Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/558

Rh Goethe's latest writings. French Revolu- tion. Kant. 540 until nearly his last birthday. vulgar magician ; Goethe so conceives the character that it indicates the deepest iziysteries of human existence. The second part, in which the problem of the poem is solved, can har-.lly be regarded as a work of art; it is, or seems to be, confused and dark. And the individual elements of the first part are not completely welded; they form rather a series of poems than a single creation. In these individual elements, however, we ﬁnd the grandest sweep of imaginative thought yet achieved by the German gen1us. The episode of Gretchen reﬂects with perfect art the most alluring and the most sorrowful facts of life ; and philoso- phy aml religion in their highest aspects meet in F aust’s aspirations and struggles. It might have been supposed that at the age of seventy ioethe had no 11cw imaginative worlds to conquer; yet he then published his ll'esti).~‘tIic/zcr Divan, representing, with dramatic sympathy and lyric force almost unabated, the combined mysticism and sensuousness of Oriental life. Ten years before, he had issued Il'ahlvcru-andlschqftm (“ Elective Afiinities”), a powerful picture of impulses which law cannot control, and in which are concealed the germs of tragic issues. It has, however, less charm than another prose work, Dic/ztung mul Wu/u‘/zcit (“Poetry and Truth”), in which he draws a slightly idealized sketch of his early life. This fascinating book has made the figure of young Goethe as familiar as his chief dramatic characters; and no creations of the fancy are better known than the Frederikas and the Lilis, who had long before occasioned his sweetest lyrics, and the memory of whom in old age gave delicacy and music to his style. - Vhile Goethe and Schiller were in the midst of their career, Europe was startled by the French Revolution. At first it stirred as much interest in Germany as in England. The aged Klopstock greeted it with odes full of the ﬁery energy of youth, and for a time Schiller almost fancied that his loftiest hopes were about to be realized. Sympathy, however, was transformed into bitter opposition by tile Reign of Terror; and when Germany was trodden under foot by Napoleon, she turned more and more from every kind of French inﬂuence. Thus it happened that, although the ideas of the Revolution have indirectly affected the literature of Germany as deeply as that of the_rest of Europe, their immediate effect was slight and transitory. An event of the highest importance in the intellectual growth of Germany was the publication, in 1781, of Kant’s Ifritik dcr Ifeinen l'ermmft. It is hard for men of a later time, accustomed to metaphysical speculation, to realize the impression produced by this great book. Its effect in philosophy was not unlike that caused in our own day in science by Mr Darwin’s Ora}/in of Species. Everywhere among thoughtful men, at the universities especially, philosophy became the absorbing subject of study; and it was taken up at a point from which its whole past develop- ment was for the first time intelligible. Goethe, without neglecting the movement, was perhaps less stirred by it than any other prominent writer ; Schiller became one of Kant’s most enthusiastic students, and traces of the new system are to be found in many of his later lyrics and dramas. He also applied its principles to aesthetics in several admirable critical writings. By and by, dissatisﬁed with the gulf left by Kant between mind and matter as “things in them- selves,” philosophers started in search of some principle which should harmonize all the elements of existence ; and thus grew up, one after the other, the systems of Fichte, Schelling, and Ilegel. For n1ore than a generation these thinkers excited deeper interest than imaginative writers; the most serious minds were fascinated by speculations which placed in new lights all the greatest questions relating to human thought and action. G E H. II A N Y The Faust of legend was a ‘ [I.I"rnn_'rL'nE. Of the poets or versificrs who began their career with Sturm . Goethe, the one who for some time attracted most notice ‘JIM trang was lilinger (1753-1831), whose play, Nlurm -mad 1)r(m_r/, is at least memorable through its title. were C'onru_¢Iz'n and .l[e¢lm; aml he also wrote romances, of which the best known were 1"uu.-(‘s 1.rln'-n, '/'/mien, 7/ml I[i)llenfu/n't and Der We/(munn uml der 1):}-/zter. llis writings are violent and noisy, without atouch of true art ; what he mistook for imagination was a power of crude and unmeasured declamation. llis later works express the bitterness of a deeply disappointed man. Lcnz (175U—92), whose name is usually connected with that of Klinger, did not make even so distant an approach to imagination as his rival ; his plays are the wild outgrowths of a mind which has made no sincere observation of life, and has submitted neither to intellectual nor to moral discipline. A man of much greater talent than either was Daniel St-hubart (1739-91), the restless, liceutious, and unfortunate poet who, for publishing a piece of false news, was confined for tell years in a fortress, where he suffered incredible hard- ships. In his attempts to portray the horrible he is some- , times extremely grotesque, but his best verses have both music and pathos, and they had the good fort11ne to exercise some inﬂuence on Schiller. lie was one of the earliest publicists of Germany, and his hatred of despotism was the real cause of the infamous act which deprived him of freedom. 'riters who shared the spirit of “Sturm und Draug,” and applied it in new directions, were Lavater and Basedow. Lavater enjoyed the friendship of nearly every distinguished man of his day, yet he was vain and fanatical. His 1’/z_z/siqr/2zo7m'sc/ze 1"ra_r/azmzle (“F1'ag111e11ts on 1’hysiognomy”) were supposed by theusancls of readers to find in the relations of mind and body the lnaterials of a new and mysterious science; but the pretended science was in reality a mixture of commonplace and extravagance. Basedow, although with too passionate a faith in the power of education to effect an immediate transformation of the race, did excellent service by advocating, after Rousseau, a more humane and natural system of mental training than had before prevailed. The same cause was more temper- ately promoted by Campe, who wrote some admirable books for the young; and the Swiss educational reformer, Pes- talozzi, set forth methods of instruction in earnest did-actic works which had some effect in nearly every country in Europe. The excitement of the “ Sturm 11nd Drang” shared bya band of young poets who in other respects dis- l'““'l played a wholly different temper. Most of them were ml students at Gottingen, where they gathered round l§oiO,:,_.,.1,,,O' editor of the .l[uscnr(ln2.(umc/z, a journal he had started in imitation of Le Jlercure dc 1"r(mce, and to which Goethe and many of the best of the younger men of the day contributed. They called themselves the “llaiubund” (“ Grove Confede- ration ”), because of their dancing one night by moonlight round an oak tree, swearing eternal friendship, and vowing to devote themselves to their native land. The god of their idolatry was Klopstock, whose somewhat fantastic enthusiasm for primitive Germany they fully shared, and whose labours on behalf of virtue they never ceased to celebrate, while they loathed and despised Wieland. Several members of the “ Hainbund ” afterwards acquired distinction, and all of them were more or less remarkable for the genuinely popular tone of their writings. lty far the greatest of them was Burger (l74b'~94), who, although he never did full justice to himself, gave evidence of an original and adventurous genius. llis l.mzm-P, a translation of which was Scott"s first published work, is full of weird power, and his sonnets are among the most perfect in Ger- man literature. His faculty of meeting the popular taste was possessed by Ilolty (I7-ltS—7G), who, however, delighted Other plays of his PM writers was Unin- (:.';ttn Biirgi