Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/559

Rh. ~ Voss. «llaudius. imitat- )rs of Mieland. mitat- g II'S Of loethe .nd Schiller. ROMANTIC scnooL.] in mild and calm expression, while the best of 1}iirger's : poems are full of stir and action. Johann Martin Miller (1750-1814) became known chieﬂy as the author of the . ' both romance S£e_r/wart, a rather weak imitation of Wert/ulr. Some irreverent spirits ventured to laugh at its tedious pathos, but it was welcomed by the majority of the middle class, who took especial delight in the songs it includes. Christian, Count Stolberg, and his brother, Frederick Leo- pold, were also members of the Gottingen school. Besides imitations of Greek plays, they issued odes, ballads, and songs. Of the two the most powerful was Frederick Leo- poltl (1750-1819), in some of whose briefer pieces there is true feeling for nature. He continually verges, however, on extravagance, and often takes the fatal step fron1 the sublime. A stronger writer was Johann Heinrich Voss (1751-1826), author of a famous idyll, Louise, which was received by Schiller as a poem of ﬁrst—rate importance, and suggested to Goethe the idea of his Ilermmm. marl D07‘0[]l6((. Its homcliness of style is perhaps more in keeping with its simple and commonplace theme than the classic grace of Goethe’s verses. Voss acquired a better title to fame by an admirable translation of Homer, which did for the I/{ml in Germany what Pope’s translation did in England. Voss’s rendering is less polished than Pope's, but incom- parably more faithful. Matthias Claudius (1740-1815), although 11ot a member of the “ Hainbund,” is usually associated with it because of his general sympathy with its tone. The ll'cuulsbec/cer Bole (“ Wandsbeck Messenger ”), in which he brought together all his writings, contains much simple poetic feeling, and some of his songs are still popular favourites. While these writers attached themselves to Klopstock, others showed traces of Wieland’s inﬂuence. The 111ost important of this class was Wilhelm Heinse (17-19-1803), whose chief work was .lrtIin_r]/rello, a prose romance. He shares Wieland's general theory of life, but, instead of ex- pressing it in the calm, ironical style of his master, he is vehement, tumultuous, and enthusiastic. Amid his wild exaggerations he sometimes displays a remarkable power of describing physical beauty. He was an ardent student of art, a11d was the ﬁrst German writer who succeeded in reproducing in glowing language the impression produced upon him by pictures a11d music. Other imitators of Wie- land were Aloys Blumauer, who mistook vulgar burlesque for satire; Alxinger, whose Doolin, von. Jlaiuz may be taken to represent a large class of tiresome poems of chivalry; and Von Thiimmel, who, with considerably more ability than these writers, spoiled his good qualities by cynical grossness. An indeﬁnite number of medizeval plays were written in imitation of Goethe’s GUI2, and robber romances in imitation of Schiller’s Iféiuber. Of the latter the earliest and most famous was the Rinaldo Jt’£naltlz'n.zI of Vulpius. Jung Stilling (1740-1817) con- tinued the sentimental tone of lT'e7't/zer in a number of curious autobiographic tales, which acquired extraordinary popularity, a11d threw nmch light on the inner tendencies of the later pietists. Among imitators of Schiller’s lyrical poetry the best were Matthison and Salis-Seewis ; but they were 111ore successful in reproducing his moral feeling than in rivalling his high art. For many years the stage was in the possession of Iﬂland (1759-1814-) and Kotzebue (1761-1819). The former, who was a distinguished actor, wrote dramas chieﬂy of domestic interest. They are without genius, but had the merit of almost displacing the foolish mediwval plays of Goethe’s imitators. Kotzebue was a 1nost proliﬁc writer; and although he had no imagination, and wrote merely to catch the applause of the moment, his comedies still deserve to be named among the few works of this class which have hitherto been pro- duced in Germany. GERMANY 5-11 A writer who exercised some inﬂuence over the youth I of Goethe was Frederick Jacobi (17-13-1819). He was the author of two romances, Alu--ill and ll'ol¢Iem(n', in of which there is a little of Werther’s senti- mentalism, although their main purpose is didactic. He also wrote a number of philosophical works. His main principle is that the sources of religion and morality are to be found in intuition; and by a constant re- iteration of this doctrine he worked in opposition to Spinoza, to Kant, and to Schelling. There are occasional gleams of philosophical genius in Jacobi, and he is of some interest to English readers because of the attention Sir William Hamilton appears to have devoted to his writings. An author of a very different type, and of far greater eminence, was Jean 1’aul Richter, usually called Jean Paul Richtel. (1763-1825). It is difficult to do justice to Jean 1’aul, for he commits almost every fault of which a writer of romance can be guilty ; he is at different times pedantic, extravagant, sentimental, and tedious. He pre- scribed for himself no limits; everything that occurred to him at the moment of his writing went down exactly as it suggested itself. Yet it is impossible even to look into any of his innumerable books without recognizing his genius. The work which has maintained the strongest hold over the nation is perhaps his charming prose idyll, Die I7le_r]e/ja/are (“The Years of Wild Oats”); but his great romance, Tilmz, and the less ambitious Siebeu/:(is, or “ Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces,” have also kept their place as works of permanent excellence. The most admir- able quality of Richter is his humour. N o German writer plays with his subject more delightfully, and he produces his most striking etfects in dealing with the simplest, most unpretending relations of life. He is usually very near the sources of pathos when he smiles, and Jean l’aul’s pathos, at its best, is full of power, awakening the deepest feeling by its obvious sincerity. Sometimes it is associated with lofty imagination, as in the famous dream in which he de- scribes a universe without religion. His feeling for the periodic changes of season in nature is that of a poet in the highest sense, his descriptions of spring being perhaps un- surpassed for their glowing yet tender beauty. To his other excellences we must add the manly spirit which led him to scoff, occasionally without due measure, at every kind of vulgarity and pretence, and at the same time pre- served in its original freshness his sympathy with his fellow—me11 and his passion for their enlightenment and progress. The most important literary movement which originated Roman- tic scho during the lifetime of Goethe was that of the Romantic school, whose leading members at ﬁrst attached themselves to him, but gradually diverged more and more from his spirit. The rise of the school was in some measure due to the philo- sophy of F ichte, whose theory of the ego as the principle which freely creates its own world gave new importance to the individual as opposed to law and convention.’ Schelling still more effectually prepared the way for the llomanticists by his poetic treatment of the relations between the mind and nature; and several of his disciples, especially Steffens, worked in the same direction by dwelling on the possibilities of mystery in human life and in the external world. The aim of the Romantic school was to assert for modern feeling the right of a freer, more varied utterance than can be provided for it by the forms of classic litera- ture. They were not in sympathy with their own time; they found it tame, prosaic, colourless; and to enrich it with new elements they went back to mediaevalism, in which, as they conceived it, daily life had not been divorced from poetry. They drew enthusiastic pictures of the Middle Ages, of the charms of chivalry, of the loyalty of each class to the class above it and to society as a whole,