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F. Max Müller



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Title: Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III.

Author: F. Max Müller

Release Date: September 10, 2008 [Ebook #26572]

Language: English

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***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. VOL. III.***





                       CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP

                                    BY

                          F. MAX MÜLLER, M. A.,

               FOREIGN MEMBER OF THE FRENCH INSTITUTE, ETC.

                               VOLUME III.

            ESSAYS ON LITERATURE, BIOGRAPHY, AND ANTIQUITIES.

                                NEW YORK:

                      CHARLES SCRIBNER AND COMPANY.

                                  1871.





CONTENTS


DEDICATION.
I. GERMAN LITERATURE.
   LIST OF EXTRACTS FOR ILLUSTRATING THE HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE.
II. OLD GERMAN LOVE-SONGS.
III. YE SCHYPPE OF FOOLES.
IV. LIFE OF SCHILLER.
V. WILHELM MÜLLER. 1794-1827.
VI. ON THE LANGUAGE AND POETRY OF SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN.
VII. JOINVILLE.
VIII. THE JOURNAL DES SAVANTS AND THE JOURNAL DE TRÉVOUX.
IX. CHASOT.
X. SHAKESPEARE.
XI. BACON IN GERMANY.
XII. A GERMAN TRAVELLER IN ENGLAND.
XIII. CORNISH ANTIQUITIES.
XIV. ARE THERE JEWS IN CORNWALL?
XV. THE INSULATION OF ST. MICHAEL’S MOUNT.
XVI. BUNSEN.
   LETTERS FROM BUNSEN TO MAX MÜLLER IN THE YEARS 1848 TO 1859.
Footnotes






DEDICATION.


TO
FRANCIS TURNER PALGRAVE,

IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF KIND HELP

GIVEN TO ME

IN MY FIRST ATTEMPTS AT WRITING IN ENGLISH,

AND AS A MEMORIAL

OF MANY YEARS OF FAITHFUL FRIENDSHIP.





I. GERMAN LITERATURE.(1)


There is no country where so much interest is taken in the literature of
Germany as in England, and there is no country where the literature of
England is so much appreciated as in Germany. Some of our modern classics,
whether poets or philosophers, are read by Englishmen with the same
attention as their own; and the historians, the novel-writers, and the
poets of England have exercised, and continue to exercise, a most powerful
and beneficial influence on the people of Germany. In recent times, the
literature of the two countries has almost grown into one. Lord Macaulay’s
History has not only been translated into German, but reprinted at Leipzig
in the original; and it is said to have had a larger sale in Germany than
the work of any German historian. Baron Humboldt and Baron Bunsen address
their writings to the English as much as to the German public. The novels
of Dickens and Thackeray are expected with the same impatience at Leipzig
and Berlin as in London. The two great German classics, Schiller and
Goethe, have found their most successful biographers in Carlyle and Lewes;
and several works of German scholarship have met with more attentive and
thoughtful readers in the colleges of England than in the universities of
Germany. Goethe’s idea of a world-literature has, to a certain extent,
been realized; and the strong feeling of sympathy between the best classes
in both countries holds out a hope that, for many years to come, the
supremacy of the Teutonic race, not only in Europe, but over all the
world, will be maintained in common by the two champions of political
freedom and of the liberty of thought,—Protestant England and Protestant
Germany.

The interest, however, which Englishmen take in German literature has
hitherto been confined almost exclusively to the literature of the last
fifty years, and very little is known of those fourteen centuries during
which the German language had been growing up and gathering strength for
the great triumphs which were achieved by Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe.
Nor is this to be wondered at. The number of people in England, who take
any interest in the early history of their own literature, is extremely
small, and there is as yet no history of English literature worthy of that
name. It cannot be expected, therefore, that in England many people will
care to read in the original the ancient epic poems of the “Nibelunge” or
“Gudrun,” or acquire a grammatical knowledge of the Gothic of Ulfilas and
the Old High-German of Otfried. Gothic, Old High-German, and Middle
High-German are three distinct languages, each possessing its own grammar,
each differing from the others and from Modern German more materially than
the Greek of Homer differs from the Greek of Demosthenes. Even in Germany
these languages are studied only by professional antiquarians and
scholars, and they do not form part of the general system of instruction
in public schools and universities. The study of Gothic grammar alone
(where we still find a dual in addition to the singular and plural, and
where some tenses of the passive are still formed, as in Greek and Latin,
without auxiliary verbs), would require as much time as the study of Greek
grammar, though it would not offer the key to a literature like that of
Greece. Old High-German, again, is as difficult a language to a German as
Anglo-Saxon is to an Englishman; and the Middle High-German of the
“Nibelunge,” of Wolfram, and Walther, nay even of Eckhart and Tauler, is
more remote from the language of Goethe than Chaucer is from Tennyson.

