FASTOLF. O day of wo! (Lionel enters.) LIONEL. Think ye, I will tremble? spirits of my murdered ones! I will not tremble. (Trembling violently.)-Your feeble dying moan,- Look what a sight awaits you, Lionel! your black-choked faces,-your frightfully Our leader wounded, dying! gaping wounds are but links of an unbreakable chain of Destiny; and depend at last on my childish sports, on the whims of my nurses and pedagogues, on the temperament of my father, on the blood of my mother(shaken with horror.) Why has my Perillus made of me a Brazen Bull to roast mankind in my glowing belly? O noble Talbot, this is not a time to die. TALBOT. In vain! the day of Destiny is come Make haste to rescue Paris. LIONEL. Paris is the Dauphin's: (Gazing on the Pistol.) TIME and ETERNITY linked together by a single moment!-Dread key, that shuttest behind me the prison of life, and before me openest the dwelling of eternal Night-say-O say-whither,whither wilt thou lead me? Foreign, never circumnavigated Land!-See, manhood waxes faint under this image; the effort of the finite gives up, and A post arrived even now with th' evil news Fancy, the capricious ape of Sense, juggles our credulity with strange shadows.-No! No! It becomes not a man to waver. Be what thou wilt, nameless Yonder-so this me keep but true. This Sun is growing loathsome to me. Be what thou wilt, so I take myself along with me-!-Outward things are but the colouring "of the man-I am my Heaven and my Hell. It had surrender'd. TALBOT (tears away his bandages.) LIONEL. Fastolf, TALBOT. Madness, thou conquerest, and I must yield : What if thou shouldst send me companionless to some burnt and blasted circle of the Universe; which thou hast banished from thy sight; where the lone darkness and the motionless desert were my prospects for ever? -I would people the silent wilderness with my fantasies; I should have Eternity for leisure to unravel the perplexed image of the boundless wo.-Or wilt Thou lead me through still other births! still other scenes of pain, from stage to stage-Onwards to Annihilation? The life-threads that are to be woven for me Yonder, cannot I tear them asunder, as I do these? Thou canst make me Nothing ;-this freedom canst Thou not take from me. (He Oh! Death is near! Think of your God, and pray ! loads the Pistol. Suddenly he Stops.) And shall I for terror of a miserable life-die?-Shall I give wretchedness the victory over me ?-No, I will endure it. (He throws the Pistol away.) Let misery blunt itself on my pride! I will go through with it.-Act IV. Scene VI. And now with these ferocities, and Sybilline frenzies, compare the placid strength of the following delineation, also of a stern character, from the Maid of Orleans, where Talbot, the gray veteran, dark, unbelieving, indomitable, passes down, as he thinks, to the land of utter Nothingness, contemptuous even of the Fate that destroys him, and "In death reposes on the soil of France, Like hero on his unsurrender'd shield." LIONEL. TALBOT. T had been but Fortune's common fickleness : Were we, as brave men, worsted by the brave, LIONEL (grasps his hand.) TALBOT. Soon it is over, and to the earth I render, It is the sixth Scene of the third Act; in the Which for pain and pleasure join'd to form me; heat of a Battle: (The scene changes to an open Space encircled with TALBOT, leaning on FASTOLF, and accompanied by TALBOT. Here, set me down beneath this tree, and you And of the mighty Talbot, whose renown Is knowledge that 't is Nothing, and contempt SCENE VII. Enter CHARLES, BURGUNDY, DUNOIS, DU CHATEL, and Soldiers. BURGUNDY. The trench is stormed. That Bridge with its dizzying, perilous span By his hand that grim old arch was bended? The water is boiling and hissing-for ever will hiss. That Gate through the rocks is as darksome and drear, Yet enter! A sweet laughing landscape is here, Where the Spring with the Autumn is married. Four Rivers rush down from on high, Their spring will be hidden for ever; Their course is to all the four points of the sky, And fast as they start from their old Mother's feet, There threading alone their lightsome maze, Her head serene, and azure, and lone A diamond crown encloses ; The Power-words and Thunder-words," as the Germans call them, so frequent in the Robbers, are altogether wanting here; that volcanic fury has assuaged itself; instead of smoke and red lava, we have sunshine and a verdant world. For still more striking examples of this benignant change, we might refer to many scenes, (too long for our present pur-The Sun with his darts shoots round it keen and hot, poses) in Wallenstein, and indeed in all the He gilds it always, he warms it not. Dramas which followed this, and most of all in Wilhelm Tell, which is the latest of them. The careful, and in general truly poetic structure of these works, considered as complete Poems, would exhibit it infinitely better; but for this object, larger limits than ours at present, and studious Readers as well as a Reviewer, were essential. In his smaller Poems, the like progress is visible. Schiller's works should all be dated, as we study them; but indeed the most, by internal evidence, date themselves.