Page:Stories Translated from the German.djvu/224

 in many of their works single passages, scenes, passions and situations so new and original, that they can be found nowhere else, so that people must acknowledge, that in these things we have gone far beyond all other foreign poets, the single Shakspeare perhaps excepted."

"But it appears to me," replied the professor, "that this more modern literature, whatever praise it may deserve, could scarcely have developed itself without German examples, and thus perhaps we might attribute to ourselves a great part of that which is most excellent among your writers, as belonging to our stock, to our manners and customs."

"Mere sophistry!" said the Dane, "for then you Germans could not be original either, because without the model of Shakspeare you would never have found out the excitement which made you faithless to the path, in which you had hitherto vainly endeavoured to follow or limp after the French."

Göthe and Schiller, it was asserted on the German side, besides some other poets of whom it may be permitted to speak, are at all events not so nearly allied to the Briton as the modern Danish