much-injured spouse, his worst enemies. How, the Treasures not making their appearance, but only new misdeeds, he is again haled to judgment; again glozes the general ear with sweetest speeches; at length, being challenged to it, fights Isegrim in knightly tourney, and by the cunningest, though the most unchivalrous method, not to be farther specified in polite writing, carries off a complete victory; and having thus, by wager of battle, manifested his innocence, is overloaded with royal favour; created Chancellor, and Pilot to weather the Storm; and so, in universal honour and authority, reaps the fair fruit of his gifts and labours.

nigh starved by short commons, Foxes pilgrim- at heart, and furnished even with shoes, cut ing to Rome for absolution, Cocks pleading from the living hides of Isegrim and Isegrim's at the judgment-bar, make strange mummery. Nor is this wild Parody of Human Life without its meaning and moral: it is an Air-pageant from Fancy's Dream-grotto, yet Wisdom lurks in it; as we gaze, the vision becomes poetic and prophetic. A true Irony must have dwelt in the Poet's heart and head; here, under grotesque shadows, he gives us the saddest picture of Reality; yet for us without sadness; his figures mask themselves in uncouth, bestial vizards, and enact, gamboling: their Tragedy dissolves into sardonic grins. He has a deep, heartfelt Humour, sporting with the world and its evils in kind mockery: this is the poetic soul, round which the outward material has fashioned itself into living coherence. And so, in that rude old Apologue, we have still a mirror, though now tarnished and time-worn, of true magic reality; and can discern there, in cunning reflex, some image both of our destiny and of our duty: for now, as then, "Prudence is the only virtue sure of its reward," and cunning triumphs where Honesty is worsted; and now, as then, it is the wise man's part to know this, and cheerfully look for it, and cheerfully defy it:

Ut vulpis adulatio

Here through his own world moveth,
Sic hominis et ratio

Most like to Reynard's proveth.*

If Reinecke is nowise a perfect Comic Epos, it has various features of such, and, above all, a genuine Epic spirit, which is the rarest fea

ture.

Whereby shall each to wisdom turn,
Evil eschew, and virtue learn,
Therefore was this same story wrote,
That is its aim, and other not.
This Book for little price is sold,
But image clear of world doth hold;
Whoso into the world would look,
My counsel is,-he buy this book.
So endeth Reynard's Fox's story:
God help us all to heavenly glory!

It has been objected that the animals in Rienecke are not Animals, but Men disguised; to which objection, except in so far as grounded on the necessary indubitable fact that this is an Apologue or emblematic Fable, and no Chapter of Natural History, we cannot in any considerable degree accede. Nay, that very contrast between Object and Effort, where the Passions of men develope themselves on the Interests of animals, and the whole is huddled together in chaotic mockery, is a main charm of the picture. For the rest, we should rather say, these bestial characters were moderately well sustained: the vehement, futile vociferation of Chanticleer; the hysterical promptitude, and earnest profession and protestation of poor Lampe the Hare; the thickheaded ferocity of Isegrim; the sluggish, gluttonous opacity of Bruin; above all, the craft, the tact, and inexhaustible knavish adroitness of Reinecke himself, are in strict accuracy of

