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ceptions, and luckily will never be acquired by mankind at large. Scholars, owing to the effeminacy of their habits, perceive many things too strongly, and feel other things too weakly. They do not possess the elements of human nature in the average proportion, and therefore are little to be trusted, I think, in judging of poetry and popular literature, which is by no means addressed exelusively to the understanding and imagination, but to the whole aggregate mass of faculties, sentiments, and propensities, which go to make up human nature a great part of which, as I said before, is often imperfect in studious people. I would be ready to bet any money, if the thing were capable of being ascertained, that a common shopkeeper in London has more feeling of the manly and energetic passages of Shakspeare, than most of those feeble young lads whom a milksop constitution has led to addict themselves to the belles lettres. The language of Shakspeare is like the sound of trumpet, and speaks to men of full bloods and masculine temperaments; and it is not easy to conceive how a young consumptive clergyman, perspiring at the nose, with scarcely any brawn upon his legs, should ever be able to crush into the pit of the theatre upon a full night, or enter into the real spirit of Shakspeare after he got there.

I therefore think it extremely unfortunate, that the respect which mankind feel for intellect and erudition, should enable literary persons to assume the authority which they do assume in matters of taste. For all the intellect and acuteness in the world will only enable a person to decide upon the skill and conduct exhibited in a piece, and upon the neatness of the arrangement of the ideas contained in it, but never upon its general potency as an appeal to human nature. The best ratification of a good work, is when human nature makes the proper responses to it. As for the responses of critics, they put one in mind of the Aldermen of Braywick. "Be not wise beyond what is written," says the Scripture; but in no work do critics perceive distinctly what is written. They always see something more or something else. I say they know not how the thing looks to a plain,

downright, and rational man. They are not in a sound state of mind, any more than those sons of corruption, who, for these thirty years, have been putting the vilest misconstructions upon every thing which I have written, and who continue to do so, although they have been again and again exposed and detected, and a thousand and a thousand times overlaid with argument and fact, and tracked home to the innermost den of hireling malignity.

Taste relates chiefly to fineness and propriety of arrangement. Now, I say, (and so says every vigorous mind) give me a sufficient supply of materials such as Shakspeare pours forth, and I do not care so much about the general design, or the observance of proprieties, which for the most part afford but a feeble and trivial pleasure-a pleasure perceived coldly by the judgment, and not a powerful throb of passion communicated to the heart, or an enlivening impulse given to the reflective powers. If this preference were not just, how should it happen that men of sense derive so much gratification from the perusal of Shakspeare's writings, which, all the world admits, are a chaos, and nothing but a chaos, of thoughts, observations, and pictures. In making this remark, however, I must not fail to allow that Shakspeare exhibits the utmost coherence in the delineation of human character. This is the highest kind of coherence; and it is the only kind which he possesses. But the very licenses he takes enable him to fill his pages with a greater variety of remarks, images, and mental food, of every sort.

Upon looking over what I have written, I begin to think that I have gone a little too far, and have advanced some things savouring of paradox. But let not the malignant rejoice. My propositions will be found true in all their bearings, true in every item, if they are properly explained. The sources of pleasure in a literary. production are so complicated, that it is not easy to insist much upon the advantages of one, without saying something in prejudice of another. The fact is, that they are not always compatible, and that, like the faculties they address, they sometimes pull different ways. Tenderness and enthusiasm, for instance, incline to dwell

perseveringly upon the same thoughts, or, at least, upon thoughts so much akin to each other, as to cherish and prolong the same sentiment. The understanding, on the other hand, is often gratified by the juxtaposition and comparison of ideas, which are calculated to produce very different sentiments; and the faculty of ridicule delights in ideas which bear an express contradiction to each other. Now we see that different authors have entertained very different opinions concerning the possibility of reconciling these jarring interests in the same composition. Shakspeare, in keeping the mind always full, is certainly sometimes apt to garble impressions and feelings, so rapidly does he shift the intellectual scene. These mixed masses of thought bear a close resemblance to what really takes place in the human mind; and when viewed in the light of imitations, they are excellent. I will, at the same time, however, admit, that poetry is not altogether an imitative art. It is also a selective and perfectionating art; and, by picking out of the general chaos a number of thoughts which have the same character and colour, is often able to produce more sustained and continuous impressions than those which occur in nature. But what I mean to point out is the radical difference between substance and conduct or arrangement. It seems to be a conclusion warranted by the whole history of poetry, that those writers who aim at too high a degree of purity and propriety, generally fall into a corresponding poverty of materials; and for my part, I confess myself to be, on the whole, an advocate for the full and substantial style of composition, as being the one best adapted to the appetites of a vigorous mind.

