter steel clad in military pomp and their gather round him to take his orders in a wild delivered with due emphasis he s them not so much how they are to conquer whom doubtless he knows to be a sort of dream as how they are to manage and the country they shall acquire is to have the of while with its hundred is recommended to the care of the host of the must go towards is to be the saxon share and is to clear the seas and make great however k to continue the territory of and be queen and of these inferior in all this are we to trace some faint shadow of the national character and respective intellectual performance of the several european tribes or perhaps of the real history of the middle ages the of the northern issuing like and his air warriors from night and spreading over so many	37
fair regions perhaps of both and of more perhaps properly of neither for the whole has a character changing hue as we look on it however be this as it may the chorus cannot sufficiently admire s faculty and the troops march off speech indeed but evidently in the highest spirits he himself with another rapid describing the of greece or rather perhaps the region of true kissed by the sea waters and knit to the last mountain branch of the firm land there is a wild glowing fire in these two a musical yet a rugged keen sense which were the gift of rhyme so common as thinks it we should have pleasure in presenting to our readers again and again we think of and his a as he his seat by that she is sprung the highest gods and belongs to the first world alone it is not meet that bolted towers should her near by over the hills s q writings in eternal strength of youth a abode foe them two l et pass into groves free be such felicity no sooner said than done our fortress we suppose rushes asunder like a palace of air for the scene altogether changes a series of now are shut in by close shady to the foot of the rocks which the place and are not seen the chorus scattered around lie sleeping in the business grows than ever who has now become wonderfully civil and notwithstanding her stands on the best footing with the poor light headed swarm of a chorus them to hear and see the wonders that have happened so shortly it appears too that there ace certain bearded ones we suspect devils waiting with anxiety sitting watchful there below to see the issue of this extraordinary transaction but of these gives her silly women no hint ever she tells them in phrase what great things are in the wind and have been happier than mortals in these who was in waiting gradually glided away seeking roots moss and on household duty bent and so they two remained alone chorus talk st as if within those lay whole tracts of wood and meadow rivers lakes what tales thou palm st on us sure enough ye foolish creatures these are recesses hall runs out on hall i there spaces these i musing traced but at once from within a peal of laughter peeping in what is it leaps a boy from mother s breast to father s s ul from the to the mother such a such a foolish love s caressing cry of jest and shriek of pleasure in their turn do me quite naked without wings a genius in humor coarse ness he on the ground hut the ground him up to airy heights and at the third the second touches he the roof frightened cries the mother bound away away and as thou but my son beware of flying wings nor of flight are thine and the father thus in the earth the virtue which so fast doth send thee upwards touch but with thy toe the surface like the earth bom old straightway thou art strong again and so he hither thither on these jagged rocks from summit still to summit all about like stricken ball springs but at once in of some rude sinking has he vanished and so seems it we have lost him mother mourning father cheers her shrug my shoulders i and look about me but again behold what vision are there treasures lying here concealed there he is again and garments flower has on from his aims about his flutter s miscellaneous in his hand the golden wholly like a little steps he light of heart upon the astonished stand we and the parents in their rapture fly into each other s arms for what glittering s that about his head were hard to say what whether jewels and gold or flame of all strength of soul and with such a bearing moves he in himself this boy future master of all beauty whom the eternal do inform through every fibre and forthwith so shall ye hear him and forthwith so shall ye see him to your amazement the chorus suggest in their simplicity that this elastic little may have some relationship to the son of who in old times himself so out of his clothes and stole the sea ruler s and and various other before he was well span long but declares all this to be fable unfit for modern uses and now a beautiful purely melodious music of ments from the oe all listen and soon deeply moved it continues playing in full tone while in person makes his in the costume above described larger of stature but no less and our readers are aware that this the offspring of northern character wedded to culture it here not without reference to modern which had a birth so precisely similar sorry are we that we follow him through these fine m the light fantastic toe to our ears there is a quick pure music in them as perhaps of bells when the queen of rides by moonlight it is in truth a s ful dance this life of full of and half the history of poetry traits of individual poets the the three glimpses of all things full vision of nothing grows rapidly and passes from pursuit to another his boyish he takes to dancing and with the chorus and this in a style of tumult which rather the wildest and of these he with intent of a kiss but alas she and still more singular up in flame into the air inviting him perhaps in mockery to follow her and catch his vanished purpose shakes off the of the flame and now in a humor on the begins to talk of courage and battle higher and higher he rises till the chorus	37
see him on e cliff shining in harness as for victory and yet though at such a distance they still hear his tones neither is his figure diminished in their eyes which indeed as they observe always is and should be the case with sacred though it farther and farther till it glitter like the fairest star but s life dance is near ending from his high peak he catches the sound of war and fires at it and to mix in it let chorus and mother and father say what they will and hear ye on the ocean and roll from tower and wall and host with host in fierce commotion see mixing at the trumpet s call and to die in strife is the law of life that is certain once for all s miscellaneous writings and chorus what a horror spoken madly wilt thou die then what must i shall i view it safe and gladly no to share it will i hie chorus fatal are such haughty things war is for the stout ha and a pair of wings folds itself out thither i must i must t is my to fly hi casts into the air his garments support for a moment ms head a ain of light follows him chorus earth and dust o woe thou mount st too high a at ihe feet of the parents fancy you recognise in the dead a form but the part instantly the gold uke a to the sky coat mantle and are left lying it is perhaps in reference to this phrase that certain sagacious critics among the have hit upon the wonderful discovery of being lord a fact if it is one which curiously the author s in this passage but unhappily while we fancy that we recognise in the dead a well known form the bodily part instantly and the keenest critic finds that he can see no deeper into a than another man some allusion to our english poet there is or may be here and in the page that and the page that follows but is no image of any person least of all one would think of george lord s and joy soon changes to woe and mirth to heaviest s from beneath let me not to below descend o mother alone the prayer is soon granted the chorus a over his remains and then to a sad old saying proves itself again in me good hap with beauty hath no long abode so with love s band is life s asunder rent both i clasp thee in my arms once more and bid thee painfully farewell take my boy and with him me she embraces her garment and veil remain in his arms to hold fast what now alone remains to thee that garment quit not they are there these at the skirt of it would to the take it down hold fast the goddess is it not whom thou hast lost yet is it see thou use aright the high and aloft t will lift thee away above the common world far up to so thou endure we meet again far very far from hence s garments into raise him and foot with him up s mantle and from the ground comes forward into the holds these remains and says well fairly found be happily won t is true the flame is lost and gone but well for us we have still tliis s miscellaneous writings a dress to our poets of merit and make brethren and and can t they borrow the body and spirit at least lend them clothes enough down in the at ht foot of the rest of the personages are now speedily disposed of the leader of the chorus and the only one of them who has shown any of reason or ot aught beyond mere sensitive life mere love of pleasure and fear of pain that being now delivered from the soul spell of the they should forthwith return to to bear company but none will with her so she goes herself the chorus have lost their taste for meadows and playing so subordinate a part in they prefer abiding in the light of day though indeed under rather peculiar circumstances being no longer persons they say but a kind of qualities as we conjecture and poetic in various natural objects thus one division become a sort of invisible and have their being in trees and their joy in the various movements beauties and of trees a second change into echoes a third into the spirits of and a fourth take up their abode in and delight in the manufacture of wine no sooner have these several parties made up their minds than the curtain falls and in the rises in gigantic size hut steps down from her lays her mask and veil and shows herself as in order so far a may he necessary to comment on the piece hy way of such is the in we have all the desire in the world to hear s but far be s it from us to take the word out of so gifted a mouth in the way of on we ourselves have little more to add the reader sees in general that is to save himself from the straits and of worldly life in the regions of art or in that temper of mind by which alone those regions can be reached and permanently dwelt in further also that this doctrine is to be stated and so that it might seem as if in s hands the history of among the realities of every day existence to these certain spiritual and passing into a more character as it proceeds may fade away at its termination into a region where symbol and thing signified are no longer clearly distinguished and thus the final result be curiously and significantly indicated rather	37
than exhibited with regard to the special purport of and the rest we have nothing more to say at present nay perhaps we may have already said too much for it must not be forgotten by the and not of a be forgotten by whenever he may please to deliver his that is not an but a not a type of one thing but a vague fitful of many this is no picture painted on with mere material colors and abiding our scrutiny but rather it is like the smoke of a s in which as we gaze on its flickering tints and wild thousands of strangest shapes themselves yet no one will abide with us and thus as says elsewhere we are reminded of nothing and of ail properly speaking is what the call a tale a species of fiction they have n particularly in and of which has already produced more than one distinguished specimen some day i s miscellaneous writings we purpose to for our readers that little piece of his deserving to be named as it is the and which we must agree with a great critic in reckoning the tale of all tales as to the composition of this we cannot but perceive it to be deeply studied appropriate and successful it is wonderful with what fidelity the style is maintained throughout the earlier part of the poem how it is at once united to the romantic style of the latter part and made to at intervals to the end and then the small half secret touches of sarcasm the curious little traits by which w get a peep behind the curtain figure for instance that so nt allusion to these bearded ones sitting watchful there below and then their at s mantle to pull it down with them by such light hints does point out our and ever anon remind us that not on the firm earth but on the wide a airy deep has he spread his strange where in magic light so many wonders are displayed to us had we chanced to find that in other instances had ever written one line without meaning or many lines without a deep and true meaning we should not have thought this little cloud picture worthy of such minute development or such careful study in that case too we should never have seen the true of but some false one of our own too indolent imagination for this drama as it grows clearer grows also more beautiful and complete and the third the fourth perusal of it pleases far better than the first few living artists would deserve such faith from us but few also would so well reward it on the general relation of to and the degree of fitness of the one for the other it were premature to speak more expressly at present we have learned on authority which we may justly reckon the best that ck s is even now engaged in preparing the entire second part of into which this passes as a part with the third of his works we understand the beginning of that second part is to be published we shall then if need be feel more qualified to speak for the present therefore we take leave of and and of their author but with regard to the latter our task is ended indeed as yet hardly begun for it is not in the province of the that will ever become most interesting to english readers but like his own though he rises into ther he like his strength from the earth the has not more practical understanding or a or more quiet character than this most and imaginative of poets we hold to be the foreigner at this era who of all others the l est and the best by many degrees deserves our study and appreciation what help we can give in such a matter we shall consider it a duty and a pleasure to have in readiness we purpose to return in our next number to the consideration of bis works and character in general s miscellaneous foreign review it is not on this second portion of s works which at any rate contains nothing new to us that we mean at present to dwell in our last number we engaged to make some survey of his writings and character in general and must now endeavor with such insight as we have to fulfil that promise we have already said that we reckoned this no unimportant subject and few of s readers can need to be reminded that it is no easy one we hope also that our pretensions in regard to it are not the sum of our aims being to solve so deep and an inquiry but only to show that an inquiry of such a sort lies ready for solution courts the attention of thinking men among us nay merits a thorough investigation and must sooner or later obtain it s literary history appears to us a matter beyond most others of rich and manifold significance which will require and reward the best study of the best heads and to the right of which not one but many judgments will be necessary however we need not linger on our own inability and the difficulties we have so volunteered to front considering the highly complex aspect which such a mind of itself presents to us and still s hand s works complete edition with his final v x and more taking into account the state of english opinion in respect of it there certainly seem few literary questions of our time so perplexed perhaps as this of the character of but few also on which a or even a sincere word would be more likely to profit for our countrymen at no time to foreign excellence but at all times x of foreign have heard much of but heard for the	37
most part what excited and perplexed rather than instructed them vague of the man have for more than half a century been humming through our ears from time to time we have even seen some distorted of his own thoughts which all obscure and as it might seem failed not to here and there a ray of keenest and purest sense travellers also are still running to and fro the opinions or at worst the gossip of foreign countries so that by one or another many of us have come to understand that considerably the most distinguished poet and of his age is called and lives at and must to all appearance be an extremely surprising character but here unhappily our knowledge almost and still must curiosity must love of information and mere passive wonder alike inquire what manner of man is this how shall we interpret how shall we even see him what is his spiritual structure what at least are the outward form and features of his mind has he any real poetic worth and if so how much how much to his own people how much to us of great and of small character have man fully endeavored to satisfy the british world on these points but which of us could believe their report did it not rather become apparent as we reflected on the matter that this of theirs was not the real man nay could not j s writings be any real man whatever for what after all were their portraits of him but copies with some and ornamental of our english original ture of the german in itself such a piece of art as national portraits under like circumstances are wont to be and resembling as some unusually sign of the s head may resemble the present of did we imagine that much information or any very deep sagacity were required for avoiding such mistakes it would ill become us to step forward on this occasion but surely it is given to every man if he will but take heed to know so much as whether or not he knows and nothing can be to us than that if in the present business we can report from our own personal vision and clear hearty belief it will be a useful novelty in the of it the reader be patient with us then and according as he finds that we speak honestly and earnestly or loosely and consider our statement or dismiss it as thy oi consideration viewed in his merely external relations an appearance such as seldom occurs in the history of let and indeed from the nature of the case can seldom occur a man who in early life rising almost at a single bound into the highest reputation over all europe by gradual fixing himself more and more firmly in the of his countrymen silently through many to the supreme intellectual place among them and now after half a century distinguished by political moral and poetical still full of years and honors with a soft sway still laboring in his still as with whatever can profit the culture of his nation such a man might justly attract our notice were it only by the of his fortune of this sort are rare in modem times so universal and of such continuance they are almost for the age of the and doctors has long since passed away and now it is by much by transient and mere earthly ties that bodies of men connect themselves with a man the wisest most melodious voice cannot in these days pass for a divine one the word inspiration still but in the shape of a poetic figure from which the once earnest awful and sense has vanished without return the of literature is called a republic oftener it is an where by strength or fortune favorite after favorite rises into splendor and authority but like while judging the le is on the third day and shot nay few such can attain this painful for at most it is clear any given age can have but one first man many ages have only a crowd of secondary men each of whom is first in his own eyes and seldom at best can the single person long keep his station at the head of this wild most sovereigns are never universally acknowledged least of all in their lifetime few of the acknowledged can reign to the end of such a perpetual among the french gives the last european instance but even with him it was perhaps a much less striking affair reigned over a less as their than as their general for he was at bitter enmity with the great majority of his nation by whom his services far from being acknowledged as benefits were as but s object has at all times been rather to unite than to divide and though he has not as occasion served t forth his convictions distinctly enough on many delicate topics and seems in general to have paid s miscellaneous little court to the prejudices or private feelings of any man or body of men we see not at present that his merits are anywhere disputed his intellectual or his person regarded otherwise than with and respect in later years too the advanced age of the poet has invested him with another sort of dignity and the admiration to which his great qualities give him claim is tempered into a grateful feeling almost as of sons and to their common father no doubt there are and must be but apparently their cause is not pleaded in words no man of the smallest note speaks on that side or at most such men may question not the worth of but the cant and idle affectation with which in many quarters this must be and certainly there is not probably there never was in any european country a writer who with so	37
cunning a style and so deep so a sense ever found so many readers for from the peasant to the king from the and to the grave philosopher men of all degrees and dispositions are familiar with the writings of each studies them with affection with a faith which where it cannot to trust each takes with him what he is adequate to carry and thankful for his own two of gk s admirers are of and a friend of ours in one of these among the deepest men in europe the other among the all this is no doubt singular enough and a proper understanding of it would throw light on many things whatever we may think of s the existence of it remains a highly curious fact and to trace its history to discover by what steps such influence has been attained and how so long preserved were no trivial or in it would be worth while to see so strange a for sake and here we should see not only the himself and his own progress and spiritual development but the progress also of his nation and this at no or even quiet era but in times marked by strange of opinions by angry high enthusiasm novelty of enterprise and doubtless in many respects by rapid advancement for that the have been and still are struggling forward with honest effort sometimes with success no one who knows them will deny and as little that in every province of literature of art and humane accomplishment the influence the direct guidance of may be recognised the history of his mind is in fact at the same time the history of culture in his day for whatever excellence this individual might realize has sooner or later been acknowledged and appropriated by his country and the title of which his admirers give him is perhaps in sober not be it for good or for evil there is certainly no german since tho days of whose life can occupy so large a space in the intellectual of that people in this point of view were it in no other s so soon as it is completed may deserve to be reckoned one of his most interesting works we speak not of its literary merits though in that respect too we must say that few have come in our way where so difficult a matter was so successfully handled where perfect knowledge could be found united so kindly with perfect and a personal narrative moving along in soft clearness showed us a man and the objects that him under an aspect so yet so lovely with an air dignified and earnest yet graceful cheerful even gay a story as of a to his children such indeed as few men be called upon to relate and s miscellaneous writings few if called upon could relate so well what would we give for such an of of milton even of pope or swift the und has been considerably in england but not we are inclined to believe with any insight into its proper meaning the misfortune of the work among us was that we did not know the his narrative and could not judge what sort of narrative he was bound to give in these or whether he was bound to give any at all we saw nothing of his situation heard only the sound of his voice and hearing it never doubted that he must be in official garments from the instead of speaking by the fireside for the chief ground of offence seemed to be that the story was not noble enough that it entered oa details of too poor and private a nature here and there towards was not in one word written in the style of what we call a gentleman whether it might be written in the style of a man and how far these two be and what might be their relative worth and was a deeper question to which apparently no heed had been given yet lay the very cream of the matter for was not writing to persons of quality in england but to persons of heart and head in europe a somewhat different problem perhaps and requiring a somewhat different solution as to this and freedom of detail especially we may say that to a german few could appear more surprising than which with us the head and front of his offending in his own country far from being of undue familiarity towards his readers had up to that date been laboring under precisely the opposite charge it was his his reserve his indifference his contempt for the public that were strange almost inexplicable as many of his works might appear loud sorrowful and altogether stolid as might be the they no word of explanation could be wrung from him he had never even to write a preface and in later and days when the study of poetry came to be in another spirit and it was found that was standing not like a to plead for himself before the literary but like a high teacher and preacher speaking for truth to whom both and were bound to give all ear the outward difficulty of his works began indeed to vanish but enough still remained nay increased curiosity had given rise to new difficulties and deeper inquiries not only were these works but how did they became questions for the critic yet several of s chief productions and of his smaller poems nearly the whole seemed so intimately with his private history that without some knowledge of this no answer to such questions could be given nay have been written on single pieces of his by way of guess to supply this deficiency we can thus judge whether to the such of in this und may have seemed a sin few readers of we believe but would wish rather to see it extended than it is	37
our duty also to remark if any one be still unaware of it that the of published some years ago in london can have no real concern with this the rage of hunger is an excuse for much otherwise that german whom indignant have proved to know no german were a highly see in particular dr s in winter s miscellaneous writings ble man his work it appears is done from the french and shows and what is worse additions but the unhappy has already been perhaps too sharply if with the and and cross of life he still on this side the shadow of night and any word of ours might reach him we would rather say courage brother i grow honest and times will mend it would appear then that for into foreign literature for all men anxious to see and understand t european world as it lies around them a it problem is presented in this a singular highly significant and now also means more or less complete for its a man of wonderful nay reputation and intellectual influence among forty millions of serious and cultivated men us to study him and to determine for ourselves whether and how far such influence has been such reputation that this call will one day be answered that will be seen and judged of in his real character among us appears certain enough his name long familiar everywhere has now awakened the attention of critics in all european countries to his works he is studied wherever true study exists eagerly studied even in france nay some considerable knowledge of his nature and spiritual importance seems already to prevail there for ourselves meanwhile in giving all due weight to so curious an exhibition of opinion it is doubtless our part at the same time to beware that we do not give it too much this universal sentiment of admiration is wonderful is in witness le par and the on it see also the essays in the globe ting enough but it must not lead ud astray we english stand as yet without the sphere of it neither will we plunge blindly in but enter or if we see good keep aloof from it altogether fame we may understand is no sure test of merit but only a probability of such it is an accident not a property of a man like light it can give little or nothing but at most may show what is given often it is but a false glare ling the eyes of the vulgar by casual splendor the brightness and manifold glance of the diamond to pebbles of no value a man is in all cases simply the man of the same worth and weakness whether his worth and weakness lie hidden in the depths of his own consciousness or be and from end to end of the globe these are plain truths which no one should lose sight of though whether in love or in anger for praise or for condemnation most of us are too apt to forget them but least of all can it become the critic to follow a multitude to do evil even when that evil is excess of admiration on the contrary it will him to lift up his voice how feeble how against the common delusion from which if he can save or help to save any mortal his will have been repaid with these things in some measure before us we must remind our readers of another influence at work in this air and one acting as we think in the contrary direction that pitiful enough desire for originality which and acts in all minds will rather we imagine lead the critic of foreign literature to adopt the negative than the affirmative with regard to if a writer indeed feel that he is writing for england alone and to the rest of the earth the temptations may be pretty equally balanced if he write for some small which he thinks the representative of england they may vol i s sway this way or that as it chances but writing in such isolated spirit is no longer possible traffic with its swift ships is all nations into one europe at large is be coming more and more one public and in this public the voices for compared with those against him are in the proportion as we reckon them both as to the number and value of perhaps a hundred to one we take in not alone but france and italy not the and but the and de the bias of originality therefore may lie to the side of whoever among us shall step forward with such knowledge as our common critics have of to the european public by contradiction in this matter a heroism which in his other merits ought to be forgotten our own view of the case we confess in some degree with that of the majority we reckon that s fame has to a considerable extent been deserved that his influence has been of high benefit to his own country nay more that it promises to be of benefit to us and to all other nations the essential grounds of this opinion which to explain were a long indeed boundless task we may state without many words we ad then in an artist in the high and ancient meaning of that term in the meaning which it may have borne long ago among the masters of italian painting and the fathers of poetry in england we say that we trace in the of this man belonging in every sense to our own time some touches of that old divine spirit which had long passed away from among us nay which as has been laboriously was not to return to this world any more or perhaps we come nearer our meaning if we say that in we discover by far the most striking instance in our	37
time of a writer who is in strict speech what s can call a man he is neither noble nor neither liberal nor nor nor but the best excellence of all these joined in pure union a clear and universal man s poetry is no separate faculty no mental but the voice of the whole manhood nay it is the very harmony the living and harmony of that rich manhood which forms his poetry au good men may be called poets in act or in word all good poets are so in both but besides appears to us a person of th t deep and gifted vision of that experience also and sympathy in the ways of all men which him to stand forth not only as the literary ornament but in many respects too as the teacher and of his age for to say nothing of his natural gifts he has cultivated himself and his art he has studied how to live and to write with a fidelity an earnestness of which there is no other living instance of which among british poets especially alone offers any resemblance and this in our view is the result to our minds in these soft melodious of his there b embodied the wisdom which is proper to this time the beautiful the religious wisdom which may still with something of its old to the whole soul still in these hard days reveal to us glimpses of the unseen but not unreal world that so the actual and the ideal may again meet together and clear knowledge be again wedded to in the life and business of men such is our conviction or persuasion with regard to the poetry of could we this opinion to be true could we even exhibit it with that degree of clearness and which it has attained in our own thoughts were on our part sufficiently recommended to the best of all thinking men but unhappily it is not a subject susceptible of demonstration the merits and s s miscellaneous writings of a poet are not to be set forth logic but to be gathered by personal and as in this case it must be by deep and careful inspection of his works nay s world is every way so different from ours it costs us such effort we have so much to remember and so much to forget before we can transfer ourselves in any measure into his peculiar point of vision that a right study of him for an englishman even of open inquisitive mind becomes unusually difficult for a fixed decided contemptuous englishman next to impossible to a reader of the first class helps may be given explanations will remove many a difficulty beauties that lay hidden may be made apparent and directions adapted to his actual position will at length guide him into the proper track for such an inquiry all this however must be a of and detail to do our part in it from time to time must rank among the best duties of an english foreign meanwhile our present endeavor limits itself within far bounds we cannot aim to make known but only to prove that he is worthy of being known at most to point out as it were afar off the path by which some knowledge of him may be obtained a slight glance at his general character and and one or two of his chief productions which throw light on these must for the present suffice a french personage contemplating s is said to hav observed un qui a de a truer version of the matter himself seems to think would have been here is a man who has struggled who has es sick s life whether as a writer and or as a living active man has indeed been a life of effort of earnest endeavor af er all ck y his intellectual progress his spiritual and moral history as it may be gathered from his successive works with us no small portion of the pleasure and profit we derive from them deeply in all the influences of his age he has from the at every new stood forth to the new circumstances of the time to the instruction the solace which that time required his literary life itself into two portions widely different in character the of the t once so new and original have long either directly or through the thousand thousand of them been familiar to us with the of the second equally original and in our day far more precious we are yet little acquainted these two classes of works stand related with each other at first view in strong yet in truth connected together by the for has not only suffered and mourned in bitter agony under the spiritual of his time but he has also mastered these he is above them and has shown others how to rise above them at one time we found him in darkness and now he is in light he was once an and now he is a and he believes moreover not by denying his but by following it out not by stopping short still less turning back in his inquiries but by resolutely them this it appears to us is a case of singular interest and rarely if at all elsewhere in these our days how has this man to whom the world once o red nothing but blackness denial and despair attained to that better vision which now shows it to him not tolerable only but full of solemnity and loveliness how has the belief of a saint been united in this high and true mind with the clearness of a the devout spirit of a made to in soft harmony with the gaiety the sarcasm the of a s miscellaneous writings s two earliest works are von and the sorrows of the boundless influence and popularity they gained both at home and	37
