LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



159 



drama of Alceste, the History of the Abderites, 

 a satirical romance, besides many letters, 

 satires, and criticisms on literature and art. 

 IIi't<ier, his contemporary, in addition to his 

 fame as a poet, is celebrated for his philosoph- 

 ical and theological writings, and his Spirit of 

 Hebrew Poetry. He died in 1803. At the com- 

 mencement of this century, Wieland, Herder, 

 Goethe, and Schiller were gathered together at 

 the court of Weimar the most illustrious 

 congregation of poets since Shakespeare, 

 Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Fletcher met to- 

 gether in London. Goethe was born in 1749, 

 and from his boyhood displayed a remarkable 

 talent for literature, science, and art. His 

 first romance, The Sorrows of Werther, pro- 

 duced a great sensation throughout all Europe. 

 His tragedy of Gtitz von Ber Itching en, written 

 at the age of 22, established his fame as a 

 poet. After his settlement at Weimar in 

 1774, his works followed each other rapidly. 

 He produced the tragedies of Iphigenia, Eg- 

 mont, Tasso, and Clavigo, the pastoral epic of 

 Hermann and Dorothea, the philosophical ro- 

 mances of Willielm Meister and Die Wahlver- 

 wandschaften, the West-Oestliche Divan, a col- 

 lection of poems founded in his studies of 

 Oriental literature, and the first part of his 

 greatest work, Faust. He also published nar- 

 ratives of travel in France and Italy, and 

 Wahrheit und Dichtung, an autobiography of 

 his life. His philosophic and scientific writ- 

 ings, especially his theory of color, are scarcely 

 less celebrated than his literary works. He is 

 equally a master in all departments of litera- 

 ture, and is generally acknowledged as the 

 greatest author since Shakespeare. He died 

 in 1832. Schiller, born in 1759, exercised | 

 scarcely less influence on German literature 

 than Goethe. His tragedy of The Robbers pro- 

 duced nearly as great a revolution as The Sor- 

 roirs of Werther. On account of this and 

 other works he was obliged to fly from his 

 native Wiirtemberg, and after many vicissi- j 

 tudes, settled in Weimar, with his great col- 

 leagues. After a brief but intense and 

 laborious life, he died in 1805. After The 

 Hnlil i-rs, he wrote the following dramatic 

 works : Fiesco, Cabal and Love, Don Carlos, 

 The Maid of Orleans, Marie Stuart, William 

 Tell, The Bride of Messina, and Wallenstein. 

 The last is the greatest drama in the German 

 language. His lyrical poems are unsurpassed. 

 His principal prose works are the History of 

 the Netherlands and History of the Thirty Years' 

 War. This period, so glorious for German 

 literature, produced also the poets, Burger, 

 author of Lenore and The Wild Huntsman; 

 Count Stolberg ; Voss, author of Luise ; Salis 

 and Matthisaon. elegiac poets ; Tiedge, author 



of Urania ; and the hero Korner, the Tyrtaeua 

 of the wars of 1812 and 1813. The depart- 

 ment of prose \\as filled by many distin- 

 guished writers of philosophy, history, and 

 romance. Kant, who lived from 1724 to 

 1804, is the father of modern German philoso- 

 phy, and exercised a great influence on all his 

 contemporaries. Schlegel, in the department 

 of literary criticism, and Winckelmann, in 

 that of art, are renowned names. Hegel and 

 Fichte succeeded Kant as philosophers, and 

 these in turn were followed by Ruge, Strauss, 

 Feuerbach, Ulrici, Schopenhauer, and Von 

 Hartmann ; while Alexander von Humboldt 

 became the leader of a new and splendid com- 

 pany of writers on cosmical science. The 

 name of Tieck heads the school of modern 

 German romance. He was born in 1773, and 

 early attracted attention by his Bluebeard and 

 Puss in Boots. In addition to a great number 

 of plays, romances, and poems, he produced, 

 in conjunction with Schlegel, a German trans.- 

 lation of Shakespeare, which is the most 

 remarkable work of its kind in all literature. 

 Jean Paul Richter, the most original and 

 peculiar of all German authors, was born in 

 1763 and died in 1825. His first work was a 

 humorous and satirical production, entitled 

 The Greenlandic Lawsuit, followed by Selec- 

 tions from the Devil's Papers. His works are 

 distinguished by a great knowledge of human 

 nature, and a bewildering richness of imagina- 

 tion, and a style so quaint and involved as 

 almost to form a separate dialect. His best 

 works are Titan, Hesperus, Die Unsichtbare 

 Loge, and Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces. 

 E. T. A. Hoffman is scarcely less original in 

 his romances, which have a wild, fantastic, 

 and supernatural character. Among other 

 German authors, the brothers Grimm are cele- 

 brated for their Kinder und Plans Mahrchen, 

 the notorious Kotzebue for his plays, and 

 Wolfgang Menzel for his History of Germany 

 and German Literature. 



Since the commencement of the present cen- 

 tury Germany has been prolific of authors, 

 but the limits of this sketch prohibit us from 

 much more than the mere mention of their 

 names. Baron de la Motte Fouque is known 

 as the author of Undine, one of the most purely 

 poetical creations of fiction, Sintram, and 

 Thiodolf, the Icelander. Borne attained celeb- 

 rity as a satirist, critic, and political writer. 

 Uhland stands at the head of the modern gen- 

 eration of poets. His ballads, romances, and 

 his epic of Ludwig der Baier, are among the 

 best German poems of the day. After him 

 rank Ruckert, also renowned as an oriental 

 scholar ; Hauff , a lyric poet, and author of the 

 romance of Lichtenstein : Gustav Schwab, Jus- 