Of the Fable, and its incidents and structure, it is perhaps superfluous to offer any sketch; to most readers the whole may be already familiar. How Noble, King of the Beasts, holding a solemn Court, one Whitsuntide, is deafened on all hands with complaints against Reinecke; Hinze the Cat, Lampe the Hare, Isegrim the Wolf, with innumerable others, having suffered from his villany, Isegrim especially, in a point which most keenly touches honour; nay, Chanticleer the Cock, (Henning de Hane,) amid bitterest wail, appear ing even with the corpus delicti, the body of one costume. Often also their situations and ocof his children, whom that arch-knave has fe- cupations are bestial enough. What quanloniously murdered with intent to eat. How tities of bacon and other provant do Isegrim his indignant Majesty thereupon despatches and Reinecke forage; Reinecke contributing Bruin the Bear to cite the delinquent in the the scheme, for the two were then in partnerKing's name; how Bruin, inveigled into a Ho- ship,—and Isegrim paying the shot in broken ney-Expedition, returns without his errand, bones! What more characteristic than the without his ears, almost without his life; Hinze fate of Bruin, when, ill-counselled, he introthe Cat, in a subsequent expedition, faring no duces his stupid head into Rustefill's half-split better. How at last Reinecke, that he may log, has the wedges whisked away, and stands not have to stand actual siege in his fortress clutched there, as in a vice, and uselessly of Malapertus, does appear for trial, and is roaring, disappointed of honey, sure only of a about to be hanged, but on the gallows-ladder beating without parallel! Not to forget the makes a speech unrivalled in forensic elo- Mare, whom, addressing her by the title of quence, and saves his life; nay, having inci-Good-wife, with all politeness, Isegrim, soredentally hinted at some Treasures, the hidingplace of which is well known to him, rises into high favour; is permitted to depart on that pious pilgrimage to Rome he has so much

pinched with hunger, asks whether she will sell her foal: she answers, that the price is written on her hinder hoof; which document the intending purchaser, being "an Erfurt graduate," declares his full ability to read; but finds there no writing, or print, save only the print of six horsenails on his own mauled visage. And abundance of the like; sufficient

ask, where are now our People's Books? the answer might give room for reflections. Hinrek van Alkmer has passed away, and Dr. Birkbeck has risen in his room. What good and evil lie in that little sentence !-But doubtless the day is coming when what is wanting here will be supplied; when as the Logical, so likewise the Poetical susceptibility and faculty of the people,-their Fancy, Humour, Imagination, wherein lie the main elements of spiritual life,-will no longer be left uncultivated, barren, or bearing only spontaneous thistles, but in new and finer harmony, with an improved Understanding, will flourish in new vigour; and in our inward world there

will again be a sunny Firmament and verdant Earth, as well as a Pantry and culinary Fire; and men will learn not only to recapitulate and compute, but to worship, to love; in tears or in laughter, hold mystical as well as logical communion with the high and the low of this wondrous Universe; and read, as they should live, with their whole being. Of which glorious consummation there is at all times, seeing these endowments are indestructible, nay, essentially supreme, in man, the firmest ulterior certainty, but, for the present, only faint prospects and far-off indications. Time brings Roses!

TAYLOR'S HISTORIC SURVEY OF GERMAN

POETRY.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1831.]

GERMAN Literature has now for upwards irruption of those swarms of Publications of half a century been making some way in now daily issuing from the banks of the DaEngland; yet by no means at a constant rate, nube, which, like their ravaging predecessors rather in capricious flux and reflux,-deluge of the darker ages, though with far other and alternating with desiccation: never would it more fatal arms, are overrunning civilized soassume such moderate, reasonable currency, ciety. Those readers, whose purer taste has as promised to be useful and lasting. The been formed on the correct models of the old history of its progress here would illustrate classic school, see with indignation and astothe progress of more important things; would nishment the Huns and Vandals once more again exemplify what obstacles a new spiritual overpowering the Greeks and Romans. They object, with its mixture of truth and of false- behold our minds, with a retrograde but rapid hood, has to encounter from unwise enemies, motion, hurried back to the reign of Chaos still more from unwise friends; how dross is and old Night, by distorted and unprincipled mistaken for metal, and common ashes are so-Compositions, which, in spite of strong flashes lemnly labelled as fell poison; how long, in such cases, blind Passion must vociferate before she can awaken Judgment; in short, with what tumult, vicissitude, and protracted difficulty, a foreign doctrine adjusts and locates itself among the homeborn. Perfect ignorance is quiet, perfect knowledge is quiet; not so the transition from the former to the latter. In a vague, all-exaggerating twilight of wonder, the new has to fight its battle with the old; Hope has to settle accounts with Fear: thus the scales strangely waver; public opinion, which is as yet baseless, fluctuates without limit; periods of foolish admiration and foolish execration must elapse, before that of true inquiry and zeal according to knowledge can begin.

