Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 21 (US).djvu/19

 CARLYLE'S PREFACE

were unhappy for me if the reader should expect in this Work any full view of so complex a subject as German Novelwriting, or of so motley a body as the German Novelwriters. The dead wall, which divides us from this as from all other provinces of German Literature, I must not dream that I have anywhere overturned: at the most, I may have perforated it with a few loopholes, of narrow aperture truly, and scanty range; through which, however, a studious eye may perhaps discern some limited, but, as I hope, genuine and distinctive features of the singular country, which, on the other side, has long flourished in such abundant variety of intellectual scenery and product, and been unknown to us, though at our very hand. For this wall, what is the worst property in such walls, is to most of us an invisible one; and our eye rests contentedly on Vacancy, or distorted Fata-morganas, where a great and true-minded people have been living and labouring, in the light of Science and Art, for many ages.

In such an undertaking as the present, fragmentary in its very nature, it is not absolute, but only relative completeness, that can be looked for. German Novelwriters are easily come at; but the German Novelwriters are a class of persons whom no prudent editor will hope to exhibit, and no reader will engage to examine, even in the briefest mode of specimen. To say nothing of what has been accumulated in past generations, the number of Novelists at present alive and active is