708 POETRY 



deals either with concrete images or positive emotions, and will not 

 come to the artist at the bidding of analytical philosophy. 



Hence the critical advice of Herder, a truly representative German, 

 to his young countrymen in the eighteenth century was barren and 

 futile. Herder said : " National literature is of little importance ; 

 the age of world literature is at hand, and every one ought to work 

 in order to accelerate the coming of the new era. What we want is a 

 poetry in harmony with the voices of the peoples and with the whole 

 heart of mankind. Our studies must be cosmopolitan, and must in- 

 clude the popular poetry of the Hebrews, the Arabs, the Franks, Ger- 

 mans, Italians, Spaniards, and even the songs and ballads of half- 

 savage races." That is the opinion of a man who understands the 

 necessity of expressing the Universal in poetry, but who has not the 

 least conception of the meaning of the characteristic. It is needless 

 to say that nothing in the shape of Poetry ever came in Germany, 

 or could come anywhere, out of such a horrible witches' cauldron as 

 Herder proposed to mix. 



Not less contrary to the true law of character in art was the attempt 

 made by the patriotic party in Germany to express in the lyric poetry 

 of their native language ideas of a civil or political order. If ideas 

 of this kind be embodied in lyric verse, the style adopted must be 

 lofty and severe, but of what was needed for such a style the Ger- 

 mans, with their want of political training, had no conception. How 

 far they were from attaining it may be imagined from a comparison 

 of Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard with Frederick Schubart's 

 once famous poem, Die Furstengruft, or The Vault of the Princes. 

 Both poets have here selected a subject of universal interest, and both 

 seek to draw out its essential character by a series of contrasted 

 images. Gray hits the mark. How solemn and heroic is the march 

 of the verse in which he represents the compensations in the respective 

 lots of prince and peasant that make them equal in the grave! 



Th' applause of listening senates to command, 

 The threats of pain and ruin to despise, 

 To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, 

 And read their history in a nation's eyes, 



Their lot forbade : nor circumscribed alone 

 Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined, 

 Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne, 

 And shut the gates of mercy on mankind; 



The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide, 

 To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, 

 Or heap the shrines of luxury and pride 

 With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. 



Schubart's poem, on the contrary, is a rhetorical invective against 

 the prince? of Hprmany. whom he reproaches as the tyrants of their 



