Initiation into Literature Part 8

THE STAGE.--The drama was very brilliant during this first half of the nineteenth century. The struggle was lively for thirty or thirty-five years between the cla.s.sicists and the romanticists; the cla.s.sics defending their citadel, the French stage, much more by their polemics in the newspapers than by the unimportant works which they brought to the _Comedie francaise_, the romantics here producing nearly all the plays of Hugo (_Hernani_, _Marion de Lorme_, _Ruy Blas_, _The Burghers_, etc.), and the works of Vigny(_Oth.e.l.lo_, _Marshal d'Ancre_), as well as the dramas of Dumas (_Henry III and his Court_, etc.). Between the two schools, both of which were on the stage nearer to the modern than to the antique, the dexterous Casimir Delavigne, with almost invariable success, gave _Marino Faliero_, _Louis XI_, _The Children of Edward_, _Don Juan of Austria_, and _Princess Aurelia_, which was pretty, but without impa.s.sioned interest.

A veritable dramatic genius, although dest.i.tute of style, of elevation of thought and of ideas, but a prodigious constructor of well-made plays, was Eugene Scribe, who, by his dramas and comedies, as well as the libretti of operas, was the chief purveyor to the French stage between 1830 and 1860.

ROMANTICISM AND REALISM.--So far as pure literature was concerned, the second half of the nineteenth century was divided between enfeebled but persistent romanticism and realism. Theophile Gautier, in 1853, gave his _Enamels and Cameos_, his best poetic work, and later (1862) his _Captain Fraca.s.se_. Hugo wrote his _Miserables_, the second and third _Legends of the Centuries_, _Songs of the Streets and the Woods_, etc.

A third romantic generation, of which Theodore de Banville was the most brilliant representative, and which proceeded far more from Gautier than from Hugo or De Musset, pushed verbal and rhythmic virtuosity to the limit and perhaps beyond. Then great or highly distinguished poets appeared.

FAMOUS POETS.--Leconte de Lisle, philosophical poet, attracted by Indian literature, by pessimism, by the taste for nothingness, and the thirst for death, forcing admiration by his sculptural form and majestic rhythm; Sully-Prudhomme, another philosopher, especially psychological, manipulating the lyrical elegy with much art and, above all, infusing into it a grave, sad, and profound sensibility which would have awakened the affection and earned the respect of Catullus, Tibullus, and Lucretius; Francis Coppee, the poet of the joys and sorrows of the lowly, a dexterous versifier too, and possessed of a sincerity so candid as to make the reader forget that there is art in it; Baudelaire, inquisitive about rare and at times artificial sensations, possessing a laborious style, but sometimes managing to produce a deep impression either morbid or lugubrious, considered by an entire school which is still extant as one of the greatest poets within the whole range of French literature; Verlaine, extremely unequal, often detestable and contemptible, but suddenly charming and touching or revealing a religious feeling that suggests a clerk of the Middle Ages; Catulle Mendes, purely romantic, wholly virtuoso, but an astonis.h.i.+ngly dexterous versifier. To these poets some highly curious literary dandies set themselves in opposition, being desirous of renovating the poetic art by ascribing more value to the sound of words than to their meaning, striving to make a music of poesy and, in a general way--which is their chief characteristic--being difficult to understand. They gave themselves the name of symbolists, and accepted that of decadents; they regarded Stephen Mallarme either as their chief or as a friend who did them honour. This school has been dignified by no masterpieces and will probably ere long be forgotten.

REALISTIC LITERATURE.--Confronting all this literature, which had a romantic origin even when it affected scorn of the men of 1830, was developed an entire realistic literature composed almost exclusively of writers in prose, but of prose imbued with poetry written by some who had read the romantics and who would not have achieved what they did had romanticism not already existed, a fact which they themselves have not denied, and which is now almost universally accepted. Flaubert, whose masterpiece, _Madame Bovary_, is dated 1857, was very precisely divided between the two schools; he possessed the taste for breadth of eloquence, for the adventurous, and for Oriental colouring, and also the taste for the common, vulgar, well visualised, thoroughly a.s.similated truth, tersely portrayed in all its significance. But as he has succeeded better, at least in the eyes of his contemporaries, as a realist than as a man with imagination, he pa.s.ses into history as the founder of realism always conditionally upon considering Balzac as possessing much of the vigorous realism which provided the impulse and furnished models.