-Besides the Lied der Glocke, already mentioned, there are many lyrical pieces of high merit; particularly a whole series of Ballads, nearly every one of which is true and poetical. The Ritter Toggenberg, the Dragon-fight, the Diver, are all well known; the Cranes of Ibycus has in it, under this simple form, something Old-Grecian, an emphasis, a prophetic gloom, which might seem borrowed even from the spirit of Eschylus. But on these, or any farther on the other poetical works of Schiller, we must not dilate at present. One little piece, which lies by us translated, we may give as a specimen of his style in this lyrical province, and therewith terminate this part of our subject. It is entitled Alpenlied, (Song of the Alps,) and seems to require no commentary. Perhaps something of the clear, melodious, yet still somewhat metallic tone of the original may penetrate even through our version: Of Schiller's Philosophic talent, still more of the results he had arrived at in philosophy, there were much to be said and thought, which we must not enter upon here. As hinted above, his primary endowment seems to us fully as much philosophical as poetical; his intellect, at all events, is peculiarly of that character; strong, penetrating, yet systematic and scholastic, rather than intuitive; and manifesting this tendency both in the objects it treats, and in its mode of treating them. The transcendental Philosophy, which arose in Schiller's busiest era, could not remain without influence on him; he had carefully studied Kant's System, and appears to have not only admitted but zealously appropriated its fundamental doctrines; remoulding them, however, into his own peculiar forms, so that they seem no longer borrowed, but permanently acquired, not less Schiller's than Kant's. Some, perhaps, little aware of his natural wants and tendencies, are of opinion that these speculations did not profit. him: Schiller himself, on the other hand, appears to have been well contented with his Philosophy; in which, as harmonized with his Poetry, the assurance and safe anchorage for his moral nature might lie. "From the opponents of the New Philosophy," says he, "I expect not that tolerance, better seen into than this: for Kant's Philowhich is shown to every other system, no sophy itself, in its leading points, practises no tolerance; and bears much too rigorous a character, to leave any room for accommodation. But in my eyes this does it honour; proving how little it can endure to have truth tampered with. Such a Philosophy will not be discussed with a mere shake of the head. In the open, clear, accessible field of Inquiry it builds up its system; seeks no shade, makes no reservation; but even as it treats its neighbours, so it requires to be treated; and may in the long run, all speculation turns, may in truth afford such a nature matter for poetic play, but can never become serious concerns and necessities for it."-II. 131. concerns and necessities;" as many portions of his works, and various entire treatises, will testify. Nevertheless, it plays an important part in his theories of Poetry; and often, under milder forms, returns on us there. be forgiven for lightly esteeming every thing but Proofs. Nor am I terrified to think that the law of Change, from which no human and no divine work finds grace, will operate on this Philosophy, as on every other, and one This last seems a singular opinion; and may day its Form will be destroyed: but its Foun- prove, if it be correct, that Schiller himself dations will not have this destiny to fear; for was no "healthy poetic nature;" for undoubtever since mankind has existed, and any Rea-edly with him those three points were "serious son among mankind, these same first principles have been admitted, and on the whole acted upon."-Correspondence with Goethe, I. 58. Schiller's philosophical performances relate chiefly to matters of Art; not, indeed, without significant glances into still more important regions of speculation: nay, Art, as he viewed it, has its basis on the most important interests of man, and of itself involves the harmonious adjustment of these. We have already unWe have already undertaken to present our readers, on a future occasion, with some abstract of the Esthetic Letters, one of the deepest, most compact pieces of reasoning we are anywhere acquainted with by that opportunity, the general character of Schiller, as a Philosopher, will best fall to be discussed. Meanwhile, the two following brief passages, as some indication of his views on the highest of all philosophical questions, may stand here without commentary. He is speaking of Wilhelm Meister, and in the first extract, of the Fair Saint's Confessions, which occupy the Fifth Book of that work: "The transition from Religion in general to the Christian Religion, by the experience of sin, is excellently conceived. * * * I find virtually in the Christian System the rudiments of the Highest and Noblest; and the different phases of this System, in practical life, are so offensive and mean, precisely because they are bungled representations of that same Highest. If you study the specific character of Christianity, what distinguishes