But, without acquiring a grammatical knowledge of these ancient languages,
there are, I believe, not a few people who wish to know something of the
history of German literature. Nor is this, if properly taught, a subject
of narrow or merely antiquarian interest. The history of literature
reflects and helps us to interpret the political history of a country. It
contains, as it were, the confession which every generation, before it
passed away, has made to posterity. “Without Literary History,” as Lord
Bacon says, “the History of the World seemeth to be as the Statue of
Polyphemus with his eye out; that part being wanting which doth most shew
the spirit and life of the person.” From this point of view the historian
of literature learns to value what to the critic would seem unmeaning and
tedious, and he is loath to miss the works even of mediocre poets, where
they throw light on the times in which they lived, and serve to connect
the otherwise disjointed productions of men of the highest genius,
separated, as these necessarily are, by long intervals in the annals of
every country.

Although there exists no literature to reward the student of Gothic, yet
every one who cares for the history of Germany and of German thought
should know something of Ulfilas, the great Bishop of the Goths, who
anticipated the work of Luther by more than a thousand years, and who, at
a time when Greek and Latin were the only two respectable and orthodox
languages of Europe, dared for the first time to translate the Bible into
the vulgar tongue of Barbarians, as if foreseeing with a prophetic eye the
destiny of these Teutonic tribes, whose language, after Greek and Latin
had died away, was to become the life-spring of the Gospel over the whole
civilized world. He ought to know something of those early missionaries
and martyrs, most of them sent from Ireland and England to preach the
Gospel in the dark forests of Germany,—men like St. Gall (died 638), St.
Kilian (died 689), and St. Boniface (died 755), who were not content with
felling the sacred oak-trees and baptizing unconverted multitudes, but
founded missionary stations, and schools, and monasteries; working hard
themselves in order to acquire a knowledge of the language and the
character of the people, and drawing up those curious lists of barbarous
words, with their no less barbarous equivalents in Latin, which we still
possess, though copied by a later hand. He ought to know the gradual
progress of Christianity and civilization in Germany, previous to the time
of Charlemagne; for we see from the German translations of the Rules of
the Benedictine monks, of ancient Latin hymns, the Creeds, the Lord’s
Prayer, and portions of the New Testament, that the good sense of the
national clergy had led them to do what Charlemagne had afterwards to
enjoin by repeated Capitularia.(2) It is in the history of German
literature that we learn what Charlemagne really was. Though claimed as a
saint by the Church of Rome, and styled _Empereur Français_ by modern
French historians, Karl was really and truly a German king, proud, no
doubt, of his Roman subjects, and of his title of Emperor, and anxious to
give to his uncouth Germans the benefit of Italian and English teachers,
but fondly attached in his heart to his own mother tongue, to the lays and
laws of his fatherland: feelings displayed in his own attempt to compose a
German grammar, and in his collection of old national songs, fragments of
which may have been preserved to us in the ballads of Hildebrand and
Hadubrand.

After the death of Charlemagne, and under the reign of the good but weak
King Ludwig, the prospects of a national literature in Germany became
darkened. In one instance, indeed, the king was the patron of a German
poet; for he encouraged the author of the “Heliand” to write that poem for
the benefit of his newly converted countrymen. But he would hardly have
approved of the thoroughly German and almost heathen spirit which pervades
that Saxon epic of the New Testament, and he expressed his disgust at the
old German poems which his great father had taught him in his youth. The
seed, however, which Charlemagne had sown had fallen on healthy soil, and
grew up even without the sunshine of royal favor. The monastery of Fulda,
under Hrabanus Maurus, the pupil of Alcuin, became the seminary of a truly
national clergy. Here it was that Otfried, the author of the rhymed
“Gospel-book” was brought up. In the mean time, the heterogeneous elements
of the Carlovingian Empire broke asunder. Germany, by losing its French
and Italian provinces, became Germany once more. Ludwig the German was
King of Germany, Hrabanus Maurus Archbishop of Mayence; and the spirit of
Charlemagne, Alcuin, and Eginhard was revived at Aachen, Fulda, and many
other places, such as St. Gall, Weissenburg, and Corvey, where schools
were founded on the model of that of Tours. The translation of the
“Harmony of the Gospels,” gives us a specimen of the quiet studies of
those monasteries, whereas the lay on the victory of Louis III. over the
Normans, in 881, reminds us of the dangers that threatened Germany from
the West at the same time that the Hungarians began their inroads from the
East. The Saxon Emperors had hard battles to fight against these invaders,
and there were few places in Germany where the peaceful pursuits of the
monasteries and schools could be carried on without interruption. St. Gall
is the one bright star in the approaching gloom of the next centuries. Not
only was the Bible read, and translated, and commented upon in German at
St. Gall, as formerly at Fulda, but Greek and Roman classics were copied
and studied for educational purposes. Notker Teutonicus is the great
representative of that school, which continued to maintain its reputation
for theological and classical learning, and for a careful cultivation of
the national language, nearly to the close of the eleventh century. At the
court of the Saxon Emperors, though their policy was thoroughly German,
there was little taste for German poetry. The Queen of Otto I. was a
Lombard, the Queen of Otto II. a Greek lady; and their influence was not
favorable to the rude poetry of national bards. If some traces of their
work have been preserved to us, we owe it again to the more national taste
of the monks of St. Gall and Passau. They translate some of the German
epics into Latin verse, such as the poem of the “Nibelunge,” of “Walther
of Aquitain,” and of “Ruodlieb.” The first is lost; but the other two have
been preserved and published.(3) The stories of the Fox and the Bear, and
the other animals,—a branch of poetry so peculiar to Germany, and epic
rather than didactic in its origin,—attracted the attention of the monks;
and it is owing again to their Latin translations that the existence of
this curious style of poetry can be traced back so far as the tenth
century.(4) As these poems are written in Latin, they could not find a
place in a German reading-book; but they, as well as the unduly suspected
Latin plays of the nun Hrosvitha, throw much light on the state of German
civilization during the tenth and eleventh centuries.

