Ixiv 



RISE AND PROGRESS 



" tliere was a time when I would have given 

 anything to be praised by Gotteched ; and, half 

 a year afterwards, I would have given anything 

 to be excused his praise." But a greater than 

 these, the greatest perhaps of all German poets, 

 also allied himself with Bodmer. It was under 

 his banner that KLOPSTOCK* appeared, when 

 he gave vent, in song, to the ruling passions 

 of his heart, the love of God, the love of his 

 friends, and the love of his father -land. What 

 could Frederick of Prussia, with all his French 

 associates, and all the sneers they taught him to 

 indulge in at German literature, expect to do 

 against the sacred inspiration, the indignant 

 patriotism, of such a writer as the bard of the 

 Messiah ? 



From Klopstock the Germans date the finest 

 bloom of their poetry. The judgment, wit, and 

 fire of LESSINQ f (for all these qualities meet in 

 his divers works) caused many of its blossoms to 

 expand. French taste, however, had a last 

 chance of gaining the mastery, when mixed up 

 with the manifold witcheries of WIELAND. J For 

 her ultimate preservation from this danger, Ger- 

 many is more indebted to the study of Shakspeare 

 than to any other outward influence. 



Yet Wieland must always be cited as one of 

 the foremost German authors. In short, a whole 

 galaxy of bright stars must be passed over, in 

 order to give due prominence to him, to SCHIL- 

 LER^ and to GOETHE. || 



Looking to his romantic poetry, Schlegel says 

 of Wieland : " He might have become the 

 German Ariosto, but stooped to be the imitator 

 of such a prose writer as the novelist Crebillon." 

 Looking more narrowly at his prose romances, 

 we would add : He might have been a Greek of 

 Athens, had he not been so much a Greek of 

 Paris. 



Schiller, as a dramatist, the only light in 

 which to view him justly, had a more catholic 

 spirit than either of the other two. In him we 

 behold a mind ever strengthening as he advanced 

 in life, and struggling on to greater heights of 

 excellence. As a youth, he was wild and vision- 

 ary : a Hercules, whose choice was not yet 

 made. But the full-grown Schiller we would 

 sometimes place at the feet of Shakspeare ; 

 sometimes at those of the Greek tragedians. 



Goethe is a German of the Germans : a genius 

 in whom heaven and gross earth, the high ideal 

 and the low actual, succeed one another by the 

 most abrupt transitions. How much must one 



A. D. 1/241803. t A. D. 17291781. 



J A. D. 17331813. A. D. 17591805. 



II A. D. 17491833. 



know of Germany, and of its people, to under- 

 stand the Faust ! Without such knowledge, 

 translations and expositions of that marvellous 

 poem only bewilder the reader. 



When the Germans talk of their prose as being 

 yet imperfect, they seem to forget Goethe's 

 William Meister. In point of style that book 

 is faultless. Eichhorn,* indeed, from whom 

 every labourer in literary history may derive 

 assistance, affirms, on this head, merely that 

 " the time is probably distant when German 

 literature will be enriched by tasteful prose 

 works of large compass :" and that " classic 

 prose is more rare than classic verse in Ger- 

 many." 



For the strait bounds within which we must 

 now compress all that it would be delightful to 

 write on the latest period of BRITISH letters, 

 there is a double consolation. In the first place, 

 the legislative union of England and Scotland, 

 in 1706, so amalgamated the two countries that 

 many of their chief differences in feeling and 

 taste were at an end ; and though Ireland was 

 not taken into the same close connexion until 

 1801, the great stage whereon Irish literary 

 talent has shown itself, during the last hundred 

 and thirty years, has been on this side of the chan- 

 nel. In the second place, the few names we can 

 afford to cite tell their own story. Accordingly it 

 will not be necessary to array the English writers 

 apart from the Scotch and Irish. Nor will it be 

 necessary to describe at large those who may be 

 mentioned. On the one hand, we need not make 

 a comparative estimate of genius to suit the 

 divisions of geography : Addison, Bolingbroke, 

 Pope, Fielding, Cowper, Gibbon, Byron, of the 

 south ; against Thomson, Hume, Smollett, Ro- 

 bertson, Burns, Mackenzie, Scott, of the north ; 

 or against Steele, Swift, Parnell, Sterne, Gold- 

 smith, Burke, Moore, of the west. On the other 

 hand, every one knows what these men are most 

 famous for. It is one of the greatest distinc- 

 tions of modern literature, when contrasted with 

 ancient, that some modern authors have shone 

 both in prose and poetry. This is true of Swift, 

 Addison, Pope, Johnson, Goldsmith, Byron, 

 Scott, Southey, and many more. But who needs 

 to be told that Pope and Byron are most eminent 

 as poets ; that Addison, Swift, and Johnson are 

 most happy in prose ; that Goldsmith, Scott, and 

 Southey write in either style with so much ease 

 and power as to hold the judgment in suspense 

 with regard to their main excellence. They 

 always seem to have done best what we have last 

 read from their pens. 



Gosdiichte, &c., IV., 1024. 