it from all monotheistic Religion, it lies in nothing else than in that making dead of the Law, the removal of that Kantean Imperative, instead of which Christianity requires a free Inclination. It is thus, in its pure form, a representing of Moral Beauty, or the Incarnation of the Holy; and in this sense, the only aesthetic Religion: hence, too, I explain to myself why it so prospers with female natures, and only in women is now to be met with under a tolerable figure." --Correspondence, I. 195. "But in seriousness," he says elsewhere, "whence may it proceed that you have had a man educated, and in all points equipt, without ever coming upon certain wants which only Philosophy can meet? I am convinced, it is entirely attributable to the aesthetic direction you have taken through the whole Romance. Within the æsthetic temper there arises no want of those grounds of comfort, which are to be drawn from speculation: such a temper has self-subsistence, has infinitude, within itself; only when the Sensual and the Moral in man strive hostilely together, need help be sought of pure Reason. A healthy poetic nature wants, as you yourself say, no Moral Law, no Rights of Man, no Political Metaphysics. You might have added as well, it wants no Deity, no Immortality, to stay and uphold itself withal. Those three points round which, But, without entering farther on those complex topics, we must here for the present take leave of Schiller. Of his merits we have all along spoken rather on the negative side; and we rejoice in feeling authorized to do so. That any German writer, especially one so dear to us, should already stand so high with British readers that, in admiring him, the critic may also, without prejudice to right feeling on the subject, coolly judge of him, cannot be other than a gratifying circumstance. Perhaps there is no other true Poet of that nation with whom the like course would be suitable. Connected with this there is one farther observation we must make before concluding. Among young students of German Literature, the question often arises, and is warmly mooted: whether Schiller or Goethe is the greater Poet? Of this question we must be allowed to say that it seems rather a slender one, and for two reasons. First, because Schiller and Goethe are of totally dissimilar endowments and endeavours, in regard to all matters intellectual, and cannot well be compared together as Poets. Secondly, because if the question mean to ask, which Poet is on the whole the rarer and more excellent, as probably it does, it must be considered as long ago abundantly answered. To the clear-sighted and modest Schiller, above all, such a question would have appeared surprising. No one knew better than himself, that as Goethe was a born Poet, so he was in great part a made Poet; that as the one spirit was intuitive, allembracing, instinct with melody, so the other was scholastic, divisive, only partially and as it were artificially melodious. Besides, Goethe has lived to perfect his natural gift, which the less happy Schiller was not permitted to do. The former, accordingly, is the national Poet; the latter is not, and never could have been. We once heard a German remark that readers till their twenty-fifth year usually preferred Schiller; after their twenty-fifth year, Goethe. This probably was no unfair illustration of the question. Schiller can seem higher than Goethe only because he is narrower. Thus to unpractised eyes, a Peak of Teneriffe, nay, a Strasburg Minster, when we stand on it, may seem higher than a Chimborazo; because the former rise abruptly, without abutment or environment; the latter rises gradually, carrying half a world aloft with it; and only the deeper azure of the heavens, the widened horizon, the "eternal sunshine," disclose to the geographer that the "Region of Change" lies far below him. However, let us not divide these two Friends, who in life were so benignantly united. With out asserting for Schiller any claim that even | Schiller be forgotten. "His works, too, the enemies can dispute, enough will remain for memory of what he did and was, will arise him. We may say that, as a Poèt and Thinker, afar off like a towering landmark in the solihe attained to a perennial Truth, and ranks tude of the Past, when distance shall have among the noblest productions of his century dwarfed into invisibility many lesser people and nation. Goethe may continue the German that once encompassed him, and hid him from Poet, but neither through long generations can the near beholder." THE NIBELUNGEN LIED.