abroad is well known it was they that established almost at once his literary fame in his own country and even determined his subsequent private history for they brought him into contact with the duke of in with whom the poet engaged in manifold duties political as well as literary has lived for fifty four years and still in honorable retirement continues to live their effects over at large were not less striking than in germany it would be difficult a writer on this subject to name two books which have exercised a deeper influence on the subsequent literature of europe than these two of a young author liis first fruits the produce of his twenty fourth year appeared to seize the hearts of men in all quarters of the world and to utter for them the word which they had long been waiting to hear as usually happens too this same word once uttered was soon abundantly repeated spoken in all and through all notes of the till the sound of it had grown a weariness rather than a pleasure view hunting love friendship suicide and desperation became the of literary ware and though the after a long course of years subsided in germany it reappeared with various in other countries and everywhere abundant traces of its good and bad effects are till to be discerned the fortune of vm the iron h f though less sudden was by no means less exalted in his own country though he now stands solitary and became the parent of an innumerable of chivalry plays and performances which though long ago deceased m m i iii i l f i m p w m w i ii ii i since the above was written that worthy prince worthy we have understood in all respects in whatever concerned literature and the arts has b n called suddenly away he died on bis road firom near on the th of june made noise enough in their day and generation and with ourselves his influence has been perhaps still more remarkable sir walter scott s first literary enterprise was a translation of von and if genius could be communicated like instruction we might call this work of s the prime cause of and the lady lake with all that has followed from the same hand truly a grain of seed that has lighted on the right soil for if not firmer and fairer it has grown to be taller and broader than any other tree and all the nations of the earth are still yearly gathering of its but these spiritual which bring little certainty and little profit it may be to observe of c and that they stand prominent among the causes or at the very least among the of a great change in modem literature the former directed men s attention with a new force to the picturesque effects of the past and the latter for the first time attempted the more accurate of a class of feelings deeply important to modem minds but for which our elder poetry offered no and perhaps could offer none because they are feelings that arise from passion incapable of being converted into action and belong to an age as indolent cultivated and as our own this notwithstanding the dash of falsehood which may exist in itself and the boundless delirium of extravagance which it called forth in others is a high praise which cannot justly be denied it the english reader ought also to understand that our current version of is and it comes to us through the all medium of the french of its strength with its melancholy rendered its hero reduced from the stately gloom of a broken hearted poet to the tearful of a tailor to the same dark mood which in itself forth in bitter over human life and in appears as a fond and sad looking back into the past belong various other productions of s for german romance vol iv s miscellaneous writings example the and the first idea of which however was not realized in actual composition till a calmer period of his history of this early harsh arid crude yet and genial period may stand here as the representative and viewed in its external and internal relation will help to illustrate the writer and the he was writing for at the present day it would be difficult for us satisfied nay to as we have been with the doctrines of to tlie boundless interest which must have excited when first given to the world it was then new in all senses it was wonderful yet wished for both in its own country and in every other the literature of germany had as yet but partially awakened from its long deep learning deep reflection have at no time been wanting there but the spirit had for a century been almost extinct of late however the had attained to no polish of style s had called forth the admiration and perhaps still more the pride of the country as a piece of art a high enthusiasm was abroad had roused the minds of men to a deeper and truer interest in literature had even decidedly begun to introduce a warmer and more expressive style the were on the alert in expectation or at least in full readiness for some far bolder impulse waiting for the poet that might speak to them from the heart to the heart it was in that such a poet was to be given them nay the literature of other countries placid self satisfied as they might seem was in an equally expectant condition everywhere as in germany there was polish and languor external glitter and internal it was not fire but	37
a picture of fire at which no soul could be warmed literature had sunk from its former it no longer held the mirror up to nature no longer reflected in expressive the actual passions the hopes sorrows joys of living men but dwelt in a remote conventional world in castles of in and among clear heroes and white high beauties in whom the and were the least important qualities men thought it right that the heart should swell into with and and melt into sorrow with many an and but the heart was in no haste either to swell or to melt some of sentiment a few unnatural tears might with conscientious readers be actually squeezed forth on such occasions but they came only from the surface of the mind nay had the conscientious man considered of the matter he would have found that they ought not to have come at all our only english poet of the period was a pure clear genuine spirit had he been of depth or strength sufficient his of wake field remains the best of all modern but it is and was nothing more and consider our leading writers consider the poetry of gray and the prose of johnson the first a laborious through the hard stiff of which little life or true grace could be expected to look real feeling and all freedom of expressing it are sacrificed to pomp to cold splendor for vigor we have a certain vehemence too elegant indeed to be yet essentially foreign to the heart and seen to extend na deeper than the mere voice and gestures were it not for his letters which are full of warm power we might almost doubt whether gray was a man of genius nay was a living man at all and not rather some thousand times more devised poetical turning loom than that of swift s philosophers in johnson s prose is true indeed and sound and full sense few men have seen more clearly s writings into the motives the interests the whole walk and tion of the living world as it lay before him but than this busy and to most of us rather world he seldom looked his hi is for men of business and in regard to matters of business alone prudence is the highest virtue he can and for that finer portion of our nature that portion of it which belongs essentially to literature strictly so called where our highest feelings our best joys and keenest sorrows our doubt our love our religion reside he has no word to no remedy no counsel to give us in our straits or at most if like poor the patient is will answer my dear sir endeavor to clear your mind of cant the turn which speculation had taken in the preceding age with this tendency and its influences or was indeed properly speaking the root they had sprung from himself a clear humble minded patient nay religious man had paved the way for religion from the world mind by being in men s into a shape a and reasoned of as if it had been some and substance some finer or curious piece of logical began to lose its mysterious divine though invisible character it was figured as something that might were our organs fine enough be seen yet who had ever seen it who could ever see it thus by degrees it passed into a doubt a relation some faint possibility and at last into a highly probable following s footsteps the french had discovered that as the stomach so does the brain thought and what hen was religion what was poetry what was all high and heroic feeling chiefly a delusion a false and one poetry indeed was still to be preserved because poetry was a useful thing men needed amusement and to amuse themselves with poetry the was a pretty of an evening then there were so many so much more impressive for the rhyme to say nothing of your occasional verses birth day by which the dream of existence may be so highly and nay does not poetry acting on the of men excite them to daring purposes sometimes as in the case of us to fight better in which wise may it not rank as a useful to man along with and scotch the manufacture of which is allowed by law in heaven s name then let poetry be preserved with religion however it worse in the eyes of and his religion was a indeed a nuisance here it is true his followers have since found that he w nt too far that religion being a great sanction to civil morality is of use for keeping society in order at least the lower classes who have not the feeling of honor in due force and therefore as a help to the and ought decidedly to be kept up but such is the fruit only of later days in those times there was no question but how to get rid of it root and branch the sooner the better a gleam of zeal nay we will call it however a glow of real and love of truth may have animated the minds of these men as they looked abroad on the of superstition and hoped to clear the earth of it for ever this little glow so so with pride and poor or bad was the last which thinking men were to experience in europe for a time so is it always in regard to religious belief how degraded and the delight of the and is no pure delight and must soon pass away with bold with skilful s writings hand set his torch to the it blazed aloft to heaven and the flame and comforted the bat unhappily such comfort could not continue ere long this flame with its cheerful light and heat was gone the it is true had been	37
consumed but with its its shelter and its spots of also and the black chill swamp left in its stead seemed for the time a greater evil than the other in such a state of painful extending itself everywhere over europe and already master of germany lay the general mind when gk first appeared in literature whatever belonged to the nature of man had under the breath of doubt or passed away in the of open and now where the tree of life once and brought fruit of there was only and desolation to such as could find sufficient interest in the day labor and day wages of earthly existence in the resources of the five bodily senses and of vanity the only mental sense which yet flourished which flourished indeed with gigantic vigor matters were still not so bad such men helped themselves forward as they will generally do and found the world if not an altogether proper sphere for every man disguise it as he may has a soul in him at least a tolerable enough place where by one item and another some comfort or show of comfort might from time to time be got up and these few years especially since they were so few be spent without much murmuring but to men afflicted with the malady of thought some of temper was an inevitable to such the noisy of the world could appear but an empty altogether insufficient concern and the whole scene of life had become hopeless enough unhappily such feelings are yet by no means so with ourselves that we need stop here to them that state of from which the do to be in some measure delivered still presses with force on the greater part of europe and nation after nation each in its own way feels that the first of all moral problems is how to cast it off or how to rise above it naturally attempt the first expedient philosophers in general the second the poet says is a citizen not only of his country but of his time whatever and interests men in general will interest him still more that nameless the blind struggle of a soul in bondage that high sad longing discontent which was every bosom had driven almost to despair all felt it he alone could give it voice and here lies the secret of his popularity in his deep heart he felt a thousand times more keenly what every one was feeling with the gift which belonged to him as a poet he it forth into visible shape gave it a local habitation and a name and so made himself the of his generation is but the cry of that dim rooted pain under which all thoughtful men of a certain age were it the misery it passionately the complaint and heart and voice all over europe loudly and at once respond to it true it no remedy for that was a far different far harder enterprise to which other years and a higher culture were required but even this utterance of the pain even this little for the present is grasped at and with eager sympathy appropriated in every bosom if s life weariness his moody melancholy and mad indignation borne on the tones of a wild and quite melody could pierce so deep into many a british heart now that the whole matter is no longer new is indeed old and we may judge with what vehement acceptance this must have been welcomed coming vol i s miscellaneous writings m it did like a voice from unknown regions the first thrilling peal of that impassioned which in country after country men s ears have listened to till they were deaf to all else for er itself into the core and whole spirit of literature gave birth to a race of who have raged and in every part of the world till better light dawned on them or at worst exhausted nature laid herself to sleep and it was discovered that was an labor these in germany a loud haggard tumultuous as well as tearful class were named the or power men but have all long since like sick children cried themselves to rest b was our english and the strongest of his kind in europe the wildest the and it may be hoped the last for what good is it to put finger i the eye and sob in such a case still more to and snap in malignant wise like dog or monkey sick why should we quarrel with our existence here as it lies before us our field and inheritance to make or to mar for better or for worse in which too so many noblest men have ever from the beginning with the very evils we war with both made and been what will be to all time what thou here at the world t is long ago the maker shaped it and thought it were best even sa thy lot is appointed go follow its best thy journey s begun thou move and not rest for sorrow and care cannot alter thy case and running not raging will win thee the race meanwhile of the philosophy which in and which it has been our lot to hear so often repeated elsewhere we may here produce a short specimen the following passage will serve our turn and be if we mistake not new to the mere english reader that the life of man is but a dream has come into many a head and with me too some feeling of that sort is ever at work when t look upon the limits within which man s powers of action and inquiry are hemmed in when i see how all effort issues simply in supply for wants which again have no object but continuing this poor existence of ours and then that all satisfaction on certain points of inquiry	37
faults are overtaken unexpectedly the former seldom give us much joy the latter are continually giving us sorrow and distress indeed here lies the difficulty in self knowledge the almost renders it impossible but figure in addition to all this the heat of youthful blood an imagination easily fascinated and by individual objects further the wavering of the day we believe but perhaps it was less the of spring that vexed him than s too admiration of it ed s miscellaneous writings and you will find that an impatient striving to free one s self from such a pressure was no unnatural state however these gloomy which if a man yield to them will lead him to boundless could not have so decidedly developed themselves in our young german minds had not some outward cause excited and forwarded us in this sorrowful employment such a cause existed for us in the literature especially the poetical literature of england the great qualities of which are accompanied by a certain earnest melancholy which it to every one that himself with it in such an element with such an of circumstances with studies and tastes of this sort harassed by desires nowhere called forth to important action with the sole prospect of dragging on a languid mere life we had in our pride to the thought that life when it no longer suited one might be cast aside at pleasure and had helped ourselves enough over the crosses and of the time these sentiments were so universal that on this very account could produce the greatest striking in everywhere with the dominant humor and representing the interior of a sickly youthful heart in a visible and palpable shape how accurately the english have this sorrow might be seen from these few significant lines written before the appearance of to congenial prone more wounds than nature gave he knew while misery s form his fancy drew in dark ideal hues and horrors not its own self murder is an occurrence in men s affairs which how much it may have already been discussed and commented upon an interest in every mortal and at every new era must be discussed again on his heroes and great men the right of putting themselves to death when they see good observing that it must stand at the will of every one to conclude the fifth act of his tragedy whenever he thinks best so in the original however our business lies not with persons who in activity have led an important life who have spent their days for some mighty empire or for the cause of freedom and whom one may forbear to censure when seeing the high ideal purpose which had inspired them vanish from the earth they pursuing it to that other country our business here is with persons to whom properly from want of activity and in the condition imaginable life has nevertheless by their on themselves become a burden as i myself was in this and know best what pain i suffered in it what efforts it cost me to escape from it i shall not hide the speculations i from time to time as to the various modes of death one had to from it is something so unnatural for a man to break loose from himself not only to hurt but to himself that he for the most part catches at means of a mechanical sort for putting his purpose in execution when falls on his sword it is the weight of his body that this service for him when the warrior his bearer to him rather than that he come into the hands of the enemy this is likewise an external force which he for himself only a moral instead of a physical one women seek in the water a for their desperation and the highly mechanical means of pistol shooting a quick act with the smallest effort hanging is a death one unwillingly because it is an one in england it may happen more readily than elsewhere because from youth upwards you there see that punishment frequent without being specially by poison by opening of veins men aim but at parting slowly from life and the most refined the the most death by means of an was worthy of a queen who had spent her life in pomp and luxurious pleasure all these however are external helps are enemies with which a man that he may fight against himself makes league when i considered these various methods and further looked abroad over history i could find among all no one that had gone about this deed with such greatness and freedom of spirit as the emperor this man beaten indeed as a yet reduced to for the good of the s miscellaneous writings empire which already in some measure belonged to him and for the saving of so many thousands to leave the world with his friends he passes a gay night and next morning it is found that with his own hand he has plunged a sharp dagger into his heart this sole act seemed to me worthy of imitation and i convinced myself that whoever could not proceed as had done was not entitled to resolve on life by this conviction i saved myself from the purpose or indeed more properly speaking from the whim of suicide which in those fair times had itself into the mind of indolent youth among a considerable collection of arms i possessed a costly well ground dagger this i laid down nightly beside my bed and before the light i tried whether i could succeed in sending the sharp point an inch or two deep into my breast but as i truly never could succeed i at last took to laughing at myself threw away all these and determined to live to do this with cheerfulness however i required to have some poetical task given me wherein all that	37
i had felt thought or dreamed on this business might be spoken forth with such view i endeavored to collect the elements which for a year or two had been floating about in me i to myself the circumstances which had most oppressed and afflicted me but of all this would take form there was wanting an incident a fable in which i might it all at once i hear tidings of s death and directly following the general came the most precise and description of the business and in this instant the plan of was invented the whole shot together from all sides and became a solid mass as the water in the vessel which already stood on the point of is by the slightest motion changed at once into firm ice a wide and every way most important interval with its philosophy and from s next novel ter s published some twenty years after und b iii wards this work belongs in all senses to the second and period of s life and may indeed serve as the fullest if perhaps not the purest impress of it being written with due at various times during a period of no less than ten years considered as a piece of art there were much to be said on all which however lies beyond our present purpose we are here looking at the work chiefly as a document for the writer s history and in this point of view it certainly seems as contrasted with its more popular to deserve our best attention for the problem which had been stated in er with despair of its solution is here solved the lofty enthusiasm which wandering wildly over the universe found no resting place has here reached its appointed home and lives in harmony with what long appeared to threaten it with has now become peace the once gloomy and spirit is now serene cheerfully vigorous and rich in good fruits neither which is most important of all has this peace been attained by a surrender to necessity or any compact with delusion a seeming blessing such as years and will of themselves bring to most men and which is indeed no blessing since even continued battle is better than destruction or j and peace of this sort is like that of s who called it peace when they had made a desert here the ardent high youth has grown into the man yet with increase and not loss of and with aspirations higher as well as clearer for he has conquered his the ideal has been built on the actual no longer vaguely in darkness and regions of dreams but rests in light on the firm ground of human interest and business as in its true scene on its true basis it is wonderful to see with what softness the of the commercial spirit of the s writings of and the uncle the enthusiasm of the the gay animal vivacity of na the mystic ethereal almost spiritual nature of are blended together in this work how justice is done to each how each lives freely in his proper element in his proper form and how as himself the all hoping all believing struggles forward towards his world of art through these curiously influences all this itself into a yet so harmonious whole as into a clear poetic mirror where man s life and business in this age his passions and purposes the highest equally with the lowest are back to us in beautiful significance poetry and prose are no longer at for the poet s eyes are opened he sees the changes of many colored existence and sees the loveliness and deep purport which lies hidden under the very meanest of them hidden to the vulgar sight but clear to the poet s because the open secret is no longer a secret to him and he knows that the universe is full of goodness that whatever has being has beauty apart from its literary merits or such is the temper of mind we trace in s and more or less exhibited in all his later works we reckon it a rare phenomenon this temper and worthy in our times if it do exist of best study from all inquiring men how has such a temper been attained in this so lofty and impetuous mind once too dark desolate and full of doubt more than any other how may we each of us in his several sphere attain it or strengthen it for ourselves these are questions this last is a question in which no one is to answer these questions to begin the answer of them would lead us very far beyond our present limits it is not as we believe without long study without learn ing much and much that for any man the answer of such questions is even to be hoped meanwhile as regards there is one feature of the business which to us throws considerable light on his moral and will not in the secret of them be overlooked we allude to the spirit in which he his art the noble disinterested almost religious love with which he looks on art in general and towards it as towards the sure highest nay only good we extract one passage from it may pass for a piece of fine but not in that light do we offer it here strange unaccountable as the thing may seem we have actually evidence before our mind that believes in such doctrines nay has in some sort lived and endeavored to direct his conduct by them look at men continues how they struggle and satisfaction their wishes their toil their gold are ever hunting and after what that which the poet has received from nature the right enjoyment of the world the feeling of himself in others the harmonious of many things that will seldom go together what is it that keeps men	37
have christian dispositions and very little time so was without among the legal coin of tlie press and allowed to as copper among the rest that ii so quick a process a german d or might not slip through unnoticed among new and equally brilliant british brass there is no for our critics can now which though far the is the plan is the mature product of the first genius in our times and must one would think be different in various respects from the of who are far from the first and whose works spring from the brain in as many weeks as s cost him years nevertheless we quarrel with no man s verdict for time which tries all things will try this also and bring to light the truth both as regards criticism and the thing or sink both into final darkness which likewise will be the truth as regards them but there is one censure which we must to for a moment so singular does it seem to us it appears is a vulgar work no gentleman we hear in certain circles could have written it few real gentlemen it is can like to read it no real lady unless possessed of considerable courage profess having read it at all of s we shall leave all men to speak that have any even the faintest knowledge of him and with regard to the of his readers state only the following fact most of us have heard of the late queen of and know whether or not she was genteel enough and of real nay if we must prove everything her character can be read in the life of napoleon by sir walter who passes for a judge of those matters and yet this is what we find written in the und for books too have their past happiness which ne chance can take away am die der these heart broken lines a highly noble minded queen repeated in the exile when cast forth to boundless misery she made herself familiar with the book in which these words with many other painful experiences are communicated and drew from it a melancholy consolation his stretching of itself into boundless time what is there that can here are strange of taste national enough had we time to investigate them nevertheless wishing each party to retain his own special so far as they are honest and adapted to his band v s t who never ate his bread in sorrow who never spent the hours weeping and watching for the morrow he knows you not ye unseen powers book ii chap s miscellaneous writings intellectual position national or individual we cannot but believe that there is an inward and essential truth in art a truth far deeper than the of mere mode and which could we pierce through these would be true for all nations and all men to arrive at this truth distant from every one at first by most by some small number is the end and aim of all real study of poetry for such a purpose among others the comparison of english with foreign judgment on works that will bear judging forms no help some day we may s essay on by way of contrast to our english on that subject praise whatever ours might do rises sufficiently high neither does he seem during twenty years to have repented of what he said for we observe in the edition of his works at present he the whole character and even to it in a separate sketch some new assurances and it may deserve to be mentioned here that at its first appearance in germany was received very much as it has been in england s known character indeed indifference there but otherwise it was much the same the whole of criticism was thrown into perplexity into sorrow everywhere was dissatisfaction open or concealed official duty them to speak some said one thing some another all felt in secret that they knew not what to say till the appearance of s character no word that we have seen of the smallest chance to be decisive or indeed to last beyond the day had been uttered regarding it some regretted that the fire of was so wonderfully there might be about some forth boldly in behalf of virtue was not among the but he the work in secret and this for a reason which to us seem the strangest for its being as we should say a work many are the bitter we find among his fragments directed against for its mechanical economical cold hearted altogether character we english again call a mystic so difficult is it to please all parties but uie good deep made the fairest amends for notwithstanding all this tells us if we remember rightly h regularly twice a year on a somewhat different ground proceeded quite another sort of assault from one of felt afflicted it would seem at the want of and religion too manifest in and to take what vengeance he could by way of to the had announced his as in a state of preparation but the still lingered whereupon in the forth comes this with a of his own according to ability the spirit and principles of the we have seen an on and his attributed with what justice we know not to himself whether it is his or not it is written in his name and seems to express accurately enough for such a purpose the relation between the parties in language which we had rather not the period which a german is by law or usage obliged to pass in travelling to perfect himself in his after the conclusion of his and before his can begin in many this custom is as old aa their existence and continues still to be indispensable it is said to have originated in the frequent journeys of the german to	37
italy and the consequent improvement observed in workmen among their as had attended them thither most of the are what is called that is presenting having presents to give to wandering brothers s miscellaneous writings f hat dock die die so much for and the rest the true wander has at length appeared the first volume has heen before the world since this fragment for it still such is in our view one of the most perfect pieces of composition that has ever produced we have heard something of being at present engaged in extending or it what the whole may in his hands become we are anxious to see but the even in its actual state can hardly be called unfinished as a piece of writing it so beautifully within itself and yet we see not whence the wondrous landscape came or whither it is stretching but it hangs before us as a fairy region hiding its borders on this side in light sunny clouds fading away on that into the infinite already we might almost say it gives us the notion of a completed or the state in which a fragment not meant for com might be but apart from its and considered merely in itself this seems to us a most work there is in truth a singular in it a high melodious wisdom so is it yet so earnest so calm so gay yet so strong and deep for the purest spirit of all art rests over it and breathes through it mild wisdom is wedded in living union to harmony divine the thought of the sage is melted we might say and in the liquid music of the poet it is called a the english but it treats not of romance characters or subjects it has less relation to s tom jones than to s queen we have not forgotten what is due to yet perhaps beside his immortal this may in fact not be named and with this advantage that it is an not of the century but of the nineteenth a picture full of of what men are striving for and ought to strive for in these actual days the scene we are further told is not laid on this firm earth but in a fair of art and science and free activity the figures light and come unlocked for and melt away abruptly like the of in his enchanted island we venture to add that like s island this too is drawn from the inward depths the purest sphere of poetic tion ever as we read it the images of old italian art before us the gay tints of the quaint grace x f sometimes the clear yet depth of and whatever else we have known or dreamed of in that rich old genial world as it is s moral sentiments and culture as a man we have made our chief object in this survey we would fain give some adequate specimen of the where as appears to us these are to be traced in their last degree of clearness and completeness but to do this to find a specimen that should be adequate were difficult or rather impossible how shall we divide what is in itself one and how shall the of a complex picture give us any idea of the so beautiful whole nevertheless we shall refer our readers to the tenth and chapters of the where in poetic and style they will find a sketch of the nature objects and present ground of religious belief which if they have ever reflected duly on that matter will hardly fail to interest them they will find these chapters if we mistake not worthy of deep consideration for this is the merit of his will bear study nay they require it and improve by it more and more they come from the s miscellaneous depths of his mind and are not in their place till they have reached tlie depths of ours the wisest man we may see in them a of his own wisdom hut to him who is still learning they become as seeds of knowledge they take root in the mind and as we them into a whole garden of thought the sketch we mentioned is far too long for being extracted here however we give some scattered of it which the reader will accept with fair allowance as the wild of formed our first extract this by way of may be the last we must fancy in the province proceeding towards the chief or the three with intent to place his son under their charge in that wonderful region where he was to see so many had already noticed that in the cut and color of the young people s clothes a variety prevailed which gave the whole tiny population a peculiar aspect he was about to question his attendant on this point when a still stranger observation forced itself upon him all the children how employed laid down their work and turned with singular yet gestures the party riding past them or rather as it was easy to infer towards the who was in it the youngest laid their arms over their breasts and looked cheerfully up to the sky those of middle size held their hands on their backs and looked smiling on the ground the eldest stood with a frank and spirited air their arms stretched down they turned their heads to the right and formed themselves into a line whereas the others kept separate each where he chanced to be the having stopped and dismounted here as several children in their various modes were standing forth to be by the asked the meaning of these gestures but struck in and cried gaily what posture am i to take then without doubt said the the first posture the arms over the breast the face earnest and cheerful towards the sky obeyed but soon	37
cried this is not much to my taste i see nothing up there does it last long but yes ex claimed he yonder are a pair of flying from the west to the east that is a good sign too as thou it as said the other now mingle among them as they mingle he gave a signal and the children left their and again them to work or sport as before a second time asks the meaning of these gestures but the is not at liberty to throw much light on the matter only that they are mere but have a moral purport which perhaps the chief or the three may further explain to him the children themselves it would seem only know it in part secrecy having many advantages for when you tell a man at once and straight forward the purpose of any object he fancies there is nothing in it by and by however having left by the way and parted with the arrives at the abode of the three who over sacred things and from whom further satisfaction is to be looked for had now reached the gate of a wooded surrounded with high walls on a certain sign the little door opened and a man of earnest imposing look received our traveller the latter found himself in a large beautifully space with the richest foliage shaded with trees and bushes of all sorts while stately walls and magnificent buildings were discerned only in glimpses through this thick natural a friendly reception from the three who by and by appeared at last turned into a general conversation the substance of which we now present in an shape since you your son to us said they it is fair that we admit you to a closer view of our of what is external you have seen much that does not bear its meaning on its front what part of this do you wish to have explained dignified yet singular gestures of salutation i have noticed the import of which i would gladly learn with you doubtless the exterior has a reference to the interior and let me know what this reference is s miscellaneous well formed healthy children replied the three bring much into the world along with them nature has given to each whatever he requires for time and duration to this is our duty often it itself better of its own accord one thing there is however which no child brings into the world with him and yet it is on this one thing that all depends for making man in every point a man if you can discover it yourself speak it out thought a little while then shook his head the three after a suitable pause exclaimed reverence seemed to hesitate reverence cried they a second time all want it perhaps yourself three kinds of gestures you have seen and we a reverence which when and into one whole its full force and effect the first is reverence for what is above us that posture the aims crossed over the breast the look turned joyfully towards heaven that is what we have on young children requiring from them thereby a testimony that there is a god above who images and himself in parents teachers then comes the second reverence for what is under us those hands folded over the back and as it were tied together that down turned smiling look that we are to regard the earth with attention and cheerfulness from the of the earth we are nourished the earth affords unutterable joys but sorrows she also brings us should one of our children do himself external hurt or should others hurt him accidentally or purposely should dead involuntary matter do him hurt then let him well consider it for such dangers will attend him all his days but from this posture we delay not to free our pupil the instant we become convinced that the instruction connected with it has produced sufficient influence on him then on the contrary we bid him gather courage and turning to his comrades range himself along with them now at last he stands forth frank and bold not isolated only in combination with his equals does he front the world further we have nothing to add i see a glimpse of it said are not the mass of men so and because they take pleasure only in the element of evil wishing and evil speaking whoever gives him to soon comes to be indifferent towards god towards the world towards his equals and the true genuine indispensable sentiment of self estimation into self conceit and presumption allow me however continued he to state one difficulty you say that reverence is not natural to man now has not the reverence or fear of rude people for violent of nature or other inexplicable mysteriously be i heretofore regarded as the out of which a higher feeling a purer sentiment was by degrees to be developed nature is indeed adequate to fear replied they but to re not adequate men fear a known or unknown powerful being the strong seeks to conquer it the weak to avoid it both endeavor to get quit of it and feel themselves happy when for a season they have put it aside and their nature has in some degree itself to freedom and independence the natural man this operation millions of times in the course of his life from fear he struggles to freedom from freedom he is driven back to fear and so makes no advancement to fear is easy but grievous to reverence is difficult but satisfactory man does not willingly submit himself to reverence or rather he never so himself it is a higher sense which must be communicated to his nature which only in some favored individuals itself who on this account too have of old been looked upon as saints and gods here lies	37
