1848.] Hedge's Prose- Writers of Germany. 263 the average period for the reign of each. Great revolutions have taken place in shorter periods, but reforms require more extended spaces of time, to be thorough and secure, and to bear the risk of a change in the individual who stands at the head of a government. We will still hope for much from the reign of Pius IX., much for the happiness of his own subjects, the good of the Christian Church, and the advancement of every cause of righteousness and progress. There are some matters which lie between temporal and spiritual interests, and partake of the relations of each, over which his power extends, and where he may exert it. But, as we judge, true reform can triumph in the Roman States only when it is no longer in the power of a Pope to say that it shall or shall not triumph. G. E. E. ART. VII. HEDGE'S PROSE-WRITERS OF GERMANY.* WITHIN the last quarter of a century, the rich world of German literature has been steadily rolling into sight, and a multitude of eyes are now earnestly engaged, with such aids as they can command, in exploring its wide domains. A fashion is setting in, almost amounting to a rage, for the study of the German language. Translations from the German, in prose and poetry, are appearing in all manner of periodicals. While we are thus certainly approaching to a more intelligent appreciation of the German mind and its creations, it is still far from being settled to the general satisfaction, whether this new light which is streaming in upon us, investing things with so many strange colors, comes from a new planet of the first magnitude with a somewhat hazy atmosphere, or from some stray nebula without nucleus or solidity, portentous of most disastrous changes, and threatening to rival the moon in driving men mad. That the fears of people have been in any degree allayed, that a correct idea of the worth of German literature is beginning to gain ground, is due to Thomas Carlyle. He has introduced Germany to England, thereby discharging a Prose-Writers of Germany. By FREDERIC H. HEDGE. Illustrated with Portraits. Philadelphia: Carey & Hart. 1848. 8vo. pp. 567. great office of humanity. To bring two individuals who were strangers to each other, one of whom regarded the other with prejudice and contempt, into relations of mutual respect, is to perform a most Christian act. To displace ignorance by knowledge, an excluding pride by a sincere good-will, is to enlarge the boundaries of the invisible Christendom. To teach a man to pay his neighbour the respect to which that neighbour is entitled, is to confer upon him a new claim to be respected himself. How grand the service rendered, then, when ties of mutual kindness are created between two large communities, and such communities as England and Germany! He who renders the world such a service must be ranked among our greatest benefactors. The heartiest acknowledgments are due to Mr. Carlyle. We are grateful to him for the manifest and inestimable good that he has done. At the same time, it is not to be overlooked that Mr. Carlyle has impaired the value of his benefaction, not merely by his disloyal desertion of "the .pure wells of English undefiled," (with Sir Walter Scott, we like a quotation that is not hackneyed,) but also by an imitation of German modes of thought, altogether too close to be consistent with the intellectual independence which Mr. Carlyle appears to guard with such unsleeping jealousy. We admit, with some abatement, the common objections to the style of this remarkable writer. It is frequently as twisted and fantastic as those Chinese ornaments carved out of the roots of trees. Amidst endless convolutions and contortions there must needs be some accidental graces, and amidst all varieties of sounds some exquisite chords and cadences. Still, if, with no pretensions on this score, we may pass such a judgment, we apprehend that Mr. Carlyle has very little ear for music, and that there are more reasons than lie in his will why, poet as he is, he rarely versifies. To our sense, his style continually offends against all harmony. It is a breathless business to read him aloud. And this, we suppose, is one reason why so many persons are repelled from him. This much, however, may be said in extenuation of his peculiarities, that they have helped to reveal the versatility of which our language is susceptible, and to show that tameness is not a necessary quality of the English tongue. Still, Mr. Carlyle lacks simplicity; a very serious want. He writes in German slightly Anglicized. We should not venture this criti 1848.] cism, if we believed his style to be sincerely his own. In that case, we should accept it as his and be thankful. It is not well to "look a gift horse in the mouth." But here there is manifest room for doubt. Certain it is, that his present style is not his first style. In his earlier writings, his Life of Schiller, for instance, hardly a trace is visible, as all his readers know, of those characteristics with which his later productions have been successively more and more marked. The change which his manner of writing has undergone, comparing his earliest works with his latest, is most remarkable. We know of nothing like it in any great writer that we are acquainted with. With all our admiration of Carlyle, we cannot escape the impression, that his style is a borrowed one; especially when we note his close imitation of German models, of Richter in particular. To our apprehension, Carlyle is Richter Redivivus, with the slightest variations, not merely in forms of expression, but in ways of thinking and turns of humor. It is true, the Briton does not shed as many tears as the German. Richter's heroes rival even pius Eneas in the sensibility of their lachrymatory organs. And while Carlyle laughs as much, his mirth is grim, as if it were echoed out of