The eleventh century presents almost an entire blank in the history of
literature. Under the Frankish or Salic dynasty, Germany had either to
defend herself against the inroads of Hungarian and Slavonic armies, or it
was the battle-field of violent feuds between the Emperors and their
vassals. The second half of that century was filled with the struggles
between Henry IV. and Pope Gregory VII. The clergy, hitherto the chief
support of German literature, became estranged from the German people; and
the insecurity of the times was unfavorable to literary pursuits.
Williram’s German had lost the classical correctness of Notker’s language,
and the “Merigarto,” and similar works, are written in a hybrid style,
which is neither prose nor poetry. The Old High-German had become a
literary language chiefly through the efforts of the clergy, and the
character of the whole Old High-German literature is preëminently
clerical. The Crusades put an end to the preponderance of the clerical
element in the literature of Germany. They were, no doubt, the work of the
clergy. By using to the utmost the influence which they had gradually
gained and carefully fomented, the priests were able to rouse a whole
nation to a pitch of religious enthusiasm never known before or after. But
the Crusades were the last triumph of the clergy; and with their failure
the predominant influence of the clerical element in German society is
checked and extinguished.

From the first beginning of the Crusades the interest of the people was
with the knight,—no longer with the priest. The chivalrous Emperors of the
Hohenstaufen dynasty formed a new rallying point for all national
sympathies. Their courts, and the castles of their vassals, offered a new
and more genial home to the poets of Germany than the monasteries of Fulda
and St. Gall. Poetry changed hands. The poets took their inspirations from
real life, though they borrowed their models from the romantic cycles of
Brittany and Provence. Middle High-German, the language of the Swabian
court, became the language of poetry. The earliest compositions in that
language continue for a while to bear the stamp of the clerical poetry of
a former age. The first Middle High-German poems are written by a nun; and
the poetical translation of the Books of Moses, the poem on Anno, Bishop
of Cologne, and the “Chronicle of the Roman Emperors,” all continue to
breathe the spirit of cloisters and cathedral towns. And when a new taste
for chivalrous romances was awakened in Germany; when the stories of
Arthur and his knights, of Charlemagne and his champions, of Achilles,
Æneas, and Alexander, in their modern dress, were imported by French and
Provençal knights, who, on their way to Jerusalem, came to stay at the
castles of their German allies, the first poets who ventured to imitate
these motley compositions were priests, not laymen. A few short extracts
from Konrad’s “Roland” and Lamprecht’s “Alexander” are sufficient to mark
this period of transition. Like Charlemagne, who had been changed into a
legendary hero by French poets before he became again the subject of
German poetry, another German worthy returned at the same time to his
native home, though but slightly changed by his foreign travels, “Reinhard
the Fox.” The influence of Provence and of Flanders is seen in every
branch of German poetry at that time; and yet nothing can be more
different than the same subject, as treated by French and German poets.
The German Minnesänger in particular were far from being imitators of the
Trouvères or Troubadours. There are a few solitary instances of lyric
poems translated from Provençal into German;(5) as there is, on the other
hand, one poem translated from German into Italian,(6) early in the
thirteenth century. But the great mass of German lyrics are of purely
German growth. Neither the Romans, nor the lineal descendants of the
Romans, the Italians, the Provençals, the Spaniards, can claim that poetry
as their own. It is Teutonic, purely Teutonic in its heart and soul,
though its utterance, its rhyme and metre, its grace and imagery, have
been touched by the more genial rays of the brilliant sun of a more
southern sky. The same applies to the great romantic poems of that period.
The first impulse came from abroad. The subjects were borrowed from a
foreign source, and the earlier poems, such as Heinrich von Veldecke’s
“Æneid,” might occasionally paraphrase the sentiments of French poets. But
in the works of Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Gottfried
von Strassburg, we breathe again the pure German air; and we cannot but
regret that these men should have taken the subjects of their poems, with
their unpronounceable names, extravagant conceits, and licentious manners,
from foreign sources, while they had at home their grand mythology, their
heroic traditions, their kings and saints, which would have been more
worthy subjects than Tristan and Isold, Schionatulander and Sigune. There
were new thoughts stirring in the hearts and minds of those men of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A hundred years before Dante, the German
poets had gazed with their eyes wide open into that infinite reality which
underlies our short existence on earth. To Wolfram, and to many a poet of
his time, the human tragedy of this world presented the same unreal,
transitory, and transparent aspect which we find again in Dante’s “Divine
Comedy.” Everything points to another world. Beauty, love, virtue,
happiness,—everything, in fact, that moves the heart of the poet,—has a