.

Thirty years ago, for example, a person of influence and understanding thought good to emit such a proclamation as the following: "Those ladies, who take the lead in society, are loudly called upon to act as guardians of the public taste as well as of the public virtue. They are called upon, therefore, to oppose, with the whole weight of their influence, the

* Historic Survey of German Poetry, interspersed with various Translations. By W. Taylor, of Norwich. 3 vols. 8vo, London, 1830.

of genius, unite the taste of the Goths with the morals of Bagshot."-"The newspapers announce that Schiller's Tragedy of the Robbers, which inflamed the young nobility of Germany to enlist themselves into a band of highwaymen, to rob in the forests of Bohemia, is now acting in England by persons of quality!"*

Whether our fair Amazons, at sound of this alarm-trumpet, drew up in array of war to discomfit those invading Compositions, and snuff out the lights of that questionable private theatre, we have not learned; and see only that, if so, their campaign was fruitless and needless. Like the old Northern Immigrators, those new Paper Goths marched on resistless whither they were bound; some to honour, some to dishonour, the most to oblivion and the impalpable inane; and no weapon or artillery, not even the glances of bright eyes, but only the omnipotence of Time, could tame and assort them. Thus, Kotzebue's truculent armaments, once so threatening, all turned out to be mere Fantasms and Night apparitions; and so rushed onwards, like Spectre Hunt, with loud howls indeed, yet

some

* Strictures on the Modern System of Female Education. By Hannah More. The Eighth Edition, p. 41.

1

hurrying nothing into chaos but themselves. | of it, or, which is the still surer course, altoWhile again, Schiller's Tragedy of the Robbers, gether to hold his peace. Hence freedom from which did not inflame either the young or the much babble that was wont to be oppressive: old nobility of Germany to rob in the forests of probably no watchhorn with such a note as Bohemia, or indeed to do any thing, except per- that of Mrs. More's can again be sounded, by haps yawn a little less, proved equally innocu- male or female Dogberry, in these Islands. ous in England, and might still be acted without Again, there is no one of our younger, more offence, could living individuals, idle enough vigorous Periodicals, but has its German for that end, be met with here. Nay, this same craftsman, gleaning what he can we have Schiller, not indeed by Robbers, yet by Wallen-seen Jean Paul quoted in English Newspapers. steins, by Maids of Orleans, and Wilhelm Tells, Nor, among the signs of improvement, at least has actually conquered for himself a fixed of extended curiosity, let us omit our British dominion among us, which is yearly widening; Foreign Reviews, a sort of merchantmen that round which other German kings, of less in-regularly visit the Continental, especially the trinsic prowess, and of greater, are likewise German ports, and bring back such ware as erecting thrones. And yet, as we perceive, luck yields them, with the hope of better. civilized society still stands in its place; and Last, not least among our evidences of Philothe public taste, as well as the public virtue, Germanism, here is a whole Historic Survey of live on, though languidly, as before. For, in German Poetry, in three sufficient octavos; and fine, it has become manifest that the old Cim- this not merely in the eulogistic and recommerian forest is now quite felled and tilled; mendatory vein, but proceeding in the way of that the true Children of Night, whom we have criticism, and indifferent, impartial narrative : to dread, dwell not on the banks of the Danube, a man of known character, of talent, experience, but nearer hand. penetration, judges that the English public is prepared for such a service, and likely to reward it.