cavernous depths of indignation and suffering. With these differences, the Leibgeber and Siebenkäs of Richter's romances are not more truly copies, one of the other, than Carlyle is of Richter. We cannot read one without being reminded of the other, and not seldom of particular passages in the other. We have no thought of insinuating a charge of plagiarism against Carlyle. His unquestionable originality raises him far above that. But it appears to us as if Richter had so entirely possessed Carlyle, that the latter is at times completely overpowered, and can only speak the thoughts, and in the humor, of his demon. As a mere curiosity, this strong resemblance and occasional identity of two minds of extraordinary power is so striking, that we wonder it has never been noticed. How it is to be explained, to speak with Mr. Carlyle, "were wise who wist." Nevertheless, we repeat, Mr. Carlyle has rendered us all a service the value of which it is not within our ability to estimate. He it is who has awakened on English soil the interest which is growing wider and deeper every day in German literature. In the chronicles of literary history it will stand recorded, that the appearance of this writer was the beginning of an intellectual federation of the German and English minds; we ought rather to say, perhaps, the beginning of a knowledge of German literature among Englishmen and the allies of Englishmen, for we find a marvellous familiarity with English literature in German works published fifty years ago. Swift and Sterne seem to have been as well known to Richter, for example, as if they were his own native teachers. And Shakspeare found his first philosophical appreciation among the Germans; a fact that alone should make us blush for the flippancy with which we were once disposed to regard the Germans, as if they were semi-barbarians at best, with no sound principles of thought, a people upon the worth of whose intellectual culture no dependence was to be placed. Our English pride might suggest to us, that, readers of English works, intelligent lovers of Shakspeare, the Germans have had some worthy guides. "They have seen some majesty, and should know. And reading us so long!" We disparage our own magnificent literature, with Shakspeare at its head, if we suppose that it could have been so diligently studied and so wisely valued without fruit in the German mind. Have they been at school to the English so long, and turned out dullards? The truth is, they knew what the English were about long before they themselves were known, even among our most highly educated. The modes of thought just beginning to appear among us came out in full flower in Germany half a century ago, and more. As Carlyle has said of English Utilitarians, so is it with our young philosophers of these days; they are so far in the rear, that they fancy themselves in the van. "But the Germans are a nation of dreamers." Without doubt, they are "first-rate " at dreaming. But dreaming has its significance, if dreams have not. It shows an active intellectual nature. Coleridge, is it not?- no high authority, we know, among the unbelieving, advises young men to look to the quality of their dreams, if they would be assured of the possession of the divine gift. But this by the way. For ourselves, to be greatly prepossessed in favor of the genius of the German people, we have only to bring to 1848.] Leutze. 267 mind German art, the music and painting of the Germans. We do not presume to talk about their classics in music, Mozart and Beethoven, but we are thinking of the national airs of Germany, those harmonies which have come out of the heart of the people, or been at once universally adopted as the musical language of the country. Is there any music so expressive, purely as music? Is there any music that so little needs interpretation for the uninitiated in the divine art, and that strikes so directly to the heart, awakening a thousand mysterious echoes, which come floating around us as from our birthplaces and homes? As in music, so in painting, the Germans hold strongly to nature; and thus some presumption is created in favor of the German nature generally. Let any one study the "Outlines" of Retzsch, the "Christus Consolator" of Ary Schaeffer, or that beautiful print of the "St. Catharine borne by Angels to Heaven," after Mücke, and the "Illustration of the One Hundred and Thirty-seventh Psalm," after Bendemann, and it will be felt that in respect to art the Germans are in profound sympathy with truth. Such works could hardly be produced by an artificial or superficial people. And here it will not be out of place to express our admiration of the noble genius of the artist, a design from whose pencil graces the title-page of Mr. Hedge's book, representing, as we interpret it, the triumph of letters over barbarian force. Mr. Leutze's name shows his German descent; and although he is a loyal American, and from early childhood until within a few years has been a resident in the United States, identified with us in language and by citizenship, yet it is upon German soil, and in association with eminent German artists, Lessing, Overbach, and others, and under the inspiring influences of German literature, as he himself gratefully acknowledges, that his genius has been nursed into whatever vigor it now shows. We claim him, and he considers himself, an American artist; and among our artists, young as he is, he stands second to none. His works (the bare titles of which indicate genius), "The Landing of the Northmen," "Cromwell and his Daughter," "John Knox and Mary, Queen of Scots," "Columbus received by Ferdinand and Isabella at Barcelona," and others, appeal to no questionable sense of beauty, but to our highest sentiments, and in this respect are akin to all of German art that we have had the good fortune to see. The exquisite works |