Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/637

 Reviews and Notes 633 nection. Rousseau once branded the evil genius of the human race, the blood-hounds of Mr. Babbitt's savage Aristotelianism chase up and down, right and left, on the highways and byways of the world's history, anywhere within the unmeasured area of time and space between Adam and Bergson, to trail Rosseau- ite heretics and to devour whomsoever chance throws into their gaping jaws. Rousseau, thus runs the mathematical argument, is not only one of the many leaders but the leader of the storm and stress, and since Rousseau is likewise the leader of the roman- tic movement, it follows that both movements are the same thing. On pp. 97 ff., in a feeble and haphazard way, attention is called to certain modifications "Herder (whose influence on German romanticism is very great)" gave to the primitivism of Rousseau. Now instead of dropping this important subject, as Mr. B. does, after a few desultory remarks on minor details, a true scholar would have found it an inevitable task to deter- mine just what Herder meant: first for storm and stress, second for romanticism. Even without making a special study of the subject Mr. B. might have learnt from Haym's Herder, that Herder as early as 1769 had turned from Rousseau's to Montes- quieu's conception of organized civilization; and linger might have shown him the way to Hamann and through him to my- sticism and pietism and Socrates which all, in successive stages and with many gradual changes became vital factors first in the Genieperiode and then again in the romantic movement. Mr. B. could then not have failed to observe that besides Rousseau there were very many other forces at work in the battle against the barrenness of rationalism; and that after the interregnum of extreme classicism, when the romanticists con- tinued the struggle, the movement became too universal in its ramifications, too intense in its quest for new foundations of modern life, to be arbitrarily reduced to a scholastic, if con- venient little formula like Rousseauism. But our author is bent upon words regardless of meaning. Because the romanti- cists discuss the problem of genius, Genieperiode and romanti- cism are identical. It is the same circulus vitiosus as in the use of the name of Rousseau. If it is too exacting a demand that Mr. B. read Unger's chapter "Der Geniegedanke" (Hamann, pp. 275 ff.), the reviewer suggests a rapid glance at Walzel's booklet Deutsche Romantik where, on pp. 32 f. and pp. 53 f., the evolution of the romantic conception of genius from storm and stress through Fichte and Friedrich Schlegel to Schelling is briefly outlined. In the same booklet Mr. B. might have found a great deal more enlightenment with regard to romantic irony than he is himself able to give in his chapter on the same subject. Com- pare also Carl Enders, Friedrich Schlegel, p. 358. Starting his argumentation against this cardinal sin of the romanticists