Could we take our progress in knowledge of German Literature since that diatribe was written, as any measure of our progress in the These are appearances, which, as advocates science of Criticism, above all in the grand for the friendly approximation of all men and science of national Tolerance, there were some all peoples, and the readiest possible interreason for satisfaction. With regard to Ger- change of whatever each produces of advanmany itself, whether we yet stand on the right tage to the others, we must witness gladly. footing, and know at last how we are to live | Free Literary intercourse with other nations, in profitable neighbourhood and intercourse what is it but an extended Freedom of the with that country; or whether the present is Press; a liberty to read (in spite of Ignorance, but one of those capricious tides, which also of Prejudice, which is the worst of Censors) will have its reflux, may seem doubtful: what our foreign teachers also have printed for meanwhile, clearly enough, a rapidly, growing us?-ultimately, therefore, a liberty to speak favour for German Literature comes to light; and to hear, were it with men of all countries which favour too is the more hopeful, as it and of all times; to use, in utmost compass, now grounds itself on better knowledge, on those precious natural organs, by which not direct study and judgment. Our knowledge is Knowledge only but mutual Affection is chiefly | better, if only because more general. Within generated among mankind! It is a natural the last ten years, independent readers of Ger- wish in man to know his fellow-passengers in man have multiplied perhaps a hundred fold; this Strange Ship, or Planet, on this strange so that now this acquirement is almost ex- Life-voyage: neither need his curiosity repected as a natural item in liberal education. strict itself to the cabin where he himself Hence, in a great number of minds, some im- chances to lodge; but may extend to all accesmediate personal insight into the deeper sig-sible departments of the vessel. In all he nificance of German Intellect and Art; will find mysterious beings, of Wants and everywhere, at least a feeling that it has some Endeavours like his own; in all he will find such significance. With independent readers, Men; with these let him comfort and_manimoreover, the writer ceases to be independent, foldly instruct himself. As to German Literawhich of itself is a considerable step. Our ture, in particular, which professes to be not British Translators, for instance, have long only new, but original, and rich in curious inbeen unparalleled in modern literature, and, formation for us; which claims, moreover, like their country, "the envy of surrounding nothing that we have not granted to the French, nations:" but now there are symptoms that, Italian, Spanish, and in a less degree to far even in the remote German province, they meaner literatures, we are gratified to see that must no longer range quite at will; that the such claims can no longer be resisted. In the butchering of a Faust will henceforth be present fallow state of our English Literature, accounted literary homicide, and practitioners when no Poet cultivates his own poetic field, of that quality must operate on the dead sub-but all are harnessed into Editorial teams, and ject only. While there are Klingemanns and ploughing in concert, for Useful Knowledge, Claurens in such abundance, let no merely or Bibliopolic Profit, we regard this renewal ambitious, or merely hungry Interpreter, fasten of our intercourse with poetic Germany, after on Goethes and Schillers. Remark, too, with twenty years of languor or suspension, as satisfaction, how the old established British among the most remarkable and even promisCritic now feels that it has become unsafe ing features of our recent intellectual history. to speak delirium on this subject; wherefore In the absence of better tendencies, let this, he prudently restricts himself to one of two which is no idle, but, in some points of view, courses: either to acquire some understanding l'a deep and earnest one, be encouraged. For

ourselves, in the midst of so many louder and more exciting interests, we feel it a kind of duty to cast some glances now and then on this little stiller interest; since the matter is once for all to be inquired into, sound notions on it should be furthered, unsound ones cannot be too speedily corrected. It is on such grounds that we have taken up this Historic Survey.

expositors of German things; that his book is greatly the most important we yet have on this subject. Here are upwards of fourteen hundred solid pages of commentary, narrative, and translation, submitted to the English reader; numerous statements and personages, hitherto unheard of, or vaguely heard of, stand here in fixed shape; there is, if no map of intellectual Germany, some first attempt at such. Farther, we are to state that our author is a zealous, earnest man; no hollow dilettante hunting after shadows, and prating he knows not what; but a substantial, distinct, remarkably decisive man; has his own opinion on many subjects, and can express it adequately. We should say, precision of idea was a striking quality of his : no vague transcendentalism, or mysticism of any kind; nothing but what is measurable and tangible, and has a meaning which he that runs may read, is to be apprehended here. He is a man of much classical and other reading; of much singular reflection; stands on his own basis, quiescent yet immovable: a certain rugged vigour of natural power, interesting even in its distortions, is everywhere manifest. Lastly, we venture to assign him the rare merit of honesty: he speaks out in plain English what is in him; seems heartily convinced of his own doctrines, and preaches them because they are his own; not for the sake of sale, but of truth; at worst, for the sake of making proselytes.

