Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 21 (US).djvu/23

 vacuity, that write not by vision but by hearsay, and so belong to all nations, or, more properly speaking, to none, there is no want in Germany more than in any other country. It would be easy to fill, not four, but four hundred volumes with German Novelists of this unblamable description; thereby to refresh the reader with long processions of spotless romances, bright and stately, like so many frontispieces in La Belle Assemblée, with cheeks of the fairest carnation, lips of the gentlest curvature, and most perfect Grecian noses, and no shade of character or meaning to mar their pure idealness. But so long as our Minerva Press and its many branch-establishments do their duty, to import ware of that sort into these Islands seems unnecessary.

On the whole, as the light of a very small taper may be useful in total darkness, I have sometimes hoped that this little enterprise might assist, in its degree, to forward an acquaintance with the Germans and their literature; a literature and a people both well worthy of our study. Translations, in this point of view, can be of little avail, except in so far as they excite us to a much more general study of the language. The difficulties of German are little more than a bugbear: they can only be compared to those of Greek by persons claiming praise or pudding for having mastered them. Three months of moderate diligence will carry any man, almost without assistance of a master, over its prime obstacles; and the rest is play rather than labour.

To judge from the signs of the times, this general diffusion of German among us seems a consummation not far distant. As an individual, I cannot but anticipate from it some little evil and much good; and look forward with pleasure to the time when a people who have listened with the most friendly placidity to criticisms of the slenderest nature from