the worth here lies tlie business of all true whereof there are likewise only three according to the objects towards which they direct our devotion the men paused for a time in silence but feeling in himself no to these strange words he requested the to proceed with their they immediately complied no religion that grounds itself on fear said they is regarded among us with the reverence to which a man should give dominion in his mind he can in paying honor his own honor he is not with himself as in the former case the religion which depends on reverence for what is above us we the it is the religion of the nations and the first happy from a degrading fear all heathen as we call them are of this sort whatsoever s writings names they may bear the second religion which itself on reverence for what is around us we the philosophical for the philosopher stations himself in the middle and must draw down to him all that is higher and up to him all that is lower and only in this medium condition does he merit the title of wise here as he with clear sight his relation to his equals and therefore to the whole human race his relation likewise to all other earthly circumstances and arrangements necessary or accidental he alone in a sense lives in truth but now we have to speak of the third religion on reverence for what is under us this we name the christian as in the christian religion such a temper is the most distinctly manifested it is a last step to which mankind were fitted and destined to attain but what a task it not only to be patient with the earth and let it lie beneath us we appealing to a higher but also to recognise humility and poverty mockery and despite disgrace and wretchedness suffering and death to recognise these things as divine nay even on sin and crime to look not as but to honor and love them as of what is holy of this indeed we find some traces in all ages but the trace is the goal and this being now attained the human species cannot and we may say that the christian religion having once appeared cannot again vanish having once assumed its divine shape can be subject to no dissolution to which of these do you specially inquired to all the three replied they for in their union they produce what may properly be called the true religion out of those three springs the highest reverence reverence for one s self and these again themselves from this so that man the highest elevation of which he is capable tliat of justified in reckoning himself the best that god and nature have produced nay of being able to continue on this eminence without being again by self conceit and presumption drawn down firom it into the vulgar level the three undertake to admit him into the interior of their whither accordingly he at the hand of die eldest proceeds on the morrow are we that we cannot follow them into the hall so full of paintings and the gallery open on one side and stretching round a spacious gay garden it is a representation by pictures and of art of the first and the second the the philosophical for the former of which the pictures have been composed from the old testament for the latter from the new we can only make room for some small portions i observe said you have done the the honor to select their history as the of this or rather you have made it the leading object there as you see replied the eldest for you will remark that on the and we have introduced another series of transactions and not so much of a as of a kind since among all nations we discover records of a similar import and on the same facts thus you perceive here while in the main field of the picture receives a visit from his gods in the form of fair youths among the of is painted above on the from which we may learn that the gods when they appear to men are commonly of them the friends walked on for the most part met with well known objects but they were here exhibited in a more expressive manner than he had been used to see them on some few matters he requested explanation and at last could not help returning to his former question why the history had been chosen in preference to all others the eldest answered among all heathen for such also is the this has the most distinguished advantages of which i shall mention only a few at the at the judgment seat of the god of nations it is not asked whether this is the best the most excellent nation but whether it lasts whether it has continued the people never was good for much as its own leaders judges rulers have a i s s miscellaneous it possesses most of the faults of other but in and when all this would not serve in obstinate it has no match it is the most nation in the world it is it was and it will be to the name of through all ages we have set it up therefore as the pattern figure as the main figure to which the others only serve as a it becomes me to dispute ith you said since you have instruction to impart open to me therefore the o r advantages of this people or rather of its history of its g one chief advantage said the is its excellent collection of sacred books these stand so happily together that even out of the most elements the feeling of a whole still rises before us they are complete enough to satisfy enough	37
to excite barbarous enough to rouse tender enough to and for how many other merits might not these books might not this one book be praised thus wandering on they had now reached the gloomy perplexed periods of the history the destruction of th and the temple the murder exile slavery of whole masses of this people its subsequent fortunes e in a cunning way a real historical of them would have lain without the limits of true art at this point the gallery abruptly in a cl s door and was surprised to see himself already at the end in your historical series said he i find a chasm you have destroyed the temple of and dispersed the yet you have not introduced the divine man who taught there shortly before to whom shortly before they would give no ear to have done this as you require it would have been an error the life of that divine man whom you allude to stands in no with the general history of the world in his time it was a private life his teaching was a teaching individuals what has publicly befallen vast masses of people arid the minor parts which compose them belongs to the general history of the world to the general religion of the world the religion we have named the first what inwardly individuals belongs to the second the philosophical such a religion was it that christ taught id practised so long as he went about on earth for this reason the external here and i now open to you the a door went back and they entered a similar gallery t er soon recognised a corresponding series of pictures the new testament they seemed as if by another hand than the first all was softer forms movements light and into this second gallery with its strange doctrine about miracles and the characteristic of the philosophical religion we cannot enter for the present yet must give one hurried glance expresses some surprise that these with the supper with the scene where the master and his part he for the remaining portion of the history in all sorts of instruction said the eldest in all sorts of communication we are fond of separating whatever it is possible to separate for by this means alone can the notion of importance and peculiar significance arise in the young mind actual experience of itself and all things together here accordingly we have entirely that sublime man s life from its termination in life he appears as a true philosopher let not the expression you as a wise man in the higher sense he stands firm to his point he goes on his way and while he the lower to himself while he makes the ignorant the poor the sick of his wisdom of his riches of his strength he on the other hand in no wise his divine origin he dares to equal himself with god nay to declare that he himself is god in this manner is he wont from youth upwards to his familiar friends of these he gains a part to his own cause the rest against him and shows to all men who are at a certain elevation in doctrine and life what they have to look for from the world and thus for the noble portion of mankind his walk and conversation are even more instructive s writings and profitable than his death for to those trials every one is to trial but a few now all that results from this consideration do bat look at the scene of the last here the wise man as it ever is leaves those that are his own utterly behind him and while he is careful for the good he along with them a traitor by whom he and the better are to be destroyed this seems to us to have a deep still meaning and the longer and closer we examine it the more it pleases us is not admitted into the shrine of the third religion the christian or that of which christ s and death were the symbol as his walk and conversation had been the symbol of the second or philosophical religion that last religion it is said that last religion which arises the reverence of what is beneath us that veneration of the contradictory the hated the avoided we give to each of our pupils in small portions by way of along with him into tlie world merely that he may know where more is to be had should such a want spring up within him i invite you to return hither at the end of a year to attend our general festival and see how far your son is advanced then shall you be admitted into the of sorrow permit me one question said as you have set up the life of this divine man for a pattern and example have you likewise selected his his death as a model of exalted patience undoubtedly we have replied the eldest of this we make no secret but we draw a veil over those sufferings even because we reverence them so highly we hold it a audacity to bring forth that cross and the holy one who suffers on it or to expose them to the light of the sun which hid its face when a reckless world forced such a sight on it to take these mysterious secrets in which the divine depth of sorrow lies hid and play with them them trick them out and rest not till the most reverend of all appears vulgar and paltry let so much for the present the rest we must w n ft in tiie u we give ao is allowed to come to and you will be t s e k e it serviceable tp public on those matters could we hope that in its present	37
di state this would rise before die minds of our in any measure as it stood before the mind of the that in it ib might seize only an out of those many which at less or greater depth me hidden under it we should anticipate their thanks f a first or a second time brought it before them as it is believing that to open minded truth seeking men the deliberate of an open minded truth seeking man can in no c use be wholly unintelligible nor the words of such a man as indifferent we have it for their if we induce them to turn to the original and study s in its completeness with so much else that it and bears on it they will thank us still more to our own judgment at least there is a fine and pure in this whole such phrases even as the of sorrow the divine depth of sorrow have of themselves a pathetic wisdom for us as indeed a tone oi of calm mild dignity the in a time like ours it is rare to see in the writings of cultivated men any whatever bearing any mark of sincerity on such a subject as is yet it is and the highest subject and they that are highest are most fit for it and helping others to study it s was published in his year in his twenty thus in passing between these two works and over which stands nearly wo have glanced over a space of almost fifty years including within them of course what s writings ever was most important in his public or le by means of these so in their tone we meant to make it visible that a great change had taken place in the moral disposition of the man a change from inward imprisonment doubt and discontent into freedom belief and clear activity such a change as in our opinion must take place more or less in every character that especially in these times to spiritual manhood and in characters possessing any and sensibility will seldom take place without a too painful consciousness without bitter in which the character itself is too often and and which end too often not in victory but in defeat or fatal compromise with the enemy too often we may well say for though many on the harness few bear it warrior like still fewer put it off with triumph among our own poets was almost the only man we saw faithfully and struggling to the end in this cause and he died while the victory was still doubts or at best only beginning to be gained we have already stated our opinion hat s success in this matter has been more complete than that of any other in his age nay that in the sense he may also be called the only one that has so succeeded on this ground were it on no other we have ventured to say that his spiritual history and must deserve attention that his opinions his his mode of thought his whole picture of the world as it dwells within him must to his be an inquiry of no common interest of an interest altogether peculiar and not in this degree in existing literature these things can be but imperfectly stated here and must be left not in a state of demonstration but at the utmost of loose probability never less if inquired into they will be found to have a precise enough meaning and as we believe a highly important one for the what sort of mind it is that has passed through this change that has gained this victory how rich and high a mind how learned by study in all that is wisest by experience in all at is most complex the brightest as well as the in man s existence gifted with what insight with what grace and power of utterance we shall not for the present attempt discussing all these the reader will learn who st his writings with such attention as merit and by no other means of s dramatic poems in their for they are j ll of we can here say nothing but in every department of literature of art ancient and modem in many provinces of science we shall often meet him and hope to have other occasions of what in these respects we and all men owe him two circumstances meanwhile we have remarked which to us throw light on the nature of his original faculty for poetry and go far to convince us of the mastery he has attained in that art these we may here state briefly for the judgment of such as already know his writings or the help of such as are beginning to know them the first is his singularly intellect his perpetual never failing tendency to into shape into e the opinion the feeling that may dwell in him which in its sense i we reckon to be essentially the grand problem of the poet we do not mean mere and these are but the exterior concern often but the of the edifice which is to be built up within our thoughts by means of them in allusions in though no one known to us is happier many are more copious than but we find this faculty of his in the very essence of his and trace it alike in the quiet cunning the the quaint device reminding us of some or and in the the the fu s s in p re ae may t remind tiie i has form s forth the of them to hap as a in we ta a high degree the other of his which proves to us l s acquired m art aa t ns i wa ua the extent of his capacity for it ia his variety b his entire freedom from we read for we come	37
to see wherein the peculiarity of his understanding of his even of his way of writings consists it seems quite a style r of his chiefly for ness its in short its i and yet it is the most of all we feel as if every one imitate it and yet it is as hard is it to c er in his writings thou there also as in every man s writings of the must lie recorded sort of spiritual construction he has what are his temper hm bis individual for all lives freely within and and are alike or alike dear to him he is of no or he seems not this man or that man but a man we reckon this to be the of a master in art of any sort and true especially of all great how true is it of and who knows or can figure what the was by the first hy the twentieth perusal of his he is a voice coming to ua from the land of melody his old brick in the mere earthly of on ua the most inexplicable and what is ia the he is witness he has seen and he it we l and believe but do not behold him are with these two poets any other two not of equal genius for there are none such but of equal sincerity who wrote as earnestly and from the heart like them take for instance paul and lord the good begins to show himself in his broad massive kindly quaint significance before we have read many pages of even his slightest work and to the last he himself much better than his subject may almost be said to have painted nothing else than himself be his subject what it might yet as a test for the culture of a poet in his capacity for his pretensions to mastery and completeness in his art we cannot but reckon this among the tried by this there is no living writer that approaches within many degrees of thus it would seem we consider to be a richly educated poet no less than a richly educated man a master both of humanity and of poetry one to whom experience has given true wisdom and the eternal a perfect utterance for his wisdom of the particular form which this humanity this wisdom has assumed of his opinions character personality for these with whatever difficulty are and must be in his writings we had much to say but this also we must decline in the present state of matters to speak would be a task too hard for us and one in which our readers could little help nay in which many of them might take little interest meanwhile we have found a brief sketch on this subject already written in our language some parts of it by way of preparation we shall here it is written by a professed admirer of nay as might almost seem by a grateful whom he had taught whom he had helped to lead out of spiritual into peace and light making due allowance for all this is little in the paper that we object to s miscellaneous writings in s h a that at then its beauty a deeper to m its and strength this man rules and is not ruled the stern and fiery energies of a most passionate soul lie silent in the centre of his being a trembling sensibility has been to stand without or murmur the trials nothing outward nothing inward shall or control him the brightest and most capricious fancy the most piercing and inquisitive the wildest and deepest imagination highest of joy the bitterest pangs of sorrow all these axe lu be is not theirs while he moves every heart from its his own is firm and still the words th t search into inmost recesses of our nature he with a tone of coldness and in the deepest pathos he not or hm tears are like water from a rock of he is a king of himself and of his world nor does he rule it like a vulgar great man like a napoleon or charles the twelfth by the mere exertion of his on no principle or on a one his faculties and are not or under the iron sway of l ut led and guided in the mild sway of reason as the ce elements of were at the coming of light and bound together under its soft into glorious and beneficent creation this is the true rest of man the dim aim of every human soul the full of only a chosen few it comes not tb any but the wise are wise because they think no price too high for it s inward home has been reared by and but it stands on no hollow or basis s f his peace is not from blindness but from clear vision from uncertain hope of alteration but from sure insight into what cannot alter his world seems once to have been desolate and as that of the darkest but he has covered it anew with beauty and solemnity derived from deeper sources over which doubt can have no sway he has inquired and searched out and denied the false but he has not forgotten what is equally essential and infinitely harder to out and admit the true his heart i still of his head is clear and cold the world for him is still full of he it with no false colors his fellow are still objects t f reverence aad love though their are to no eye than to his to reconcile these is the task of all good men each for himself in his own way and manner a task which in our age is with difficulties peculiar to time and which seems to have with a success that few can rival a mind	37
so in with itself even though it were a poor and small one would onr and win some kind regard from us but when this mind ranks among the strongest and most complicated of the species it becomes a sight full of interest a study full of deep instruction such a mind s is the fruit not only of a royal by nature but also of a culture to her in s original form of spirit we discern the highest gifts of mai without any deficiency of the lower he has an eye and heart equally for the sublime the common and the ridiculous the elements at once of a poet a and a wit of his culture we have often spoken already and it deserves again to be held up to praise and imitation this as he himself confessed has been the soul of all his conduct the great enter of his life and that understand him will be apt to deny that he has as a writer his resources have been accumulated from nearly all the provinces of human intellect and activity and he has trained himself to use these complicated instruments with a light which we have admired in the professor of a solitary department freedom and grace aid smiling earnestness are the characteristics of his works the matter of them along in abundance in the so est combination and their style is referred to by native as the h specimen of the german tongue but s as a writer is perhaps less remarkable than his culture as a man he has learned not in head only but also in heart not from art and literature but also by action and passion in the rugged school of experience if asked what w s ihe grand characteristic of his writings we should not say s writings edge but wisdom a mind that se and aiid speaks to us of what it has tried and conquered a gay will give us notice of dark and experiences of business done in the great deep of the spirit a trivial to the careless eye will rise with light and solution over long perplexed periods of our own history it is thus that heart speaks to heart that the life of one man becomes a possession to all here is a mind of the most and tumultuous elements but it is governed in peaceful diligence and its impetuous and ethereal faculties work softly together for good and noble ends may be called a philosopher for he loves and has practised as a man the wisdom which as a poet he and cheerful seriousness seem to breathe over all his character there is no over human woes it is understood that we must simply all strive to or remove them there is no noisy for opinions but a effort to make truth lovely and recommend her by a thousand avenues to the hearts of all men of his personal manners we can easily believe the universal report as often given in the way of censure as of praise that he is a man of breeding and the presence for an air of polished of we mi t almost say majestic repose and serene humanity is visible throughout his works in no line of them does he speak with of any man scarcely ever even of a thing he knows the good and loves it he knows the bad and hateful and it but in neither case with violence his love is calm and active his is implied rather than pronounced meek and gentle though we see that it is thorough and never to be the noblest and the he not only seems to comprehend but to and body forth in their most secret hence actions and opinions appear to him as they are with all the circumstances which or them to the hearts where they originated and are entertained this also is the spirit of our and perhaps of every great dramatic poet is no to all he with and mercy because he knows all and his heart is wide enough for all in his mind the world is a whole he figures it as providence it and to him it is not strange that the sun should be caused good a i rain the just considered as a transient far off view of in his personal character all this from the writer s peculiar point of vision may have its true grounds and wears at least the aspect of sincerity we may also quote something of what follows on s character as a poet and and the he in this respect with another ed and now er european author this critic has been called the german but it is a name which does him wrong and him ill except in the corresponding variety of their pursuits and knowledge in which perhaps it does wrong the two cannot be compared is all or the best of all that was and he is much that did not dream of to say nothing of his dignified and truthful character as a man he belongs as a and a writer to a far higher class than this du u he is not a and a but a teacher and a not a but a up not a wit only but a wise man of him not have said with even truth h a le a is the of all past and present men but a great man is something more and this he surely was not whether this which we have seen in some dictionary really belongs to we know not but it does seem to not wholly i to and at all events highly expressive of an important distinction among men of talent generally in fact the popular man and the man of true at least of great ity are seldom and the same we suspect that till a long struggle	37
on the part of the latter they are never so seasons are obvious enough the popular man stands on our own level or a hair s breadth higher h shows us a truth which we can see without shifting our vol i s miscellaneous present intellectual po iti this is a highly arrangement the original man again stands us he wishes to us from our old and us to a higher and clearer level hut to quit our old especially if we have sat in them with moderate comfort for some score or two of years is no such easy business accordingly we we resist we even give battle we still suspect that he is above us but try to persuade ourselves and vanity earnestly that he is below for is it not the very essence of such a man that he be new and who will warrant us that at the same time he shall only be an and of the old which in general is what we long and look for no one can warrant us and him to be a man of real genius real depth and that speaks not till after earnest meditation what sort of a philosophy were his could we estimate the length breadth and thickness of it at a single glance and when did criticism give two glances criticism therefore opens on such a man its greater and its lesser on every side he has no security but to go on it and in the end says criticism itself comes to relish that method but now let a speaker of the other class come forward one of those men that have more than any one the opinion which all men have i no sooner does he speak than all and sundry of us feel as if we had been wishing to speak that very thing if we ourselves might have spoken it and forthwith from the united universe a of that surprising feat what clearness brilliancy penetration who can doubt that this man is right when so many thousand are ready to back him doubtless he is right doubtless he is a clever man and his praise will long be in all the magazines clever men are good but ihey are not the best instruction they can give us is like baked bread and satisfying for a single day but unhappily flour cannot be sown and seed corn ought not to be ground we proceed with our critic in his contrast of with as poets continues he the two live not in the same sphere not in the same world of s poetry it were blindness to deny the polished vigor the logical the flashes that from time to time give it the color if not the warmth oi fire but it is in a far other sense than this that is a poet in a sense of which the french literature has never any example we may venture to say of him that his province is high and peculiar higher than any poet but himself for several generations has so far succeeded in perhaps even has attempted in reading s poetry it perpetually strikes us that we are reading the poetry of our own day and no demands are made on our the light the science the of our age is not hid from us he does not deal in or ring changes on poetic forms there are no no infernal influences for is an apparent rather than a real exception but there is the barren prose of the nineteenth century the vulgar life which we are all leading and it starts into strange beauty in his hands and we pause in delighted wonder to behold the of blooming in that and rugged soil this is the end of his and of his and poetry as he views it exists not in time or place but in the spirit of man and art with nature is now to perform for the poet what nature alone performed o old the and the and are vanished from the world never again to be recalled but the imagination which created these still lives and will for ever live in man s soul and can again pour its light over the universe and summon forth as lovely or impressive and which its sister faculties will not contradict to say that has accomplished all this would be to say that his genius is greater than was ever given to any man for if it was a high and glorious mind or rather series s miscellaneous writings of minds that peopled the first ages with their peculiar forms of poetry it must be a series of minds much higher and more glorious that shall so people the present the angels and that can lay prostrate our hearts in the nineteenth century must be of another and more cunning fashion than those that subdued us in the ninth to have attempted to have begun this enterprise may be accounted the greatest praise that gk ever meditated it in the form here set forth we have no direct evidence but indeed such is the end and aim of high poetry at all times and seasons for the fiction of the poet is not falsehood but the purest truth and if he would lead captive our whole not rest satisfied with a part of it he must address us on interests that ore not that ours and in a dialect which finds a response and not a contradiction within our here however we must our or and bring these straggling to a close in the we have given in the remarks made on them and on the subject of them we are aware that we have held the attitude of admirers and neither is it unknown to us that the critic is in virtue of his office a judge and not an advocate sits there not to do favor but to	37
dispense justice which in most cases will involve blame as well as praise but we are firm in the that for all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful nay essential to see his good qualities before on his bad this is so clear to ourselves that in respect of poetry at least we almost think we could make it clear to other men in the first place at all events it is a much and more occupation to detect faults than to discover beauties the critic fly if it do but alight on any or single of a brave stately building shall be able to declare with its half inch vision that here is a speck and there an that in fact romance vol iv this and the other individual stone are as they should be for all this the critic fly will be but to take in the fair relations of the whole to see the building as one object to estimate its purpose the of its parts and their harmonious towards that purpose will require the eye and the mind of a or a but further the faults of a poem or other piece of art as we view them at first will by no means continue when we view them after due and final investigation let us consider what we mean by a fault by the word fault we that us that us but here the question might arise who are we this fault us so far is clear had we had j and my pleasure and confirmation been the chief end of the poet then doubtless he has failed in that end and his fault remains a fault and without defence but who shall say whether such really was his object whether such ou t to hare been his object and if it was not and ought not to have been what becomes of the fault it must hang altogether we as yet know nothing of it perhaps it may hot be the poet s but our own fault perhaps it may be no fault whatever to see rightly into this matter to determine with any whether what we call a fault in very deed a fault we must previously have settled two points neither of which may be so readily settled first we must have made plain to ourselves what the poet s aim really and truly was how the task he had to do stood before his own eye and how far with such means as it afforded him he has fulfilled it secondly we must have decided whether and how far this aim this task of his accorded not with m and our individual and the of our little where we give or take the law but with human nature and the nature of things at large with the universal principles of poetic beauty not as ss s they stand written in our text books but in the hearts nd of all men does the answer in either case come out was an between the means and the end a between the end and truth there is a fault was there not there is no fault thus it would appear that the detection of faults provided they be faults x depth and consequence leads us f itself into that region where also the higher beauties of the piece if it have any true beauties essentially reside in fact according to our no man can pronounce with even a chance of being right on the faults of a poem till he has seen its very last and beauty the in becoming visible to any one which few ever lo after which indeed in most pieces it were very vain to look after the beauty of the poem as a whole in the strict sense the clear view of it as an unity and whether it has grown up from the general soil of thought and stands there like a thousand years oak no leaf no bough superfluous or is nothing but a tree together out of size and waste paper and water colors altogether with the soil of thought except by mere or at best united with it by some decayed stump and dead which the more cunning as in your historic novel may have selected for the basis and support of his it is true most readers judge of a poem by pieces they praise and blame by pieces it is a common practice and for most poems and most readers may be perfectly sufficient yet we would advise no man to follow this practice traces in himself even the slightest of following a better one and if possible we would advise him to practise only on worthy subjects to read few poems that will not bear being studied as well as read that has im cannot be for we it was s long ago there is no man free from are we ourselves without some glimmer ing f certain actual and by which too as he really lives and writes and is may be hemmed in which beset him too b they do men which show that he top is a son of eve but to exhibit these our readers in present state of matters we should i no easy labor were it to be to be justly done and done no profitable one better is it we first study him better to see the great man before attempting to him we are not ignorant that certain objections against already float vaguely in the mind and here and there according to occasion have even come to utterance these as the study of him proceeds we shall hold ourselves ready in due season to discuss but for the present we must beg the reader to believe on our word that we do not reckon them that we reckon them in	37