NATURALISM.--From the realism of Flaubert was born the naturalism of Zola, which is the same thing more grossly expressed. Also by his energetic, violent, and tenacious talent, as well as by a weighty though powerful imagination, he exercised over his contemporaries a kind of fascination which it would be puerile to regard as an infatuation for which there was no cause.

More refined and even extremely delicate, though himself also fond of the small characteristic fact; possessed, too, with a graceful and gracious sensibility, Alphonse Daudet often charmed and always interested us in his novels, which are the pictorial anecdotes of the Parisian world at the close of the second Empire and the opening of the third Republic.

The brothers De Goncourt also enjoyed notable success, being themselves absorbed in the exceptional deed and the exceptional character whilst possessing a laboured style which is sometimes seductive because of its unlooked-for effects.

THE POSITIVISTS.--Two great men filled with their renown an epoch already so brilliant; namely, Renan and Taine, both equally historians and philosophers. Renan composed _The History of the Children of Israel_ and _The Origins of Christianity_, as well as various works of general philosophy, of which the most celebrated is ent.i.tled _Philosophical Dialogues_. Taine wrote the history of _The Origins of Contemporary France_: that is, the history of the French Revolution, and sundry philosophical works of which the princ.i.p.al are _On Intelligence_ and _The French Philosophers of the Eighteenth Century_. Both were "positivists," that is to say, elevating Auguste Comte, who has his place in the history of philosophy, but not here, because he was not a good writer; both were positivists, but Renan possessed a lively and profound sense of the grandeur and the moral beauty of Christianity, Taine being imbued with more philosophic strictness. Renan, with infinite flexibility of intelligence, applied himself to understand thoroughly and always (with some excess) to bring home to us the great figures of the Bible, the Gospels, and the early Christians, as well as their foes down to the time of Marcus Aurelius. Further, he affirmed science to possess _unique_ value in his _Future of Science_; elsewhere, under the similitude of "dreams," he indulged in conceptions, hypotheses, and metaphysical imaginations which were voluntarily rash and infinitely seductive. As always happens, he possessed the style of his mind, supple, sinuous, undulating, astonis.h.i.+ngly plastic, insatiable, and charming, evoking the comment, "That is admirably done and it is impossible to know with what it is done."

TAINE.--Taine, more rigid, acc.u.mulating doc.u.ments and methodically arranging them in a method that refuses to be concealed, advances in a rectilineal order, step by step, and with a measured gait, to a solid truth which he did not wish to be either evasive or complex. Highly pessimistic and a little affecting to be so, just as Renan was optimistic and much affected being so, he believed in the evil origin of man and of the necessity for him to be drastically curbed if he is to remain inoffensive. He has written a history of the Revolution wherein he has refused admiration and respect for the crimes then committed, which is why posterity now begins to be very severe upon him. His learned style is wholly artificial, coloured without his being a colourist, composed of metaphors prolonged with difficulty, yet remaining singularly imposing and powerful. He was a curious philosopher, an upright, severe, and rather systematic historian, solid and laboriously original as a writer.

BRUNETIeRE.--Brunetiere, of the great French thinkers before our contemporaneous epoch, was critic, literary historian, philosopher, theologian, and orator. As critic, he defended cla.s.sic tradition against bold innovations, and, especially, moral literature against licentious or gross literature; as a literary historian he renovated literary history by the introduction of the curious, audacious, and fruitful theory of evolution, and his _Manual of the History of French Literature_ was a masterpiece; as philosopher he imparted clearness and precision into the system of Auguste Comte, whose disciple he was; as theologian, exceeding Comte and utilising him, he added weight to Catholicism in France by finding new and decisive "reasons for belief"; as orator he raised his marvellously eloquent tones in France, Switzerland, and America, making more than a hundred "fighting speeches." Since the death of Renan and Taine, he has been the sole director of French thought, which he continues to guide by his books and by the diffusion of his thought among the most vigorous, serious, and meditative minds of the day.

