336 



Monthly Review of Literature, 



[MARCH, 



tion. The " Beowulf" has some Chris- 

 tianity mixed up with it ; and, though 

 undoubtedly Danish, is assigned by Mr. 

 Taylor to the Danes of our own East 

 Anglia, rather than, as has been done 

 bv German critics, to the Danes of Lu- 

 beck. 



Of the Southern Germans, classed as 

 the Lombard poetry, the oldest piece is 

 the story of Old Hildebrand, which may 

 be assigned to the sixth century, though, 

 in its existing form, it has been much 

 modernized. Pursuing the stream of 

 German poetry, he comes next to the 

 Franks, and the influence of Charle- 

 magne and his party upon the more 

 northern tribes. The most memorable 

 relics of these are a Loyal Ballad to 

 Louis II. Otfride Hymns St. 

 George a War-Song of Louis III. 

 Life of St. Anno and Renard the Fox. 

 Here follows a blank till the accession 

 of the Suabian family to the empire ; 

 and then we have romance and chivalry 

 in abundance. Mr. T. discusses at some 

 length the sources of this new and po- 

 pular fiction which he considers to 

 have been neither Moorish-Spain, nor 

 Gothic-Scandinavia but Armorica, and 

 the connected provinces of Britain. All 

 European nations take their romances of 

 chivalry from the French ; the French 

 romances originate in the north of 

 France, not the south ; and the older 

 romances celebrate the heroes of greater 

 or lesser Britanny, and are therefore of 

 Armorican origin. 



The Suabian period (1150-1300) ex- 

 hibits a multitude of poets, which, for 

 convenience, are distributed into cy- 

 cles. The first and earliest wrote of 

 Arthur and his knights the second, of 

 Charlemagne and his peers the third, 

 of the heroes of antiquity, coupled with 

 the manners of chivalry and the fourth, 

 alone and exclusively of German heroes, 

 of whom Theodoric of Verona is the 

 centre. Of course, these last are all of 

 Lombard origin. 



The Austrian period extends to the 

 Reformation, and embraces the produc- 

 tions of the master-singers a sort of 

 patent poets ; such as a Dance of Death 

 Ship of Fools Mirror of Owls- 

 Mysteries Faustus Pope Joan, &c. 



The Reformation put a stop to all 

 poetry and music, but psalms and psalm- 

 singing ; and Mr. Taylor takes the op- 

 portunity of balancing the good and the 

 bad of the Reformation generally, and 

 finds the bad preponderating immensely. 

 Liberty and liberality were silently 

 working their way ; their career was 

 suddenly checked by the austerity of the 

 Reformers, and wars and contentions 

 followed for a century and a half solely 

 in consequence of the Reformation. 



German poetry did not revive again 

 till the last century ; but so numerous 



have been the poets since that period, 

 that, to speak of them at all, it has been 

 necessary to distribute them into groups 

 the Swiss Saxon Hamburgh Ber- 

 lin Gottingen Vienna. Of the lead- 

 ing poets, Mr. T. has given biographical 

 sketches and critical estimates, confirm- 

 ing his opinions by specimens of consi- 

 derable length. The second and third 

 volumes are almost wholly occupied 

 with Wieland, Herder, Kotzebue, Schil- 

 ler, and Goethe. Many of the transla- 

 tions are executed with spirit and vigour, 

 and furnish ample proofs of the author's 

 powers of discrimination, and compe- 

 tency for the task he undertook. 



Tlie Temple of Melekartha. 3 vols. 

 12mo. The aim of the writer of this 

 somewhat singular performance is to 

 trace the effects upon communities of 

 some of the principal forms of supersti- 

 tious and fanatic feeling ; but to avoid 

 offence, the details are thrown into ages 

 and scenes beyond the pale of all histo- 

 rical authority. The consequence is, the 

 mind has no recognized events to rest 

 upon, and the reader too often does not 

 know where he is, nor what he is about. 

 He is lost in a fog, and the gleams of 

 sunshine are few and far between. 

 Though the book takes the form of a 

 tale, it scarcely furnishes a thread to 

 lead him securely through the mazes of 

 it. Nevertheles's there is much vigour 

 of thought in the performance, and 

 force and felicity of expression enough 

 to arrest often the reader's attention ; 

 while the writer's powers of description 

 are of no ordinary cast, and his purpose 

 of the most commendable kind. 



The Temple of Melekartha is sup- 

 posed to be at Old Tyre, at some remote 

 period in the days of its magnificence, 

 when its merchants were princes. It 

 is dedicated to Moloch, whose thirst for 

 blood was insatiable, and the horrid 

 worship, full of cruelty and impurity, is 

 minutely analysed. By and by the 

 country is desolated by the plague, and 

 the chief priest, on being consulted, de- 

 mands in the name of the Deity the 

 blood of seventy youths to appease his 

 supposed wrath. *The monarch, a man 

 of some sense and humanity, makes a 

 stand against these barbarities, and find- 

 ing the plague ceasing its devastations, 

 instead of complying, ventures upon the 

 bold measure of banishing the priests 

 in a body. In their exile they stir up 

 some mighty conqueror to invade the 

 country, who defeats the armies of the 

 Tzidonians, and carries away twenty 

 thousand captives. By sea, the Tzido- 

 nians are more successful ; and though 

 Tyre itself is destroyed, the monarch 

 and his people get all their riches on 

 board, and migrate to some other dis- 

 tant land, to renew their old career of 



