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REV. CHANCELLOR LIAS, M.A., ON 



far behind Dante in intellectual power, has so finished a style, 

 and so keen an appreciation of beauty, that he cannot be denied 

 a very high place in literature. Even Boccaccio, offensive in 

 moral principle as he often is, has great literary merits, and a 

 strong sense of humour. In ability, however, though not in 

 the moral sense, he must, I think, be held to surpass even Cer- 

 vantes. I cannot deny that the predominance which Italian 

 music enjoyed over German music in my younger days was not 

 merited, and that the superiority of German music over that of 

 every other nation cannot for a moment be disputed. The 

 favourites of my youth, Kossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, were 

 frivolous when compared with Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, 

 Beethoven, Weber, and even Meyerbeer, to say nothing of the 

 most recent idol, Wagner. In the sister arts of painting and 

 sculpture, France and England have, I must think, unquestion- 

 ably surpassed Germany more even than Germany has surpassed 

 them in music. 



For a good many years I could not at all understand 

 the substitution of German for Italian literature in the estima- 

 tion of the inhabitants of this country. But attention has 

 lately been called to the fact that it was chiefly due to Carlyle, 

 who first " boomed,'' as the Americans say, German literature 

 into the first rank, and then, having influenced English opinion 

 in that direction by his Hero Worship, elevated the most morally 

 contemptible and unprincipled of the great men of the world, 

 Frederick the Great — for he really was a great man as a soldier 

 and a statesman — into the first rank of the world's heroes. I 

 must say that Carlyle never carried me away by his enthusiasm. 

 I remained in the same mind as I was when I read, as a boy, 

 Canning's Rovers of Weimar, and felt not a little contempt for 

 German sentiment and German intellect as there burlesqued. 

 Carlyle's earlier style, a clear and manly English one, was much 

 superior — at least so I thought — to the artificial mannerisms 

 into which his German proclivities led him. I did not like his 

 heroes very much, and when I embarked in his Life of Frederick 

 the Great, I fairly stuck fast. I could appreciate Greek 

 history, or Latin history, or English history, or French history, 

 because they are written by and for reasonable beings. But I 

 absolutely failed to tolerate the eccentric style in which Carlyle's 

 Frederick the Great was written, though I must admit that 

 Ranke, Mommsen, and Neander are a triad of historians of 

 whom any nation might be proud. As to Jean Paul Richter, 