hidden reference to something higher than this life; and the highest
object of the highest poetry seems to be to transfer the mind to those
regions where men feel the presence of a Divine power and a Divine love,
and are lost in blissful adoration. The beginning of the thirteenth
century is as great an era in the history of German literature as the
beginning of the nineteenth. The German mind was completely regenerated.
Old words, old thoughts, old metres, old fashions, were swept away, and a
new spring dawned over Germany. The various branches of the Teutonic race
which, after their inroads into the seats of Roman civilization, had for a
time become separated, were beginning to assume a national
independence,—when suddenly a new age of migration threatened to set in.
The knights of France and Flanders, of England, Lombardy, and Sicily, left
their brilliant castles. They marched to the East, carrying along with
them the less polished, but equally enthusiastic, nobility of Germany.
From the very first the spirit of the Roman towns in Italy and Gaul had
exercised a more civilizing influence on the Barbarians who had crossed
the Alps and the Rhine, whereas the Germans of Germany proper had been
left to their own resources, assisted only by the lessons of the Roman
clergy. Now, at the beginning of the Crusades, the various divisions of
the German race met again, but they met as strangers; no longer with the
impetuosity of Franks and Goths, but with the polished reserve of a
Godefroy of Bouillon and the chivalrous bearing of a Frederick Barbarossa.
The German Emperors and nobles opened their courts to receive their guests
with brilliant hospitality. Their festivals, the splendor and beauty of
their tournaments, attracted crowds from great distances, and foremost
among them poets and singers. It was at such festivals as Heinrich von
Veldecke describes at Mayence, in 1184, under Frederick I., that French
and German poetry were brought face to face. It was here that high-born
German poets learnt from French poets the subjects of their own romantic
compositions. German ladies became the patrons of German poets; and the
etiquette of French chivalry was imitated at the castles of German
knights. Poets made bold for the first time to express their own feelings,
their joys and sufferings, and epic poetry had to share its honors with
lyric songs. Not only France and Germany, but England and Northern Italy
were drawn into this gay society. Henry II. married Eleanor of Poitou, and
her grace and beauty found eloquent admirers in the army of the Crusaders.
Their daughter Mathilde was married to Henry the Lion, of Saxony, and one
of the Provençal poets has celebrated her loveliness. Frenchmen became the
tutors of the sons of the German nobility. French manners, dresses,
dishes, and dances were the fashion everywhere. The poetry which
flourished at the castles was soon adopted by the lower ranks. Travelling
poets and jesters are frequently mentioned, and the poems of the
“Nibelunge” and “Gudrun,” such as we now possess them, were composed at
that time by poets who took their subjects, their best thoughts and
expressions, from the people, but imitated the language, the metre, and
the manners of the court poets. The most famous courts to which the German
poets resorted, and where they were entertained with generous hospitality,
were the court of Leopold, Duke of Austria (1198-1230), and of his son
Frederick II.; of Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia, who resided at the
Wartburg, near Eisenach (1190-1215); of Berthold, Duke of Zähringen
(1186-1218); and of the Swabian Emperors in general. At the present day,
when not only the language, but even the thoughts of these poets have
become to most of us unintelligible and strange, we cannot claim for their
poetry more than an historical interest. But if we wish to know the men
who took a leading part in the Crusades, who fought with the Emperors
against the Pope, or with the Pope against the Emperors, who lived in
magnificent castles like that of the Wartburg, and founded cathedrals like
that of Cologne (1248), we must read the poetry which they admired, which
they composed or patronized. The subjects of their Romances cannot gain
our sympathy. They are artificial, unreal, with little of humanity, and
still less of nationality in them. But the mind of a poet like Wolfram von
Eschenbach rises above all these difficulties. He has thoughts of his own,
truly human, deeply religious, and thoroughly national; and there are
expressions and comparisons in his poetry which had never been used
before. His style, however, is lengthy, his descriptions tiresome, and his
characters somewhat vague and unearthly. As critics, we should have to
bestow on Wolfram von Eschenbach, on Gottfried von Strassburg, even on
Hartman von Aue and Walther von der Vogelweide, as much of blame as of
praise. But as historians, we cannot value them too highly. If we measure
them with the poets that preceded and those that followed them, they tower
above all like giants. From the deep marks which they left behind, we
discover that they were men of creative genius, men who had looked at life
with their own eyes, and were able to express what they had seen and
thought and felt in a language which fascinated their contemporaries, and
which even now holds its charm over all who can bring themselves to study
their works in the same spirit in which they read the tragedies of
Æschylus, or the “Divina Commedia” of Dante.