than one splendid monument has been reared in other places to his fame the street where he in poverty is called by his name the highest personages in our literature have been proud to appear as his and admirers and here is the sixth narrative of his life that has been given to the world mr thinks it necessary to for this new attempt on such a subject but his readers we believe will readily him or at worst will censure only the performance of his task not the choice of it the character the life of robert burns by j g ll b s miscellaneous writings of indeed is a theme that cannot easily become either or exhausted and will probably gain rather than lose in its dimensions by the distance to which it is removed by time no man it has been said is a hero to his and this is probably true but the fault is at least as likely to be the s as the hero s for it is certain that to the vulgar eye few things are wonderful that are not distant it is difficult for men to believe that the man the mere whom they see nay perhaps painfully feel toiling at their side through the poor of existence can be made of finer clay than themselves suppose that some dining acquaintance of sir thomas s and neighbor of john a s had snatched an hour or two from the preservation of his game and written us a life of what should we not have had not on hamlet and the tempest but on the wool trade and deer stealing and the and laws and how the became a player and how sir thomas and mr john had christian and did not push him to in like manner we believe with respect to that till the companions of his pilgrimage the honorable and the gentlemen of the hunt and the aristocracy mid all the and equally with the writers and the new and old light clergy whom he had to do with shall have become invisible in the darkness of the past or visible only by light borrowed from his it will be difficult to measure him by any true standard or to estimate what he really was and did in the century for his and the world it will be difficult we say but still a fair problem for literary and repeated attempts will give us repeated his former have done something no doubt but by no means a great deal to assist us dr and burns and mr the principal of these writers have both we think mistaken one essentially important thing their own and the world s true relation to their author and the style in which it became such men to think and to speak of such a man dr loved the poet truly more perhaps than he to his readers or even to himself yet he everywhere him with a certain air as if the polite public might think it strange and half that he a man of science a scholar and gentleman should do such honor to a rustic in all this however we readily admit that his fault was not want of love but weakness of faith and regret that the first and kindest of all our poet s should not have seen farther or believed more boldly what he saw mr more deeply in the same kind and both alike in presenting us with a detached catalogue of his several supposed attributes virtues and vices instead of a of the character as a living unity this however is not painting a portrait but the length and breadth of the several features and down their dimensions in nay it is not so much as this for we are yet to learn by what arts or instruments the mind could be so measured and mr we are happy to say has avoided both these errors he uniformly treats burns as the high and remarkable man the public voice has now pronounced him to be and in him he has avoided the method of separate and rather sought for characteristic incidents habits actions sayings in a word for aspects which exhibit the whole man as he looked and lived among his fellows the book accordingly with all its gives more insight we think into the true character of than any prior biography though being written on the very popular and scheme of an article for vol i mo s can it has less depth than we could liave wished and expected from a writer of such power and contains rather more and more than belong of right to an original production indeed mr s own writing is generally so good so clear direct and nervous that we seldom wish to see it making place for another man s however the spirit of the work is throughout candid and anxiously compliments and praises are liberally distributed on all hands to great and small and as mr of the society in the of america the of polite life are never lost sight of for a moment but there are better things than these in the volume and we can safely testify not only that it is easily and pleasantly read l first time but may even be without difficulty read again nevertheless we are far from thinking that the problem of burns s biography has yet been solved we do not allude so much to deficiency of facts or documents though of these we are still every day receiving some accession as to the limited and imperfect application of them to the great end of biography our notions upon this subject may perhaps appear extravagant but if an individual is really of consequence enough to have his life and character recorded for public remembrance we have always been of opinion that the public ought to be made	37
acquainted with all the inward springs and relations of his character how did the world and man s life from his particular position represent themselves to his mind how did circumstances him from without how did he these from within with what and what rule over them with what resistance and what sink under them in one word what and how produced was the effect of society on him what and how produced was his effect on society he who should answer burns these questions in regard to any individual would as we furnish a model of mi in biography few individuals indeed can deserve such a study and many will be written and for the gratification of innocent curiosity ought to be written and read and forgotten which are not in this sense but if we mistake not is one of these few individuals and such a study at least with such a result he has not yet obtained our own c to it we are aware can be but scanty and but we offer them with good will and trust they may meet with acceptance from those for whom they intended first came upon the world as a and was in that character entertained by it in the usual fashion with loud vague tumultuous wonder speedily into censure and neglect till his early and most death awakened an enthusiasm for him which especially as there was now nothing to be done and much to be has prolonged itself even to our own time h is true the nine days have long since elapsed and the very continuance of this proves that was no vulgar wonder accordingly even sober judgments as years passed by he has come to rest more and more ex on his own merits and may now be well nigh of that casual radiance he appears not only as a tn poet but as one of the most considerable british men of the century let it not be objected that he did little he did much if we c where and how if the work was small we must remember that he had his very materials to discover for the metal he worked in lay hid under the desert where no eye but his had guessed its existence and we may almost say that with his own hand he had to the tools for ing it for he found himself in deepest without miscellaneous help without instruction without models or with of the meanest sort an educated man stands as it were in the midst of a boundless and magazine filled with all the weapons and engines which man s skill has been able to devise from the earliest time and he works accordingly with a strength borrowed from all past ages how different is his state who stands on the outside of that and feels that its gates must be or remain for ever shut against him his means are the commonest and the mere work done is no of his strength a dwarf behind his steam engine may remove mountains but no dwarf will them down with the and he must be a that them abroad with his arms it is in this last shape that presents himself bom in an age the most britain had yet seen and in a condition the most where his mind if it accomplished aught must accomplish it under the pressure of continual bodily toil nay of and apprehension of the worst and with no but such knowledge as dwells in a poor man s hut and the of a or for his standard of beauty he sinks not under all these through the and of that obscure region liis eagle eye the true relations of the world and human life he grows into strength and trains himself into intellectual impelled by the irrepressible movement of his inward spirit he struggles forward into the general view and with haughty modesty lays down before us as the fruit of his labor a gift which time has now pronounced add to all this that his childhood and youth was by far the era of his whole life and that he died in bis thirty seventh year and then ask if it be strange that his poems are imperfect and m of small extent or that his attained po y in iti s as through a tropical and the pale shadow of death it at noon in such the genius of was never seen in clear world but some beams from it did by fits pierce through and it tinted those clouds rainbow and colors into a glory and i grandeur j which men silently gazed on with wonder and tears we are not to for it is rather than that our readers require of us here and yet to avoid some tendency to that side is no easy matter we love and we pity him and love and pity are prone to ma criticism it is sometimes thought should be a cold business we are not so sure of this but ox all events our concern with is not that of critics true and genial as his poetry must i it is not chiefly as a poet but as a man thai be interests and affects us he was often advised to write a tragedy time and means were not lent him for this but through life he a tragedy and one of the deepest we question whether the world has since witnessed so utterly sad a scene whether napoleon himself left to with sir and perish oa his rock amid the melancholy main pr to the reflecting mind such a spectacle of pity and fear as did this nobler and perhaps greater soul wasting itself away in a hopeless struggle with base which and closer round him till only death opened him an outlet are a race with whom the world could well dispense nor can the	37
hard intellect the and high but selfish enthusiasm of such persons inspire us in general with any affection at best it may excite amazement and their fall like that of a s miscellaneous writings will be beheld with a certain sadness and awe but a true poet a man in whose heart some of wisdom some tone of the eternal is the most precious that can be bestowed on a generation we see in him a purer development of whatever is noblest in ourselves his life is a rich lesson to us and we mourn his death as that of a benefactor who loved and taught us such a gift had nature in her bestowed on us in robert but with indifference she cast it from her hand like a thing of no moment and it was faced and torn asunder as an idle before we it to the ill was given the power of making man s life more venerable but that of wisely guiding own was not given destiny for so in our ignorance we must speak his faults the faults of others proved too hard for him and that spirit which might have could it but have walked soon sank to the dust its glorious faculties trodden under foot in the blossom and died we may almost say without ever having lived and so kind and warm a soul so full of riches of love to all and lifeless things how his heart flows out in sympathy over universal nature and in her provinces a beauty and a meaning the falls not under his nor the ruined nest of that cast forth after all its pains to the and the of winter delights him he dwells with a sad and oft returning fondness in these scenes of solemn desolation but the voice of the tempest becomes an to his ears he loves to walk in the sounding woods for it raises his thoughts to him that on the wings of the wind a true poet soul for it needs but to be struck and the sound it will be music but observe him chiefly as he with his brother men what warm all fellow feeling what boundless love what generous exaggeration of the object loved his rustic friend his nut brown maiden are no longer mean and homely but a hero and a queen whom he as the of earth the rough scenes of life not by in any illusion but ib the rude contradiction in the smoke and soil of a too harsh reality are still lovely to him poverty is indeed his companion but love also and courage the simple feelings the worth the that dwell under the straw roof are dear and venerable to his heart and thus over the lowest provinces of man s existence he the glory of his own soul and they rise in shadow and sunshine softened and brightened into a beauty which other eyes discern not in the highest he has a just self consciousness which too often into pride yet it is a noble pride for defence not for offence no cold suspicious feeling but a frank and social one the peasant poet bears himself we might say like a king in exile he is cast among the low and feels himself equal to the highest yet he claims no rank that none may be disputed to him the forward he can the he can subdue pretensions of wealth or are of no avail with him there is a fire in that dark eye under which the insolence of condescension cannot in his in his extreme need he forgets not for a moment the majesty of poetry and manhood and yet far as he feels himself above common men he not apart from them but warmly in their interests nay himself into their arms and as it were them to love him it is moving to see how in his darkest despondency this proud being still seeks relief from friendship himself to the unworthy and amid tears strains to his glowing heart a heart that knows only the name of friendship and yet he was quick to learn a man s of keen vision before whom common afforded no concealment his saw through the ness even of accomplished but there was a generous in his heart and so did our peasant show himself among us a soul like an harp in whose strings the vulgar wind as it passed through them changed itself into articulate melody and this was he for whom the found no business than quarrelling with and upon and in such toils was that mighty spirit wasted and a hundred years may on before another such is given us to waste all that remains of the writings he has left seem to us as we hinted above no more than a poor of what was in him brief broken glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete that wanted all things for completeness culture leisure true nay even length of life his poems are with scarcely any ex mere occasional poured forth with little expressing by such means as th passion opinion or humor of the hour never in one instance was it permitted him to with any subject witb the full i of his strength to and mould it in concentrated fire of his genius to try by the strict rules of art such imperfect fragments would be at once and unfair nevertheless there is something in these poems and as they are which the most fastidious student of poetry to pass them by some sort of enduring quality they must have for years of the wildest in poetic taste they still continue to be read nay are read more and more more and more and this not only by and that class upon whom causes most strongly but by all classes down to the most hard and	37
certain of his letters and other of prose composition by no means deserve this praise here doubtless there is not the same natural truth of style but on the contrary something not only stiff but strained and twisted a certain high flown tone the emphasis of which ill with the firmness and rugged simplicity of even his poorest verses thus no man it would appear is altogether unaffected does not himself sometimes the but even with regard to these letters of burns it is but fair to state that he had two excuses the first was his comparative deficiency in language though for most part he writes with singular force and even is not master of english prose as he is of verse not master of it we mean in proportion to the depth and vehemence of his matter these letters strike us as the effort of a man to express something which he has no organ fit for expressing but a second and excuse is to be found in the peculiarity of burns s social rank his are often men whose relation to him he has never accurately ascertained whom therefore he is either himself against or else unconsciously flattering by the style he thinks will please them at all events we should remember that these faults even in his letters are not the rule but the exception whenever he writes as one would ever wish to do to trusted friends and on real interests his style becomes simple vigorous expressive sometimes even beautiful his letters to mrs are uniformly excellent but we return to his poetry in addition to its sincerity k has another peculiar merit which indeed is but a mode or perhaps a means of the foregoing it itself in his choice of subjects or rather in his indifference as to subjects burns and the power be has of making all subjects interesting the ordinary poet like the ordinary man is for ever seeking in external circumstances the help which can be found only in himself in what is familiar and near at hand he no or home is not poetical but it is in some past distant conventional world that poetry for him were he there and not here were he thus and not so it would be well witli him hence our innumerable host of rose colored novels and with their locality not on the earth but somewhere nearer to the moon hence our of the sun and our knights of the cross malicious in and copper colored chiefs in and so many other figures from the heroic times or the heroic who on all hands swarm in our poetry peace be ith them but yet as a great proposed preaching to the men of this century so would we fain preach to the poets a sermon on the duty of staying at home let them be sure that heroic ages and heroic can do little for them that form of life has attraction for us less because it is better or nobler than our own than simply because it is different and even this attraction must be of the most transient sort for will not our own age one day be an ancient one and have as quaint b costume as the rest not contrasted with the rest therefore but along with them in respect of does interest us now because he wrote of what passed out of his native greece and two centuries before he was born or because he wrote of what passed in god s world and in the heart of man which is the same after thirty centuries let our poets look to this is their feeling really finer truer and their vision deeper than that of other men they have nothing to even from the subject is it not so they i s miscellaneous writings have nothing to hope but an favor even from the highest the poet we cannot but think can never have far to seek for a subject the elements of his art are in him and around him on every hand for him the ideal world is not remote from the actual but under it and within h nay he is a poet precisely because he can discern it there wherever there is a sky above him and a world around him the poet is in his place for here too is man s existence with its infinite and small its ever its unspeakable aspirations its fears and hopes that wander through and au the of brightness and of gloom that it was ever made of in any age or climate since man first began to live is there not the fifth act of a tragedy in every bed it were a peasant s and a bed of heath and are and that there can be no longer or are men suddenly grown wise that laughter must no longer shake his sides but be cheated of his farce man s life and nature is as it was and as it will ever be but the poet must have an eye to read these things and a heart to understand them or they come and pass away before him in vain he is a a a of vision has been given him has life no him which another cannot equally then he is no poet and itself will not make him one in this respect though not perhaps absolutely a great poet better his better proves the truth of his genius than if he had by his own kept the whole press going to the end of his literary course he shows himself at least a poet of nature s own making and nature all is still the grand agent in making poets we hear of this and the other external condition being requisite for the existence of a poet some times it is a certain sort of training he must have studied	37
vehemence now by their cool vigor and a single phrase a whole subject a whole scene our forefathers in the battle field struggled forward he says re shod giving in this one word a full vision of horror and top accurate for art i in fact one of the leading features in the mind of is this of bis strictly intellectual a resolute force is ever visible in his judgments as in his feelings and professor says of him with some surprise all the faculties of s mind were as far as i could judge equally vigorous and his for poetry was rather the result of his own enthusiastic and impassioned temper than of a genius exclusively adapted to that species of composition from his conversation i have pronounced him to be fitted to in whatever walk of ambition he had chosen to exert bis abilities but this if we mistake not is at all times the very essence of a truly poetical poetry except in such cases as that of where the whole consists in extreme sensibility and a certain vague of is no separate faculty no organ which can be to the rest or from them but rather the result of their general harmony and completion the feelings the gifts that exist in the poet are those that exist with more or less development in every human soul the imagination which at the hell of is the same faculty weaker in degree which called that picture into being how does the poet speak to all men with power but by being still more a man than they burns it has been well observed in the planning and of his has shown an understanding were it nothing more which might have governed states or a what burns s force of understanding may have been we have less means of judging for it dwelt among the objects never saw philosophy and never rose except for short intervals into the region of great ideas nevertheless sufficient indication remains for us in his works we discern the movements of a gigantic though strength and can understand how in conversation his quick sure insight into men and things may as much as aught else about him have amazed the best of his time and country but unless we mistake the intellectual of is fine as well as strong the more delicate relations of things could not well have escaped his eye for they were intimately present to his heart the logic of the and the is indispensable but not all sufficient nay the highest truth is that which will the most certainly it for this logic works by words and the highest it has been said cannot be expressed in words we are not without tokens of an for this higher truth also of a keen though sense for it having existed in burns mr it will be remembered wonders in the pass e above quoted that had formed some distinct conception of the doctrine of association we rather think that far things than the doctrine of association had from of old been familiar to him here for instance we know nothing thus writes he or next to nothing of the structure of our souls so we cannot account for those seeming in them that one should be particularly pleased with this thing or struck with that which on minds of a different cast makes no extraordinary impression i have some favorite flowers s miscellaneous writings in among which are the the haze the fox glove the wild the and the that i view and hang over with particular delight i never hear the loud solitary whistle of the in a summer noon or the wild mixing of a troop of grey in an morning without feeling an elevation of soul hke the enthusiasm of devotion or poetry tell me my dear friend to what can this be owing are we a piece of machinery which like the harp passive takes the impression of the accident or do these something within us above the trodden i own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities a god that made all things man s and immortal nature and a world of or woe beyond death and the grave force and of understanding are often spoken of as something different from general force and of nature as something partly independent of them the necessities of language probably require this but in truth these qualities are not distinct and independent except in special cases and from special causes they ever go together a man of strong understanding is generally a man of strong character neither is delicacy in the one kind divided from delicacy in the other no one at all events is ignorant that in the poetry of burns of insight keeps pace of feeling that his light is not more than his he is a man of the most impassioned temper with passions not strong only but noble and of the sort in which great virtues and great poems take their rise it is reverence it is love towards all nature that him that opens his eyes to its beauty and makes heart and voice eloquent in its praise there is a true old saying that love knowledge but above all it is the living essence of that knowledge which makes poets the first principle of its existence increase activity of burns s his generous all embracing love we have spoken already as of the grand distinction of his nature seen equally in word and deed in his life and in his writings it were easy to examples not man only but all that man in the material and moral universe is lovely in his sight the the troop of grey the solitary all are dear to him all live in this earth along with him and to all he is knit as in mysterious brotherhood how touching is it for	37
instance that amidst the gloom of personal misery brooding over the wintry desolation without him and him he thinks of the cattle and sheep and their sufferings in the pitiless storm i thought me on the cattle or silly sheep bide this wintry war or the drift deep beneath a bird helpless thing that in the merry months o spring delighted me to hear thee sing what comes o thee where wilt thou cow r thy wing and close thy ee the tenant of the mean hut with its ragged roof and wall has a heart to pity even these this is worth several on mercy for it is the voice of mercy herself burns indeed lives in sympathy his soul rushes forth into all of being nothing that has existence can be indifferent to him the very devil he cannot hate with right but fare you ben ye a thought and men ye might i ken still a stake m to think yon den even for your sake s miscellaneous s he did not know probably that had been with him he is the father of curses and lies said dr and is cursed and damned already i am sorry for it my uncle a poet without love were a physical and impossibility why should we speak of since all know it from the king to the meanest of his subjects this was composed on horseback in riding in the middle of over the wildest in company witli a mr who observing the poet s looks to speak enough for a man s address might be to trifle with doubtless this stem hymn was singing itself as he formed it through the soul of burns but to the external ear it should be sung with the throat of the so long as there is warm blood in the heart of ot man it will move in fierce under this war the best we believe that was ever written by any pen another wild song that dwells in our ear and mind with a strange is s perhaps there is something in the tradition itself that for was not tliis grim this shaggy that lived a life of and strife and died by was not he too one of the and of the earth in the of his own remote misty for want of a clearer and wider one nay was there not a touch of grace given him a fibre of love and softness of poetry itself must have lived in his savage heart for he composed that air the night before his execution on the wings of that poor melody his better soul would away above oblivion pain and all the and despair which like an was him to the abyss here also as at and in line was material fate matched against man s free will matched in bitterest though obscure and the ethereal soul sunk not even in its blindness without a cry which has survived it but who except could have given words to such a soul words that we never listen to without a strange half barbarous fellow feeling he a spring and danced it rounds below the tree under a lighter and thinner disguise the same principle of love which we have recognised as the great character of and of all true poets occasionally in the shape of humor everywhere indeed in his sunny moods a full flood of mirth rolls through the mind of he rises to the high and to the low and is l and to all nature we speak not of his bold and irresistible faculty of for this is rather than humor but a much dwells in him and comes forth h re and there in and beautiful touches as in his address to the mouse or the farmer s mare or in his on poor which last may be reckoned his happiest effort of this kind in these pieces there are traits of a humor as fine as that of yet altogether different original peculiar the humor of of the tenderness the playful pathos and many other kindred qualities of s poetry much more might be said but now with these poor outlines of a sketch we must prepare to quit this part of our subject to of his individual writings and with any detail would lead us far beyond our limits as already hinted we can look on but few of these pieces as in strict critical deserving the name of poems they are eloquence pathos sense yet seldom s miscellaneous writings melodious poetical o itself which so high a favor does not appear to i at all to come under this last it is not so much a poem as a piece of sparkling the heart and of the story still lies hard and dead he has not gone back much less carried us back into that dark earnest wondering age when the tradition was believed and when it took its rise he does not attempt by any new of his supernatural ware to strike anew that deep mysterious of human nature which once responded to such things and which lives in us too and will for ever live though silent or with far other notes and to far issues our readers will understand us when we say that he is not the but the of this tale it is all green and living yet look closer it is no firm growth but only ivy on a rock the piece does not properly the strange chasm which in our incredulous between the public house and the gate of is nowhere over nay the idea of such a bridge is laughed at and thus the tragedy of the adventure becomes a mere drunken painted on ale and the farce alone has any reality we do not say that should have made much more of this tradition we rather think	37
that for strictly poetical purposes not much was to be made of it neither are we blind to the deep varied genial power displayed in what he has actually but we find far more qualities as these of o have been fondly named in many of his other pieces nay we incline to believe that this latter might have been written all but quite as well by a man who in place of genius had only possessed talent perhaps we may venture to say that the most strictly poetical of all his poems is one which does not appear in s edition but has been printed before and since under the humble title of the beggars the subject truly is among the lowest in nature but it only the more shows our poet s gift in raising it into the domain of art to our minds this piece seems thoroughly melted together refined and poured forth in one flood of true liquid harmony it is light airy and soft of movement yet sharp and precise in its details every face is a portrait that that that son of are yet ideal the scene is at once a dream and the very rag castle of farther it seems in a considerable degree complete a real se f ing whole which is the highest merit in a poem the of the night is drawn asunder for a moment in full ruddy and flaming light these rough are seen in their boisterous for the strong pulse of life its right to gladness even here and when the curtain we the action without effort the next day as the last our and our are singing and their and cat lets are beg g and some other night in new they will from fate another hour of and good cheer it would be strange doubtless to call this the best of s writings we mean to say only that it seems to us the most perfect of its kind as a piece of poetical composition strictly so called in hb beggar s opera in the beggar bush as other critics have already remarked there is nothing which in real poetic vigor equals this nothing as we think which comes within many degrees of it but by far the most finished complete and truly inspired pieces of burns are without dispute to be found among his songs it is here that although through a small his light shines with the least in its highest vol i s miscellaneous writings beauty and pure sunny the reason may be that song is a brief and simple of and requires nothing so much for its perfection as ine poetic feeling genuine music of heart the has its rules equally with the tragedy rules which in most cases are poorly fulfilled in many cases are not much as felt we might write a long essay on the of which we by far the best that britain has yet produced fc r indeed since the era of mm elizabeth we know not that by t worth attention been in this true we have so by j of quality i we hate hollow wine many a speech in the flowing and watery vein of the bishop rich in words and for moral dashed perhaps with some of a sentimental which many persons cease not from to though lor most part we the music is but from ihe throat or at b t from some region s of the not in but in a certain of the fancy or even in some land on the outside of the nervous system most of such and speeches seem to have originated tiie songs of burns we must not name these things of the clear sentiment that ever his poetry his songs are honest in point of view in as well as in spirit they do not to be to but they actually and in themselves are music they have received their life and fashioned together in the medium of harmony as rose from the bosom of the sea the story tho fe ing is not detailed but suggested not said or in l completeness and but m it in glowing hints in breaks in not o i ae burns voice only but of the whole mind we consider this to be the essence of a song and that no songs since the little careless catches and as it were drops of song which has here and there sprinkled over his plays fulfil condition in nearly the same degree as most of burns s do such grace and truth of external movement too in general a corresponding force and truth of sentiment and inward meaning the songs of burns are not more perfect in the former quality than in the latter with what tenderness he sings yet with what vehemence and there is a piercing wail in his sorrow the purest rapture in his joy he burns with the ire or laughs with the or mirth and yet he is sweet and sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet and soft as their parting tear if we farther take into account the immense variety of his subjects how from the loud flowing in a o to the still enthusiasm of sadness for mary in heaven from the glad kind greeting of or the comic of gray to the fire eyed fury of seats he has found a tone and words for every mood cf man heart it will seem a small praise if we rank him as the first of all our song writers for we know not where to find one worthy of being second to him it is on his songs as we believe that s chief influence as an author will ultimately be found to depend nor if our s is true shall we account this a small influence let me make the songs of a people said	37
he and you shall make its laws surely if ever any poet might have equalled himself with on this ground it was his songs are already part of the mother tongue not of scotland only but of britain and of the millions that in all the ends of the earth speak a h language in hut and hall as the heart itself in the s miscellaneous writings joy and of existence the name tlie voice of that joy and that woe is the name and voice which burns has given them strictly speaking perhaps no british man has so deeply affected the thoughts and feelings of so many men as this solitary and altogether private individual with means apparently the in another point of view moreover we incline to think that burns s influence may have been considerable we mean as exerted specially on the literature of his country at least on the literature of scotland among the great changes which british particularly literature has undergone since that period one of the greatest will be found to consist in its remarkable increase of even the english writers most popular in burns s time were little distinguished for their literary patriotism in this its best sense a certain had in good measure taken place of the old home feeling literature was as it were without any local was not nourished by the affections which spring from a native soil our and seemed to write almost as if in the thing written bears no mark of place it is not written so much for englishmen as for men or rather which is the inevitable result of this for certain which philosophy termed men is an exception not so johnson the scene of his is little more english than that of his but if such was in some degree the case with england it was in the highest degree the case with scotland in fact our literature had at that period a very singular aspect so far as we know except perhaps at where the same state of matters appears still to continue for a long period after scotland became british we had no literature at the date when and were writing their our good john boston was writing with the noblest intent but alike in defiance of grammar and philosophy his state of man then came the in our national church and the in our body ink and blood with enough in both cases seemed to have blotted out the intellect of the country however it was only obscured not lord made nearly the first attempt and a tolerably clumsy one at writing english and ere long smith and a host of followers attracted the eyes of all europe and yet in this brilliant of our genius there was nothing truly nothing except perhaps the natural of intellect which we sometimes claim and are sometimes with as a characteristic of our nation it to remark that scotland so full of writers had no culture nor indeed any english our culture was almost exclusively french it was by studying and and that had trained himself to be a critic and philosopher it was the light of and that guided in his political speculations s lamp that kindled e lamp of adam smith was too rich a man to borrow and perhaps he on the french more than he was acted on by them but neither had he aught to do with scotland equally with la was but the lodging and in which he not so much morally lived as physically never was there a class of writers so clear and well ordered yet so totally to all appearance of any patriotic nay of any human affection whatever the french wits of the period as but their general deficiency in moral principle not to say their and in all virtue strictly so called render this enough we hope there is a patriotism founded on s miscellaneous writings something better than prejudice that our country may be dear to us without injury to our philosophy that in loving and justly all other lands we may prize justly and yet love before all others our own stern and the venerable structure of social and life which mind has through long ages been building up for us there surely there is nourishment for the better part of man s heart in all this surely the roots that have fixed themselves in the very core of man s being may be so cultivated as to grow up pot into but into roses in the field of his life our have no such the field of their life shows neither nor roses but only a flat continuous floor for logic whereon all questions from the doctrine of rent to the natural history of religion are and with the same mechanical with sir walter scott at the head of our literature it cannot be denied that much of this evil is past or rapidly passing away our chief literary men whatever other faults they may have no longer live among us like a french colony or some knot of but like natural born subjects of the soil and in all our and habits our literature no longer grows in but in mould and with the true virtues of the soil and climate how much of this change may be due to burns or to any other individual it might be difficult to estimate direct literary imitation of burns was not to be looked for but his example in the fearless of domestic subjects could not but operate from afar and certainly in no heart did the love of country ever bum with a warmer glow than in that of burns a tide of prejudice as he modestly calls this deep and generous feeling had been poured along his veins and he felt that it would boil there till the flood burns gates shut in eternal rest it seemed to	37
