Ix 



RISE AND PROGRESS 



to make deep, sincere feelings speak for them- 

 " selves : enough for him to describe them ! He 

 troubles himself not to exalt the interesting, 

 through the free flight of fancy, to the ideal : 

 enough for him to represent it elegantly! A 

 light, superficial stirring of the senses ; an airy 

 play of wit ; such is French poetry !" Now this 

 is a true criticism with reference to almost the 

 whole body of French poetry from the date of 

 the old trouveres to the eighteenth century : and 

 why, therefore, encroach on the limited remainder 

 of our essay by minutely tracing its route between 

 these points ? The jovial, comical MAROT,* 

 coeval with Rabelais, began the first stage : but 

 the sportiveness which Marot had caught from 

 the Italians, appeared to RONSARD f to require a 

 copious infusion of the antique to give it force 

 and dignity. Hence the pedantry, the excess of 

 Greek and Latin words, the pseudo-classical 

 style, which Ronsard introduced into his abortive 

 epic, and into the works of his six followers, 

 whom with their master the fleeting homage of 

 their own generation hailed as a Pleiad of poets. 

 ToDELLEjJ one of the number, had, however, the 

 merit of bringing copies of the Greek and Roman 

 drama into the French theatre. But it was MAL- 

 HKRBK that first triumphed over the pomp and 

 pedantry of Ronsard's sect ; and, though his 

 odes are no more like lyric poetry than those of 

 other Frenchmen, his style served as an useful 

 pattern till the age of Louis. Then rises, with 

 superior brilliancy, an authentic Pleiad : 



Quse septem did, SEX tamen esse solent ! 



CORNEILLE the elder, MOLIBRE, LA FONTAINE, 

 RACINE, CORNEILLE the younger, BOILEAU. 

 No one will hesitate as to the respective 

 qualities to be coupled with each name : tragic 

 greatness, sometimes too stiff or too pointed 

 in expression ; comic power, always most suc- 

 cessful when adapting to modern usages the 

 scenes of Aristophanes or Plautus ; a grace, a 

 matchless skill in narrative, so felicitous as to 

 look like instinct ; perfect elegance and tender- 

 ness ; a taste for the romantic and surprising ; 

 neat satire conjoined with the love of order and 

 as much knowledge of poetry as one who pre- 

 ferred art to nature could have. The French 

 themselves are most enamoured of their tra- 

 gedy, and suppose it to be formed on the 

 Greek model. But, after all that the elder 

 Corneille has achieved in the Cid, or Racine in 

 hi Athalie, French tragedy resembles that of 



A D.U9V-I544. 

 t A. D. 1532-1573. 



t A. D. 15241585. 

 J A. D. 15561628. 



the Greeks no more than a petit mattre does Ajax 

 or Prometheus. 



The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries- 

 brought forth few great additions to GERMAN 

 literature. The name of LUTHER * is in every 

 sense the first of that period. To strike with 

 the sword of the Word was his high vocation ; 

 and therefore he created a national form of 

 speech, to which all dialects have been forced to 

 bow, and a prose style, free from the faults and 

 inconsistencies that had clung to the pens of 

 even Tauler and Albert Durer. Luther found 

 room for poetry also among his original writ- 

 ings ; but his capital work was a translation of 

 the Bible, in which he exhibited almost every 

 kind of literary talent, and gave to scriptural 

 expression a wide and wholesome sway over the 

 German language. Passing over Fischart,f the 

 German Rabelais, and Jacob Boehme,J the poe- 

 tical mystic, observe next the adverse parties of 

 OPITZ, of LOHENSTEIN, and of NEUKIRCH, with the 

 proofs they yield that a fierce battle must often 

 be fought, and aberrations to the right hand and 

 the left must occur, before true principles secure 

 the victory. The Silesian Opitz, a disciple of 

 the ancients, a master of style and prosody, 

 revealing, in many different species of song, the 

 soul of a heroic poet, held on his way amid the 

 troubles of the thirty years' war, and seemed des- 

 tined to herald a band of followers happier and 

 greater than himself. But German literature was 

 ever too apt to take its hue from contingent in- 

 fluences. Thus Lohenstein,|| being himself tainted 

 with the vices of Marino's Italian poetry, had no 

 difficulty in rallying a party to foster affectation 

 and the mock sublime. Their innovations on the 

 vernacular vocabulary were resisted by the strenu- 

 ous Zesen,Tf and sundry quaintly-named societies: 

 but the artificial vein of composition was most 

 actively opposed by Neukirch,** and some others, 

 who ran into the contrary extreme of utter flat- 

 ness and insipidity. These intended, with 

 whatever bad success, to imitate the French 

 style ; a standard that had naturally obtained a 

 temporary ascendant in Germany after the peace 

 of Westphalia in 1648, and that of Nimeguen in 

 1678. What further consequences the adoption 

 of that standard gave rise to, and how far they 

 were at last counteracted, will presently be 

 noticed. 



III. We must now explain how it was that 

 near the beginning of the eighteenth century, 



* A. D. 14831560. t A. D. 15111587. 



t A. D. 15751624. A. D. 15971639. 



I! A. D. 16381683. f A. D. 1619 1C89. 



* A. I). IGU5 1729. 



