128 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
more directed toward the alleviation of sadness; the severity of 
manhood wears off giving way to the benignity of old age. At all 
times of his life the master wrote rhymed stories and tales, from 
the fifties on, however, they become both more frequent and better. 
The whole monotony and mechanical fertility of his (423) produc¬ 
tion shows itself in this species, but it is at the same time his high¬ 
est triumph. He had inherited this type of instructive tale, seri¬ 
ous or comic, from older periods, whose novelettes, folk tales, and 
farces he modernized in countless numbers and multiplied by new 
ones, but he also left them to posterity. No older story teller is 
his peer in moral earnestness, few later ones in skill of treatment 
and genuine humor. . . . The animation and accuracy of de¬ 
scription, the motley throng of subjects, and the uniform precision 
and reliability of his brush impart an uncommon charm to these 
pieces, and it was these qualities that attracted our Goethe, who in 
Hans Sachs’s Poetic Mission erected the most reverent monument 
to the old master. The figures move and stir before our eyes, and 
if Hans Sachs praises the painter because he can so place every¬ 
thing before our eyes that one could not narrate it more clearly, 
he himself narrates and describes everything so that one could not 
paint it more plainly. The most playful and frolicsome humor 
tints the pictures of the magic chest that he throws open to us, 
. . . (424) and all this is to be compared only with the bur¬ 
lesques of Dutch painting. . . . Everything that characterizes 
the good German middle class, craftsmanship, self-respecting trade- 
unionism, common sense, honesty (425) and integrity, pious sim¬ 
plicity, a sound moral core, and practical insight into life, speaks 
amiably from every tone and every line of these pieces, poor as 
many of them are in content and stale jests. 
In the last decades of Hans Sachs’s poetry, a distinct change 
takes place. He himself complains repeatedly of the decline of art 
in general. Formerly, he says, it flourished, all nooks and corners 
were full of scholars, there were ingenious craftsmen and artists 
enough and books in abundance, now the arts are common and 
despised, few devotees remain, looked at ascance as visionaries; 
the world is madly bent on lust and gold, the Muses are leaving 
the country. His eulogy of good morals had brought him envy and 
hatred; often he meant to stop writing, also because at last his 
reason told him that his poetic power was on the wane. But yet 
he means courageously to make the most of his talent; after forty- 
four years of poetic activity he will not now desist from preaching 