him as if he could do so little for his country and yet would so gladly have done all one small province stood open for him that of song and how eagerly he entered on it how de he labored there i in his most this object never him it is the little happy valley of heart in the gloom of his own affliction he eagerly some lonely brother of the muse and to one other name from the oblivion that was covering it i these were early feelings and they abode with him to the end a wish i mind its power a wish that to my latest hour will heave my breast that i for poor scotland s sake some plan or book could make or sing a sang at least the rough spreading wide the bearded bear i d my aside and spared the symbol dear but to leave the mere literary character of burns which has already detained us too long we cannot but think that the life he willed and was fated to lead among his fellow men is both more interesting and instructive than any of his written works these poems are but like little fragments scattered here and there in the grand of his earthly existence and it is only i in this at their proper that they attain their full measure of significance and this too alas was but a fragment the plan of a mighty edifice had been some columns firm masses of ing stand completed the rest more or less clearly indicated with many a far stretching tendency which only ft s miscellaneous and friendly eyes can now trace towards the posed termination for the work is off in the almost in the beginning and rises among us and sad at once unfinished land a ruin if charitable judgment was necessary in his poems and justice required tliat the aim and the manifest power to fulfil it must be accepted for the fulfilment much more is this the case in regard to the sum and result of all his where his difficulties came upon him not in detail only but in mass and so much has been nay was mistaken and altogether properly speaking there is but one era in the life of burns and that the earliest we have not youth and manhood but only youth for to the end we discern no decisive change in the complexion of his character in his thirty seventh year he is still as it were in youth with all that of judgment that penetrating insight and singular maturity of intellectual power exhibited in his writings he never to any clearness regarding himself to the last he never his peculiar aim even with such distinctness as is common among ordinary men and therefore never can pursue it with that of will which success and some contentment to such men to the last he between two in his talent like a true poet he yet cannot consent to make this his chief and sole glory and to follow it as the one thing needful through poverty or riches through good or evil report another far ambition still to him he must dream and struggle about a certain rock of independence which natural and even admirable as it might be was still but a with the world on the comparatively insignificant ground of his being more or less completely supplied with than others of his ing at a higher or at a lower in general burns than others for the world still appears to him as to the young in borrowed he expects from it what it cannot give to any seeks for contentment not within himself j in action and wise effort but from without in the kindness of circumstances in love friendship honor pecuniary ease he would be happy not and in himself but and from some ideal of not earned by his own labor but on him by the of destiny thus like a young man he cannot steady himself for any fixed or pursuit but to and fro between passionate hope and disappointment rushing with a deep force he or breaks asunder many a barrier travels nay advances far but advancing only under uncertain guidance is ever and anon turned from his path and to the last cannot reach the only true happiness of a man that of clear decided activity in the sphere for which by nature and circumstances he has been fitted and appointed we do not say these things in of nay perhaps they but interest us the more in his favor this blessing is not given to the best but rather it is often the greatest minds that are latest in obtaining it for where most is to be developed most time may be required to develop it a complex condition had been assigned him from without as complex a from within no harmony existed between the clay soil of and the soul of robert burns it was not wonderful therefore that the between them should have been long postponed and his arm long and his sight confused in so vast and an economy as he had been appointed steward over was at his death but a year younger than and through life as it might have appeared far more simply s s miscellaneous writings yet in him we can trace no such no moral manhood but at best and only a little fore his end the beginning of what seemed by much the most striking incident in s life is his journey to but perhaps a still more important one is his residence at so early as in his third year hitherto his life had been poor and toil l worn but otherwise not and with all its by no means unhappy in his outward ci he had every reason to reckon himself his father was a man of thoughtful intense earnest character as	37
could at a later period have come through them altogether victorious and but it seems peculiarly unfortunate that this time above all others should have been fixed for the encounter for now with principles assailed by evil example from without by passions raging like from within he had little need of to whisper treason in the heat of the battle or to cut off his retreat if he were already defeated he loses his feeling of innocence his mind is at with itself the old divinity no longer there but wild desires and wild repentance alternately him ere long too he h is committed himself before the world his character for dear to a peasant as few can even conceive is destroyed in the eyes of men and his only refuge consists in trying to his and is but a refuge of lies the desperation now over him broken only by the red of remorse the whole fabric of his life is asunder for now not only his character but his personal liberty is to be lost men and fortune are for his hurt hungry ruin has vol i s miscellaneous writings him in the wind he sees no escape but the of ah exile from his loved country to a in every sense and to him while the gloomy night is gathering fast in mental storm and solitude as well as in physical he sings his wild to scotland farewell my friends farewell my my peace with these my love with those the tears my heart adieu my native banks of light breaks suddenly in on him in floods hut a false light and no real sunshine he is invited to thither with heart is welcomed as in triumph and with universal and whatever is wisest whatever is of loveliest there round him to gaze on to show him honor sympathy s appear ance among the and of must be regarded as one of the most singular phenomena in modern literature almost like the appearance of some napoleon among the crowned sovereigns of modem politics for it is as a mockery king set there by favor and for a purpose that he will let himself be treated still less is he a mad whose elevation turns his too weak head but he stands there on his own basis cool holding his equal rank from nature herself putting forth no claim which there is not strength in him as well as about him to mr has some forcible observations on this point it needs no effort of imagination says he to conceive what the sensations of an isolated set of scholars almost au either x r professors must have been in the presence of this big stranger with his great flashing eyes who having forced his way among them from the plough at a single stride manifested in the whole strain of his bearing and a most thorough conviction tliat in the society of the most eminent men of his nation he was exactly where he was entitled to be hardly to flatter them by exhibiting an occasional symptom of being flattered by their notice by turns calmly measured himself against the most cultivated of his time in discussion overpowered the hon of the most celebrated by broad floods of merriment with all the burning life of genius astounded habitually enveloped in the thrice piled folds of social reserve by compelling them to tremble nay to tremble visibly beneath the fearless touch of natural pathos and all this without indicating the smallest to be among those professional ministers of excitement who are content to be paid in money and smiles for doing what the spectators and would be ashamed of doing in their own persons even if they had the power of doing it and last and probably worst of all who was known to be in the habit of societies which they would have scorned to approach still more frequently than their own with eloquence no less magnificent with wit in all still more daring often enough as the whom he without alarm might have guessed firom the beginning and had ere long no occasion to guess with wit pointed at themselves p l the farther we remove from this scene the more singular will it seem to us details of the exterior aspect of it are already full of interest most readers recollect mr s personal with as among the best passages of his narrative a time will come when this of sir walter scott s slight though it is will also be precious as for writes sir walter i may truly say i was a lad of fifteen in when he came first to but had sense and feeling enough to be much interested in his poetry and would have given the world to know him but i had very little acquaintance with any literary people and still less with the gentry of the west country the two sets that he s miscellaneous writings most frequented mr thomas was at that time a clerk of my father s he knew and promised to ask him to his lodgings to dinner but had no opportunity to keep his word otherwise i might have seen more of tliis distinguished man as it was i saw him one day at the late venerable professor s where there were several gentlemen of literary among whom i remember the celebrated mr of course we sat silent looked and listened the only thing i remember which was remarkable in burns s manner was the effect produced upon bim by a print of s a soldier lying dead on the snow his dog sitting in misery on one side on the r his widow with a child in her arms these lines were written beneath cold on hills or s plain perhaps that mother wept her soldier slain bent o er her babe her eye dissolved in	37
dew the big drops mingling with the milk he drew gave the sad of his future years the child of misery in tears seemed much affected by the print or rather by the ideas which it suggested to his mind he actually shed tears he asked whose the lines were and it chanced that nobody but myself remembered that they occur in a half forgotten poem of s called by the title of the justice of peace i whispered my information to a friend present be mentioned it to who rewarded me with a look and a word which though of mere civility i then received and still recollect with very great pleasure his person was strong and robust his manners rustic not a sort of dignified and simplicity which received part of its effect perhaps from one s knowledge of his extraordinary talents his features are represented in mr s picture but to me il the idea that they are diminished as if seen in perspective i think his countenance was more massive than it looks in any of the portraits i should have taken the poet liad i not known what he was for a very sagacious try of the old scotch i e none of your modem who keep for their but the who held his own plough there was a strong sion of sense and in all his the eye alone i think indicated the poetical character and temperament it was large and of a dark cast which glowed i say literally when he spoke witli feeling or interest i never saw such another eye in a human head though i have seen the most distinguished men of my time his conversation expressed perfect self deuce without the slightest presumption among the men who were the most learned of their time and country he expressed himself with perfect firmness but without the least and when he in opinion he did not hesitate to express it firmly yet at the same time with modesty i do not remember any part of his conversation distinctly enough to be quoted nor did i ever see him again except in the street where he did not recognise me as i could not expect he should he much in but considering what literary have been since his day the made for his relief were extremely trifling i remember on this occasion i mention i thought acquaintance with english poetry w rather limited and also that having twenty times the abilities of and of he talked of them with too much humility as his models there was doubtless national in his estimate this is au i can tell you about i have only to add that his dress with his manner he was like a farmer dressed in his best to dine with the i do not speak in when i say i never saw a man in company with his in station or information more perfectly from either the reality or the affectation of embarrassment i was told but did not observe it that his address to females was extremely and always with a turn either to the pathetic or humorous which engaged their attention particularly i have heard the late of remark this i do not know anything i can add to these recollections of forty years since s miscellaneous the of burns under this dazzling of favor the calm unaffected manly manner in which he not only bore it but estimated its value has justly been regarded a s the best proof that could be given of his real vigor and integrity of mind a little natural vanity some touches of modesty some of affectation at least some fear of being thought affected we could have in almost any man but no such indication is to be traced here in his situation the young is not a moment perplexed so many strange lights do not him do not lead him astray nevertheless we cannot but perceive that this winter did him great and lasting injury a somewhat clearer knowledge of men s affairs scarcely of their characters it did afford him but a feeling of fortune s unequal arrangements in their social destiny it also led with him he had seen the gay and gorgeous in which the powerful are bom to play their parts nay had himself stood in the midst of it and he felt more bitterly than ever that here he was but a on and had no part or lot in that splendid game this time a jealous indignant fear of social degradation takes possession of him and so far as aught could his private contentment and his feelings towards his richer fellows it was clear enough to burns that he had talent enough to make a fortune or a hundred fortunes could he but have rightly willed this it was clear also that he willed something far different and therefore could not make one unhappy it was that he had not power to choose the one and reject the other but must halt for ever between two opinions two objects making advancement towards either but so is it with many men we long for the yet would fain keep the price and so stand with fate in till the night come and our fair is over burns the learned of that period were in general more noted for clearness of head than for of heart with the of the good old whose help was too ineffectual scarcely one among them seems to have looked at burns wi any true sympathy or indeed much otherwise than as at a highly curious thing by the great also he is treated in the customary fashion entertained at their tables and dismissed certain of and praise are from time to time gladly exchanged for the fascination of his presence which exchange once the bargain is finished and each party goes his several way at the end	37
no longer his peace of mind but fast losing it for ever there was a at the heart of his life for his conscience did not now approve what he was doing amid the of unwise enjoyment of re and angry discontent with fate his true a life of poetry with poverty nay with famine if it must be so was too altogether hidden from his eyes and yet he sailed a sea where without some such guide there was no right of french politics rise before him but these were not stars an accident this which hastened but did not his worst in the mad of that time he comes in collision with certain official is wounded by them cruelly we should say could a dead mechanical in any case be called cruel and in indignant pain into deeper self seclusion into than ever his life has now lost its unity it is a life of fragments led with little aim beyond the melancholy one of securing its own continuance in fits of wild false joy when such offered and of black despondency when they passed away his character before the world begins to suffer is busy with him for a miserable man makes more enemies than friends some faults he has fallen into and a thousand misfortunes but deep is what he stands accused of and they that are not without em cast the first stone at him for is he not a well of the french revolution a and therefore in that one act guilty of all these political and moral it has since appeared were false enough but the world hesitated little to credit them nay his themselves were not the last to do it there is reason to believe that in his later years the aristocracy had partly withdrawn themselves from as a person no longer worthy of their acquaintance t t painful class stationed in all provincial cities behind the of there to stand siege and do battle against the of and had actually seen in the society of and i him with their had as we say cut him we find one passage in this work of mr s which will not out of our thoughts a gentleman of that county whose name i have already more than had occasion to to has often told me that he was seldom more grieved than when riding into one fine summer evening about this time to attend a county ball he saw walking alone on the shady side of the principal street of the town while the opposite side was gay with successive groups of gentlemen and ladies all drawn together for the of the night not one of whom appeared willing to recognise him the dismounted and joined who on his proposing to cross the street said nay nay my young that s all over now and quoted after a pause some verses of lady s pathetic ballad his bonnet stood ance lu fair on his brow his look d better than s new but now he lets t wear way it will and casts upon the com o were we young as we ance been we been galloping down on yon green and it the lily white nd my heart light i die le s miscellaneous it was in d character to let his feelings on escape in this fashion he immediately after these verses assumed the of his most pleasing manner and taking his young friend home with him entertained him very till the hour of the ball arrived alas when we think that burns now sleeps where bitter indignation can no longer his heart and that most of those fair and gentlemen already lie at his side where the of is quite r down who would not sigh over the thin foolish toys that divide heart from heart and make man to his brother i it was not now to be hoped that the genius of would ever reach maturity or accomplish aught worthy of itself his spirit was in its melody not the soft breath of natural feeling but the rude hand of fate was now sweeping over the strings and yet what harmony was in him what music even in his i how the wild tones liad a charm for the simplest and the wisest and all men felt and knew that here also was one of the if he entered an inn at midnight after all the inmates were in bed the news of his arrival from the cellar to the garret and ere ten minutes had elapsed the landlord and all his guests were assembled some brief pure moments of poetic life were yet appointed him in the composition of his songs we can understand how ha grasped at this employment and how too he all other reward for it but what the labor itself brought him for the soul of burns though and was yet living in its full moral strength though sharply conscious of its errors and and here in his and degradation ne it swift s was one act of seeming and self even for him to perform he felt too that with all die thoughtless follies that had laid him low the world was unjust and cruel to him and he silently appealed to another and calmer time not as a hired soldier but as a would he strive for the glory of his country so he cast from him the poor sixpence a day and served as a let us not grudge him this last luxury of his existence let him not have appealed to us in vain the money was not necessary to him he struggled through without it long since these guineas would have been gone and now the high of refusing them will plead for him in all hearts for ever we are here arrived at the crisis of s life for matters had	37
now taken such a shape with him as could not long continue if improvement was not to be looked for nature could only for a limited time maintain this dark and warfare against the world and itself we are not informed whether any continuance of years was at this period probable for burns whether his death is to be looked on as in some sense an accidental event or only as the natural consequence of the long series of events that had preceded the latter seems to be the opinion and yet it is by no means a certain one at all events as we have said some change could not be very distant three gates of it seems to us were open for clear poetical activity madness or death the first with longer life was still possible though not probable for physical causes were beginning to be concerned in it and yet had an iron resolution could he but have seen and felt that not only his highest glory but his first duty and the true medicine for all his woes lay the second was still less probable for his mind was ever among the and so the third gate was opened for him and vol i s miscellaneous he passed not yet speedily into that still where the and fir how rs do not reach and tbe heaviest laden at length lays down his load contemplating this sad end of and how he sank hy any real help hy any wise sympathy generous minds have sometimes figured to themselves with a sorrow that much might have been done for him that by counsel true and friendly ke might have been saved to himself and the we question whether there is not more tenderness of heart n of judgment in these suggestions it to us whether the richest wisest most benevolent individual ii ould have lent burns any effectual help counsel which seldom any one he did not need in hm understanding he knew the right from the wrong as well perhaps as any man ever did but the persuasion which would have availed him lies not so in the head m in ihe heart wh re no or have ed much to it as to money again we do not really believe that this was his essential want or weu see how any private man could even s consent have bestowed on him an independent fortune with much prospect of decisive advantage it is a truth that two men in any rank of ty could hardly be found virtuous enough to give money and to take it as a necessary gift without injury to the moral of one or both but so stands the fact friendship in the old heroic sense of that term no longer exists except in the of kindred or other legal it is in reality no longer expected or recognised as a virtue among men a close observer of manners has pronounced patronage that is pecuniary or other to be twice cursed him that gives and him that takes and burns thus in regard to outward matters also it has become the rule as in regard to inward it always was and must be the rule that no one shall look for effectual help to another but that each shall rest contented with what help he can himself such we say is the principle of modem honor naturally growing out of that sentiment of pride which we and encourage as the basis of our whole social morality many poet has been poorer than but no one was ever we may question whether without great precautions even a from would not have and more than actually assisted him still less therefore are we disposed to join with another class of s admirers who accuse the higher ranks among us of having ruined by their selfish neglect of him we have stated our doubts whether direct pecuniary help had it been offered would have been or could have proved very effectual we readily admit however that much was to be done for that many a poisoned arrow might have been from his bosom many an in his path cut asunder by the hand of the powerful and light and heat shed on him from high places would have made his humble atmosphere more genial and the heart then breathing might have lived and died with some fewer pangs nay we shall grant further and for it is much that with all his pride he would have thanked even with exaggerated gratitude any one who had cordially him patronage unless cursed needed not to have been twice so at all events the poor promotion he desired in his calling might have been granted it was his own scheme therefore than any other to be of service all this it might have been a luxury nay it was a duty for our nobility to have done no part of all this however did s miscellaneous writings any of them do or apparently attempt or wish to do so much is granted against them but what then is the amount of their simply that they were men of the world and walked by the principles of such men that they treated as other and other had done other poets as the english did as king charles and his did butler as king philip and his did do men gather grapes of thorns or shall we cut down our thorns for yielding only a and how indeed could the nobility and gentry of his native land hold out any help to this bard proud of his name and country were the nobility and gentry so much as able rightly to help themselves had they not their game to preserve their interests to strengthen dinners therefore of various kinds to eat and give were their means more than adequate to all this business or less than adequate less than adequate	37
in general few of them in reality were richer than many of them were poorer for sometimes they had to their supplies as with from the hard hand and in their need of guineas to forget their duty of mercy which was never reduced to do let us pity and forgive them the game they preserved and shot the dinners they ate and gave the interests they strengthened the little they by the glory of their might are all melted or melting back into the chaos as man s merely selfish are fated to do and here was an action extending in virtue of its worldly influence we may say through all lime in virtue of its moral nature beyond all time being immortal as the spirit of goodness itself this action was offered them to do and light was not given them to do it let us pity and forgive them but better than pity let us go and do otherwise human suffering did not end with the life of neither was the burns solemn love one another bear one another s burdens given to the rich only but to all men true we shall find no to relieve to by our aid or our pity but celestial natures groaning under the of a life we shall still find and that wretchedness which fate has rendered and is not the least but the most still we do not think that the blame of s failure lies chiefly with the world the world it seems to us treated him with more rather than with less kindness than it usually shows to such men it has ever we fear shown but small favor to its teachers hunger and perils and the prison the cross the poison have in most times and countries been the market price it has offered for wisdom the welcome with which it has greeted those who have come to and it and and the an belong to old days but the world s was not completed with these bacon and in pines in the cell of a mad house dies beg on the streets of so neglected so persecuted they the not in only but in all places where men have been we reckon that every poet of s order is or should be a prophet and teacher to his age that he has no right therefore to expect great kindness from it but rather is bound to do it great kindness that in particular experienced fully the usual proportion of the world s goodness and that the blame of his failure as we have said lies not chiefly with the world where then does it lie we are forced to answer with himself it is his inward not his outward misfortunes that bring him to the dust seldom indeed is it otherwise seldom is a life morally wrecked but the grand cause lies in some internal arrangement some want less of good s miscellaneous writings fortune than of good nature fashions no without in it the strength needful for its action and duration least of all does she so neglect her and darling the poetic soul neither can we believe that it is in the f of any external circumstances utterly to ruin the mind of a man nay if proper wisdom be given him even so much as to affect its essential health and beauty the sum total of all worldly misfortunes is death nothing more can lie in the cup of human woe yet many men in all ages have over death and led it captive its physical victory into a moral victory for themselves into a seal and immortal for all that th ir past life had achieved what has been done may be done again nay it is but the degree and not the kind of such heroism that in seasons for without some portion of this spirit not of boisterous daring but of silent of self denial in all its forms no good man in any scene or time has ever attained to be good we have already stated the error of and mourned over it rather than blamed it it was the want of unity in his purposes of in his aims the attempt to mingle in friendly union the common spirit of the world with the spirit of poetry which is of a far different and altogether nature was nothing wh y and could be nothing no man formed as he was can be anything by the heart not of a mere popular verse or poetical but of a true poet and singer worthy of the old religious heroic times had been given him and he fell in an age not of heroism and religion but of selfishness and when was little understood and its place supplied by a hollow altogether barren and principle of pride the influences of that age his open kind susceptible nature to say nothing of his highly situation made it more than usually difficult for him to or resist the better spirit that was within him ever sternly demanded its rights its he spent his life in to reconcile these two and lost it as he must have lost it without them here burns was bom poor and bom also to continue poor for he would not endeavor to be otherwise this it had been well could he have once for all admitted and considered as finally settled he was poor truly but hundreds even of his own class and order of minds have been poorer yet have nothing deadly from it nay his own father had a far battle with ungrateful destiny than and he did not yield to it but died and to all moral prevailing against it true burns had little means had even little time for poetry his only real pursuit and but so much the more precious was what little he had in all these external respects his	37
with ment at the natural strength and worth of his character doubtless there was a remedy for this but not in others only in himself least of all in simple increase of wealth and worldly respectability we hope we have now heard enough about the of wealth for poetry and to make poets happy nay have we not another instance of it in these very days a man of an considerably less ethereal than that of burns is bom in the rank not of a but of an english peer the highest worldly honors the burns worldly career are his by richest harvest of fame he soon in another province by his own hand and what does all this avail him is he happy is he good is he true alas he has a soul and towards the infinite and the eternal and soon feels that all this is but mounting to the house top to reach the stars like he is only a proud man might like him have purchased a pocket copy of milton to study the character of satan lor satan so is s grand the hero of his poetry and the model apparently of his conduct as in s case too the celestial element will nt mingle with the clay c earth both poet and man of the world he must not be vulgar ambition will not live kindly with poetic adoration he cannot serve god and like is not happy nay he is the mo wretched of all men his life is arranged the fire is in him is not a strong still central fire into beauty the of a world but it is the mad fire of a and now we look sadly into the of a which will fill itself with snow and burns were sent forth as to their generation to teach it a higher doctrine a purer truth they had a message to deliver which them no rest till it was accomplished in dim of pain this divine lay within them for they knew not what it meant and felt it only in mysterious anticipation and they had to die without uttering it they are in the camp of the yet not as high messengers of though truth but as flattering singers and in pleasant fellowship will they live there they are first then persecuted they accomplish little for others they find no peace for themselves but only death and the peace of the grave we confess it is not without a certain mournful awe that we view the fate of s us writings these noble so richly yet ruined to so little purpose with all their gifts it seems to us there is a stem moral taught in this piece of history told us in our own time surely to men of like genius if there be any such it carries with it a lesson of deep impressive significance surely it would become such a man furnished the highest of all that of being the poet of his age to consider well what it is that he attempts and in what spirit he attempts it for the words of milton are true in all times and were never truer than in this he who would write heroic poems must make his whole life a heroic poem if he cannot first so make his life then let him hasten from this for neither its glories nor its fearful perils are for him let him into a ballad let him worship and be sing the of the time and the time will not fail to reward him if indeed he can endure to live in that capacity and could not live as idol priests but the fire of their own hearts consumed them and better it was for them that they could not for it is not in the favor of the great or of the small but in a life of truth and in the of his own soul that a s or a burns s strength must lie let the great stand aloof from him or know how to reverence him beautiful is the union of wealth with favor and for literature like the flower jar the loveliest yet let not the relation be mistaken a true poet is not one whom they can hire by money or flattery to be a minister of their pleasures their writer of occasional verses their of table wit he cannot be their he cannot even be their at the peril of both parties let no such union be attempted will a of the sun work in the harness of a horse his hoofs are of fire and his path is through the heavens bringing light to all will he lumber on mud l ale for earthly wi door to but we must short in the e i fi id i i i h would lead us to we had to say on the public character of but this also we must forbear we are for regarding as before the world as than the average nay from doubting that he is less guilty than one of ten thousand tried at a far more rigid than that where the e ha of are pronounced be has seemed to us even there less worthy of blame than of pity and wonder but the world is habitually unjust in its judgments of such men on many grounds of which this one may be stated as the substance it like a court of law by dead and not positively but less on what is done right than on what is or is not done wrong not the few inches of from the which are so easily measured but the of these to the whole the real this may be a planet s its the breadth of the system or it may be a city nay the circle of a its a score of feet	37
