PREFACE.

THESE extracts from German writers, beginning with Ulfilas in the fourth, and ending with Jean Paul Friedrich Richter in the nineteenth century, were originally collected for the purpose of illustrating a course of Lectures on the History of the German Language and Literature, delivered by me at Oxford, in the years 1853 and 1856. There is no country where so much interest is taken in the literature of Germany as in England, as there is no country where the literature of England is so much appreciated as in Germany. Some of our modern classics, whether poets or philosophers, are read by Englishmen with the same attention as their own; and the historians, the novelwriters, and the poets of England have exercised, and continue to exercise, a most powerful and beneficial influence on the people of Germany. In recent times, the literature of the two countries has almost grown into one. Lord Macaulay's History has not only been translated into German, but reprinted at Leipzig in the original; and it is said to have had a larger sale in Germany than the work of any German historian. Baron Humboldt and Baron Bunsen address their writings to the English as much as to the German public. The novels of Dickens and Thackeray are expected with the same impatience at Leipzig and Berlin as in London. The two great German classics, Schiller and Göthe, have found their most successful biographers in Carlyle and Lewes; and several works of German scholarship have met with more attentive and thoughtful readers in the colleges of England, than in the universities of Germany. Göthe's idea of a world-literature has, to a certain extent, been realised; and the strong feel

ing of sympathy, particularly between the middle classes of the two countries, holds out a hope that, for many years to come, the supremacy of the Teutonic race, not only in Europe but over all the world, will be maintained in common by the two champions of political freedom and of the liberty of thoughtProtestant England and Protestant Germany.

The interest, however, which Englishmen take in German literature, has hitherto been confined almost exclusively to the literature of the last fifty years, and very little is known of those fourteen centuries during which the German language had been growing up and gathering strength for the great triumphs which were achieved by Lessing, Schiller, and Göthe. Nor is this to be wondered at. The number of people in England, who take any interest in the early history of their own literature, is extremely small, and there is as yet no history of English literature worthy of that name. I should not have thought, therefore, of publishing a collection of extracts which embraces the whole course of German literature, during its darkest as well as during its brightest periods, if it had not been for the strong impulse which, within the last three years, has been given to the study of the German language, history, and literature at public and private schools. This is owing chiefly to the introduction of competitive examinations. In the examinations for admission to the chief branches of the civil and military services, a very prominent place has been assigned to German and other modern languages. In the first examination for the Indian Civil service, a knowledge of the language, history, and literature of Germany and France is valued as highly as a knowledge of the language, history, and literature of Greece. Candidates for the Royal Artillery and Engineers gain as many marks by German as by Greek, by French as by Latin. In several departments, moreover, of the English Civil service, considerable importance is attached to a knowledge of the modern languages of Europe.

In examinations where a knowledge of German is rated so high, it is but fair that the examiners should insist upon something more than a merely conversational knowledge of the language. If a candidate is to have as many marks for German as

for Greek, his knowledge of German ought to be of nearly the same kind as the knowledge of Greek which we expect in young men of the age of from seventeen to twenty. It would be going too far, no doubt, if candidates were expected to read in the original the ancient epic poems of the Nibelunge or Gudrun, or to possess a grammatical knowledge of the Gothic of Ulfilas and the Old High-German of Otfried. Gothic, Old High-German, and Middle High-German are three distinct languages, each possessing its own grammar, each differing from the others and from Modern German more materially than the Greek of Homer differs from the Greek of Demosthenes. Even in Germany these languages are studied only by professional antiquarians and scholars, and they do not form part of the general system of instruction in public schools and universities. The study of Gothic grammar alone (where we still find a dual in addition to the singular and plural, and where some tenses of the passive are still formed, as in Greek and Latin, without auxiliary verbs), would require as much time as the study of Greek grammar, though it would not offer the key to a literature like that of Greece. Old High-German, again, is as difficult a language to a German as Anglo-Saxon is to an Englishman; and the Middle High-German of the Nibelunge, of Wolfram, and Walther, nay even of Eckhart and Tauler, is more remote from the language of Göthe, than Chaucer is from Tennyson.

But, without requiring a grammatical knowledge of these ancient languages, candidates who are to receive as many marks for their proficiency in German as others for their proficiency in Greek, may fairly be required to know something of the history of German Literature. Nor is this, if properly taught, a subject of narrow or merely antiquarian interest. The history of literature reflects and helps us to interpret the political history of a country. It contains, as it were, the confession which every generation, before it passed away, has made to posterity. "Without Literary History," as Lord Bacon says, "the History of the World seemeth to be as the Statue of Polyphemus with his eye out; that part being wanting which doth most shew the spirit and life of the person." From this point of view the historian of literature learns to value what to the critic would

seem unmeaning and tedious, and he is loth to miss the works even of mediocre poets, where they throw light on the times in which they lived, and serve to connect the otherwise disjointed productions of men of the highest genius, separated, as these necessarily are, by long intervals in the annals of every country.

The extracts from German writers contained in this volume have been chosen, not merely on account of their beauty and excellence, but with a view of forming a running commentary on the history of Germany, political as well as intellectual. shall endeavour, so far as may be possible within the narrow limits of a preface, to justify the choice which I have made. The student of German history should know something of Ulfilas', the great Bishop of the Goths, who anticipated the work of Luther by more than a thousand years, and who, at a time when Greek and Latin were the only two respectable and orthodox languages of Europe, dared for the first time to translate the Bible into the vulgar tongue of Barbarians, as if foreseeing with a prophetic eye the destiny of these Teutonic tribes, whose language, after Greek and Latin had died away, was to become the life-spring of the Gospel over the whole civilised world. He ought to know something of those early missionaries and martyrs, most of them sent from Ireland and England to preach the Gospel in the dark forests of Germany-men like St. Gall (died 638), St. Kilian (died 689), and St. Boniface (died 755), who were not content with felling the sacred oak-trees and baptizing unconverted multitudes, but founded missionary stations, and schools, and monasteries; working hard themselves in order to acquire a knowledge of the language and the character of the people, and drawing up those curious lists of barbarous words, with their no less barbarous equivalents in Latin, which we still possess, though copied by a later hand. He ought to know the gradual progress of Christianity and civilisation in Germany, previous to the time of Charlemagne; for we see from the German translations of the Rules of the Benedictine monks3, of ancient Latin Hymns1,

Reading-Book, p. 1.

2 P. 2.

3 P. 3.

• P. 7.