Page:Essays and criticisms by Wainewright (1880).djvu/98

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THE Germans have long been giving proofs, that they possess one great requisite for succeeding both in poetry and its sister arts: we mean a very original and powerful fancy: but this same fancy of theirs, like a fiery young steed (we believe this is the approved simile in such a case), requires a great deal of chastising and better training, before it can avail its master much in the tug of war. In painting, they have forced a monstrous and unnatural alliance, between the sublime nonsense of Goltzius, Spranger, John Ab Ach, C. Van Mander, &c., &c., and the dry, Gothic, ludicrous, matter-of-fact work of old Durer. They have done something very like this in their poetry and romances—the lovely and loving Undine always excepted. The author of this prose poem has, with an earnest fervour which spreads itself to the reader, rendered the existence of such a being as his heroine, not merely sufficiently probable for the purposes of poetry, but apparently certain in point of fact. Her last words—"I am here, and now you must die"—whenever we think of them, seem to breathe