But the heyday of German chivalry and chivalrous poetry was of short
duration. Toward the end of the thirteenth century we begin to feel that
the age is no longer aspiring, and hoping, and growing. The world assumes
a different aspect. Its youth and vigor seem spent; and the children of a
new generation begin to be wiser and sadder than their fathers. The
Crusades languish. Their object, like the object of many a youthful hope,
has proved unattainable. The Knights no longer take the Cross “because God
wills it;” but because the Pope commands a Crusade, bargains for
subsidies, and the Emperor cannot decline his commands. Walther von der
Vogelweide already is most bitter in his attacks on Rome. Walther was the
friend of Frederick II. (1215-50), an Emperor who reminds us, in several
respects, of his namesake of Prussia. He was a sovereign of literary
tastes,—himself a poet and a philosopher. Harassed by the Pope, he
retaliated most fiercely, and was at last accused of a design to extirpate
the Christian religion. The ban was published against him, and his own son
rose in rebellion. Germany remained faithful to her Emperor, and the
Emperor was successful against his son. But he soon died in disappointment
and despair. With him the star of the Swabian dynasty had set, and the
sweet sounds of the Swabian lyre died away with the last breath of
Corradino, the last of the Hohenstaufen, on the scaffold at Naples, in
1268. Germany was breaking down under heavy burdens. It was visited by the
papal interdict, by famine, by pestilence. Sometimes there was no Emperor,
sometimes there were two or three. Rebellion could not be kept under, nor
could crime be punished. The only law was the “Law of the Fist.” The
Church was deeply demoralized. Who was to listen to romantic poetry? There
was no lack of poets or of poetry. Rudolf von Ems, a poet called Der
Stricker, and Konrad von Würzburg, all of them living in the middle of the
thirteenth century, were more fertile than Hartmann von Aue and Gottfried
von Strassburg. They complain, however, that no one took notice of them,
and they are evidently conscious themselves of their inferiority. Lyric
poetry continued to flourish for a time, but it degenerated into an
unworthy idolatry of ladies, and affected sentimentality. There is but one
branch of poetry in which we find a certain originality, the didactic and
satiric. The first beginnings of this new kind of poetry carry us back to
the age of Walther von der Vogelweide. Many of his verses are satirical,
political, and didactic; and it is supposed, on very good authority, that
Walther was the author of an anonymous didactic poem, “Freidank’s
Bescheidenheit.” By Thomasin von Zerclar, or Tommasino di Circlaria, we
have a metrical composition on manners, the “Italian Guest,” which
likewise belongs to the beginning of the thirteenth century.(7) Somewhat
later we meet, in the works of the Stricker, with the broader satire of
the middle classes; and toward the close of the century, Hugo von
Trimberg, in his “Renner,” addresses himself to the lower ranks of German
society, and no longer to princes, knights, and ladies.