There is another reason for this preference. Nations vary in their characters; there is a difference of mental constitution to be observed among them; and their literature should be adapted, not to the outlandish and bookish tastes of scholars, who, by too much reading, come to belong to no country, but to the indigenous habits peculiar to each nation. Now I do not think that Englishmen, generally speaking, are remarkable for a quick perception of those exactitudes, neatnesses, and skilful adaptations,

which form so great a part of what is called fine taste. At least, the perception of these things does not afford an excitement sufficiently great to fill the minds of Englishmen, who, after all, (and I do not say it contemptuously) are but obtuse cubs in many things; and I think, therefore, that our literature should not make too many appeals to a delicate and quick perception of coherences, but grapple with our passions, imaginations, and intellects, foggy, robust, and confused as they are. The Frenchmen have far more quicksightedness in these matters. They are speedily able to detect irregularity and unsuitableness wherever it exists; and, on the other hand, their minds are highly gratified by the observance of fitness and decorum, as one may easily perceive in the construction of their tragedies. The ancient Greeks (although very different people from the Frenca) probably resembled them in quicksightedness, to which they added strong and lofty feelings; but their plays are no models for us, who are not what is called classical in our habits of thinking, but plain Englishmen, just as we should be. I remember, on coming home from America, when I landed at Portsmouth, the first thing that met my eye was the sign of the Tankard and Cross Cudgels, which immediately struck me as an happy emblem of the nature of my countrymen.

I recollect of seeing lately, in the Edinburgh Review, a discourse upon literary compositions, in which it was said, that a perfect performance should have but one beauty, and should not be crowded with too many incidental strokes of genius; in short, that it should resemble, in purity and simplicity, a Greek temple. But there is a material difference between a poem and a visible object like a Greek temple. A temple can afford to be plain and meagre in its details, because we see the whole at once, and, in contemplating the general design, find no dearth of mental occupation; sinee, in fact, it exhibits as many parts, and as many beautiful relations of parts, as can be attended to without confusion. But the conceptions and impressions we derive from a poem are successive and multifarious; and I am thoroughly convinced, that nine persons

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out of ten, after having read a poem or play, have scarcely any notion whether the general design has been well conducted or not. Most readers go forward blindly, and have not sufficient comprehension of mind to perceive the relation of one scene or incident to another. They must therefore be furnished with temporary excitements for the faculties, as they proceed. Every person has seen a boy using the same stratagem to make a goose or other wild animal follow him. He takes a handful of pease, we shall suppose, and drops them one by one to the greedy bird, which is thus led on, step after step, to the place to which he means to conduct it. But the continued fulness of ideas, in a book, is a very different thing from the vile affection of saying fine things at every turn, which is the mere restlessness of pretension, and not a proof either of fecundity or of compilatory judgment.

LETTERS ON THE PRESENT STATE OF GERMANY.

LETTER I.

Dusselsdorf, April 1, 1818.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

YOUR letter has indeed astonished me. The questions you ask, and the language of such English newspapers as I have lately met with, convince me that, amused and occupied with domestic trifles, the nation remains in a state of utter ignorance concerning many things that should at present rivet the attention of all European politicians. The Whigs and the Tories are, I doubt not, alike to blame. The former know nothing about the thoughts, feelings, sufferings, and intentions, of the Germans; and the latter are afraid to promote any discussion about these things, from a mistaken view of their own interests, from fears that have, I am persuaded, their foundation in any thing but the truth. One small party among you say, that they hope Germany is on the eve of a revolution, and insinuate that England is, or ought to be, in a similar condition. The adherents of the ministry suffer themselves to be too much wrought upon by the foolish babbling of these

