equal terms between the muses of England and Germany. The former had seen its most glorious time; the latter was just beginning to vindicate itself after a lethargy of centuries. For our time such a comparison would show no overweening confidence. If the single name of Shakespeare be excepted, whose supremacy the Germans are as willing to accord as we are to claim it, there is no English name which cannot be matched from the great literature which has been the subject of our study.

APPENDIX.

NOTE A (p. 243).

Opitz should receive more extended mention than the few lines devoted to him on page 243. He was a shrewd, timeserving courtier. Although a Protestant, he became a servant and confidential friend of Catholic princes who persecuted without mercy his fellow-believers. Scarcely a breath of genuine poetic spirit appears in his verses. For more than a hundred years, however, he enjoyed an immense prestige; he was called the father of German poetry, and it has only in our time become possible to give right proportions to the fame of the "Silesian Swan." His celebrated critical treatise, "Von der Deutschen Poeterei," contains the principles upon which he wrote, and which he sought, so successfully, to bring into vogue. The work occupies itself with external matters, for it was not until Lessing's day that a critic was found who could treat of poetry in its essence. It is no slight desert, however, to have given German poetry a nobler and more artistic form. Through him the speech of Luther became the language of the poets, who forsook also foreign idioms and dialectic peculiarities. Opitz restored dignity to poetic expression. Through his influence, the laws of prosody which prevail even at the present day were recognized and established. It can moreover be said for Opitz, that, at a time when the literature of Germany was at its lowest, he won for poetry written in his native tongue a respectful hearing among the learned

38

and powerful, an achievement which he accomplished by a wise choice of subjects, and a treatment which gained respect.

NOTE B (p. 421).

Schiller cannot be considered quite spotless. He is often contrasted in moral respects with Göthe, greatly to the disadvantage of the latter. His relations with one woman, at least, must be set down as blameworthy. Charlotte von Kalb was a beautiful and gifted woman, the wife of a nobleman, whom she did not love, whom she had been forced to marry, and who had sought her solely for her estate. Schiller, who was slightly her senior, became acquainted with her in Mannheim, when he was twenty-five. They felt at once for one another an earnest admiration, which soon became love. Schiller's passion wrought itself, soon after, into the tragedy of "Don Carlos." When he left Mannheim, at the end of a year's intimacy, he parted from the Frau von Kalb with a kiss, and assurances of undying devotion; and soon after appear the Free-thinking of Passion," and "Resignation," poems inspired by his hopeless affection, containing a protest against the Christian code of morals. It would be unjust to suppose that any criminal relation existed between Schiller and Charlotte von Kalb. The connection may be compared, in some ways, with that between Göthe and Charlotte von Stein. The lovers came together at a later period, in Weimar, and the intimacy was renewed. When Schiller, at length, married Charlotte von Lengenfeld, an estrangement came to pass, followed, however, by a reconciliation and continued friendship.

"

We find Schiller, then, as well as his great com

1 "Freigeisterei der Leidenschaft."

peer, involved in a passion, far transcending platonic bounds, for a woman married to another. Admitting that he was culpable, it must be said, in fairness, that there was in the guilty relation every palliating circumstance. Charlotte von Kalb, bound hand and foot, had been delivered to an unloved husband, who sought her merely for mercenary motives. The German society of the last century saw in the connection nothing unusual, perhaps nothing deserving of criticism. The social standing of neither one of them appears to have been affected in the least. The Duchess Amalie of Weimar invited them together to her æsthetic teas. There was not a hint of exclusion from any circle. If Göthe, however, is to be judged harshly for his intimacy with the Frau von Stein, Schiller should suffer also.

NOTE C (p. 474).

The most elaborate criticism which the "Short History of German Literature" has received is that of the Rev. Dr. F. H. Hedge, Professor of German Literature in Harvard University, published in The Unitarian Review for March, 1879. The author of the "Short History" regards Dr. Hedge as the first authority in America on many points in German scholarship. That Dr. Hedge has thought fit to speak publicly of the "Short History" as in many ways worthy of high praise, the author honestly counts as among the greatest distinctions that have ever come to him.

Dr. Hedge, together with his praise, points out very frankly the defects of the book. The author feels that upon several points, where his critic takes him sharply to task, a good defence is possible, and proposes now to make some examination of the doctor's strictures.

As to what constitutes adequacy in such a book, Dr. Hedge should be an excellent judge. For more than fifty