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kas) been gone through by her; nay one of them, Hesperus, has not so much as been fairly gone into; for, after introducing a not very important scene from Hesperus, the couching of a father's eyes by a son, properly a thing which every century does to the other, she tables some shreds of a second incident in this same Hesperus, but with a statement that it is from a different romance. Of the Rede des todten Christus (Speech of the dead Christ), she has indeed omitted the superfluous commencement, but also more than half of the unsuperfluous conclusion, which closes those wounds. Reviewer willingly excuses her, since this author, a comet of moderate nucleus, carries so excessive a comet-train of volumes along with him, that even up to the minute when he writes this, such train has not yet got altogether above the horizon.

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On the whole, she usually passes long judgments only on fewvolumed writers, for instance, Tieck, Werner; and short on manyvolumed, for instance, the rich Herder, whom she accommodates in a pretty bowerlet of four sides, or pages. The New Poetic School, at least August Schlegel, whom she saw act in Werner's Twenty-fourth of February, might have helped her out a little with instructions and opinions about Herder (nay, even about Jean Paul) as well as about Tieck; the more, as she seems so open to such communications that they often come back from her as mere echoes: for, strictly considered, it is the New, much more than the Old School, that really stands in opposition to the French.

The thirty-second chapter (des Beaux Arts en Allemagne) does not require seventeen pages, as Faust did, to receive sentence; but only seven, to describe German painting, statuary and music, - not so much compressedly as compressingly. Nevertheless, Reviewer willingly gives up even these seven pages for the sake of the following beautiful remark : 1

'La musique des Allemands est plus variée que celle des Italiens, et c'est en cela peut-être qu'elle est moins bonne: l'esprit est condamné à la variété, c'est sa misère qui en est la cause; mais les arts, comme le sentiment, ont une admirable monotonie, celle dont on voudrait faire un moment éternel.'

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The Fifth Volume treats of Philosophies the French, the English, the old and new and newest German, and what else from ancient Greece has to do with philosophies. Concerning this volume, a German reviewer can offer his German readers nothing new, except perhaps whimsicalities. While men, -for example, Jacobi, — after long studying and re-studying of great philosophers, so often fall into anxiety lest they may not have understood them, finding the con

1 Tom. iv. p. 125.

futation look so easy, women of talent and breeding, simply from their gift of saying No, infer at once that they have seen through them. Reviewer is acquainted with intellectual ladies, who, in the hardest philosophical works, for instance, Fichte's, - have found nothing but light and ease. Not what is thought, only what is learned, can women fancy as beyond their horizon. From Love they have acquired a boldness, foreign to us, of passing sentence on great men. Besides, they can always, instead of the conception, the idea, substitute a feeling. In p. 78, Madame de Staël says quite naïvely, she does not see why philosophers have striven so much to reduce all things to one principle, be it matter or spirit; one or a pair, it makes little difference, and explains the all no better. In p. 55, she imparts to the Parisians several categories of Kant's, with an et-cætera; as it were an Alphabet, with an and-so-forth. If jesting is admissible in a review, the following passage on Schelling1 may properly stand here:

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L'idéal et le réel tiennent, dans son langage, la place de l'intelligence et de la matière, de L'IMAGINATION et de l'expérience; et c'est dans la réunion de ces deux puissances en une harmonie complète, que consiste, selon lui, le principe unique et absolu de l'univers organisé. Cette harmonie, dont les deux POLES et le centre sont l'image, et qui est renfermé dans le nombre de trois, de tout temps si mystérieux, fournit à Schelling des APPLICATIONS les plus ingénieuses.'

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But we return to earnest. Consider, now, what degree of spirit these three philosophic spirits can be expected to retain, when they have been passed off, and in, and carried through, three heads, as if by distillation ascending, distillation middle and distillation descending for the three heads are, namely, -the head of the Authoress, who does not half understand the philosophers; the head of the Parisian, who again half understands our Authoress; and finally, the head of the Parisianess, who again half understands the Parisian. Through such a series of intermediate glasses the light in the last may readily refract itself into darkness.

Meanwhile, let the former praise remain to her unimpaired, that she still seizes in our philosophy the sunny side, which holds of the heart, to exhibit and illuminate the mossy north side of the French philosophy. Striking expressions of noblest sentiments and views are uncovered, like pearl-muscles, in this philosophic ebb and flow. Precious also, in itself, is the nineteenth chapter, on Marriage Love; though for this topic, foreign in philosophy, it were hard to find any right conductor into such a discussion, except, indeed, the philosophers Crates and Socrates furnish one.

1 Tom. v. p. 83.

As the Sixth and last Volume treats of Religion and Enthusiasm, -a French juxtaposition, it is almost her heart alone that speaks, and the language of this is always a pure and rich one. The sepa

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rate pearls, from the philosophic ebb, here collect themselves into a pearl necklace. She speaks nobly on Nature, and Man, and Eternity; so likewise on Enthusiasm.2 Individual baldnesses it were easy for Reviewer to extract, for they are short; but individual splendours difficult, for they are too long.