THE CONTEMPORANEOUS DRAMA.--The drama, since 1850, has been almost exclusively written in prose. Emil Augier, however, composed some comedies and dramas in verse and in verse particularly suited to the stage; but the major portion of his work is in prose, whilst Alexander Dumas and Sardou have written exclusively in prose. Augier and Dumas came from Balzac, and remained profoundly realistic, which was particularly suitable to authors of comedy. They studied the manners of the second Empire and depicted them wittily; they studied the social questions which agitated educated minds at this time and drew useful inspiration. Augier leant towards good middle-cla.s.s common-sense, which did not prevent him from having plenty of wit. Dumas was more addicted to paradox and possessed as much ability as his rival. Victorien Sardou, as dexterous a dramatic constructor as Scribe, and who sometimes rose above this, dragged his easy tolerance from the grand historic drama to the comedy of manners, to light comedy and to insignificant comedy with prodigious facility and inexhaustible fertility.

The most admired living authors, whom we shall be content only to name because they are living, are poets: Edmond Rostand, author of _Loiterings_; Edmond Haraucourt, author of _The Naked Soul_ and _The Hope of the World_; Jean Aicard, author of _Miette el Nore_; Jean Richepin, author of _Cesarine_, _Caresses_, _Blasphemies_, etc.; in fiction, Paul Bourget, Marcel Prevost, Rene Bazin, Bordeaux, Boylesve, Henri de Regnier; in history, Ernest Lavisse, Aulard, Seign.o.bos, D'Haussonville; in philosophy, Boutroux, Bergson, Theodule Ribot, Fouillee, Izoulet; in the drama, Paul Hervieu, Lavedan, Bataille, Brieux, Porto-Riche, Bernstein, Wolff, Tristan Bernard, Edmond Rostand, author of _Cyrano de Bergerac_ and of _The Aiglon_; as orators, Alexander Ribot, De Mun Poincare, Jaures, etc.

CHAPTER XVI

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: ENGLAND

Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Pope, Young, MacPherson, etc.: Prose Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Daniel Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Swift, Sterne, David Hume. Poets of the Nineteenth Century: Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, the Lake Poets: Prose Writers of the Nineteenth Century: Walter Scott, Macaulay, d.i.c.kens, Carlyle.

THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE: POETS.--As in France, the eighteenth century (the age of Queen Anne) was in England richer in prose than in poetry. As poets, however, must be indicated Thomson, descriptive and dramatic, whose profound feeling for nature was not without influence over French writers of the same century; Pope, descriptive writer, translator, moralist, elegiast, very intelligent and highly polished, whose _Essay on Criticism_ and _Essay on Man_ were remarkably utilised by Voltaire; Edward Young, whose _Night Thoughts_ enjoyed the same prodigious success in France as in England, and who contributed in no small measure to darken and render gloomy both literatures; MacPherson, who invented _Ossian_, that is, pretended poems of the Middle Ages, a magnificent genius, be it said, who exercised considerable influence over the romanticism of both lands; Chatterton, who trod the same road, but with less success, yet was valued almost equally by the French romantic poets, and to them he has owed at least the consolidation of his immortality; Cowper, elegiac and fantastic, with a highly humorous vein; Crabbe, a very close observer of popular customs and an ingenious novelist in verse, quite a.n.a.logous to the Dutch painters; Burns, a peasant-poet, sensitive and impa.s.sioned, yet at the same time a careful artist moved by local customs, the manifestations of which he saw displayed before his eyes.

PROSE WRITERS.--The masters of prose (some being also true poets) were innumerable. Daniel Defoe, journalist, satirist, pamphleteer, was the author of the immortal _Robinson Crusoe_; Addison, justly adored by Voltaire, author of a sound tragedy, _Cato_, is supremely a scholar, the acute, sensible, and extremely thoughtful editor of _The Spectator_; Richardson, the idol of Diderot and of Jean Jacques Rousseau, enjoyed a European success with his sentimental and virtuous novels, _Pamela_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, and _Sir Charles Grandison_. As a critic and as a personality, Dr. Johnson has no parallel in any age or land. His _Dictionary_ is famous despite its faults, and _Ra.s.selas_, which he wrote to pay for his mother's funeral, can still be read.

