Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/302

 290 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE CHAPTEE VIII PROSE AND POPULAR READING The prose of a nation is as characteristic of its culture as is the poetry. As the latter may be said to be the first natural beginnings in the technical use of language, so the former represents the goal attained through much labour and exertion of the mind. It is an historical fact that national poetry preceded prose, for an artistic and perfect use of prose bespeaks a high state of national education. In Germany, while poetry by degrees fell into de- cadence, prose, on the contrary, advanced in the latter part of the fourteenth century side by side with the plastic arts. It made such gigantic strides in compass, variety, and importance, that not only were the founda- tions of all that was perfected in later centuries laid down then, but in every separate branch of prose writ- ing — philosophy, narrative, rhetoric — numbers of works were brought out, and often of distinguished character. The narrative style, both in history and fiction, was brought to great perfection. Proofs of this we may find in the book entitled ' Consolation of the Soul ' (written in the Cologne dialect), also in the Low-German fables and proverbs to be found in the chronicles of the Dominican Hermann Corner, of Liibeck, in which the tales are told with great versatility and dramatic inte- rest.