wages i had given lessons to a neighbor s child a little girl in reading and writing as the common school course take me no farther the point now was to get a private hour and proceed into latin but for that purpose weekly was required this my parents had not to give many a day i carried this grief about with me however i had a who was in easy circumstances a baker and my mother s half brother one saturday i was sent to this man to fetch a loaf with wet eyes i entered his house and chanced to find my himself there being questioned why i was crying tried to answer but a whole stream of tears broke loose and scarcely could i make the cause of my sorrow intelligible my offered to pay the weekly out of his own pocket and only this condition was imposed on me that i should come to him every sunday and repeat what part of the gospel i had learned by heart this latter arrangement had one good effect for me it exercised my memory and i learned to without ness drunk with joy i started off with my loaf tossing it up time after time into the air and as i was i aloft after it but my loaf fell into a this misfortune again brought me a little to reason my mother heartily rejoiced at the good news my father was less content thus passed a couple of years and my intimated what i myself had long known that i could now learn no more from him the life of this then waa the en i must leave school and me to the of my father were not the under of so many kinds robbed of the fruits of his hard toil and of so many advantages to which the useful citizen has a natural claim i should still say had i but continued in the station of my parents what vexation would at this hour have been unknown to me my father not but be anxious to have a grown up son for an assistant in his labor and looked upon my to it with great dislike i again longed to get into tbe grammar school of the town but for this all means were where was a of where were books and a blue cloak to be come at how wistfully my look often hung on the walls of the school when i learned it a clergyman of the was my second his name was my who likewise belonged to his congregation had told him of me i was sent for and after a short examination he promised me that i should go to the town school he himself would bear the charges who can express my as i then felt it i was despatched to the first teacher examined and placed with approbation in the second class weakly from the first pressed down with sorrow and want without any cheerful enjoyment of childhood or youth i was still of very small stature my class fellows judged by and had a very slight opinion of me scarcely by various proofs of diligence and by the praises i received could i get so far that they my being put beside them and certainly my diligence was not a of his promise the clergyman indeed kept so much tliat he paid my provided me with a coarse cloak and gave me some useless volumes that were lying on his shelves but to furnish me with school books he could not resolve i thus found myself under the necessity of a class fellow s books and daily a part of them before the lesson on the other hand the honest man would have some hand himself in my instruction and gave me from time to time some hours in latin in his youth he had learned to make latin verses scarcely was de m rum got over when i too must take to verse making all this before i had read any authors or could possibly possess any s store of words the man was withal passionate and in every point repulsive with a moderate income he was accused of he had the ess and self will of an old bachelor and at the same time the vanity of to be a good and what was more a latin verse maker and consequently a clergyman these qualities of his all contributed to my youth and away in the bud every of its pleasures in this plain but somewhat leaden style does proceed the crosses and losses of his school years we cannot pretend that the narrative delights us much nay that it is not rather bald and barren for such a narrative but its fidelity may be relied on and it the clear broad strong and somewhat heavy nature of the writer perhaps better than description could do it is curious for instance to see with how little of a purely humane interest he looks back to his childhood how the man has almost grown into a sort of teaching machine and sees in the boy little else than the and tells us little else but how this wheel after the other was developed in him and he came at last to grind in complete perfection we could have wished to get some view into the interior of that poor with its loom and cheerless hearth its and devotion its affection and and the fire of natural genius struggling into flame amid such in an atmosphere so damp and close but of all this we catch few farther glimpses and hear only of and and and school and that had been taught by neither in another respect not of but of commission can this piece of writing altogether content us we must object a little to the spirit of it as too narrow too	37
must have been a very meagre man but is it right that of all others should speak of him with without question the life of unfortunate meant nobly had not stood in his way did he not pay down his every quarter and give the boy a blue cloak though a coarse one nay he bestowed old books on him and instruction according to his gift in the mystery of verse making and was not all this something and if and charity had a continual battle to fight was not this better than a flat surrender on the part of the latter the other of are all quietly forgotten why should be remembered to his disadvantage for being only a little better than they continued to be much with tasks from and sorely held down by want and of every sort the school course moreover he says was bad nothing but the old routine exercises all without spirit or purpose nevertheless he continued to make what we must call wonderful in these branches especially as he had still to write every ta k before he could learn it for he prepared greek he says also greek verses and by and by could write down in greek prose and at last in greek as well as latin verses the he heard in church some ray of hope was beginning to spring up within his mind a certain small degree of self confidence had first been awakened in bim as he us by a adventure there chanced to be a school examination held at which the j as chief school was present this man dr a of some learning for his time all at once interrupted the who was teaching and put the question who among the scholars could tell him what might be made per from the word this whim had arisen from the circumstance that the first war was just begun and some such reckoned very happy s mi writings appeared ma newspaper no of ue as what an waa even the i looked quite perplexed as none answered the latter he to give us a description of in general i set myself to work and sprang forth with my discovery this was something different from the newspaper one so much the greater was our s admiration and the more as the successful was a little boy on the lowest bench of the he growled out his applause to me but at the same time set the whole about my ears as he stoutly them with being beaten by an i enough this adventure gave the to the development of my powers i began io take some credit to myself and in spite of all the oppression and contempt in which i to resolve on struggling forward this first struggle was in truth ineffectual enough was soon regarded as a piece of pride and it brought on me a thousand and at times it t on my into defiance nevertheless it kept me at the stretch of my m e ill guided as it was and withdrew me g om the company of my class among whom as children of low birth fm bad could not fail to be the ca e the utmost and ness of every sort prevailed the plan of these schools does not include any general inspection but limits itself to mere intellectual instruction yet on all hands continues he i found myself too sadly the perverse way in which the old parson treated me at home the discontent and of my parents especially of my father who could not get on with his work and still thought that had i kept by his way of life he might now have had some help the pressure of want the feeling of being behind every other all this would allow no cheerful thought no sentiment of worth to spring up within me a awkward carriage shut me out still further from all exterior attractions where could i learn good manners elegance a right way of thought where could i attain any culture for heart and spirit as yet was against not as in the end allied with her the life of j however i still strove a ling of honor a wish for something an effort to work myself out of this ment incessantly attended me hut without direction as it was it led me rather to and at length a place opened for me where some training in these points lay within my reach one of our took his law home to live with him she had still two children with her ft son and a daughter my own age for the son private lessons were wanted and happily i was chosen for the purpose as these private hours me in a i now began to defend myself a little against the grumbling of my parents hitherto i had been in the habit of doing work occasionally that i might not be told how i was eating their bread for nothing clothes and oil for my lamp i had earned by teaching in the house these things i could now and thus my condition w as in some degree improved on the other hand i had now opportunity of seeing persons of better education i gained the of the family so that besides the lesson hours i generally lived there such society afforded me some culture extended my and opinions and also polished a little the of my exterior in this house he must have been somewhat more at ease for he now very privately fell in love with his pupil s sister and made and burnt many greek and latin verses in her praise and had sweet dreams of sometime rising so high as to be worthy of her even as matters stood he acquired her friendship and that of her mother but the grand concern for the present was how to get to	37
college at old had promised to stand good on this occasion and unquestionably would have done so with the greatest pleasure had it cost him nothing but he promised and promised without doing aught above all without putting his hand in his pocket and elsewhere there was no hope or resource at length wearied perhaps with the boy s he determined to himself and vol i s writings lo his assistant who was just making a journey to to show the road the two arrived in perfect safety he me still longing cash for of his own he had only two about five shillings but the assistant him in a lodging house and went his way saying he had no farther orders the miseries of a poor life were now to be s portion in full measure hi clothed totally of books with five shillings in his purse he found him self set down in the university to study all learning despondency at first the poor boy s heart and he sunk into sickness from which indeed he recovered but only as he says to fall into conditions of life where he the prey of desperation how he contrived to exist much more to study is scarcely apparent from this narrative the unhappy old did at length send him some and at rare intervals repeated the yet ever with his own peculiar grace not till after unspeakable in quantities that were consumed by debt and coupled with sour nay on one occasion addressed a mr for half a year he would leave him without all help then promise to come and see what he was doing come accordingly and return without leaving him a penny neither could the destitute youth ever obtain any public no free table or was to be procured many times he had no regular meal often not three for a loaf at mid day he longed to be dead for his spirit was often sunk in the gloom of darkness one good heart alone says he i found and that in the servant girl of the house where i lodged she laid out money for my most pressing necessities and risked almost all she had seeing me in such frightful want could i but find thee in the world even now of thou good pious soul i might y what thou then for me declares it to be still a to him how he stood all this what carried me forward v continues he was not ambition my youthful dream of one day taking a place or to take one among the learned it is true the bitter feeling of of deficiency in and external polish the consciousness of awkwardness in social life incessantly me but my chief lay in a certain defiance of fate this gave me courage not to yield to try to the whether i was doomed without remedy never to rise from this degradation of order in his studies there could be little expectation he did not even know what profession he was after old was for thou himself averse to it and only to besides he had no money to pay class it was only to open lectures or at most to ill class rooms that he could gain admission of this ill guarded sort was s into which poor himself to hear philosophy alas the first problem of all philosophy the keeping of soul and body together was well nigh too hard for him s students were of a description accustomed among other to t with the feet one day they chose to receive in this fashion and he could not venture back nevertheless adds he simply enough the came to me some time afterwards demanding the fee i had my own to take before i could raise it was the only teacher from whom he derived any benefit the man indeed whose influence seems to have shaped the whole subsequent course f his studies by dint of excessive he to s s s ous writings lectures and here first learned says what interpretation of the meant one also a strange fantastic sir of a professor who built much on taste elegance of manners and the like took some notice of him and procured him a little employment as a private this more useful than his advice to imitate and read the so as to begin with the most ancient and proceed regularly to the latest small service it can do a bed rid man to convince him that is to s lectures says he were a of endless which however now and then contained excellent remarks but s best teacher was himself no pressure of no want of or encouragement not hunger itself could his resolute perseverance what books he could come at he borrowed and such was his excess of zeal in reading that for a whole half year he allowed himself only two nights of sleep in the week till at i ver obliged him to be more moderate his diligence was or ill directed but it never rested never paused and must at length prevail fortune had cast him into a and he was groping round but the prisoner was a giant and would at length forth as a giant into the light of day without any clear aim almost without any hope had set his heart on knowledge a force as of instinct drove him on aiid no promise and no threat could wm him back it was at the very depth of his when he had not three for a loaf to dine on that he refused a with handsome enough but which was to have removed him from the university had sent for him one sunday and made him the proposal there arose a violent struggle within me pays he which drove me to and fro for several days to this hour it is incomprehensible to me where i found the	37
life of to cm the o br and my in a man with a half goes backwards and forwards and makes no way on the road a man with a whole advances on the and will reach his purpose if there be a little wisdom in it with his two years v residence in s personal narrative not because the of the history had been solved then and his cleared up but simply because he had not found time to relate a long series of hopeless days were yet appointed him by or recommendation he occasion ally got employment in giving private lessons at one time he worked as secretary and classical to the philosopher who felt a little in his greek and latin everywhere he found the accommodation and shifting side to side in dreary of want had to spin out existence warmed by no ray of except the fire that burnt or within his own bosom however he had now chosen a that of law at which as at many other branches of learn ing he was laboring with his old diligence of in this province there was for the present little or no hope but this was no new thing with by degrees too his fine talents and his perverse situation began to attract notice and sympathy and here and there some well had his eye on him and stood ready to do him a service two and twenty years of and joy struggling had now passed over the man how many more such might be added was still yet surely the longest winter is followed by a spring another trifling little better than that old adventure again brought about important changes in s situation among his in had been the preacher of a chapel one who at this s ell writings time was cut off by death it is said in the real sorrow of his heart composed a long latin on that occasion the poem had been intended for the press but certain hearers of the deceased were so pleased with it that they had it printed and this in the finest style of and it was this latter circumstance not the merit of tho verses which is said to have been considerable that attracted the attention of count the well known prime minister and favorite of the sons were studying in he was pleased to express himself contented with the poem and to say that he should like to have the in his service a prime minister s words are not as water upon the ground which cannot be gathered but rather as heavenly which is up and eaten not without a religious sentiment was forthwith written to from all quarters that his fortune was made r he had but to show himself in said his friends with one voice and golden showers from the would refresh him almost to for was not the count taken with him and who in all not excepting serene itself could the count over persuaded and against his will at length determined on the journey for which as an indispensable preliminary had to be borrowed and so following this hopeful quest he actually arrived at in april count received with the most smiles and even assured him in words that he count would take care of him but a prime minister has so much to take care of danced attendance all spring and summer happier than our johnson inasmuch as he had to blow his fingers in a cold the weather being warm and obtained not only promises but useful ence of their value at courts the life of he was to be made a secretary with five hundred with four hundred or even with three hundred s of income only in the meanwhile his old stock of fifty one had quite run out and he had nothing to live upon by great good luck he procured some employment in his old craft private teaching which helped him through the winter but as this ceased he remained without resources he tried working for the and translated a french romance and a greek one s loves of and however his would scarcely furnish him with salt not to speak of he sold his few books a in divinity one took pity on his and shared a garret with him where as there was no bed slept on the floor with a few for his pillow so he as to lodging in regard to board he gathered empty and had them boiled this was not his only meal o ye poor naked wretches what would bishop say to this at length by dint of incredible in the autumn of obtained not his but the post of in the library with one hundred of salary a sum barely sufficient to keep in life which indeed was now a great point with him in such sort was this young scholar taken care of nevertheless it was under these external circumstances that he first entered on his proper career and forcibly made a place for himself among the learned men of his day in he prepared his edition of which was printed next year at a work said to exhibit remarkable talent inasmuch as the of all those by which afterwards became j de s as a on the are more or less parent in it the most illustrious henry count von in spite of the paid no regard to this ti as indeed at large paid little but in another country it fell into the hands of where it vas rightly estimated and lay waiting as in due season appeared to be the pledge of better fortune for its author meanwhile the day of difficulty for was yet far from past the profits of his served to some debts on the strength of his hundred the of might still keep turning though languidly but ere long new troubles arose his	37
superior in the was one a and gold maker who his religious principles and him with over the former evil at length and became a rational christian but the latter was an abiding grievance not indeed for ever for it was removed by a greater in the seven years war broke out advanced towards animated with es fury against whose palaces accordingly were in a few months reduced to ashes as his splendid volumes were by fire and by water and his and turned to the street without appeal had lately been engaged in studying and ad an edition x f his t from which his great soul i i i i ib iii i one rich on its way to sank in the another still more valuable portion had been for safety deposited in a vault through which passed certain pipes of artificial these the cannon broke and when the vault came to be opened all was reduced to and mould the shells burnt the remainder t the or rather the code f was in library the life of had acquired much nourishment such nourishment never comes wrong in life and surely at this time had need of it all however he struggled as he had been wont translated sometimes wrote newspaper articles eat when he had and resolutely endured when he had not by and by to whom he was a little known him a in the family of a von which not without reluctance accepted were at all times his aversion his rugged proud spirit made business of that sort grievous but want stood over him like an armed man and was not to be reasoned with in this family a novel and unexpected series of fortunes awaited him but whether for or for woe might still be hard to determine the name of has become a sort of classical word in biography her union with forms as it were a green in his otherwise hard and stony history it was here that he first met with her that they learned to love each other she was the orphan of a professor on the had long amid poverty and been trained like the to bear and forbear was now in her year and the humble companion as she had once been the school mate of the von whose young brother had come to teach their first interview may be described in his own words which is here again happily enabled to introduce it was on the th of october her future death day that i first entered the house towards what mountains of was i now proceeding to what endless of good and evil hap was the thread here taken up could i fancy that at this moment providence was deciding the fortune of my life i w is ushered into a room where sat several ladies engaged with gay youthful in confidential talk s m writings von yet at this time distant from her husband was preparing for a journey to him at where his business detained on her brow still beamed the pure innocence of youth in her eyes you saw a glad soft sky a smiling loving accompanied her discourse this too seemed one of those souls clear and as they come from the hands of their maker by reason of her brother in her tender love of him i must have been to her no unimportant guest beside her stood a young lady dignified in aspect of fair slender shape not regular in feature yet soul in every glance her words her looks her every movement impressed you with respect another sort of respect than what was paid to rank and birth good sense good feeling disclosed itself in all she did you forgot tliat more beauty more softness might have been demanded you felt yourself under the influence of something noble something and earnest something decisive that lay in her look in her gestures not less attracted to her than to r more than esteem the first sight of did not inspire me with what i noticed most were the efforts she made to relieve my embarrassment the fruit of my down bent pride and to keep me a stranger entering among familiar acquaintances in easy conversation her good heart reminded her how much the unfortunate requires encouragement especially when placed as i was among those to whose protection he must look up thus was my first kindness for her awakened by that good which made her among thousands a beneficent angel she was one at this moment to myself for i twice received letters fix m an unknown hand containing money which greatly my in a few days on the th of october i commenced my task of instruction her i did not see again till the following spring when she returned with her fix m and then only once or twice as she soon accompanied von to the country to in upper they left us after it had been settled that i was to follow them in a few days with my pupil my young heart in the prospect of of of which i had from of old cherished a delightful dreams i stiu remember the th of may when we set out for the society of two cultivated females who belonged to the noblest of their sex and the to acquire their esteem contributed to form my own character nature and religion were the objects of my daily contemplation i began to act and live on principles of which till now i had never thought these too formed the subject of our constant discourse lovely nature and exalted our feelings to a pitch oi pious enthusiasm sooner than i discovered that her for me was growing into a passion her natural melancholy now seized her heart more keenly than ever often our glad hours were changed into very gloomy and sad ones whenever our conversation chanced	37
of her property but inward sorrow and so many outward hard upon her in the winter she fell violently sick at was given up by her received extreme to the rites of her church and was for some hours believed to be dead nature however again prevailed a crisis had occurred in the mind as well as in the body for with her first returning strength declared her determination to the catholic and publicly embrace the faith argument representation of worldly disgrace and loss were she could now that all her friends were to be have little hope of being wedded to on earth but she trusted that in another scene a like creed might unite them in a like destiny he himself fell ill and only escaped death by her nursing the more in her purpose she took instruction and on the th of may in the solemnly professed her new creed admiration filled me says he as i beheld the peace and with which she executed her determination and still more the courage with which she bore the consequences of it she saw herself altogether cast out from her family forsaken by her acquaintance by every one and by the fire deprived of all she had her courage exalted me to a higher duty and me to do i had in former conversations first awakened her religious scruples the passion for me which had so much increased her enthusiasm increased her melancholy even the secret thought of belonging more closely to me by of belief had unconsciously influenced her in a word i the determination which could not but expose me to universal the life of sore less i was i united my with hen we were wedded at on the th of june l this was a bold step but a right one had now no stay but him it them to struggle and if better might not be to sink together in this narrative appears to us a noble interesting being noble not in sentiment only but in action and suffering a fair flower trodden down by misfortune but yielding like flowers only the sweeter perfume for being crushed and which it would have been a to raise up and cherish into free growth yet in plain prose we must question whether the two were happier than others in their union both were quick of temper she was all a heavenly light he in good part a hard mass which perhaps she could never wholly the balance of the love seems to have much on her side nevertheless was a steadfast true and kindly if no ethereal man he seems to have loved his wife honestly and so amid light and shadow they made their pilgrimage together if not better than other mortals not worse which was to have been feared neither for the present did the pressure of distress weigh heavier on either than it had done before he worked diligently as he found scope for his old the the war clouds grew lighter or at least the young pair better used to them friends also were kind assisting and entertaining them on occasion of such a visit to the family of a von there occurred a little trait which for the sake of must not be omitted and she had spent some happy weeks with their infant in this country house when the alarm of war drove the von from their residence which with the management of its concerns they left to he says he gained some notion of land economy truly and states that he had a candle to but to our incident s miscellaneous writings soon after tiie of the there upon m aa of as we subsequently learned after drinking to in the thej set about pursued by them i ran up stairs and no door being open but that of the room where my wife was with her infant i rushed into it she arose and placed herself with the child on her arm in the door against the robbers courage saved me and the treasure which lay hidden in the chamber o thou said on occasion of a similar rescue why hast thou never been in any deadly peril that i might show thee the lion in thy husband but better days were dawning on our return to says i learned that inquiries had been made after me from i knew not for what reason the reason by and by came to light professor of eloquence in was dead and a successor was wanted these things it would appear cause difficulties in which in many other places are little felt but the prime minister had as good as founded the himself and he was wont to watch over it with singular anxiety the noted and notorious was already there as assistant to but his beautiful says did not so with his was not thought of the minister applied to for advice knew of no fit men in germany but recommended of or of refused to leave his country and added these words but why do you seek out of germany what germany itself offers you why not for s successor take christian thai true pupil of and man of fine talent who has shown how much he knows of latin literature by his of greek by his in my ind that of the greatest the life op is the only one that can replace your nor let any one tell me that s fame is not sufficiently illustrious and extended believe me there is in this man such a richness of genius and learning that ere long all europe will ring with his praises this courageous and generous verdict of s in favor of a person as yet little known to the world and to him known only by his writings decided the matter says our believed in the boldly man not without difficulty was and after various	37
excuses on account of on his part for he had lost all his books and papers in the siege of and sadly forgotten his latin and greek in so many and various about from the saxon service and salary and privilege in the he at length formally received his appointment and some three months in june settled in with an official income of eight hundred which it appears was by several additions in the course of time increased to twelve hundred f here then had at last got to land his long life was henceforth as quiet and fruitful in activity and comfort as the past period of it had been desolate and of sorrows he never left though frequently invited to do so and sometimes with highly tempting offers but continued in his place busy in his growing in influence in extent of o at home and abroad till s he was invited to be professor at and at to be at and most flattering of all to be in the university of and of education over all he bad a struggle on this last but the again prevailed some increase of salary usually follows such it did not in this instance s miscellaneous might almost be reckoned to the letter for in his own department was without any equal in europe however his history from this point even because it was so happy for himself must lose most of its interest for the general reader has now become a professor and a regularly man of learning has a fixed house hold his rents and in it is easy to fancy how that man might flourish in calm sunshine of prosperity whom in we saw growing in spite of every storm of his proceedings in his reform of the royal society of his of the of learning his of the from to his of the library his passive quarrels with his armed with c all this we must say little the best fruit of his lies before the world in a long series of works which among us as well as elsewhere are known and justly appreciated on looking over them the first thing that strikes us is astonishment at s diligence which considering the quantity and quality of his writings might have appeared singular even in one who had been without other duties yet s involved him in the most laborious he wrote letters by the hundred to all parts of the and on all conceivable subjects he h id three classes to teach daily he appointed professors for his recommendation was schools for a long time the inspection of the was laid on him and he had bills to settle and hungry students to satisfy with his besides all he accomplished in the way of publication as follows in addition to his and the first of which went through three the second through two each time with large and improvements the life of his p v b et in various ms from to no fewer than six his c ad two his c two urn ch g h three the last with the the fragments a translation and s be his and et and lastly his volumes and a second contracted edition va volumes next almost a of of which we shall mention only his version said to be with very important improvements of our universal j by and gray then some ten or twelve thick volumes of essays treating of all from the french to the chest of of these six volumes are known in a separate shape under the title of contain some of s most valuable writings and lastly to crown the whole with one most surprising item seven thousand five hundred says from to thousand of books in the art shame on us here of itself was work for a lifetime to expect that elegance of composition should prevail in these performances were unreasonable plough wrote very indifferent german and his latin by much the more common vehicle in his learned works flowed s writings from him with a which could not he at the same time these volumes are not the of a not mere classical ore and hut regularly melted metal for most part exhibiting the essence and only the essence of very great and enlightened by a which if it does not always wisely order its results has looked far and deeply in collecting them to have performed so much on the part of no little in the great art of time gives us sufficient details on this subject explains s of his hours and various occupations how he rose at five o clock and worked all the day and all the year with the regularity of a clock nevertheless how patiently he submitted to from strangers or bu ness how briefly yet smoothly he contrived to despatch such how his letters were when they came to hand and lay in a special drawer till they were answered nay we have a description of his whole locality his and book shelves and port his very bed and strong box are not forgotten to the busy man especially the busy man of letters these details are far from uninteresting if we judged by the result many of s arrangements might seem worthy not of notice only but of imitation his domestic circumstances continued on the whole highly favorable for such activity though not now more than formerly were they from the common lot but still had several hard changes to encounter in he lost his after long ill health an event which as he was struck heavily and upon his heart he not to shed some natural tears though from eyes little used to the melting mood nine days her death he thus writes to a friend with a solemn mournful tender ness which none of us will deny to be genuine the life of i looked upon tiie	37
grave ca be remains of my wliat a pang beyond the pitch of human feeling pierced through my soul did my limbs tremble as i approached this holy spot here then what is left of the dearest that heaven gave me among the dust of her four children she sleeps a sacred horror covered the place i should have sunk altogether in my sorrow had it not been for my two daughters that were standing on the outside of the church yard saw their over the wall directed to me with anxious fear this called me to myself i hai n in sadness from the spot where i could haye continued for ever where it cheered me to that one day i should rest by her side from all the care from all the which so often have to me the enjoyment of life alas among these must i reckon even her love the strongest truest that ever inspired the heart of woman which made me the happiest of mortals and yet was a fountain to me of a thousand and cares to entire cheerfulness perhaps she never attained but for what unspeakable sweetness for what exalted jo is not love indebted to amidst anxieties with the of in my heart i have been made even by the love which caused me this anguish these anxieties happy when tears flowed over our cheeks did not a nameless seldom felt delight stream through my breast oppressed equally by joy and by sorrow but was not a man to brood over past or long where nothing was to be but mourn in a short time according to a good old plan of his having reckoned up his grounds of sorrow he fairly wrote down on paper over against them his grounds of consolation concluding with these pious words so for all these sorrows too these trials do i thank thee my god and now friend will i again turn me with heart to my duty thou approval on me nay it was not many months before a new marriage came on the in which matter truly conducted himself with the s miscellaneous writings most philosophic leaving his friends hy whom the project had been started to bring it to what issue they pleased it was a scheme by the author of solitude a man little known to and one a who had met at the the minister successor of in the management of the university concerns was there also with a daughter upon her the pro cast their eye being consulted seems to have himself like clay in the hands of the father and fair one in like manner were of a humor and thus was the business achieved and on the th of april could take home a bride won with less difficulty than most men have in choosing a pair of boots nevertheless she proved an excellent wife to him kept his house in the order managed her step children and her own like a true mother and loved and faithfully assisted her husband in whatever he undertook in his private relations such a man might well reckon himself fortunate in addition to he s claims as a scholar and her would have us regard him as an unusually expert man of business and for which line of life he himself seems indeed to have thought that his talent was more peculiarly fitted in proof of this we have long details of his in managing the library the royal society the university generally and his incessant and often rather complex correspondence with or other ministers who presided over this department without from s skill in such matters what struck us more in this narrative of s was the singular contrast which the a in its interior arrangement as well as in its external relations to the government with our own the the life of prime minister of the country writes thrice weekly to the of an institution for learning he all knows the character not only of every but of every pupil that gives any promise he is continually books drawings models treating for this or the other help or advantage to the establishment he has his eye over all and no where does a man of any decided talent show himself but he strains every nerve to su him and seldom or ever can he succeed for the seems nothing singular every state in germany has its minister for education as well as they correspond they inquire they everywhere there seems a less for places than br the best men to fill them himself has his a private class of the nine most distinguished students in the university these he trains with all diligence and is in due time most probably enabled by his to place in stations fit for them a hundred and thirty five professors are said to have been sent from this during his these things we state without we believe that the experience of all english and scotch and irish university men will of itself furnish one the state of education in germany and the structure of the for it seems to us one of the most promising inquiries that could at this moment be entered on but to return to we have said that in his private circumstances he might reckon himself fortunate his public relations on a more splendid scale continued to the last to be of the same happy sort by degrees he had risen to be both in name and office the chief man of his establishment his character stood high with the learned of all countries and the best fruit of external reputation increased respect in his own circle was not denied to him s miscellaneous writings the of so fond of their could not but be proud of nay a the passed on they found themselves laid under more on specific obligation to him he and town school	37