Fielding, who began by being only the parodist of Richardson, in _Joseph Andrews_, ended by becoming an astounding realistic novelist, the worthy predecessor of Thackeray and d.i.c.kens in his extraordinary _Tom Jones_. The amiable Goldsmith, more akin to Richardson, wrote that idyllic novel _The Vicar of Wakefield_, the charm of which was still felt throughout Europe only fifty years ago. Laurence Sterne, the most accurate representative of English _humour_, capable of emotion more especially ironical, jester, mystificator, has both amused and disquieted several generations with his _Sentimental Journey_ and his fantastical, disconcerting and enchanting _Tristram Shandy_. Swift, horribly bitter, a corrosive and cruel satirist, sadly scoffed at all the society of his time in _Gulliver's Travels_, in _Drapier's Letters_, in his _Proposal to Prevent the Children of the Poor Being a Burden_, in a ma.s.s of other small works wherein the most infuriated wrath is sustained under the form of calm and glacial irony.

HISTORY.--History was expressed in England in the eighteenth century by David Hume, who chronicled the progress of the English race from the Middle Ages until the eighteenth century; by Robertson, who similarly handled the Scotch and who narrated the reign of Charles V; and by Gibbon, so habitually familiar with the French society of his time, who followed the Romans from the first Caesars to Marcus Aurelius, then more closely from Marcus Aurelius to the epoch of Constantine, and finally the Byzantine Empire up to the period of the Renaissance. The imposing erudition, the rather pompous but highly distinguished style of the author, without counting his animosity to Christianity, caused him to enjoy a great success, especially in France. The work of Gibbon is regarded as the finest example of history written by an Englishman.

THE STAGE.--The stage in England in the eighteenth century sank far below its importance in the seventeenth century; yet who does not know _She Stoops to Conquer_ of Goldsmith, and that sparkling and lively comedy, _The School for Scandal_, by Sheridan? Note, as an incomparable journalist, the famous and mysterious Junius, who, from 1769 to 1772, waged such terrible war on the minister Grafton.

THE LAKE POETS.--In the nineteenth century appeared those poets so familiar to the French romanticists, or else the latter pretended they were, who were termed the lake poets, because they were lovers of the countryside; these were Southey, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Southey was an epic and elegiac poet, whilst he was also descriptive; Coleridge, philosopher, metaphysician, a little nebulous and disordered, had very fine outbursts and some lamentable falls. Wordsworth was a most distinguished lyricist. Lord Byron did not acquire honour by so roughly handling Southey and Wordsworth.

THE ROMANTIC EPOCH.--The two greatest English poets of the romantic period were Lord Byron and Sh.e.l.ley; the former the admirable poet of disenchantment and of despair, gifted with a n.o.ble epic genius, creating and vitalising characters which, it must be confessed, differed very little from one another, but an exalted figure with a grand manner and, except Shakespeare, the only English poet who exercised genuine influence over French literature; the latter an idealistic poet of the most suave delicacy, aerial and heavenly, despite a private life of the utmost disorder and even guilt, he is one of the most perfect poets that ever lived; a great tragedian, too, in his _Cenci_, quite unknown in France until the middle of the nineteenth century, but since then the object of a sort of adoration among the larger number of Gallic poets and lovers of poetry.

Keats was as romantic as Sh.e.l.ley and Byron, both in spite of and because of his desperate efforts to a.s.similate the Grecian spirit. He dreamt of its heroes and its ancient myths, but there is in him little that is Grecian except the choice of subjects, and it is not in his grand poem, _Endymion_, nor even in that fine fragment, _Hyperion_, that can be found the real melancholy, sensitive, and modern poet, but in his last short poems, _The Skylark_, _On a Greek Vase_, _Autumn_, which, by the exquisite perfection of their form and the harmonious richness of the style, take rank among the most beautiful songs of English lyrism.

Nearer to us came Tennyson, possessing varied inspiration, epical, lyrical, elegiac poet, always exalted and pure, approaching the cla.s.sical, and himself already a cla.s.sic.

