The nation is not, indeed, free in the American sense, but the despotism that oppressed it for ages is utterly swept away; if a master still rules, he is, at any rate, one beloved by his subjects, ruling with their consent. In politics, it is Hamlet no longer; perhaps it will be so in literature.

There is nothing more to be said in abatement of the glory of German writers. That the literature they have given the world deserves the highest estimation needs in this book no further setting forth; the story has been told in the pages that precede. To attempt to estimate the comparative excellence of German literature, to say whether it is greater or less than what the ancients, what England, Italy, or France, have achieved, is a task from which we may well shrink. Whether the literature of Germany or England is the grander structure was disputed in the time of Klopstock, a hundred years ago, drawing from him an ode in which the English and German muses - the former flushed with many triumphs, the latter just aroused from long sleep — are represented side by side. But the singer of the "Messias," while he represents the contest, does not venture to indicate the victor, a reticence which Madame de Stäel, who quotes the ode, and whom we may suppose to be an impartial judge, highly approves.1

Klopstock, however, shows a touch of patriotic arrogance in hinting, in his day, at a rivalry upon

1 L'Allemagne.

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."