* [WESTMINSTER REVIEW, 1831.] of this Paper, and which stands there simply as one of the latest, we have Versions into the modern tongue by Von der Hagen, by Hinsberg, Lachmann, Büsching, Zeune, the last in Prose, and said to be worthless; Criticisms, Introductions, Keys, and so forth, by innumerable others, of whom we mention only Docen and the Brothers Grimm. In the year 1757, the Swiss Professor Bod-| gress. The Nibelungen has now been investimer printed an ancient poetical manuscript, gated, translated, collated, commented upon, under the title of Chriemhilden Rache und die with more or less result, to almost boundless Klage, (Chriemhilde's Revenge, and the La-lengths: besides the Work named at the head ment;) which may be considered as the first of a series, or stream of publications, and speculations still rolling on, with increased current, to the present day. Not, indeed, that all these had their source or determining cause in so insignificant a circumstance; their | source, or rather thousand sources, lay far elsewhere. As has often been remarked, a certain antiquarian tendency in Literature, a fonder, more earnest looking back into the Past, began about that time to manifest itself in | all nations, (witness our own Percy's Reliques :) this was among the first distinct symptoms of it in Germany: where, as with ourselves, its manifold effects are still visible enough. Some fifteen years after Bodmer's publication, which, for the rest, is not celebrated as an editorial feat, one C. H. Müller undertook a Collection of German Poems from the Twelfth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Centuries; wherein, among other articles, he reprinted Bodmer's Chriemhilde and Klage, with a highly remarkable addition prefixed to the former, essential indeed to the right understanding of it; and the whole now stood before the world as one Poem, under the name of the Nibelungen Lied, or Lay of the Nibelungen. It has since been ascertained that the Klage is a foreign inferior appendage; at best, related only as epilogue to the main work: meanwhile out of this Nibelungen, such as it was, there soon proceeded new inquiries, and kindred enterprises. For much as the Poem, in the shape it here bore, was defaced and marred, it failed not to attract observation: to all open-minded lovers of poetry, especially where a strong patriotic feeling existed, this singular, antique Nibelungen was an interesting appearance. Johannes Müller, in his famous Swiss History, spoke of it in warm terms: subsequently, August Wilhelm Schlegel, through the medium of Das Deutsche Museum, succeeded in awakening something like a universal popular feeling on the subject; and, as a natural consequence, a whole host of Editors and Critics, of deep and of shallow endeavour, whose labours we yet see in pro By which means, not only has the Poem itself been elucidated with all manner of researches, but its whole environment has come forth in new light; the scene and personages it relates to, the other fictions and traditions connected with it, have attained a new importance and coherence. Manuscripts, that for ages had lain dormant, have issued from their archives into public view; books that had circulated only in mean guise for the amusement of the people, have become important, not to one or two virtuosos, but to the general body of the learned: and now a whole System of antique Teutonic Fiction and Mythology unfolds itself, shedding here and there a real though feeble and uncertain glimmer over what was once the total darkness of the old Timé. No fewer than Fourteen ancient Traditionary Poems, all strangely intertwisted, and growing out of and into one another, have come to light among the Germans; who now, in looking back, find that they too, as well as the Greeks, have their Heroic Age, and round the old Valhalla, as their Northern Pantheon, a world of demi-gods and wonders. Such a phenomenon, unexpected till of late, cannot but interest a deep-thinking, enthusiastic people. For the Nibelungen especially, which lies as the centre and distinct keystone of the whole too chaotic System,-let us say rather, blooms as a firm sunny island in the middle of these cloud-covered, ever-shifting, sand-whirlpools, they cannot sufficiently testify their love and veneration. Learned professors lecture on the Nibelungen, in public schools, with a praiseworthy view to initiate the German youth in love of their fatherland; from many zealous and nowise ignorant,critics we hear talk of a "great Northern Epos," of a "German Iliad;" the more saturnine are shamed into silence, or hollow mouth-homage; thus from all quarters comes a sound of joyful acclamation: the Nibelungen is welcomed as a | of Substance that casts such multiplied imprecious national possession, recovered after measurable Shadows? The primeval Mythus, six centuries of neglect, and takes undisputed place among the sacred books of German literature. were it at first philosophical truth, or were it historical incident, floats too vaguely on the breath of men: each successive Singer and Of these curious transactions, some rumour Redactor furnishes it with new personages, has not failed to reach us in England, where new scenery, to please a new audience; each our minds, from their own antiquarian dis- has the privilege of inventing, and the far position, were willing enough to receive it. wider privilege of borrowing and new-modelAbstracts and extracts of the Nibelungen have ling from all that have preceded him. Thus been printed in our language; there have been though Tradition may have but one root, it disquisitions on it in our Reviews; hitherto, grows like a Banian, into a whole overarching however, such as nowise to exhaust the sub- labyrinth of trees. Or rather might we say, it ject. On the