Swinburne, almost exclusively lyrical, a dexterous and enchanting versifier, inspired by the ancient Greeks, generally evinced a highly original poetic temperament, and Dante Rossetti, imbued with mediaeval inspiration, possessed a powerful and slightly giddy imagination. Far less known on the Continent, where critics may feel surprise at her necessary inclusion here, is his sister, Christina Rossetti. Her qualities as a poet are a touching and individual grace, much delicate spontaneity, a pure and often profound emotion, and an instinct as a stylist which is almost infallible. The Brownings form a celebrated couple, and about them Carlyle, on hearing of their marriage, observed that he hoped they would understand each other. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, translator of Aeschylus of Theocritus, gave proof in her original poetry of a vigour, of a vividness, and of a vigorous exuberance of similes that often recalled the Elizabethans, but marred her work by declamatory rhetoric and by a tormented and often obscure style. Robert Browning was yet more difficult, owing to his overpowering taste for subtlety and the bizarre--nay, even the grotesque. Almost ignored, or at least unappreciated by his contemporaries, he has since taken an exalted place in English admiration, which he owes to the depth, originality, and extreme richness of his ideas, all the more, perhaps, because they lend themselves to a number of differing interpretations.

THE NOVELISTS.--In prose the century began with the historical novelist, Sir Walter Scott, full of lore and knowledge, reconstructor and astonis.h.i.+ng _reviver_ of past times, more especially the Middle Ages, imbuing all his characters with life, and even in some measure vitalising the objects he evoked. None more than he, not even Byron, has enjoyed such continuous appreciation with both French romantic poets and also the French reading public. The English novel, recreated by this great master, was worthily continued by d.i.c.kens, both sentimentalist and humourist, a jesting, though genial, delineator of the English middle cla.s.s, and an accurate and sympathetic portrayer of the poor; by Thackeray, supreme railer and satirist, terrible to egoists, hypocrites, and sn.o.bs; by the prolific and entertaining Bulwer-Lytton, by the grave, philosophical, and sensible George Eliot, by Charlotte Bronte, author of the affecting _Jane Eyre_, etc., and her sister Emily, whose _Wuthering Heights_ has been almost extravagantly admired.

Four other great prose writers presenting startling divergences from one another cannot be omitted. Belonging to the first half of the nineteenth century, Charles Lamb earned wide popularity by his _Tales from Shakespeare_ and _Poetry for Children_, written in collaboration with his sister Mary; but he was specially remarkable for his famed _Essays of Elia_, wherein he affords evidence of possessing an almost paradoxical mixture of delicate sensibility and humour, as well as of accurate and also fantastic observation. Newman, at first an English clergyman but subsequently a cardinal, after conversion to the Catholic Church, appears to me hardly eligible in a history of literature in which Lamennais has no place. As a literary man, his famous sermons at Oxford and the Tracts exercised much influence, and provoked such impa.s.sioned and prodigious revival of old doctrines and of an antiquated spirit in religion; then the _Apologia Pro Vita Sua_, _Callista_, and the _History of Arianism_, revealed him as a master of eloquence.

Ruskin, as art critic, in his bold volumes illumined with remarkable beauty of styles, _Modern Painters_, _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, and _The Stones of Venice_, formulated the creed and the school of pre-Raphaelitism. At the time of the religious revival at Oxford, he preached a servile imitation of antiquity by the path of the Renaissance, appealing to national and mediaeval inspiration, not without _navete_ and archaism, none the less evident because he was sincere and mordant. George Meredith, who died only in 1910, was a prolific and often involved novelist (the Browning of prose), with a pa.s.sion for metaphors and a too freely expressed eclectic scorn for the mult.i.tude. Withal, he had a profound knowledge of life and of the human soul; impregnated with humour, he was creator of unforgettable types of character, and no pre-occupation of his epoch was foreign to his mind, whilst his vigorous realism always obstinately refused to turn from contemporaneous themes, or to gratify the needs and aspirations which it was possible to satisfy.

His epitaph might well be that he understood the women of his time, a rare phenomenon.

HISTORY.--History could show two writers of absolute superiority--Macaulay (_History of England since James II_), an omnivorous reader and very brilliant writer, and Carlyle, the English Michelet, feverish, pa.s.sionate, incongruous, and disconcerting, who dealt with history as might a very powerful lyrical poet.

CHAPTER XVII

THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: GERMANY

Poets of the Eighteenth Century: Klopstock, Lessing, Wieland; Prose Writers of the Eighteenth Century: Herder, Kant. Poets of the Nineteenth Century: Goethe, Schiller, Korner.