as he had before done that of and what was still important in the rude times of the french war by his skilful application he succeeded in from napoleon not only a protection for the university but from hostile for the whole district it stands in nay so happily were matters managed or so happily did they turn of their own accord that rather gained than suffered by the war under of not only were all ally paid but improvements were among other things a new and very handsome extension which had long been desired was built for the at the change of government to all these for public regard add s now venerable age and we can fancy how among his and fellow he must have been cherished nay almost worshipped already had the by a special act freed him from all but in on his birth day came a still more emphatic testimony for the bitter and all the public boards and the faculties in came to him in procession with good wishes and students him and young ladies sent him together by their own fair fingers in short was a place of and good old who affected yet could not dislike these things was among the happiest of men in another respect we must also reckon him fortunate that he lived till he had completed all his and then departed peacefully and without sickness from which indeed his whole life had been free the life of a before death in april he saw the last volume of his works in print and it is said with an affecting that so much had been granted him of life was not now to be hoped for neither did look forward to the end with apprehension his little verses and latin composed in sleepless nights at this extreme period are to us by far the most part of his poetry so 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 sc and gentle as his mother could have wished it for him the th of july was a public day in the royal society did his part in it spoke at large and with even clearness and vivacity than usual next day says 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 in the afternoon he prepared his letters domestic as well as foreign the latter one on business sealed them all but one written in latin to professor in which i found open but finished on his desk at supper none but his elder daughter was with him he talked cheerfully and at his usual time retired to r st in the night the servant girl that slept under his apartment heard him walking up and down a common practice with him when he could not sleep however he had again gone to bed soon after five he arose as usual he with the g l when she asked him how he had been over night she left him to make ready his coffee as was her wont and returning with it in a short quarter of an hour she found him sunk down before his close by his work table his hands were wet at the moment when he had been washing them had death taken him into his arms one breath more and he ceased to live when the hastening doctor opened a vein no blood would flow was with all public and in language it may be said without much vol s writings that his for at y his birth place there assembled under authority grand meeting of the ma to c memory the old school in the ragged boy had io his name was produced were delivered and in the afternoon many hundreds west to see the poor cottage where his father had and he starved and learned how generous to estimate s intellectual character to fix his rank and merits as a critic and k l r we not but consider as beyond our province and at any superfluous here by the consent oi the learned in all countries he seems to be acknowledged as first among recent scholars his immense treading his skill in and are no longer here among his taste in these matters has been praised by and by pronounced to be exquisite in his own country is even r the founder of a new epoch in classical study as the first who with any attempted to fairly beyond the letter of the to read in the writings of the 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 and the were men even as we are such of our readers as have studied any one of s works or even looked carefully into the lectures of the the most ingenious and popular of that school will be at no loss to understand what we mean by his inquiries into antiquity especially by his red investigation of its politics its is believed to have carried the torch of philosophy if not into the mysteries of old time what his of great did began to for ancient art the other with equal success began for ancient tore a high praise surely yet as we must think one not and which deed in all parts of europe is becoming more and more confirmed much in the province to which he devoted his activity is to have accomplished nevertheless we assert that in point of understanding and spiritual he can be	37
working in timber and iron for the wants of the body produce a completely suitable machine while the latter working in thought and feeling for the wants of the soul produces a machine which is suitable in other respects we confess we cannot perceive that the balance lies against him for no candid man as it seems to us will doubt but the talent which constructed a or a might have had it been properly directed to make not only and but even mills of considerable however if the public is to the in one point it must die the a tragedy in five acts by f fourth edition und king s fortune and end a tragedy in five acts by f a tragedy in five acts by f third edition a tragedy in five acts by august and a tragedy in five acts by august ur und s dramatic works first legal edition complete and by the author fit be liberal in another according to adam smith b observation that trades which are reckoned less have higher money wages thus one thing the other the may still realize an existence as in fact we find that he does for were are and probably will always be unless indeed in process of years the whole dramatic concern be finally abandoned by mankind or as in the case of our punch and every player becoming his own this trade may in the other and older one the british nation has its own several of them cunning men in their yet here it would seem this sort of does not flourish at least not with that vigor which most other branch es of our national industry in and cotton goods in all sorts of mechanical or other material processes england the world nay in many of literary manufacture also as for instance in the of she may safely boast herself but in this matter of the drama to whatever cause it be owing she can claim no such in theatrical produce she considerably to france and is out of sight inferior to germany nay do not we english hear daily last twenty years that the drama is dead or in a state of suspended animation and are not medical men sitting on the case and their weekly monthly to no manner of purpose whilst in germany the drama is not only t all appearance alive but in the very flush and of strength indeed as it were still only its first wild for if the british seem to ruin and our and stand few and comparatively forlorn like on an irish the of germany are a strong z t s body so th t it been in case of war a regiment of foot might he raised in from the colonel down ta the every o and might show his drama or to investigate the origin of so marked a superiority lead us our purpose doubtless the cause must lie in a superior demand for the article of which superior demand again may arise either from the climate of germany as might believe or perhaps more naturally and immediately from the condition of that country for man is not only a working but a talking animal and where no catholic questions and and select are given him to discuss in his leisure hours he is glad to fall upon plays or players or whatever comes to hand whereby to fence himself a little a the of of the fact at least that such a superior demand for exists in many we have only to open a newspaper to find proof is not every and stuffed to bursting with nay has not the able established in every capital city of the civilized world who report to him on this one matter and on no other ot be our curiosity what it may let us have profession of from intelligence from from is it intelligence of anything but of and of and fa es acted and to be acted not of men and their doings by hearth and hall in the firm earth but of mere shells of men and their doings in the world of do these unhappy write unhappy we call them for with all our of we cannot but think that there are limits and very ones within which their activity should be here in england our theatrical reports are nuisance enough and mis who their life and therefore take care of their time which is the life is made off regularly lose several columns of their weekly newspaper in that way hut our case is pure luxury compared with that of the who instead of a and of matter are obliged speaking to breakfast and dine on it have in fact nothing else to live on but that highly 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 a project which however must certainly have ere now occurred to themselves and for some been found it was to address these of theirs all and sundry in plain language and put the question whether on surveying the universe from their several stations there was nothing in the heavens above or 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 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 however leaving every able editor to fight his own battle we 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 features of it to the consideration of our readers for seriously	37
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 men even though it be a and foolish pursuit ever be without claim to some attention from us either in the way of or of re and b s our object is to promote the sound study of foreign literature which like all other earthly has its negative as well as its side wo have already as served home testimony to the merits of various german poets and must now say a word on certain hoping that it may be chiefly a regard to the former which has made us take even this slight notice of the latter for the bad b in 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 him on this occasion with a whole mountain of dramatic lumber poured forth in torrents like shot rubbish from the where it is b and into nothing silently and with to any far be this from us nay our own knowledge of thb subject is in the highest degree limited indeed to it or t discussing it with precision would be an impossible enterprise is there that could the whole furniture of milton s of vanity or where is the that would think k his while to write us the ck ry of a let the courteous reader take heart then for he is in hands that will not nay what is more that cannot do him much harm one brief shy glance into this huge of all and with such tumult and we leave it probably for years the s one of its own remarks has a rather broad summit yet only two are reckoned within the last half century to have mounted thither and if we are not on the strength of his von to account of the number on the slope of the may be found a few of the same brotherhood among and firmly enough stationed at considerable while far below appear various persons climbing vehemently but against of loose sand to whom we wish all speed but the reader understand that the we speak of and are about to enter lies not on the of the hill at all but on level ground close to the foot of it the essence of being that he works not in poetry but in more or less it and here pausing for a moment the that he is in a civilized for th e on the very boundary line of rises a gallows with the figure of a man hung in chains it is the figure of august v on and has swung there for many years as a warning to all too audacious who nevertheless as we see pay little heed to it ill fated once the darling of theatrical europe i this was the prince of all and could manufacture plays with a speed and felicity surpassing even novels for his muse like other in the month and the world gazed on them with an too p for mere words what is all past ar present popularity to this were not these plays translated into almost every language of articulate speaking men acted at least we literally say in every theatre from to nay did they not melt the most hearts in all countries and like the music of draw tears down iron cheeks we ourselves have known the men who professed to have wept over them for the first time in their lives so was it twenty years ago how stands it to day lifted up on the hollow of popular aj thought wings had been given him that he might ascend to the gay he rose soaring sailing as with supreme dominion but in the deep his burst asunder or the s arrows of keen pierced it and so at last we find him a compound in the character of to guard from forbidden fruit o ye and literary of every feather weep over and over yourselves know that the roar of the is not fame that the are ye mad enough lo mount ii burst or be shot through with arrows and your bones too shall act as but this idle vein let us at length proceed in plain english and as prose to the work laid out for us among le hundreds of as they are called three individuals already known to some british readers and prominent from all the rest in germany may enough stand here as representatives of the whole class whose various craft and produce the of these three may io some small degree serve to illustrate of therefore and and in their order seems to be an which country is reckoned fertile in poets a circumstance that may perhaps have contributed a httle to his own rather rapid our more special acquaintance with is of very recent date though his name and of his ware have for some time been hung out in many british and foreign magazines often with which might have less customers neither after all have we found these than other such are but rather not so false for indeed is a most man nay positively rather nor is it without reluctance that we name him under this head of and not under that of which he to had the law with regard to poets relaxed itself s time all had been well with for undoubtedly there is a small vein of tenderness and grace german him a seeming modesty also and real love of his art which gives of better things but gods and men and are still equally rigid in that unhappy particular of ven pleasing and no scene or line is yet known to us of s which anything more non	37
is his sentence for the present and the louder his admirers him the more emphatically should it be pronounced and repeated nevertheless b claim to the title of is perhaps more his misfortune than his crime living in a country where the drama so attention he been led into attempting it without any decisive for such an enterprise and so hb of talent which might have done good in some prose department or even in the song or other 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 and though with characters too express only one character and that no very extraordinary one the character of himself what is an of misfortune too he has met with applause in this career which therefore he is likely to follow farther and farther let nature and his stars say to it what they will the characteristic of a is that he writes in prose which prose he palms probably first on himself and then on the part of the public for poetry and the manner in which he effects this his specific distinction the species to which he belongs in the but it is a universal feature of him he attempts by and as it were mechanical means to accomplish an end which except by poetical genius is absolutely not to be accomplished for the most vol i s miscellaneous part he has some or trick of the trade which hy close inspection can he detected and so the heart of ins mystery he seen into he may have one trick or many and the more he can disguise these the more perfect is he as a for were the once to penetrate into this his of hand it were all over with him s occupation were gone no when we once understand his method of fire eating can any longer pass for a true or even entertain us in his proper character of though he should eat mount itself but happily for and others the public is a dim eyed animal to almost all nay which often seems to prefer being of s peculiar and for there is not very much to be said he seems to have tried various kinds of in his time and to his credit be it spoken seems little contented with any of them by much the worst play of his that we have seen is the a deep tragedy of the castle sort the whole of which was and at a single glance it is nothing but the old story of fate an invisible visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth tion a method almost as common and sovereign in german art at this day as the method of steam is in british and of which we shall anon have more occasion to speak in his preface to or deny the fact of his being a fate but to no purpose for it is a fact 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 itself we may remark that few things struck us so much as this little observation of s in the middle of the night thoughts so unexpectedly as follows der au in st dock die i t die if just in these words and the empty eye holes black down on that boundless grave how the hours do linger what o clock is a more delicate turn we venture to say is rarely to be met with in tragic dialogue as to the story of the it is naturally enough of the most heart description this is a lady or rather the ghost of a lady for she has been some centuries who in life had committed what we call an which the husband punished one would have thought sufficiently by running her through the body however the of does not think it sufficient but the fair penitent to walk as till the last branch of her family be extinct y she is heard from time to time doors and the like and now and then seen with dreadful eyes and other ghost to the terror not only of s miscellaneous writings people but of old count her now sole male whose nap she on one occasion cruelly this count is really a worthy old gentleman only he had a son long ago drowned in a fish pond body not found and has still a highly accomplished daughter whom there is none to wed except one a person of unknown and to all appearance of the purse nay as it turns out afterwards actually the head of a establishment which had long the neighboring forests however a captain of foot arrives at this juncture utterly to root out these robbers and now the strangest things come to light for who should this prove to be but poor old s drowned son not drowned but stolen and bred up by these the brother therefore of his intended a most fellow who fighting for his life his own father and drives his bride to poison herself in which wise as also case he can not get married the reader sees all this is not to be accomplished without some and tumult in fact there is a frightful uproar throughout that night robbers shrieking men and the herself emerging at as the genius of the discord but time and hours bring relief as th rs do in the long run in dying whereupon the whole having gone to the devil the also thither at least makes the upper rid of her and the piece ends in deep	37
of this poor we shall say farther wherever she be as we mentioned above the fate method of emotion seems to have yielded himself contentment for after this we hear d no more of it his duck und king s fortune and end is a much more innocent piece and proceeds in quite a different strain to subdue us not by old women s of destiny but by the accumulated splendor of and the cruel or pride of and the wit of and beautiful but queens the whole set off by a proper of ceremonies dresses of battle and the pomp and circumstance of glorious war there is even some attempt at character in this play certain of the tis are evidently meant to differ from certain others not in dress and name only but in nature and mode of being so much indeed they repeatedly or hint and do their best to make good unfortunately however with very indifferent success in fact these are and titles rather than persons for most part mere theatrical with only a mechanical existence the truth of the matter is cannot communicate a poetic life to any character or and in this were it in no other way he the nature of his talent these personages of his have in some instances a certain degree of truth that is to say one portion of their structure viewed with the other so far all is well enough but to unite these merely scientific and into a living man is work not for a but for a nevertheless is comparatively a harmless tragedy it is full of striking enough though without any and with so much both of and fighting with so many it must be we should think if the tailor and do their duty a very s m to see acted especially on the boards where it has a national interest of being a main personage in it the model of this we imagine to have been s a poem of similar materials and object but from it as a living rose from a mass of dead rose leaves or even of broken italian it seems as though had hoped to subdue us by a sufficient multitude of wonderful scenes and circumstances without inquiring with any painful solicitude whether the soul and meaning of them were presented to us or not truly we believe lies the peculiar or mystery of that its effect is calculated to depend chiefly on its quantity on the mere number of and joyful or deplorable adventures there brought to light abundance in superficial contents the absence of which second of tragic manufacture we to be better than the first but still far from good at the same time it is a very common method both in tragedy and elsewhere nay we hear persons whose trade it is to write or be other wise imaginative it openly as the best they know do not these men go about collecting features out strange incidents ghost over the globe of which features and incidents when they have gathered a sufficient stock ing is needed than that they be ample enough enough though huddled into any case novel tragedy or romance that will hold it all this is not creation and little in literature quantity it is a certain fact will not make up for defect of quality nor are the hues of any service unless there be a likeness painted from them better were it for had the story been twice as short and twice as expressive for it is still true as in time lo what the of brandy while it united with its barrel of let the pass it and it through his for it is the drops of pure that we want not the of water which may be had in every ditch on the whole however we remember without and to prove that if he could not make it poetical might have made it less and has in fact something better in him than is here manifested we shall quote one passage which strikes us as really rather sweet and natural king is in the last of his fields no prospect before him but death or and on his past i have not borne me wisely in thy world thou great all judging god like storm and tempest i traversed thy fair wasting it t is thine to waste for thou alone heal was evil not my aim how did i poor presume to the lord of worlds and the bad seek out a way to the good my fellow man sent thither for his joy an end a self within thy world a world for thou hast fashioned him a marvellous work with lofty brow erect in look strange sense and clothed him in the of thy beauty and encircled him with wonders he hears and sees and feels has pain and pleasure he takes him food and powers come forth and work and work within their secret chambers and build him up his house no royal palace is to the frame of man and i have cast them forth from me by thousands for as men throw rubbish from their door s miscellaneous writings and none of all these but had a mother who as she bore him in sore had clasped him fondly to her breast a father who had blessed him as his pride and watched over him long years if he but the skin upon his finger there would they run with anxious look to bind it and tend it cheering him until it healed and it was but a finger the skin o the and i have trod men down in heaps and for the stem iron opened out a way to their warm living hearts o god wilt thou go into judgment with me spare my suffering people passages of this sort scattered here	37
and there over s plays and at least an amiable tenderness of natural disposition make us regret the more to condemn him in fact we have hopes that he is not bom to be for ever a a true though feeble vein of poetic talent he really seems to possess and such purity of heart as may yet with study lead him into his proper for we do reckon him a conscientious man and honest lover of art nay this incessant in his dramatic schemes is itself a good omen besides this and he has written two and der the golden on quite another principle apparently at some classic model or at least at some french reflect of such a model which we are sorry to learn is not his last piece but his second appears to us very considerably the most production of his we are yet acquainted with there is a degree of grace and simplicity in it a softness polish and general good taste little to be expected from the author of the if he cannot bring out the full tragic an meaning of s situation he with dexterity to avoid the that lies within a single step of it his drama is weak and thin but innocent nay the last scene strikes us as even his we suspect to be of similar character but have not yet found time and patience to study it we repeat our hope of one day meeting in a more honorable calling than this of or even fourth rate which titles as was said above we have not given him without regret and shall be truly glad to for whatever better one he may yet chance to merit but if we felt a certain reluctance in among the no such feeling can have place with regard to the second name on our list that of doctor august dr is one of the most now nay so is his vigor in this department we might even him the his manner of proceeding is quite different from s not a wavering over charged method or combination of methods as the other s was but a fixed principle of action which he follows with courage his own mind being to all appearance highly satisfied with it if attempted to us now by the method of fate now by that of action and or sentiment heaped on us in too rich abundance without any of these resources seems to place his chief dependence on a and stay on his magazines of oil paper scarlet and what thunder and magic lantern death s heads and can do is here done abundance of churchyard and chapel scenes in the most weather to say nothing of battle fields of s miscellaneous arms here and there in the wood and even shots heard in the distance then there are such and malignant side glances and as might one would think the into drops of pity for not only are the looks and gestures of these people of the most heart description hut their words and feelings also for is no half artist are of a piece with them gorgeous the purest innocence highest sentiment of all sorts everywhere the finest tragic humor the moral too is genuine there is the most anxious regard to virtue indeed a distinct patronage of providence and the devil in this manner does dr compound his dramatic no less than dr did his and truly of the former we must say that their operation is unpleasant nay to our shame he it spoken we have even read these plays with a certain degree of satisfaction and shall declare that if any man wish to amuse himself here is the ware for his money s latest dramatic undertaking is a purely original invention on which he seems to himself somewhat his opinion that now when the birth pains are over the character of may possibly do good service in many a future drama we are not or sons of so shall leave this resting on its own basis the reader will be interested to learn is no other than the wandering jew or of concerning whom there are two things to be remarked the first is the strange name of this why do and all the call the man when his christian name is john a or for s sake simply a this should be looked german into our second remark is of the circumstance that no or neither nor any mention of s having heen present at the battle of possibly they thought the fact too notorious to need mention here at all events he was nay as we infer he must have been at also and probably at though in which fleet is not so clear for he takes a hand in all great battles and national at least is witness of them being bound to it by his destiny such is the peculiar of the wandering jew as brought to light in this tragedy his other that he cannot lodge above three nights in one place that he is of a temperament above all that he cannot die not by or steel or itself but must travel on till the general are familiar to all historical readers s task at this battle of seems to have been a very easy one simply to see the lion of the north brought down not by a cannon shot as is generally believed but by the pistol of one von a catholic who had pretended to desert from the that he might find some such opportunity unfortunately directly after this feat falls into a sleepless half state comes home to castle his poor wife and worthy old of a father then about for some time now praying oftener cursing and swearing till at length the lay hold of him and kill as usual is in at the death in the	37
however he has saved lady from drowning though as good as poisoned her with the look of his strange stony eyes and now his business to all appearance being over he in strong language that he must thereupon he steps solemnly into the wood looks him surprised the rest kneel round s writings the the and what is still more the curtain m the simple action and stem catastrophe of this tragedy concerning which it were superfluous for us to speak farther in way of criticism we shall only add that there is a print in it representing m in that very act of stepping solemnly into the wood and uttering these final words f we have heard of as of the actor in and can now hear if there he truth in this plate that he is one of the men a most figure with hare legs and red leather shoes heard eyes turned inside out and uttering these extraordinary words but go on on on i now however we must give a glance at s other chief performance in this line the tragedy of dr admits that the has heen often treated that s in particular has dramatic points but the business is to give it an entire dramatic to make it an drama a dramatic tragedy setting out with this intention dr has produced a which from that of in more than one particular the hero of this piece is not the old doctor in philosophy driven desperate by the uncertainty of human knowledge but plain john the and even the of driven desperate by his ambitious temper and a total deficiency of cash he has an excellent wife an excellent blind father both of whom would fain have him be and work at his trade but being an in the black art he rather to relieve himself in that way accordingly he proceeds to make a contract with the devil on what we should consider pretty advantageous terms the devil being to serve him in the most effectual manner and at liberty to commit four sins before any hair of his head can be however as will be seen the devil proves and naturally enough finds himself quite in the long run another characteristic distinction of is his manner of this same evil principle when at last he on introducing him to sight for all these and preliminary matters are very properly managed behind the scenes only the main points of the on being indicated to the spectator by some thunder clap or the like here is no cold mocking but a jovial west india looking stranger with a indeed quite brick colored face which at first mistakes for the effect of hard drinking however it is a remarkable feature of this stranger that always on the introduction of any religious topic or the mention of any sacred name he strikes his glass down on the table and generally breaks it for some time af er his grand bargain s affairs go on triumphantly on die great scale and he seems to feel pretty comfortable but the stranger shows him his wife the most creature in the world and the most cruel hearted for notwithstanding the easy temper of her husband she will not grant the smallest encouragement till he have killed his own living against whom he no manner of grudge nevertheless reflecting that he has a stock of four mortal sins to draw upon and may well venture one for such a prize he on killing k the but here matters take a bad turn for having poisoned poor he most unexpectedly that she is in the family way and therefore that he has committed not one sin but two vol i a writings nay before the can take place he is farther reduced in a sort of accidental self defence to kill his thus his third mortal sin with which third as we shall presently his whole is exhausted a fourth that he knew not of being on the score against him from this point it cannot but surprise us that bad grows worse are out in pursuit of him black dance round him in a most suspicious manner the brick faced stranger seems to laugh at him and will nowhere make her appearance that the reader may see with his own eyes how poor is beset at this juncture we shall quote a or two the first may properly enough be that of those black scene seventh a lighted hall in the distance is heard quick dancing music pass from time to time over ihe stage hut au dressed in and with dose after a pause wildly in a fuu in ms hand rushing into the ha poison stead of wine that i me your wine makes sober burning fire bring us off with your drink and blood is in it too shuddering he ihe his hand my father s blood i ve drunk my fill of that with increasing yet curses on him curses that he me curse on my mother s bosom that it bore me curse on the gossip that stood by her and did not me at my first scream how could i help this being that was given me accursed art thou nature that hast mock d me accursed i that let myself be mock d and thou strong being that to make thee sport the fire soul in this c that so despairing it might strive freedom he no not the fourth the sin no no in the excess of ms he his face in his hands o i am altogether wretched three black come towards first mask hey merry friend second mask hey brother mask a tone merry in humor and looking round among hey merry then mask will any one catch flies second mask a long life yet to midnight all the	37
