Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/208

Rh tales under the title of Holland Tide was so successful that he at once set about the preparation of a similar series, which appeared the same year in two volumes under the title of Tales of the Munster Festivals, and were still more popular. In 1828 appeared the Collegians, afterwards so successfully adapted for the stage under the title of the Colleen Bawn. It is said to have been the favourite novel of O'Connell; and, besides exhibiting that masterly delineation of both the pathetic and the humorous features of Irish character already shown in his other works, it was written with a verve and a dramatic intensity and realism far surpassing all his previous or subsequent efforts. His principal other works are The Invasion, The Rivals, Tracey's Ambition, and The Tales of Five Senses. He is also the author of a number of lyrics which are generally pervaded by a tender and sad cast of sentiment. When Griffin appeared to have achieved the literary success for which he had had such a hard struggle, he began to feel a growing distaste for his profession. He became doubtful as to the moral influence of his writings, and as to whether on that account he had not been "misspending his time;" and ultimately he came to the conclusion that his true sphere of duty was to be found within the walls of a monastery, a resolve doubtless partly attributable to the state of his health. He was admitted into a Dublin monastery in September 1838 under the name of Brother Joseph, and in the following summer he removed to Cork, where he died of typhus fever 12th June 1840. Previous to adopting the monastic habit he burned all his manuscripts; but Gisippus, a tragedy which he had composed in his twenty-fifth year, accidentally escaped destruction, and in 1842 was put on the Drury Lane stags by Mr Macready, and acted with great success. The collected works of Gsrald Griffin were published in 1843 in eight volumes, with a memoir by his brother. See also Dublin University Magazine for February 1844.

 GRILLPARZER,  (1791-1872), a distinguished tist, was born in  on the 15th  1791. His father, a respectable, destined him for his own profession; but on the conclusion of his legal studies, in 1811, Grillparzer became a tutor in a noble family, and two years afterwards accepted a subordinate post in the. He rose slowly in his profession, but in 1833 was made director of the archives in the court chamber. He retired in 1856, receiving the title of, a title which was replaced in 1861 by the higher one of. In 1847 he was made a member of the. From early youth he displayed a strong literary impulse. He devoted especial attention to the, and nearly all his writings bear marks of the influence of. When he began to write, the was dominated by the wild plays of, , and other authors of the so-called "fate-tragedies." His first play, Die Ahnfrau (The Ancestress), published in 1816, was penetrated by their spirit. A lady, who has been slain by her husband for infidelity, is doomed to visit "the glimpses of the moon" till her house is extinguished, and this end is reached in the tragedy amid scenes of violence and horror. Some of Grillparzer's admirers draw a sharp distinction between this play and the works with which it is usually classed, and in doing so they follow his own example. But its general character is exactly similar to that of Werner's dramas; it only differs from them in containing individual passages of much force and beauty. It at once became extremely popular, and Grillparzer was encouraged to write a second tragedy, Sappho (1819), the most artistically finished of his productions. An rendering of this play fell into the hands of, who, although the translation was very bad, expressed his conviction that the author's name would be held in reverence by posterity. It is full of the aspiration of the Romantic school, but its form is classic, and its chastened style presents a striking contrast to the noise and fury of the Ahnfrau. The problem of the play has some resemblance to that of 's Torquato Tasso, for in both we find the struggles of a nature which is unable to reconcile itself to the conditions of the actual world. Grillparzer's conceptions are not so clearly defined as Goethe's, nor is his diction so varied and harmonious; but the play has the stamp of genius, and ranks as one of the best of those works in which an attempt has been made to combine the passion and sentiment of modern life with the simplicity and grace of ancient masterpieces. Another and more ambitious work in the classic style was Das goldene Vlies (The ), a trilogy published in 1822. Of its three parts the greatest is Medea, which some critics consider his highest achievement. There is delicate art in the delineation of the mingled fascination and repulsion which and  feel for each other, and when at last repulsion becomes the dominant force, the dramatist gives splendid utterance to the rage of the disappointed wife and mother. In Des Meeres und der Liebe Wellen (Waves of the Sea and of Love), which appeared in 1840, Grillparzer again formed his work on classic models; but in this instance his feeling is so distinctly modern that it does not find adequate expression in his carefully measured verse. The subject is the story of and, and it has never been more happily treated than in some passages, which, however, are marked rather by lyrical than dramatic qualities.

In 1825 Grillparzer published König Ottokar's Glück und Ende (King 's Fortune and End). It appealed strongly to the patriotic sympathies of, dealing as it does with one of the proudest periods of ,—the time of , the founder of the house of. In a harsh criticism of Grillparzer, which appeared in the Foreign Review in 1829, and is now included in his Miscellanies, said that 's Piccolomini differed from Ottokar as "a living  [differs] from a mass of dead rose, or even of broken Italian s." This judgment has not been confirmed by later criticism. It cannot, indeed, be said that the materials of the play are welded into a compact whole, but the characters are vigorously conceived, and there is a fine dramatic contrast between the brilliant, restless, and unscrupulous Ottocar and the calm, upright, and ultimately triumphant Rudolf. Another historical play, Ein treuer Diener seines Herrn (A faithful Servant of his Lord), appeared in 1830, and brought down upon the author a storm of abuse from the liberals, who accused him of servility. On the other hand, the play displeased the court, and its representation was stopped. It hardly deserved to be made the subject of so much contention, for it is one of the least powerful of Grillparzer's later dramas. A more pleasing work was the dramatic study Der Traum, ein Leben (The Dream, a Life), which is to some extent a direct imitation of, and has something of his brilliance and charm. In the same year in which this was issued (1840) Grillparzer published Wehe dem der lügt (Woe to him who Lies), a. It was so badly received that he wrote no more for the stage. Several dramatic fragments, however, composed at a later time, appeared among his posthumous writings.

Grillparzer was a as well as a dramatic poet. He used to say that all his lyrics were written for the purpose of obtaining relief from feelings by which he happened to be oppressed. The same thing was said of himself by ; but 's emotion in passing into verse was purified and generalized; Grillparzer's remained for the most part strictly personal, and rarely touches the deepest sympathies. He is more successful in, in which