450 



LITERATURE, CONTINENTAL, IN 1877. 



the Reformation to the Present Day," by the 

 Rector von Weizsaacker, has the more interest 

 for the general public, as in this faculty origin- 

 ally Melanchthon, and in modern days the 

 leaders of the Tubingen School, Bauer and 

 Strauss, labored. 



To Goethe literature important additions 

 have been made in the edition of " Briefe Goe- 

 thes an Soret," edited by Uhde, and still more 

 in the " Briefwechsel des Dichters mit Mariano 

 von Willemer," published by Creizenach. Ma- 

 riane was the Suleika of the " West-ostliche 

 Divan," one of the later loves of the poet a 

 woman not unworthy of the honor, as several 

 verses from her pen, which were taken from 

 her letters and put in the "Divan," show. 

 Also the "Briefe Goethes aus dem Nachlasse 

 Fritz Schlossers " (a nephew of Goethe's broth- 

 er-in-law), edited by Frsee, contain much that 

 is new ; more especially the amusing fact that 

 Goethe, though doubtless, after Baron Roth- 

 schild, the most celebrated man Frankfort has 

 produced, was not only not made an " Ehren- 

 burger," but in the year 1808 was deprived of 

 his hereditary rights of citizenship, because he, 

 being then a minister at Weiinar, declined to 

 pay income-tax in the imperial city. The 

 Goethe archives at Weimar, so jealously guard- 

 ed by the heirs of the poet, still conceal many 

 a buried treasure : Ihe complete correspond- 

 ence of Wolfgang with his noble mother, the 

 classic " Frau Rath," and with his sister Cor- 

 nelia (who, though plain, was in intellect nearly 

 equal to her brother), the wife of Schlosser. 

 There, too, slumbers Goethe's correspondence 

 with the leaders of the romantic school, A. W. 

 Schlegel, Fr. Schlegel, Tieck, and others. It is 

 to be hoped that its publication may yet be in- 

 trusted to the skillful editor of Goethe's scien- 

 tific correspondence and his letters to the broth- 

 ers Humboldt, Prof. Bratranek. In Hermann 

 Grimm, the author of the " Goethevorlesun- 

 gen," which are the outcome of lectures deliv- 

 ered at the University of Berlin, the great Ger- 

 man poet has found the first German biogra- 

 pher who has treated him in the spirit of a 

 poet and not as a schoolmaster. 



In philosophy it would ssem that the star of 

 strong-minded Pessimism and the mysterious 

 Unconscious is waning. To the former Moriz 

 Carriere opposes the inevitable victory and 

 the ideal rule of the " sittliche Weltordnung," 

 in a book written with the noble warmth of 

 feeling habitual to him. The volume is a de- 

 velopment of a speech delivered on the day 

 after the battle of Sedan, under the direct im- 

 pression of that great event in the world's his- 

 tory. Against the latter, and its claims to find 

 support in the natural sciences, the Strasburg 

 naturalist, Oskar Schmidt, has declared war in 

 a cutting criticism based on scientific grounds. 

 The inventor of this philosophy, Herr von Hart- 

 mann, has replied by collecting his minor writ- 

 ings, the first half of which contains his auto- 

 biography. The author of the famous book 

 is a Prussian, born at Berlin, the son of a 



Prussian general, and himself a Prussian offi- 

 cer till a painful affection of the knee forced 

 him to lay aside his sword. Hartmann's de- 

 vice, "Speculative Resultate auf inductivem 

 Wege," is repudiated by naturalists, but both 

 parties uphold the " Allianz der Philosophie und 

 der Naturwissenschaft." In harmony with this 

 principle are the tendencies of the two new 

 periodicals, the philosophical journal started 

 by Avenarius and Goring, and the Kosmos, 

 which Otto Caspari will bring out with the 

 help of Haeckel, the author of the " Urge- 

 schichte des Menschengeschlechts." The for- 

 mer represents what its originator, W. Wundt, 

 calls inductive philosophy; the latter styles 

 itself the " Organ des Darwinismus." About 

 the essentials of this "Allianz," however, the 

 views of the philosophical parties continue to 

 differ widely. The avowed and unavowed ad- 

 herents of the former " Schelling-Hegel'sche 

 Naturphilosophie " understand thereby the 

 transformation of empirical natural science 

 into speculative " Naturphilosophie." 



Although his studies are rather of tliQfeuille- 

 ton type, the merit of making clear the con- 

 dition of philosophy at the present time can- 

 not be denied to the " Studien iiber die Philo- 

 sophie der Gegenwart " of C. Griln, the editor 

 of Feuerbach's remains. From those remains 

 a further selection has appeared, consisting of 

 Feuerbach's correspondence with Christian 

 Kapp, the philosopher and democrat. 



HOLLAND. Novels have not been plentiful 

 this year. I may mention, besides an histori- 

 cal romance of Mr. Huf van Buren, " De Kroon 

 van Gelderland," of which much good is said, 

 Mrs. Bosboom's "Langs een Omweg" ("In a 

 Roundabout Way"). In this novel we miss, 

 however, the verve and originality which are 

 the characteristics of Mrs. Bosboom's imme- 

 diately preceding novel, " Majoor Frans." 



Among the many good books which have 

 been reprinted we must neither forget Mr. Vos- 

 maer's "Rembrand," a book which is deser- 

 vedly admired by the art-critics at home and 

 abroad, nor the cheap edition of his "Lon- 

 dinias." 



Besides these have appeared new editions of 

 Gorter's essays, Lindo's complete works, and 

 De Genestet's poems. Gorter was one of our 

 best literary critics, to whose good taste we 

 owe some of our most agreeable essays. 



One of our earliest poets, Jacob van Maer- 

 lart, makes the subject of a still incomplete, 

 though voluminous, essay of Dr. J. te Winkel, 

 in which his various works are treated as the 

 "mirror of his age," the 13th century. To 

 supplement it, his minor poems, " Kleinere 

 Gedichte," were republished, with an introduc- 

 tory essay on his life and character by Dr. van 

 Vloten. 



ITALY. In Italy, during the last two or three 

 years, novels and romances have mostly ex- 

 celled dramatic works in historical and poetic 

 truthfulness. This is shown even in the most 

 difficult of all the varieties of romance, the 