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the most insignificant of their opponents, and almost persuade themselves, that those Germans who are dissatisfied with the state of affairs in their country, resemble the vulgar, illiterate, and despicable crew who are the present advocates of reform in England. If ever Britain needs a reform, I hope in God she will not listen to the advice of such men as recommend it to her now. But it argues the most deplorable ignorance on the part of any Englishman to suppose, that the discontented party in Germany bears any resemblance to that nest of croakers with which London is infested. once needed a revolution, and we had it: it was brought about by such men as Hampden, Sidney, Fairfax, and Milton. Germany needs a revolution now; and she is likely to obtain the accomplishment of her wishes by means of men who are not unworthy of being named with those illustrious Englishmen,-or who at least would scorn to be considered as having any sympathy, either of opinions or of wishes, with your paltry rabble of Hunts, Hones, and Waithmans. England is fallen indeed, if she, whose ministers are subject to the inspection of an enlightened senate, and who possesses, in all her provinces, abundance of honourable, high-minded, and patriotic gentlemen,-is to be schooled into political wisdom by the noisy ravings of ambitious and designing shopkeepers. With what contempt would those lofty, devout, and heroic spirits, that opposed the cause of Charles, look down upon the venomous and unprincipled plebeians who presume to call themselves their successors. With what disgust would one of them contemplate the impure and senseless orgies of the Common Council room or of Moorfields. Be satisfied, that Germany does not covet or dread any such outrageous and abominable manifestations of democracy. It is indeed well that it should be so; for ours is the only country in the world wherein they can be both despised and tolerated.

However we may differ in opinion about its causes, or whatever may be our hopes or our fears with respect to its probable effects, the existence of a great ferment in the national mind of the Germans, is, at this moment, a fact which none

will be inclined to call in question, who either have lately visited their country, or are familiar with the present complexion of their popular literature. I have travelled upon the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Danube,-I have conversed with the subject of empire, republic, and principality, with Austrian nobles, Hamburgh merchants, and Saxon professors, and I have had no difficulty in perceiving, that, by every German capable of thinking upon political events, the present situation of his country is viewed as one into which all the elements of future agitation are abundantly infused. To one who is accustomed to the calm and unexpecting demeanour of Englishmen, it appears quite evident that some great commotion is at hand. The symptoms of the future crisis are not indeed violent and convulsive: that would ill accord with the habits and constitution of those in whose persons they are manifested. We see no madmen dancing with red caps,-we hear no Marseilles hymns chanted in the public gardens, we read of no princes insulted, nor chateaux pillaged;-but he is blind who cannot discover hints to the full as unequivocal as these of some approaching struggle; and they who are acquainted with the character of the Germans (whether that acquaintance has been gained from themselves or from their books), will readily acknowledge, that with them the "note of preparation" is not the less ominous because it is low.

No one who knows any thing of the present state of Germany,-who is aware, that in that country, ruled as it almost every where is by a set of arbitrary despots, there prevails, upon every subject but one, the utmost possible liberty of thought and writing, -no one who is acquainted with the simple fact, that (if we except politics) the Germans are in truth very much the same sort of people with the English,-that their ancestry is the same, -that their ancient institutions, their religious habits, and, above all, the tone and complexion of their literature, bear the strongest resemblance to ours,-that their favourite authors are, in truth, the intellectual children of our own;-no one who knows this, can be surprised with the general fact, that the Germans are at present a discontented people. Were it otherwise, VOL. III.

there might indeed be great reason for wonder ;-the same that there was of old, when the traveller contemplated the strange spectacle of Greeks, who had Homer and Demosthenes in their hands, submitting, without resistance, to the oppressions of a Roman prætor; or who saw, somewhat later, the Ro mans themselves, nourished as they were in their youth by the noble en thusiasm of their Sallust and their Tacitus, bowed down, with scarcely one self-reproaching murmur, beneath the deadening tyranny of their military Cæsars:-the same, or very nearly the same, reason for wonder, which perhaps at some distant, some very distant day, the inhabitant of some free and happy land beyond the Atlantic may feel, should he come to survey England out of a love for departed glory, and find them slaves that speak the language of Milton.