How is this to be accounted for? Poetry was evidently changing hands
again. The Crusades had made the princes and knights the representatives
and leaders of the whole nation; and during the contest between the
imperial and the papal powers, the destinies of Germany were chiefly in
the hands of the hereditary nobility. The literature, which before that
time was entirely clerical, had then become worldly and chivalrous. But
now, when the power of the emperors began to decline, when the clergy was
driven into taking a decidedly anti-national position, when the unity of
the empire was well-nigh destroyed, and princes and prelates were
asserting their independence by plunder and by warfare, a new element of
society rose to the surface,—the middle classes,—the burghers of the free
towns of Germany. They were forced to hold together, in order to protect
themselves against their former protectors. They fortified their cities,
formed corporations, watched over law and morality, and founded those
powerful leagues, the first of which, the Hansa, dates from 1241. Poetry
also took refuge behind the walls of free towns; and at the fireside of
the worthy citizen had to exchange her gay, chivalrous, and romantic
strains, for themes more subdued, practical, and homely. This accounts for
such works as Hugo von Trimberg’s “Renner,” as well as for the general
character of the poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Poetry
became a trade like any other. Guilds were formed, consisting of
master-singers and their apprentices. Heinrich Frauenlob is called the
first Meistersänger; and during the fourteenth, the fifteenth, and even
the sixteenth centuries, new guilds or schools sprang up in all the
principal towns of Germany. After order had been restored by the first
Hapsburg dynasty, the intellectual and literary activity of Germany
retained its centre of gravitation in the middle classes. Rudolf von
Hapsburg was not gifted with a poetical nature, and contemporaneous poets
complain of his want of liberality. Attempts were made to revive the
chivalrous poetry of the Crusades by Hugo von Montfort and Oswald von
Wolkenstein in the beginning of the fifteenth century, and again at the
end of the same century by the “Last of the German Knights,” the Emperor
Maximilian. But these attempts could not but fail. The age of chivalry was
gone, and there was nothing great or inspiring in the wars which the
Emperors had to wage during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries against
their vassals, against the Pope, against the precursors of the
Reformation, the Hussites, and against the Turks. In Fritsche Closener’s
“Chronicle” there is a description of the citizens of Strassburg defending
themselves against their bishop in 1312; in Twinger’s “Chronicle” a
picture of the processions of the Flagellants and the religious enthusiasm
of that time (1349). The poems of Suchenwirt and Halbsuter represent the
wars of Austria against Switzerland (1386), and Niclas von Weyl’s
translation gives us a glimpse into the Council of Constance (1414) and
the Hussite wars, which were soon to follow. The poetry of those two
centuries, which was written by and for the people, is interesting
historically, but, with few exceptions, without any further worth. The
poets wish to amuse or to instruct their humble patrons, and they do this,
either by giving them the dry bones of the romantic poetry of former ages,
or by telling them fables and the quaint stories of the “Seven Wise
Masters.” What beauty there was in a Meistergesang may be fairly seen from
the poem of Michael Beheim; and the Easter play by no means shows the
lowest ebb of good taste in the popular literature of that time.

