Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/429

413 meut, the centre of good style and literary form. This golden dream was scattered by the murder in 1515 of his cousin John of Hutten by Ulrich, duke of Wiirteniburg. This outrage changed the whole course of Hutten s life ; satire, chief refuge of the weak, became his weapon ; with one hand he took his part in the famous Epistohv Obscuro- rum Virortim, and with the other launched scathing letters, eloquent Ciceronian orations, or biting satires against the duke. Though the emperor was too lazy and indifferent to smite a great prince, he condescended to bestow on Hutten the inexpensive honour of a laureate crown in 1517 ; as the poet tells us with pleased pride, the wreath was woven by the hands of fair Constantia, Conrad Peutinger s daughter. As recognized poet laureate of Germany, Hutten, who had been to Italy, again attached himself to the electoral court at Mainz; and he was there when in 1518 his true friend Pirckheimer wrote, urging him to abandon the court and dedicate himself to letters. We have the poet s long reply, in an epistle on his &quot; way of life,&quot; an amusing mixture of earnestness and vanity, self-satisfaction and satire ; he tells his friend that his career is just begun, that he has had twelve years of wandering, and will now enjoy himself a while in patriotic literary work ; that he has by no means deserted the humaner studies, but carries with him a little library of standard books. Pirckheimer in his burgher life may have ease and even luxury; he, a knight of the empire, how can he condescend to obscurity 1 ? He must abide where he can shine. And so, dazzled by his dream of an intellectual reform, Hutten chose the path which presently led him to his ruin. In 1519 he issued in one volume his attacks on Duke Ulricb, and then, drawing sword, took part in the private war which overthrew that prince ; in this affair he became intimate with Franz von Sickingen, the champion of the knightly order (Ritterstand). Henceforth Hutten takes part in the Lutheran movement, while he becomes mixed up in the attempt of the &quot; llitterstand &quot; to recover its posi tion, and to assert itself as the militia of the empire against the independence of the German princes. It was soon after this time that he discovered at Fulda a copy of the mani festo of the emperor Henry IV. against Hildebrand, and published it with comments as an attack on the papal claims over Germany. He hoped thereby to interest the new em peror Charles V., and the higher orders in the empire, in behalf of German liberties ; but the appeal failed. What Luther had achieved by speaking to cities and common folk in homely phrase, because he touched heart and con science, that the far finer weapons of Hutten failed to effect, because he tried to touch the more cultivated sympathies and dormant patriotism of princes and bishops, nobles and knights. And so he at once gained an undying nnme in the republic of letters and ruined his own career. He showed that the artificial verse-making of the Humanists could be connected with the new outburst of genuine German poetry. The Minnesinger was gone ; the new national singer, a Luther or a Hans Sachs, was heralded by the stirring lines of Hutten s pen. These form a distinct epoch in the history of German nUional literature ; they have in them a splendid nitural swing and ring, strong and patriotic, though unfor tunately addressed to knight and landsknecht rather than to the German people. The poet s high dream of a knightly national regeneration had a rude awakening. The attack on the papacy, and Luther s vast and sudden popularity, frightened Elector Albert, who dismissed Hutten from his court. Hoping for imperial favour, he betook himself to Charles V. ; but that cold young prince, who cared little for Humanists, and was not a German, would have none of him. So he returned to his friends, and they rejoiced greatly to see him still alive ; for Pope Leo X. had ordered him to be 413 arrested and sent to Rome, and assassins dogged his steps. He now attached himself more closely to Franz von Sickingen and the knightly movement. This also came to a disastrous end in the capture of the Ebernberg, and Sickingen s death ; the higher nobles had triumphed ; the archbishops avenged themselves on Lutheranism as in terpreted by the knightly order. With Sickingen Hutten also finally fell. He fled to Basel, where Erasmus refused to see the sick hero, both for fear of his loathsome diseases, and also because the beggared knight was sure to borrow money from him. A paper war consequently broke out between the two Humanists, which embittered Hutten s last days, and stained the memory of Erasmus. From Basel Ulrich dragged his limbs to Mulhausen ; and when the vengeance of Erasmus drove him thence, he went to Zurich. There the large heart of Zwingli welcomed him ; he helped him with money, and found him a quiet refuge with the pastor of the little isle of Ufnau on the Zurich Lake. There the frail and worn-out poet, writing swift satire to the end, fell a victim to his infirmities, and died (29th August 1523) at the age of thirty-five. He left behind him some debts due to compassionate friends; he did not even own a single book, arid all his goods amounted to the clothes on his back, a bundle of letters, and that valiant pen which had fought so many a sharp battle, and had won for the poor knight-errant a sure place in the annals of literature. Ulrich von Hutten is one of those men of genius at whom propriety is shocked, and whom the mean-spirited avoid. Yet through his short and buffeted life he was befriended, with wonderful charity and patience, by the chief leaders of the Humanist movement. For, in spite of his irritable vanity, his immoral life and habits, his odious diseases, his painful restlessness, Hutten had much in him that strong men could love. He passionately loved the truth, and was ever open to all good influences. He was a patriot, whose soul yearned for what was high, and soared to ideal schemes and a grand Utopian restoration of his country. In spite of all, his was a frank and noble nature ; his faults chiefly the faults of genius ill-controlled, and of a life cast in the eventful changes of an age of novelty. A swarm of writ ings issued from his pen ; at first the smooth elegance of his Latin prose and verse seemed strangely to miss his real character ; he was the Cicero and Ovid of Germany before he became its Lucian. His chief works were his Ars rersificandi (1511) ; the Nemo, (1518) ; a work on the Morlus Gallicus (1519) ; the volume of Steckelberg complaints against Duke Ulrich (including his four Ciceronian Orations, his Letters, and the Phalarismus) also in 1519 ; the l r adismus (1520) ; and the controversy with Erasmus at the end of his life. Besides these were many admirable poems in Latin and German. It will never he known with certainty how far Hutten was the parent of the celebrated Epistoloc Obscnrorum Viromm, that famous satire on monastic ignorance as represented by the theo logians of Cologne with which the friends of Eeuchlin defended him. At first the cloister-world, not discerning its irony, wel comed the work as a defence of their position ; though their eyes were soon opened by the favour with which the learned world received it. The Epislolcc were eagerly bought up ; the first part (41 letters) appeared at the end of 1515 ; early iu 1516 there was a second edition; later in 1516 a third, with an appendix of seven letters ; in 1517 appeared the second part (62 letters), to which a fresh appendix of eight letters was subjoined soon after. Hutten, in a letter addressed to Kobert Crocus, denied that he was the author, and is followed by Bayle in his Dictionary ; but there is no doubt as to his direct connexion with the book. Erasmus was of opinion that there were three authors, of whom Crotus Rubianua was the originator of the idea, and Hutten a chief contributor. D. F. Strauss, who dedicates to the subject a chapter of his admirable work on Hutten, concludes that he had no share in the first part, but that his hand is clearly visible in the second part, which he attributes in the main to him. To him is due the more serious and severe tone of that bitter portion of the satire. For a complete catalogue of the writings of Hutten, see Bucking s Index BibliograpJiicus Jhdtcnianus (1858). The best biography (though it is also somewhat of a political pamphlet) is that of