SHORT PAPERS 



PROFESSOR A. R. HOHLFELD, of the University of Wisconsin, presented a short 

 paper on "Hebbel as a Literary Critic." 



PROFESSOR JAMES TAFT HATFIELD, of Northwestern University, read a paper 

 on "More Light on the Text of Goethe." 



PROFESSOR M. D. LEARNED, of the University of Pennsylvania, presented a paper 

 on " The German Impulse in American Literature before 1800." In calling atten- 

 tion to the fact of the general recognition of the part which German culture has 

 played in American thought and life during the nineteenth century, it had not 

 been so thoroughly understood that the German influence was a stimulating force 

 in our literature during the eighteenth century : the speaker said that in the last 

 decade of the seventeenth century Boston and Philadelphia each could boast of 

 a great scholar of the universal type of knowledge which was characteristic of the 

 countries of western Europe, Cotton Mather of the Bay Colony, and Francis 

 Daniel Pastorius of Germantown. An interesting parallel could be traced between 

 the two men. Both were well versed in the learning of the time; both were prolific 

 writers; both possessed that encyclopedic bent which was characteristic of the 

 intellectual life of the old world; both were devoted to the intellectual and moral 

 interests of their respective communities; both had a command of various lan- 

 guages, Pastorius of as many as seven, and Mather of at least four. The intro- 

 duction to Mather's Magnolia is most strikingly like the title-pages of Pastorius' 

 Bee-Hive. It must have been a great " feast of reason and flow of soul," could these 

 two men have come together in personal converse. 



At the same time that Cotton Mather was forming the plan of his Magnolia for 

 the New-English colonists, Pastorius was writing a vastly larger work for his 

 children and those who should come after him. This book of Pastorius, entitled 

 Bee-Hire, is a far more erudite work than that of Cotton Mather, and is the first 

 known attempt at an American encyclopedia. The mammoth size of the Bee-Hire 

 with its million words, and the more or less private character and purpose of the 

 work, have prevented it from coming into print to the present day. Although it 

 remains unprinted, it is nevertheless a noteworthy monument not only to the 

 German industry of Pastorius, but to American literature as well. 



The following works by Pastorius were printed in English: Pastorius' Primer 

 (published in Philadelphia about 1700: Seidensticker), Henry Bernhard Rosier, 

 William Daris, Thomas Rutter, and Thomas Bowycr, four boasting Disputcrs of this 

 World briefly rebuked; printed and sold by Wm. Bradford of The Bible in New 

 York, 1697. (The writer, Francis Daniel Pastorius, signed his name on page 15.) 



Franklin's travels in Germany in 1766 in company with the distinguished 

 Dr. Pringle,and his direct contact with the great German scholars at Gottingen, 

 must have enriched his knowledge and quickened his interest in the Fatherland 

 of the Germans whom he had left at home in the province of Pennsylvania. That 

 he had an open eye for German conditions is apparent iiom his later writings, 

 particularly his pseudo-diplomatic documents written during the American 

 Revolution, The Dialogue between Britain. France, Spain. Holland, Saxony, and 

 America, and the letter From the Count de Schaumbergh to Baron HohcndorJ com- 

 manding the Hessian Troops in America. 



Many other illustrations were given by the speaker of German influence in 

 literature of the eighteenth century and particular attention called to the growing 