way third mask and after that such without end the music suddenly ceases and a dock astonished what is it first mask wants a quarter sir of twelve second mask then we have time third mask aye time enough for mask and not till midnight comes the shot to pay shuddering what want ye s miscellaneous writings t k mi hand hey to dance a step with thee hand off fire first mask a spark or so of second mask art dreaming brother third mask music there tht h ns again in ihe distance first mask ng the is biting him second mask hark at the gallows what jovial footing of it third mask thither must i exit first mask below too down in hear ye second mask a stirring there t is time then your servant first mask to till midnight his ha what me here stepping forward down with your violent knocking what horrid uproar next is madness coming on me voice en open in the king s name ceases es hack i have a heavy dream sure here is the murderer open open then ma brow has me scene eighth where is he where from these merely the jovial stranger easily but now comes the long for d with scene twelfth the she is the withdraw warm no longer strive proud beauty ha wild my bosom the time is not yet come and so forth through four pages of and ice till at last off with the mask then hey the marriage hour off with the mask s one kiss take it tht mask and head dress from her and she at urn a death s head loud thunder and the music ends as shriek in back o horror the couch is ready there come bridegroom to thy fire she sinks a crashing into the ground out of which all this is bad enough but mere child s play to the scene the last of this strange history with some parts of which we propose to send our readers weeping to their beds scene stranger face is pale hack to the by ha let me fly come come with thundering tone t is over now that horrid i in a tremor on the stranger s breast thou art my friend protect me stranger laughing ha ha ha o save me stranger him force him rounds that t face ia towards he spectators his own is turned away and thus lie looks at him and with thundering voice t is i a clap of of deepest horror rushes to the ground uttering an inarticulate cry the other a pause continues with cutting coolness is that t ie mighty hell that threatened me ha me contempt worm of the dust i had reserved thy torment for myself descend to other hands be sport for slaves thou art too small for me rises erect and seems to recover his strength am i not stranger thou no i rising in his whole vehemence accursed ha i am i am down at my feet i am thy master stranger no more i wildly more ha my bargain stranger is concluded t e mortal sins stranger the fourth too is committed my wife my and my old father s blood i l f writings t an er to and here thy own that ib my thia was thy most sin ro fig ha spirit of lies d c c stranger in fury down thou accursed he him ly the hair the at this moment amid violent thunder and the scene changes into a horrid in tlie background of which a yawning chasm into this the on au sides rains down so that the whole interior of the seems burning a black over so soon as is got under in ha down thunder and fire both sink the curtain on considering all which supernatural transactions the bewildered reader has no theory for it except that must in dr s phrase have labored under in the region all this of the devil and and so much murder and have been nothing but a waking dream or other and regrets that the poor had not rather applied to some on the subject or even by one sufficient dose of salt on his own have put an end to the whole matter and restored himself to the bosom of his afflicted family such then for dr s part is his method of to which method it may perhaps be objected that there is a want of originality in it for do german not out own british follow precisely the same plan we might answer that if not his plan at least his infinitely superior execution of it must distinguish we rather think his claim to originality rests on a different ground on the ground namely of his entire contentment with himself and with this his and the cool heroism with which on all occasions he that contentment here is no poor begging the public for god s sake not to give him the which he deserves but a bold perpendicular himself as such nay mounted on the top of his and a sharp critical over the drama generally we understand has lately executed a theatrical tour as don did various and thrown stones into most german and at various german play writers of which we have seen only his assault on a feat perhaps ta that never adventure of the fortune it is said the brave and the prayer of s is not always unheard of heaven in conclusion we congratulate dr on his manager dignity in the theatre a post he seems made for almost as was for the but now like his own doctor must go on on on for another and greater doctor has been kept too long waiting	37
whose seven beautiful volumes of might well secure him a better fate dr of all these is the best known in england some of his works have even we believe been into our language in his own country his fame or at least is also supreme over all no of this age makes such a noise as nay many there are who affirm that he is something far better s s than a critics of the sixth and lower in every comer of hare put the question a thousand times whether is not a poet and drama to which question as the higher authorities maintain an obstinate silence or if much pressed reply only in groans these sixth magnitude men hare been obliged to make answer themselves and they have done it with an emphasis and calculated to all remaining doubts in the minds of men in s mind at they have little a the more as the vulgar seem to be almost unanimous in ing it and of applause through so many theatres return him loud renown is pleasant food for the hungry appetite of a man and naturally he it as a sweet morsel under his tongue but after all it can profit him but little nay many times what is sugar to the taste may be sugar when it is swallowed were it ua we had fainter of and from fewer theatres greeted him for what good is in it even w e there no evil though a thousand caps leap into the air at his name his own stature is no hair s breadth higher neither even can the final estimate of its height be thereby in the smallest degree enlarged from these greetings provoke only a scrutiny the matter comes to be accurately known at last and he who has been treated with foolish liberality at one period must make up for it by the want of bare necessaries at another no one will deny that is a person of some considerable talent we understand he is or was once a lawyer and can believe that he may have acted and talked and written very prettily in that capacity but to set up for a poet was quite a different enterprise in which we reckon that he has altogether mistaken his road and these mob cheers have led him farther and farther astray several years ago mi ttie faith of very earnest it was our lot to read one of dr s the with which such was its on us we could willingly enough have terminated our acquaintance with dr a palpable imitation of s von any philosophy or feeling that was not either perfectly commonplace or false both the one and the other ie ee into certain hollow bulk but altogether l being built throughout on mere and and other elements of the most prose such a work could not but be satisfactory to us respecting dr b s genius as a poet and time being precious and world wide enough we had privately determined that we and dr were each henceforth to pursue his own course nevertheless so has been the progress of our worthy friend since then both at home and abroad that his labors are again forced on our notice for we the existence of a true poet in any country to be so important a fact that even the slight probability of such is worthy of investigation accordingly we have again th and along with it faithfully examined the whole dramatic of published in seven volumes on beautiful paper in small shape and every way very fit for handling the whole tragic works we should rather say for three or four of his comic performances sufficiently contented us and some two volumes of we confess are still we have also carefully gone through and with much less difficulty the and other prose sheets wherein the k the himself from unjust reports just ones or himself makes such the toils of this ta we shall not well knowing that man s life is a throughout only having gathered what light is to s miscellaneous be had on this matter we to speak forth our verdict fondly hoping that we shall then with it for an indefinite period of time dr then we must take liberty to believe in spite of all that has been said or sung on the subject is no has never written a tragedy and in all human probability will never write one grounds for this harsh negative opinion did the burden of proof lie chiefly on our side we might state in extreme abundance there is one ground however which if our observation be correct would include all the rest dr s wh soul and character to the deepest root we can trace of it seems not poetical his therefore like whatever else he produces must be not created nay we think that his principle of manufacture is itself rather a poor and second hand one vain were it for any reader to search in these seven volumes for an opinion any deeper or clearer a sentiment any finer or higher than may conveniently belong to the commonest advocate except which the man himself half knows to be false and every other man easily aside there is nothing here to disturb the of either heart or head this man is a doctor most probably of good talent nothing more whatever his language too all accurately measured into feet and good current german so far as a foreigner may judge bears similar testimony except the rhyme and it no poetical symptom without being it is essentially meagre and watery no no melody no virtue of any kind the commonest vehicle for the commonest meaning not that our doctor is destitute of and other but that these also are of the most trivial character old material up into a state of shabby on light and flashes through clouds y	37
of heart tempest of soul and the like which can no man or woman in short we must repeat it dr has yet to show that there is any of poetic metal in him that his genius is other than a lay pit from which good bricks may be made but where to look for gold or diamonds were sheer waste of labor when we think of our own and and die day of popularity which once enjoyed with us we can be at no loss for the which dr is to be included in critical nevertheless in marking him as a distinct we are bound to mention that in general intellectual talent he himself very considerably superior to his two german brethren he has a much better taste than the aid of and we may say altogether is even at the pains to rhyme great part of his and on the whole writes with a certain care and composure to which the manager seems totally indifferent moreover he appears to er as well as in a certain force both of judgment and passion which indeed is no very mighty affair being naturally but a pipe in these matters and blowing through such ah enormous coach horn that the natural note goes for nothing becomes a mere in that all of sound af the same time it is singular enough that neither nor should be nearly so tough reading as which however we declare to be the fact as to he is even an amusing artist there is such a and heart in bim so he nay so in riches so full of fire flashes and all manner of and then good soul he asks no attention from us vol i s w knows his trade better than to dream of asking m again is a and perhaps a wiser companion long a little but and soft hearted his melancholy even when he is in the highest degree and we weep a tear or two far if not with him bi of all may the indulgent heavens deliver us from any farther traffic with dr i this is the which we could wish to be either cold or hot will not keep us while we read him yet neither will he like let us fairly get asleep ever and anon it is as if we came into some country and the soul her self that here at last she may be allowed to fall back on cushions the eyes meanwhile like two safe comfortably conducting through that flat j in which are nothing but crops and and and anon some or unexpected noise hei and looking out it is no or mountain chasm the highway and of october wind to speak without figure dr does seem to oppressive writer and perhaps for this reason that he too near the verge of good writing ever tempting us with some hope that here is a touch of poetry and ever us with a touch o pure prose a stately sentiment forth with a sounds poetic and heroic we start in breathless tion waiting to reverence the t alas he proves to be but an old dressed in new a well known to us nay o t d a that has already been out of most well r so is it ever with dr no feeling can be traced much deeper in him than the tongue or perhaps when we search more strictly instead of an ideal of beauty we shall find some vague aim after strength or in defect of german mere size and yet how he the a most plausible fair spoken close man a man whom you must riot for decency throw out of the arid yet you feel that being a in grain his are wicked and not charitable the grand question with regard to as with to these other is where lies his liar of hand in this let is endeavor then to find out his secret his for play making and the same of the british nation s is no mysterious one indeed on the veiy surface might even be taught one would suppose on a few trials to the capacity our readers may recollect and some short in first number to a highly terrific piece of is entitled t of february a more detailed account of the matter may be found in madame de in the chapter which treats of that generally it is a story of a peasant and called if we mistake not and of his wife and a rich travelling stranger lodged with them which latter is in the night of the twenty fourth of february and murdered by the two former and proves himself in the act of dying to be their own only son who had returned home to make them all comfortable could they only have had a little patience but the foul deed is already accomplished with a rusty knife or and nothing of course remains but for the whole to go to for it was written as the say on the iron leaf these are doomed men old the grandfather had committed some sin or other for which like the sons of his descend are with the utmost nay so s writings is that this very ft of february the day when that old sin was is still a fatal day with the family and this very knife or the tool oa that former occasion is ever the instrument new crime and punishment the during all that half century never having carried it to the to make but kept it hanging on a most we think almost as a sort of bait and to satan a ready made for whatever machinery he might bring to bear against them this is the tragic lesson taught in s twenty fourth of and as the whole are either stuck through with old iron or hanged in it	37
is surely taught with some considerable emphasis s play was brought out at in under the direction or permission as he of the great himself and seems to have produced no faint impression on a public it is in fact a piece destitute of substance and a certain coarse vigor and if any one has o obstinate a heart that he must absolutely stand in a slaughter house or within wind of the gallows tears will come it may have a very comfortable effect on him one symptom of merit it must be admitted to exhibit an to the general taste for the small fibre of originality which exists here has already shot forth into a whole wood of we understand that the fate line is now quite an established branch of dramatic business in germany they have their fate just as we have our and of this fate manufacture we have already se n one in s hut by far the most extensive fate the head and prince of all fate is the doctor at present under consideration in fate and fate only it is german at and of hid whole tragedy cut off this one principle you his raw material and he can manufacture no more his obligations to but we think not half warmly was in fact the making of him great he has now be ome our doctor is nothing but a mere growing from that poor oak already dead had there been no twenty fourth of were th i no twenty of february do no most probably no for the reader is to understand that dr a middle aged and as yet a perfectly began business with a direct copy of this twenty fourth a thing proceeding by destiny and ending in murder by a knife or as in e case with one improvement indeed that there was a grinding stone into the scene and the spectator had the satisfaction ef seeing the knife previously the author too was honest enough publicly to admit his imitation foi he named this play the twenty ninth of february and in his preface gave thanks though somewhat reluctantly to as to his master and for some inscrutable reason this twenty ninth was not sent to but became popular there was even the of written on it entitled des gloomy which has there was like wise a wish expressed that the might be made not grievous with which wish also the has complied and so for the benefit of weak nerves we have e delusion which still ends in but glad ones in short our doctor has a peculiar merit with this twenty of his for who but he could have cut a second and a third face on the same cherry stone said i s miscellaneous writings cherry stone first to be borrowed or indeed at this point dr apparently began to set up for himself and ever henceforth he to persuade his own mind and ours that his debt to here nevertheless clear it is that fresh debt was every day for bad not this one idea taken complete hold of the doctor s mind so that he was quite possessed with it had we might say no other tragic idea whatever that a man on a certain day of the m ith fall into crime for which an invisible fate shall pursue him the most probably on the same day of the month unless as in the ninth it be leap year and fate in this may be to a certain extent and never till the poor himself and perhaps his last shall be swept away with the of such more oar less frequently without any disguise is the tragic essence the vital principle natural or we are not of all dr s thus in everlasting twenty of f we have the principle in its naked state some old or has into deadly sin with his wife s sister long ago on that day and so his whole must or proceed in and murder the day of the catastrophe regularly every four years on that same twenty till happily the whole are murdered and there is an end so likewise in the guilt a much more ambitious performance we have exactly the same of an and the interest once more turns on that delicate business of murder and in the pair again which may have the credit such as it is of being s best play we find the fate theory a colored german as if the had begun to disgust and the doctor hide it in ft of it is a d man s curse that on the criminal which curse being strength by a sin of very old standing in the family of the takes singular the parties only and the old story of by two self ments and two very decisive self nay it seems as if our positively could not act at all without this fate in js on we might almost think that he had made such an attempt and found that it would not do this an imaginary peasant king of is meant as we are kindly informed to present us with some of napoleon aad truly for the two or three first acts he goes along bo small in what call a dashing or style a virtuous kind of man and as bold as or any other when suddenly in middle of a battle far m in the play he is seized with some or to a solitary place among rocks and there in the most manner de himself over to the devil who indeed does not appear personally to take of him but yet as afterwards comes light has with great readiness accepted the gift for now grows dreadfully sulky and wicked does little henceforth but bully men and kill them till at length the measure of his being full he himself is	37
ci we ai happy to observe he shows to much more advantage in d the office seems quite to him and would he t e any advice from us which he will not here were the in which and not in the fate he would exclusively continue to fence for liis br ad or gk i he is not without a vein of small wit a certain degree of there ia and grinning half half he has a at the sort of the g b also seem familiar to him and his skill in the riddle is so that altogether as we said he makes a superior figure in this line which indeed is but managed in and his i by several the most paper of its kind we meet in that country not that we in the ab much admire dr s newspaper bis style is merely the common tavern style familiar enough in our own literature with of a half style and smells considerably oi tobacco and liquor ther do we find that there is the smallest of valuable opinion communicated in the paper indeed except it be the knowledge and c thai dr is a at and that all who presume to think o are insufficient members of society we cannot charge our memory with having gathered any knowledge from it whatever it may be too that dr is not original in his manner we have sometimes felt as if his light were to a certain extent a borrowed one a kindled at the great r pitch link of our own s miscellaneous writings but od this we cannot take us to decide one of s regular articles is the or war intelligence of all the paper and private chiefly dramatic occur in the more distracted portion of the german literary this dr evidently writes with great in a lively manner especially when touching on his own exploits yet to us it is far the most melancholy part of the alas this is not what we search for in a german newspaper how or or so many other sen are all busily one another i we ourselves are pacific men make a point to i un circles rather than seek them and how sad is it to hear of so many illustrious obscure persons living in foreign parts and hear only what was well known without that they also are instinct wi the s of satan for what is the bone that these in and elsewhere are worrying over what is the ultimate purpose of all this barking and sheer love of fight you would say simply to make one another s i e a little hit as if fate had not been cross enough to the happiest of them were there any perceptible subject of dispute an doctrine to advocate even a false one it would be something but so far as we can discover whether from and company or the of our own worthy doctor there is none and is this their appointed function are scattered over the country and supplied with and purely to bite one another certainly not but these we think are like the s colony of this french had found that were worth something could even be woven into silk stockings whereupon he ex german a very handsome pair of to the academy is encouraged to proceed with the manufacture and so col some half of and puts them down in with every convenience for making silk but will the vicious creatures spin a thread in place of it they take to fighting with their whole vigor in contempt of the poor s utmost exertions to part them and end not till there is simply one spider left living and not a of woven or to be expected could the of like these of the fairly and silence one another it would perhaps be a little more but an editor is made of stuff in general cases indeed when the brains are out the man but it is a well known fact in that a man may not only live but support wife and children by his labors in this line years after the brain if there ever was any has been completely abstracted or reduced by time and hard usage into a state of dry powder what then is to be done is there no end to this and will the noise endure for ever by way of we have sometimes imagined that a of all german might be appointed by in some central spot say the market place if it would hold them all here we would humbly suggest that the whole might on a given day and under the eye of proper and satisfactorily one another simultaneously each his till the very had enough both of and of being whipped in this way it seems probable little or no injustice would be done and each cleared of for several months might return home in a more composed frame of mind and himself with new alacrity to the real of his office vol i j s miscellaneous but enough enough the humor of these men may be it is not good for us to be here wandering over the fields of german literature not watching the gloomy of its is wh it we wish to be employed in let the iron gate again close and shut in the pallid view we gladly the upper air not in despite towards the german nation which we love honestly have we spoken thus of these its and alas when we look around us at home we feel too well that the might say to us neighbor sweep thy own floor neither is it with any hope of the existence of these three individual still less with the smallest shadow of wish to make it more miserable that we have spoken all there must be as we have said and these are	37
all manner of with beginning middle and end with and s with its and warfare against fate its and singing courage by crime ev the two tragic elements of pity and fear above all with supernatural machinery enough not the man bom out of did he not die and vanishing return thither the most poem nay will may he not name it a prophecy or whatever else is highest in his since only in reality lies the essence and foundation of all that was ever sung spoken or by the human species and the actual life of man in it all revelations true and false that have been are or are to be man i say therefore reverence he too issued from above is and as thou it this know thou of a truth se ng also that we ourselves of so high is not vol iv s that in very deed the highest reverence and most needful for us reverence for to my view is every life more properly is every man that has life to lead a small or occasional verse composed by the powers and published in such type and shape with such head piece and as thou to the thinking or universe heroic some few are full of force and a sacred fire so that to latest ages the hearts of those that read therein are made to others seem mere weeping harmonious or against destiny we too may sometimes weep again have we not flesh and blood of the sort though in these days rarely owing to poor game laws population theories and the like farther of the comic laughter loving sort yet ever with an earnestness as is fit lying for thee what is the grinning face of any but a behind which quite otherwise the most a head however i say farther there are of the pastoral sort as in and elsewhere of the tragic of all named and a thousand sorts there are poetic written as was said in heaven printed on earth and published bound in cloth or for the use of the finally a small number seem utter mere on humanity these too however are at times worth reading in this wise continues our too obscure friend out of all imaginable elements awakening all imaginable moods of heart and soul barbarous enough to excite tender enough to ever contradictory yet ever is that mighty world bid of existence page page generation after generation and chapter or epoch after chapter put together this is what some one names the grand sacred or bible of world history infinite in meaning as the divine mind it wherein he is wise that can read here a line and there a line remark too under another aspect whether it is not in this same bible of world ry that all men in all tunes with or count tr without clear consciousness have been to read what we may call read and again to write or rather to be written what is all history and all but a somewhat thereof out of that mystic heaven written and rendering it into the speech of men know value is a s which i only half approve of but know value others is the best of nature herself or again work it is to day is not that also the law of being for mortal man and now what is all working what is all knowing but a faint and a faint showing forth of that same mystery of which ever remains infinite mystic view it as we will to him that lives life is a divine matter felt to be of quite sacred significance consider the that wears breeches of thy acquaintance into whose wool head thought as thou never entered who in element of business pleasure or what else he names it walks for ever in a vain show asking not whence or why or whither looking up to the heaven above as if some had made it and down to the hell beneath as if had neither part nor lot there yet tell me does not he too over and above his five senses acknowledge some sixth ir ite sense were it only that of vanity for him in the other five as you may will this sixth sense leave him rest does he not rise early and sit late and study and in constitutional countries motions and bursts of eloquence and himself in and himself and himself and in all ways painfully take heed to his feeling if we must admit it that an altogether infinite has been him also namely a life to lead thus does he too with his whole foi e in his own way proclaim that the world old of existence is divine and an inspired bible and himself a wondrous e therein be it heroic be it study with his whole soul as we said both to read and to be written here also i will observe that the manner in which men read this same bible is like all else to their stage of culture to the circumstances of their first and among the earnest oriental nations it was read wholly like a s miscellaneous book most clearly by the most earnest those wondrous hebrew readers reading accordingly was sacred has meaning for all tribes of mortal men since ever to the latest generation of the world a true utterance from the of man s being will speak significantly to man but again in how different was that other oriental reading of the of or whoever it was that first so opened the matter gorgeous semi and on infinite darkness brightest glowing light and fire of which all by time and turned mostly into lies a quite late in those and the like still leads captive every heart look at the earnest west and that of the flesh which forth life	37
radiant smiling earnest in immortal grace under the and the of old greece here too was the infinite proclaimed as infinite and the antique man walked between a and an his brilliant of existence by boundless of sadness and gloom of which three antique manners of reading our modem yon will remark been httle more than the imitation for always indeed the west has been of than of the hebrew manner has had its echo in our and the greek and in mountains of fiction published by by in or by money of your own till now at last by dint of and through some ten centuries all these manners have grown wearisome listened to only as the monotonous moaning wind while there is nothing else to listen to and so now well nigh in total oblivion of the of life except what small unconscious recognition the above argued of may have we wait in hope and patience for some manner of anew announcing it these singular sentences from the spring we have thought right to and quote by way of and apology we are here about to give some critical account of what would call a blood poem of the purest sort in plain words ca o to examine e biography of the most perfect scoundrel that in these latter ages has marked the world s history too says are at times worth reading or that mystic dialect of his may we not assert in our own way that the history of an original man is always worth knowing so magnificent a thing is will in a creature of like fashion with ourselves we run to witness all thereof what man has marked out a peculiar path of life for himself let it lead this way or that way and successfully travelled the same of him we specially inquire how he travelled what him on the journey though the man were a of the first water this not the question how he managed his nay it rather such question for nothing properly is wholly at once detestable n and but your he who is neither true nor who never in his existence once spoke or did any true thing for indeed his mind lives in twilight with cat vision incapable of truth and yet had not the to speak or act any decided lie but spent his whole life in together the true and the false and the plausible such a one our have defined as a moral and therefore under the moral point of view as an impossibility and mere put together for commercial purposes of which sort nevertheless how many millions through all manner of from the of kings to the of matches at tea tables council tables behind shop in priests incessantly and everywhere do now in this world of ours in this isle of ours offer themselves to view from such at least from this intolerable over proportion of such might the merciful heavens one day deliver us glorious heroic fruitful for his own time and for au b s miscellaneous writings time and all eternity is the constant speaker and of truth if no such again in the present generation is io be vouchsafed us let us have at least the melancholy pleasure of beholding a decided liar wretched mortal that with a single eye to be respectable for ever together two which stick not for an hour but require ever new and labor will it by no length of experience no of time or chance be revealed to thee that truth is of heaven and falsehood is of hell that if thou cast not from thee the one or the other thy existence is wholly an illusion and and that properly thou not at all what in the devils name is the use of with never so many and silver if thou inwardly art the of all men i would thou either cold or hot one such desirable second best perhaps the chief of all such we have here found in the count di pupil of the sage foster child of the of probable son of the last king of f named also and unfortunate child of nature by i profession of diseases of wrinkles friend of the poor and impotent of the egyptian lodge of high science spirit gold cook grand prophet priest and and really a liar of the first magnitude in all provinces of lying what one may call the king of baron and others are celebrated in this art and not without some color of justice yet must it in remain doubtful whether any of these comparatively were much more than li rs from the teeth a perfect character of the species in question who lied not in word only nor in act and word but continually in thought word and act and so to count k lived in an element of lying and from birth to death did nothing but lie was still a of which count offers we say if not the fulfilment perhaps as near an approach to such as the limited human faculties permit not in the modem ages probably not ki the ancient though these had their their and enough else did any figure of this sort issue out of chaos and old night a sublime kind of figure presenting himself with the air of calm strength of sure perfection in his art whom the heart opens itself to with wonder and a sort of welcome the only vice i know says one is at lowest answer we he that does his work shall have his work judged of indeed if satan himself has in these days become a poetic hero why should not for some short hour be a prose one one first question says a great philosopher i ask of every man has he an aim which with soul he follows and advances towards	37
whether his aim is a right one or a wrong one forms but my second question here then is a small human not without poetic interest however be this as it may we apprehend the eye of science at least cannot view him with doubtful false as much is in s manner of being of this there is no doubt that starting from the lowest point of fortune s wheel he rose to a height universally notable that without external money beauty bravery almost without common sense or any worth whatever he supported for a long course of years the wants and of one of the bodies and one of the minds outwardly in his we senses inwardly in his sixth sense that of vanity nothing clear enough it is however much may be ous that this chariot rushing through the s miscellaneous world with dust clouds and loud noise at the speed of four horses and with luggage has an existence the six beef too that ride his advent waiting on him are they not realities ever must the purse open paying tavern drink and the tear and wear of such a team yet ever like a of plenty does it pour and brief rest the chariot ceases not to roll whereupon rather arises the scientific question how within that wonderful machinery of horses wheels top luggage beef sits only a gross individual enough and by his side a with a look of doubtful reputation how comes it that means still meet ends that the whole engine like a steam coach wanting fuel does not go silent and to pieces in the ditch such question did the scientific curiosity of the present writer of en put and for many a day in vain neither indeed as book readers know was he peculiar the great for example struck both with the poetic and the scientific phases of the matter admitted the influences of the former to shape themselves anew within him and strove with his usual to burst since was impossible the secrets of the latter and so his unfinished novel the saw the light still more renowned is s drama of the which as himself us delivered him from a state of mind that had become alarming to certain friends so deep was the hold this business at one of its had taken of him a dramatic fiction that of his based on the possible historical study and inquiry wherein perhaps the image of the historical fact as yet in any shape lies in artistic miniature curiously unfolded nay mere newspaper readers of a certain age can count ca t o of egyptian of high science of the s and revelations of miss and scott and messrs and and lord s judgment seat the d mar the diamond and lord george for hovering through unknown space twice perhaps thrice lighted on oar london did business in the great chaos there looking at thy so decorated private theatre wherein thou and what hand but ib es to draw aside thy curtain thy boards paper stage lamps and turning the whole inside out find thee in the middle thereof for there of a truth thou though the rest was foam and sham there as large as life and as against the world and indeed the for it remained thy and yielded daily innumerable officers of every european climate were on thy traces their hostile enough single against them all in the whole earth thou no friend what say we in the whole earth in the whole se thou no friend heaven knew nothing of could in charity know nothing of thee aud as for friendship as is ascertained cannot count for much but to proceed with business the present in obstinate investigation of a phenomenon so has searched through the whole not circle which his of circumstances position trade health extent of money him to describe and sad to say with the most imperfect results he has read books in various languages and feared s miscellaneous writings not to soil his fingers hunting through ancient dusty magazines to his heart in any of and nay he had not to even into the de for a hint or two could he have found that work which however most british make a point of denying that they possess a painful search as through some spiritual house and then with such issue i the quantity of about so much being burnt is now not great nevertheless in frightful proportion to the quantity of information given except vague newspaper and the things found written of this are little more than temporary by himself by or of his not true therefore at best only certain of what he wished or expected the public to reckon true misty for most part highly stupid even provoking which can only be believed to be under such and such conditions lies of this sort emphatically is the english life of the count price three shillings and sixpence a book indeed which one might hold so is it to be some mere dream vision and unreal did it not now stand there as sold by t bond street and bear to be handled at and torn into pipe matches some human creature doubtless was at the writing of it but of what kind country trade character or you will in vain strive to fancy of like stamp are the pour le de with a from the during that sorrowful business of the diamond in no less the du de au which followed shortly after at london from which two indeed that inexplicable english has perhaps been mainly next come the au count pour d du de twice printed in the same year at and at paris a without talent without truth or worth happily of small si e so it with us alas all this is but the outside of the private theatre or the sounding of	37

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