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To one who loves not only Germany but mankind, or rather both in each other, her praise and high preference of the German religious temper, in this volume, almost grows to pain: for, as we Germans ourselves complain of our coldness, she could have found a temperate climate here only by contrast with the French ice-field of irreligion from which she comes. Truly, she is in the right. The French, in these very days, have accepted their Sunday as crabbedly as the Germans parted with their Second Sundays, or Holidays, when forced to do it. Thus does the poisonous meadow-saffron of the Revolution, after its autumn-flowers have been left solitary and withered, still keep under ground its narcotic bulb for the awakened spring; almost as if the spirit of Freedom in this Revolution, like the spirit of Christianity, should construct and remodel every foreign people-only not the Jewish, where were the Nativity and Crucifixion.

The bitterness of the Parisian journal-corps, who have charged against this Work of the Baroness more fiercely than against all her Romances, shows us that it is something else than difference of taste that they strike and fire at: their hearts have been doubly provoked by this comparison, and trebly by this discordance in their own most inward feeling, which loves not to expose itself as an outward one. In romances, they took all manner of religion as it came; they could charge it on the characters, and absolve the poetess: but here she herself, not with foreign lips, but with her own, has spoken out for religion, and against the country where religion is yet no rêmigrée.

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A special Pamphlet, published in Paris, on this Work, enlists the method of question and answer in the service of delusion, to exhibit bold beauties, by distorting them from their accompaniments, in the character of bombast. It is but seldom that our Authoress sins, and, in German fashion, against German taste, as where she says,3

'Tous les moutons du même troupeau viennent donner, les uns après les autres, leurs coups-de-tête aux idées, qui n'en restent moins ce qu'elles

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In presence of a descriptive power that delights foreign nations, one might hope the existing French would modestly sink mutethey whose eulogistic manner, in the Moniteur, in the senate and everywhere, towards the throne, has at all times been as strained, windy and faded as its object; and in whom, as in men dying the wrong way (while, in common cases, in the cooling of the outward limbs, the heart continues to give heat), nothing remains warm but the members from which the frozen heart lies farthest.

It is difficult, amid so many bright passages, which, like polished gold, not only glitter, but image and exhibit, to select the best. For example, the description of the Alps by night, and of the whole festival of Interlaken ;1. the remark 2 that both the excess of heat in the east, and of cold in the north, incline the mind to idealism and visuality; or this, 'Ce qui manque en France, en tout genre, c'est le 'sentiment et l'habitude du respect.' &

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Still more than we admire the Work, is the Authoress, considering also her sex and her nation, to be admired. Probably she is the only woman in Europe, and still more probably the only French person in France, that could have written such a book on Germany. Had Germany been her cradle and school, she might have written a still better work, namely, on France. And so we shall wish this spiritual Amazon strength and heart for new campaigns and victories; and then, should she again prove the revieweress of a reviewer, let no one undertake that matrimonial relation but FRIP.4

1 Tom. i. ch. xx.

2 Tom. v. p. 87.

3 Tom. v. p. 27. So likewise, tom. v. pp. 11, 97, 109, 125, 207.

4 Frip is the anagram of J. P. F. R., and his common signature in such cases -T.

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS.

VOLTAIRE.

RESISTLESS and boundless power of true Literature. Every Life a well-spring, whose stream flows onward to Eternity. Present aspect of a man often strangely contrasted with his future influence; Moses; Mahomet; the early Christians; Tamerlane and Faust of Mentz. How noiseless is Thought! (p. 5). - Voltaire's European reputation. The biography of such a man cannot be unimportant. Differences of opinion: Necessity for mutual tolerance. Voltaire's character: Adroitness, and multifarious success: Keen sense of rectitude; and fellow-feeling for human suffering. (9). Not a 'great character;' essentially a Mocker. Ridicule not the test of truth. The glory of knowing and believing, all but a stranger to him; only with that of questioning and qualifying is he familiar. His tragicomical explosions, more like a bundle of rockets than a volcano. Character of the age into which he was cast. What is implied by a Lover of Wisdom. Voltaire loved Truth, but chiefly of the triumphant sort. His love of fame: 'Necessity' of lying: Can either fly or crawl, as the occasion demands. (20). His view of the world a cool, gently scornful, altogether prosaic one. His last ill-omened visit to Frederick the Great. His women, an embittered and embittering set of wantons from the earliest to the last: Widow Denis; the Marquise du Châtelet. The greatest of all Persifleurs. (35). — His last and most striking appearance in society: The loudest and showiest homage ever paid to Literature. The last scene of all. (45). Intellectual gifts: His power of rapid, perspicuous Arrangement: His Wit, a mere logical pleasantry; scarcely a twinkling of Humour in the whole of his numberless sallies. Poetry of the toilette: Criticisms of Shakspeare,— Voltaire, and Frederick the Great: Let justice be shown even to French poetry. (53). - Voltaire chiefly conspicuous as a vehement opponent of the Christian Faith: Shallowness of his deepest insight: The Worship of Sorrow, godlike Doctrine of Humility, all unknown to him. The Christian Religion itself can never die. Voltaire's whole character plain enough: A light, careless, courteous Man of the World: His chief merits belong to Nature and himself; his chief faults are of his time and country. The strange ungodly Age of Louis XV.: Honour; Enlightened

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