THE AGE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT.--In the literature of Germany the eighteenth century, sometimes designated under the t.i.tle of the age of Frederick the Great, forms a Renaissance or, if preferred, an awakening after a fairly prolonged slumber. This awakening was a.s.sisted by a quarrel, sufficiently unimportant in itself, but which proved fertile, between Gottsched, the German Boileau, and Bodmer, the energetic vindicator of the rights of the imagination. In the train of Bodmer came Haller, like him a Swiss; then suddenly Klopstock appeared. _The Messiah_ of Klopstock is an epic poem; it is the history of Jesus Christ from Cana to the Resurrection, with a crowd of episodes dexterously attached to the action. The profound religious sentiment, the grandeur of the setting, the beauty of the scenes, the purity and n.o.bility of the sermon, the Biblical colour so skilfully spread over the whole composition, cause this vast poem, which was perhaps unduly praised on its first appearance, to be one of the finest products of the human mind, even when all reservations are made. German literature revived. As for Gottsched, he was vanquished.

THE POETS.--Then came Lavater, Burger, Lessing, Wieland. Lavater, a Swiss like Haller, is remembered for his scientific labours, but was also a meritorious poet, and his naive and moving _Swiss Hymns_ have remained national songs; Burger was a great poet, lyrical, impa.s.sioned, personal, original, vibrating; Wieland, the Voltaire of Germany, although he began by being the friend of Klopstock, witty, facile, light, and graceful, whose _Oberon_ and _Agathon_ preserve the gift of growing old felicitously, is one of the most delightful minds that Germany produced.

Napoleon did him the honour of desiring to converse with him as with Goethe.

LESSING.--Lessing, personally, was a great author, and owing to the influence he exercised over his fellow-countrymen, he holds one of the n.o.blest positions in the history of German literature. He was a critic, and in his _Dramaturgie of Hamburg_ and elsewhere, with all his strength, and often unjustly, he combated French literature to arrest the ascendency which, according to his indolent opinion, it exercised over the Germans; and in his _Laoc.o.o.n_, with admirable lucidity, he made a kind of cla.s.sification of the arts. As author, properly speaking, he wrote _Fables_ which to our taste are dry and cold; he made several dramatic efforts none of which were masterpieces, the best being _Minna von Barnhelm_ and _Emilia Galotti_, and a philosophical poem in dialogue (for it could hardly be termed drama), _Nathan the Sage_, which possessed great moral and literary beauties.

HERDER.--Herder was the Vico of Germany. Here was the historical philosopher, or rather the thoughtful philosopher on history. He did everything: literary criticism, works of erudition, translations, even personal poems, but his great work was _Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind_. This was the theory of progress in all its breadth and majesty, supported by arguments that are at least s.p.a.cious and imposing. From Michelet to Quinet, on to Renan, every French author who has at all regarded the unity of the destinies of the human race has drawn inspiration from him. His broad, measured, and highly coloured style is on the level of the subject and conforms to it. Even in an exclusively literary history Kant must not be forgotten, because when he set himself to compose a moral dissertation, as, for example, the one upon lying, he took high rank as a writer.

THE GLORIOUS EPOCH.--Thus is reached the end of the eighteenth close on the beginning of the nineteenth century. In this intermediary epoch shone the most glorious hour of Teutonic literature. Simultaneously Iffland, Kotzebue, Korner, Schiller, and Goethe were to the fore. This formed a great constellation. Iffland, actor, manager, and author, friend and protector of Schiller, wrote numerous dramas, the princ.i.p.al of which were _The Criminal through Ambition_, _The Pupil_, _The Hunters_, _The Lawyers_, _The Friends of the House_. He was realistic without being gloomy. He resembled the French Sedaine. Kotzebue, who was the friend of Catherine of Russia, subsequently disgraced by her, possessed a highly irritable and quarrelsome disposition, and was finally killed in 1819 as a reactionary by a Liberal student, did not fall far short of genius.

He wrote a number of dramas and comedies. Those still read with pleasure are _Misanthropy and Repentance_, _Hugo Grotius_, _The Calumniator_, and _The Small German Town_, which has remained a cla.s.sic.

KoRNER.--Korner, the "Tyrtaeus of Germany," was simultaneously a brave soldier and a great lyrical poet who was killed on the battlefield of Gadebusch, wrote lyrical poems, dramas, comedies, farces, and, above all, _The Lyre and Sword_, war-songs imbued with splendid spirit.