The triumph of human intellect over the sway of despotism was never made more manifest than it has been within the last fifty years among the Germans. Their princes bound them all over within the small links of a pervading and lethargic chain: they left only one o pening free, and that has been sufficient. They burdened them with imposts, privileges, and oppressions-but they permitted them to read and to write; and although over literature too they have successfully attempted to establish some control, that which they left free has been enough to work the future enlargement of all that ever was enslaved. They permitted their people to rear up a national poetryto embalm, in imperishable materials, the faded recollections of ancient glory and independence. After Locke and Milton had been naturalized, and Millar and Schiller had arisen, the progress of the public mind was a thing no longer within the control of external power. The giant of literature had touched the soil, and, like Antæus, he was irresistible.

Frederick the Great employed all the weapons of contemptuous ridicule against the rising literature of his country, with a zeal and a perseverance which might almost induce one to suspect that he had foreseen the nature of its future progress, and anticipated, among some other of its consequences, the present perplexities of his successor. It was reserved for after years to discover, that he might

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perhaps have acted wisely, both for his own fame and for the safety of his children, had he been less munificent in his patronage of French encyclopædiasts, and devoted the pensions he squandered on Maupertuis and Diderot, to sustain the neglected manhood of Klopstock, or the rising genius of Wieland and Goethe. The nobles of Germany may live to rue the day that they ever insulted their country by banishing her language. In the days of Frederick, German literature wanted patronage, and in vain expected it from his hands. It has since grown and thriven without any royal assistance, and is likely to repay, with terrible vengeance, upon the monarchs of the present age, the injury it received from the hostility or coldness of those of the last. Whatever faults may be found with the great authors of Germany, since the days of Klopstock they have been uniformly free of that indifference of external events, which gave an air so tame and energetic to all the works of their predecessors. No literature ever made such rapid strides to perfection as that of Germany has done within the last fifty years: it is equally certain, that no literature of any country, even of Greece, Spain, or England,- -was ever more thoroughly imbued and animated with the spirit of nationality.

How far this national literature, even if left entirely to itself, might have in time succeeded in breaking the bonds of Germany-this is a question to which, but for some late events, it might have been in the power of our children to supply an answer. But the French Revolution produced a convulsive effect over the whole of cultivated Europe, and imparted a more than natural velocity of action to the awakening national spirit of the Germans. The horrible enormities of those bloody demagogues into whose hands the work of the Revolution fell, gave rise, indeed, to no inconsiderable reaction. The calm and rational Germans were disgusted with the prospect of procuring even good to themselves at such a price; and with cordiality assisted their feeble and trembling sovereigns in their endeavours to suppress the progress of the treacherous contagion. By degrees, however, there is no doubt that the seed of liberal sentiment, even although it had been scattered by the way side, and

obstructed by thorns and brambles, did spring up, and the crop, if not abundant, was at least a crop. Year after year the grain shed itself around, and the harvest grew. The Germans opposed indeed the tyrannies of Bonaparte, but they began to know and feel that foreign oppressions (however necessary it might be to throw these off first), were not the only oppressions; and it became the universal belief throughout the country, that as soon as no danger should remain from abroad, there was much to be seen to at home. The excess of cruelty to which they were subjected during the ten years which elapsed after the French despotism was established over their country, filled them with an enthusiasm for liberty, far more settled, and far more universal, than that which had been kindled within their breasts by the distant spectacle of the infant Revolution. Long familiarity had rendered them less sensible to the inflictions of their native princes, but the tyranny of Napoleon shewed itself in new forms of outrage, and roused unmingled aversion. They were well prepared for an eruption long before the actual moment of opportunity arrived. They had full leisure to speculate upon the true nature of those causes, which had subjected a people so numerous, and naturally so powerful, as they knew themselves to be, to insults thus atrocious and intolerable. The petty tricks, ambitions, and jealousies, of their sovereigns; the disunion of their great country; the absurd privileges of the nobility;-all these things appeared to them in quite a new point of view. Necessity was once more the mother of wisdom; every strong place in the midst of Germany was in the hands of the French, and most of the petty princes were, by every tie of inclination and intent, their allies; but one sentiment had become diffused in unextinguishable zeal throughout all the population of that part of Germany, which has long given its form and pressure to the general intellect of the nation. The conduct of Napoleon shewed that he perceived the danger long before the explosion took place; but he was far too proud and confident to adopt any of those measures by which alone it must have been prevented. To no prince who ever abused the kindness of his early destiny,

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