It might seem, indeed, as if all the high and noble aspirations of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries had been lost and forgotten during the
fourteenth and fifteenth. And yet it was not quite so. There was one class
of men on whom the spirit of true nobility had descended, and whose works
form a connecting chain between the great era of the Crusades and the
still greater era of the Reformation. These are the so-called
Mystics,—true Crusaders, true knights of the Spirit, many of whom
sacrificed their lives for the cause of truth, and who at last conquered
from the hands of the infidels that Holy Sepulchre in which the true
Christian faith had been lying buried for centuries. The name of Mystics,
which has been given to these men, is apt to mislead. Their writings are
not dark or unintelligible, and those who call them so must find
Christianity itself unintelligible and dark. There is more broad daylight
in Eckhart and Tauler than in the works of all the Thomists and Scotists.
Eckhart was not a dreamer. He had been a pupil of Thomas Aquinas, and his
own style is sometimes painfully scholastic. But there is a fresh breeze
of thought in his works, and in the works of his disciples. They knew that
whenever the problems of man’s relation to God, the creation of the world,
the origin of evil, and the hope of salvation come to be discussed, the
sharpest edge of logical reasoning will turn, and the best defined terms
of metaphysics die away into mere music. They knew that the hard and
narrow categories of the schoolmen do greater violence to the highest
truths of religion than the soft, and vague, and vanishing tones with
which they tried to shadow forth in the vulgar language of the people the
distant objects which transcend the horizon of human understanding. They
did not handle the truths of Christianity as if they should or could be
proved by the syllogisms of our human reasoning. Nevertheless these
Mystics were hard and honest thinkers, and never played with words and
phrases. Their faith is to them as clear and as real as sunshine; and
instead of throwing scholastic dust into the eyes of the people, they
boldly told them to open their eyes and to look at the mysteries all
around them, and to feel the presence of God within and without, which the
priests had veiled by the very revelation which they had preached. For a
true appreciation of the times in which they lived, the works of these
Reformers of the Faith are invaluable. Without them we should try in vain
to explain how a nation which, to judge from its literature, seemed to
have lost all vigor and virtue, could suddenly rise and dare the work of a
reformation of the Church. With them we learn how that same nation, after
groaning for centuries under the yoke of superstition and hypocrisy, found
in its very prostration the source of an irresistible strength. The higher
clergy contributed hardly anything to the literature of these two
centuries; and what they wrote would better have remained unwritten. At
St. Gall, toward the end of the thirteenth century, the monks, the
successors of Notker, were unable to sign their names. The Abbot was a
nobleman who composed love-songs, a branch of poetry at all events out of
place in the monastery founded by St. Gall. It is only among the lower
clergy that we find the traces of genuine Christian piety and intellectual
activity, though frequently branded by obese prelates and obtuse
magistrates with the names of mysticism and heresy. The orders of the
Franciscans and Dominicans, founded in 1208 and 1215, and intended to act
as clerical spies and confessors, began to fraternize in many parts of
Germany with the people against the higher clergy. The people were hungry
and thirsty after religious teaching. They had been systematically
starved, or fed with stones. Part of the Bible had been translated for the
people, but what Ulfilas was free to do in the fourth century, was
condemned by the prelates assembled at the Synod of Trier in 1231. Nor
were the sermons of the itinerant friars in towns and villages always to
the taste of bishops and abbots. We possess collections of these
discourses, preached by Franciscans and Dominicans under the trees of
cemeteries, and from the church-towers of the villages. Brother Berthold,
who died in 1272, was a Franciscan. He travelled about the country, and
was revered by the poor like a saint and prophet. The doctrine he
preached, though it was the old teaching of the Apostles, was as new to
the peasants who came to hear him, as it had been to the citizens of
Athens who came to hear St. Paul. The saying of St Chrysostom that
Christianity had turned many a peasant into a philosopher, came true again
in the time of Eckhart and Tauler. Men who called themselves Christians
had been taught, and had brought themselves to believe, that to read the
writings of the Apostles was a deadly sin. Yet in secret they were
yearning after that forbidden Bible. They knew that there were
translations, and though these translations had been condemned by popes
and synods, the people could not resist the temptation of reading them. In
1373, we find the first complete version of the Bible into German, by
Matthias of Beheim. Several are mentioned after this. The new religious
fervor that had been kindled among the inferior clergy, and among the
lower and middle classes of the laity, became stronger; and, though it
sometimes degenerated into wild fanaticism, the sacred spark was kept in
safe hands by such men as Eckhart (died 1329), Tauler (died 1361), and the
author of the German Theology. Men like these are sure to conquer; they
are persecuted justly or unjustly; they suffer and die, and all they
thought and said and did seems for a time to have been in vain. But
suddenly their work, long marked as dangerous in the smooth current of
society, rises above the surface like the coral reefs in the Pacific, and
it remains for centuries the firm foundation of a new world of thought and
faith. Without the labors of these Reformers of the Faith, the Reformers
of the Church would never have found a whole nation waiting to receive,
and ready to support them.

There are two other events which prepared the way of the German Reformers
of the sixteenth century: the foundation of universities, and the
invention of printing. Their importance is the same in the literary and in
the political history of Germany. The intellectual and moral character of
a nation is formed in schools and universities; and those who educate a
people have always been its real masters, though they may go by a more
modest name. Under the Roman Empire public schools had been supported by
the government, both at Rome and in the chief towns of the Provinces. We
know of their existence in Gaul and parts of Germany. With the decline of
the central authority, the salaries of the grammarians and rhetors in the
Provinces ceased to be paid, and the pagan gymnasia were succeeded by
Christian schools, attached to episcopal sees and monasteries. Whilst the
clergy retained their vigor and efficiency, their schools were powerful
engines for spreading a half clerical and half classical culture in
Germany. During the Crusades, when ecclesiastical activity and learning
declined very rapidly, we hear of French tutors at the castles of the
nobility, and classical learning gave way to the superficial polish of a
chivalrous age. And when the nobility likewise relapsed into a state of
savage barbarism, new schools were wanted, and they were founded by the
towns, the only places where, during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, we see any evidence of a healthy political life. The first town
schools are mentioned in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and they
were soon followed by the high schools and universities. The University of
Prague was founded in 1348; Vienna, 1366; Heidelberg, 1386; Erfurt, 1392;
Leipzig, 1408; Basle, 1460; Tübingen, 1477; Mainz, 1482. These
universities are a novel feature in the history of German and of European
civilization. They are not ecclesiastical seminaries, not restricted to
any particular class of society; they are national institutions, open to
the rich and the poor, to the knight, the clerk, the citizen. They are
real universities of learning: they profess to teach all branches of
knowledge,—theology and law, medicine and philosophy. They contain the
first practical acknowledgment of the right of every subject to the
highest education, and through it to the highest offices in Church and
State. Neither Greece nor Rome had known such institutions: neither the
Church nor the nobility, during the days of their political supremacy,
were sufficiently impressed with the duty which they owed to the nation at
large to provide such places of liberal education. It was the nation
itself, when forsaken by its clergy and harassed by its nobility, which
called these schools into life; and it is in these schools and
universities that the great men who inaugurate the next period of
literature—the champions of political liberty and religious freedom—were
fostered and formed.