Mr. Taylor is so considerable a person, that no Book deliberately published by him, on any subject, can be without weight. On German Poetry, such is the actual state of public information and curiosity, his guidance will be sure to lead or mislead a numerous class of inquirers. We are therefore called on to examine him with more than usual strictness and minuteness. The Press, in these times, has become so active; Literature-what is still called Literature-has so dilated in volume, and diminished in density, that the very Reviewer feels at a nonplus, and has ceased to review. Why thoughtfully examine what was written without thought; or note faults and merits, where there is neither fault nor merit? From a Nonentity, imbodied, with innocent deception, into foolscap and printer's ink, and named Book; from the common wind of Talk, even when it is conserved by such mechanism, for days, in the shape of Froth,-how shall the hapless Reviewer filter aught in that once so profitable colander of his? He has ceased, as we said, to attempt the impossible,—cannot review, but only discourse; he dismisses his too unproductive Author, generally with civil words, not to quarrel needlessly with a fellowcreature; and must try, as he best may, to grind from his own poor garner. Authors long looked with an evil, envious eye on the Re-logue, will find help; though for that class, viewer, strove often to blow out his light, which only burnt the clearer for such blasts; but now, cunningly altering their tactics, they have extinguished it by want of oil. Unless for some unforeseen change of affairs, or some new-contrived machinery, of which there is yet no trace, the trade of Reviewer is well nigh

done.

On the strength of which properties, we reckon that this Historic Survey may, under certain conditions, be useful and acceptable to two classes. First, to incipient students of German Literature in the original; who in any History of their subject, even in a bare cata

unfortunately, Mr. Taylor's help is much diminished in value by several circumstances; by this one, were there no other, that he nowhere cites any authority: the path he has opened may be the true or the false one; for farther researches and lateral surveys there is no direction or indication. But, secondly, we reckon that this Book may be welcome to many The happier are we that Mr. Taylor's Book of the much larger miscellaneous class, who is of the old stamp, and has substance in it for read less for any specific object than for the our uses. If no honour, there will be no dis-sake of reading; to whom any book, that will, grace, in having carefully examined it; which service, indeed, is due to our readers, not without curiosity in this matter, as well as to the Author. In so far as he seems a safe guide, and brings true tidings from the promised land, let us proclaim that fact, and recommend him to all pilgrims: if, on the other hand, his tidings are false, let us hasten to make this also known; that the German Canaan suffer not, in the eyes of the fainthearted, by spurious samples of its produce and reports of bloodthirsty sons of Anak dwelling there, which this harbinger and spy brings out of it. In either case, we may hope, our Author, who loves the Germans in his way, and would have his countrymen brought into closer acquaintance with them, will feel that, in purpose at least, we are cooperating with him.

First, then, be it admitted without hesitation, that Mr. Taylor, in respect of general talent and acquirement, takes his place above all our

either in the way of contradiction or of confirmation, by new wisdom, or new perversion of wisdom, stir up the stagnant inner man, is a windfall; the rather if it bring some historic tidings also, fit for remembering, and repeating; above all, if, as in this case, the style, with many singularities, have some striking merits, and so the book be a light exercise, even an entertainment.

To such praise and utility the work is justly entitled ; but this is not all it pretends to; and more cannot without many limitations be conceded it. Unluckily the Historic Survey is not what it should be, but only what it would be. Our Author hastens to correct in his Preface any false hopes his Titlepage may have excited: "A complete History of German Poetry," it seems, "is hardly within reach of his local command of library: so comprehensive an undertaking would require another resi dence in a country from which he has now been