SCHILLER.--Schiller is a vast genius, historian, lyrical poet, dramatic poet, critic, and in all these different fields he showed himself to be profoundly original. He wrote _The Thirty Years' War_; odes, ballads, dithyrambic poems, such as _The Clock_, so universally celebrated; dissertations of philosophic criticism, such as _The G.o.d of Greece_ and _The Artists_; finally, a whole repertory of drama (the only point on which it is possible to show that he surpa.s.ses Goethe), in which may be remarked his first audacious and anarchical work, _The Brigands_, then the _Conjuration of Fieso_, _Intrigue and Love_, _Don Carlos_, _Wallenstein_ (a trilogy composed of _The Camp of Wallenstein_, _The Piccolomini_, _The Death of Wallenstein_), _Mary Stuart_, _The Betrothed of Messina_, _The Maid of Orleans_, _William Tell_. By his example primarily, and by his instruction subsequently (_Twelve Letters on Don Carlos_, _Letters on Aesthetic Education_, _The Sublime_, etc.), he exercised over literature and over German thought an influence at least equal, and I believe superior, to that of Goethe. He was united to Goethe by the ties of a profound and undeviating friends.h.i.+p. He died whilst still young, in 1805, twenty-seven years before his ill.u.s.trious friend.

GOETHE.--Goethe, whom posterity can only put in the same rank as Homer, is even more universal genius, and has approached yet closer to absolute beauty. Of Franco-German education, he subsequently studied at Strasburg, commencing, whilst still almost a student, with the imperishable _Werther_, to which it may be said that a whole literature is devoted and, parenthetically, a literature diametrically opposed to what Goethe subsequently became. Then a journey through Italy, which revealed Goethe to himself, made him a man who never ceased to desire to combine cla.s.sic beauty and Teutonic ways of thinking, and who was often magnificently successful. To put it in another way, Goethe in his own land is a Renaissance in himself, and the Renaissance which Germany had not known in either the sixteenth or seventeenth century came as the gift of Goethe. Immediately after his return from Italy he wrote _Ta.s.so_ (of cla.s.sic inspiration), _Wilhelm Meister_ (of Teutonic inspiration), _Iphigenia_ (cla.s.sical), _Egmont_ (Teutonic), etc. Then came _Hermann and Dorothea_, which was absolutely cla.s.sic in the simplicity of its plan and purity of lyric verse, but essentially modern in its picture of German customs; _The Roman Elegies_, _The Elective Affinities_, _Poetry and Truth_ (autobiography mingled with romance), _The Western Eastern Divan_, lyrical poems, and finally, the two parts of _Faust_. In the first part of _Faust_, Goethe was, and desired to be, entirely German; in the second, through many reveries more or less relative to the theme, he more particularly desires to depict the union of the German spirit with that of cla.s.sical genius, which formed his own life, and led to _intelligent action_, which also was a portion of his existence. And for beauty, drama, pathos, ease, phantasy, and fertility in varied invention, nothing has ever surpa.s.sed if anything has even equalled the two parts of _Faust_ regarded as a single poem.

Apart from his literary labours, Goethe occupied himself with the administration of the little duchy of Weimar, and in scientific research, notably on plants, animals, and the lines in which he displayed marked originality. He died in 1832, having been born in 1749. His literary career extends over, approximately, sixty years, equal to that of Victor Hugo, and almost equal to that of Voltaire.

THE CONTEMPORANEOUS PERIOD.--After the death of Goethe, Germany could not maintain the same height. Once more was she glorified in poetry by Henry Heine, an extremely original witty traveller, in his _Pictures of Travel_, elegiac and deeply lyrical, affecting and delightful at the same time in _The Intermezzo_; by the Austrian school, Zedlitz, Grun, and the melancholy and deep-thinking Lenau; in prose, above all, by the philosophers, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and lastly Nietzsche--at once philosopher, moralist (after his own manner), and poet, with an astonis.h.i.+ng imagination; by the historians Niebuhr (before 1830), Treitschke, Mommsen, etc. Germany seems to have drooped, so far as literature is concerned, despite some happy exceptions (especially in the drama: Hauptmann, Sudermann), since her military triumphs of 1870 and the consequent industrial activity.