IDEA OP LAW IN POETRY 705 



colored with the rich hues of traditional Latin civilization and philo- 

 sophy. The language of Klopstock is that pure German which he 

 himself thus describes : " Let no living tongue venture to enter 

 the lists with the German. As it was in the oldest times when Tacitus 

 describes it, so it still remains., solitary, unmixed, incomparable." A 

 true description, however boastful, but not one that recommends the 

 German language as the vehicle for a subject into which have flowed 

 all the ideas of the late Alexandrian philosophy, the mediaeval science 

 of the Schoolmen, the civil conceptions of Eoman Law, and the mys- 

 tical theology of the Jewish Talmud. A similar difference is visible 

 in the metrical form of the two poems. The blank verse of Milton is 

 essentially a national metre, refined with the highest art from the 

 usage of three earlier generations of English poets; the metre of the 

 Ifessiah is an exotic imitation of the classic hexameter, invented by 

 Klopstock, and having no root in the German language. In these es- 

 sential respects, therefore, the Ulcssiali must be pronounced to want 

 the national character required to make a first-class German epic 

 poem. 



Again, let us apply the two-fold law of Fine Art to the German 

 drama. "What is meant by the Universal in dramatic poetry is a situ- 

 ation of general interest such as we find in Macbeth or the CEdipus 

 Rex; characters animated by motives common to humanity; love, 

 jealousy, revenge, as we see them exhibited in men like Othello and 

 Orestes; sentiments of general human application, "To be, or not 

 to be," or " The quality of mercy is not strained," etc., etc. In order 

 that the dramatist may produce these universal effects, it is practically 

 necessary, first, that the subject or idea of the action shall be common 

 both to his audience and to himself, and, secondly, that the form or 

 character of his drama shall have been the product of long stage 

 experience, as was the case both in Athens under Pericles and in 

 England under Elizabeth. Xow neither of these conditions was satis- 

 fied when Lessing founded the modern German drama in the eight- 

 eenth century; Germany had then neither a national idea of action, 

 nor a national dramatic tradition. Lessing himself says in his 

 Hamlurgische Dramaturgic : '"' Out on the good-natured idea to pro- 

 cure for the Germans a national theatre, when we Germans are not 

 yet a nation! I do not speak of our political constitution but of our 

 social character. It might almost be said that this consists in. not 

 desiring to have an individual one. We are still the sworn copyists of 

 all that is foreign; especially are we still the obedient admirers of the 

 never enough to be admired French." 



In spite of these unfavorable circumstances, three men of eminent 

 genius- Lossing, Schiller, and Goethe determined to lay the foun- 

 dations of a national theatre. How did thev set to work ? Lessin^, 



O7 



as he confesses, formed his dramatic conceptions in the spirit not of 



