FROM ACCESSION OF FREDERICK WILLIAM IV. TO 1848. 323 



the Else and Progress of Science,' where a poetic diction seems 

 only appropriate in describing the flights of human intelligence. 

 The * Survey of Nature,' on the contrary, produces the impres- 

 sion in those parts where the composition c is overladen with 

 graces of style and poetic allusions ' of having first taken form 

 as a poetic and not a scientific description of nature. In con- 

 cluding this review of the first two volumes of ' Cosmos,' as a 

 literary work, it will not be inappropriate to bring under con- 

 sideration Humboldt's claims as a writer. 



The ' main faults of his style,' of which he was himself aware, 

 consisted, as he confessed to Varnhagen in c an unfortunate 

 predilection for poetic modes of expression, a too frequent use 

 of participles and adjectives, and a too great concentration of a 

 multiplicity of thoughts and feelings in one sentence/ l This 

 defect was not so exclusively due as he imagined to his ' pecu- 

 liarity of temperament ; ' the ' unfortunate predilection for 

 poetic modes of expression ' was characteristic of the age in 

 which his early years were passed, and was sharexl by most of 

 the contemporaries of his youthful days. At the period when 

 Weimar was in its glory, poetry exercised an influence so oveiv 

 whelming throughout Germany, that even those who had no 

 poetic muse felt constrained to express their homage, some in 

 poetic prose, others in prosaic poetry, while not a few in- 

 cluding a genius as powerful as that of Herder made use of 

 both forms of composition. In the case of William von Hum- 

 boldt, it is doubtless to be ascribed to his poems, to which, 

 notwithstanding their philosophy, no very high position can 

 be accorded, that he was enabled to preserve his scientific 

 writings untainted by the poetic influence of the age. In his 

 prose writings there is much that is laboured and stiff, in 

 contrast with his prototype Schiller, but his style is never 

 inflated or fantastic. Unlike his brother, Alexander never 

 attempted poetry, for even in the ' Grenius of Ehodes ' the garb 

 of phantasy scarce serves to cover the didactic nature of the 

 essay; in his case Groethe's criticism upon Lord Byron was 

 almost applicable, that the poetry he suppressed revenged itself 

 upon his prose. This style first began to appear antiquated 



1 ' Briefe an Varnhagen, 1 No. 16. 