contrary, where so much was to is a Hall of Mirrors, where in pale light each be told at once, the speaker might be some- mirror reflects, convexly or concavely, not what puzzled where to begin: it was a much only some real Object, but the Shadows of this readier method to begin with the end, or with in other mirrors; which again do the like for any part of the middle, than like Hamilton's it: till in such reflection and re-reflection the Ram (whose example is too little followed in whole immensity is filled with dimmer and literary narrative) to begin with the beginning. dimmer shapes; and no firm scene lies round Thus has our stock of intelligence come us, but a dislocated, distorted chaos, fading rushing out on us quite promiscuously and away on all hands, in the distance, into utter pell-mell; whereby the whole matter could not night. Only to some brave Von der Hagen, but acquire a tortuous, confused, altogether furnished with indefatigable ardour, and a deep, inexplicable, and even dreary aspect; and the almost a religious love, is it given to find sure class of "well-informed persons" now find footing there, and see his way. All those Dukes themselves in that uncomfortable position, of Aquitania, therefore, and Etzel's Court-holdings, where they are obliged to profess admiration, and Dietriche and Sigenots, we shall leave standand at the same time feel that, except by name, ing where they are. Such as desire farther inthey know not what the thing admired is. formation, will find an intelligible account of Such a position towards the venerable Nibelun- the whole Series or Cycle, in Messrs. Weber gen, which is no less bright and graceful than and Jamieson's Illustrations of Northern Antihistorically significant, cannot be the right quities; and all possible furtherance, in the one. Moreover, as appears to us, it might be numerous German works above alluded to; somewhat mended by very simple means. among which Von der Hagen's writings, though Let any one that had honestly read the Nibe- not the readiest, are probably the safest guides. lungen, which in these days is no surprising | But for us, our business here is with the achievement, only tell us what he found there, Nibelungen, the inhabited poetic country round and nothing that he did not find: we should which all these wildernesses liè; only as enthen know something, and, what were still bet-vironments of which, as routes to which, are ter, be ready for knowing more. To search out the secret roots of such a production, ramified through' successive layers of centuries, and drawing nourishment from each, may be work, and too hard work, for the deepest philosopher and critic; but to look with natural eyes on what part of it stands visibly above ground, and record his own experiences thereof, is what any reasonable mortal, if he will take heed, can do. Some such slight service we here intend proffering to our readers: let them glance with us a little into that mighty maze of Northern Archæology; where, it may be, some pleasant prospects will open. If the Nibelungen is what we have called it, a firm sunny island amid the weltering chaos of antique tradition, it must be worth visiting on general grounds; nay, if the primeval rudiments of it have the antiquity assigned them, it belongs especially to us English Teutones as well as to the German. they of moment to us. Perhaps our shortest and smoothest route will be through the Heldenbuch, (Hero-book ;) which is greatly the most important of these subsidiary Fictions, not without interest of its own, and closely related to the Nibelungen. This Heldenbuch, therefore, we must now address ourselves to traverse with all despatch. At the present stage of the business, too, we shall forbear any historical inquiry and argument concerning the date and local habitation of those Traditions; reserving what little is to be said on that matter till the Traditions themselves have become better known to us. Let the reader, on trust, for the present, transport himself into the twelfth or thirteenth century; and therefrom looking back into the sixth or fifth, see what presents itself. Of the Heldenbuch, tried on its own merits, and except as illustrating that other far worthier Poem, or at most as an old national, and still Far be it from us, meanwhile, to venture in some measure popular book, we should have rashly or farther than is needful, into that same felt strongly inclined to say, as the curate in traditionary chaos, fondly named the "Cycle Don Quixote so often did, Al corral con ello, Out of Northern Fiction," with its Fourteen Sectors, of window with it! Doubtless there are touches (or separate Poems,) which are rather Four-of beauty in the work, and even a sort of teen shoreless Limbos, where we hear of heartiness and antique quaintness in its wildpieces containing "a hundred thousand verses," est follies; but on the whole that George-andand "seventy thousand verses," as of a quite Dragon species of composition has long ceased natural affair! How travel through that inane to find favour with any one; and except for its country; by what art discover the little grain groundwork, more or less discernible, of old |