The invention of printing was in itself a reformation, and its benefits
were chiefly felt by the great masses of the people. The clergy possessed
their libraries, where they might read and study if they chose; the
castles contained collections of MSS., sacred and profane, illuminated
with the most exquisite taste; while the citizen, the poor layman, though
he might be able to read and to write, was debarred from the use of books,
and had to satisfy his literary tastes with the sermons of travelling
Franciscans, or the songs of blind beggars and peddlers. The art of
printing admitted that large class to the same privileges which had
hitherto been enjoyed almost exclusively by clergy and nobility: it placed
in the hands of the third estate arms more powerful than the swords of the
knights, and the thunderbolts of the priests: it was a revolution in the
history of literature more eventful than any in the history of mankind.
Poets and philosophers addressed themselves no longer to emperors and
noblemen, to knights and ladies, but to the people at large, and
especially to the middle classes, in which henceforth the chief strength
of the nation resides.

The years from 1450 to 1500 form a period of preparation for the great
struggle that was to inaugurate the beginning of the sixteenth century. It
was an age “rich in scholars, copious in pedants, but poor in genius, and
barren of strong thinkers.” One of the few interesting men in whose life
and writings the history of that preliminary age may be studied, is
Sebastian Brant, the famous author of the famous “Ship of Fools.”

With the sixteenth century, we enter upon the modern history and the
modern literature of Germany. We shall here pass on more rapidly, dwelling
only on the men in whose writings the political and social changes of
Germany can best be studied.

With Luther, the literary language of Germany became New High-German. A
change of language invariably betokens a change in the social constitution
of a country. In Germany, at the time of the Reformation, the change of
language marks the rise of a new aristocracy, which is henceforth to
reside in the universities. Literature leaves its former homes. It speaks
no longer the language of the towns. It addresses itself no longer to a
few citizens, nor to imperial patrons, such as Maximilian I. It indulges
no longer in moral saws, didactic verses, and prose novels, nor is it
content with mystic philosophy and the secret outpourings of religious
fervor. For a time, though but for a short time, German literature becomes
national. Poets and writers wish to be heard beyond the walls of their
monasteries and cities. They speak to the whole nation; nay, they desire
to be heard beyond the frontiers of their country. Luther and the
Reformers belonged to no class,—they belonged to the people. The voice of
the people, which during the preceding periods of literature could only be
heard like the rolling of distant thunder, had now become articulate and
distinct, and for a time one thought seemed to unite all
classes,—emperors, kings, nobles, and citizens, clergy and laity, high and
low, old and young. This is a novel sight in the history of Germany. We
have seen in the first period the gradual growth of the clergy, from the
time when the first missionaries were massacred in the marshes of
Friesland to the time when the Emperor stood penitent before the gates of
Canossa. We have seen the rise of the nobility, from the time when the
barbarian chiefs preferred living outside the walls of cities to the time
when they rivaled the French cavaliers in courtly bearing and chivalrous
bravery. Nor were the representatives of these two orders, the Pope and
the Emperor, less powerful at the beginning of the sixteenth century than
they had been before. Charles V. was the most powerful sovereign whom
Europe had seen since the days of Charlemagne, and the papal see had
recovered by diplomatic intrigue much of the influence which it had lost
by moral depravity. Let us think, then, of these two ancient powers: the
Emperor with his armies, recruited in Austria, Spain, Naples, Sicily, and
Burgundy, and with his treasures brought from Mexico and Peru; and the
Pope with his armies of priests and monks, recruited from all parts of the
Christian world, and armed with the weapons of the Inquisition and the
thunderbolts of excommunication: let us think of their former victories,
their confidence in their own strength, their belief in their divine
right: and let us then turn our eyes to the small University of
Wittenberg, and into the bleak study of a poor Augustine monk, and see
that monk step out of his study with no weapon in his hand but the
Bible,—with no armies and no treasures,—and yet defying with his clear and
manly voice both Pope and Emperor, both clergy and nobility: there is no
grander sight in history; and the longer we allow our eyes to dwell on it,
the more we feel that history is not without God, and that at every
decisive battle the divine right of truth asserts its supremacy over the
divine right of Popes and Emperors, and overthrows with one breath both
empires and hierarchies. We call the Reformation the work of Luther; but
Luther stood not alone, and no really great man ever stood alone. The
secret of their greatness lies in their understanding the spirit of the
age in which they live, and in giving expression with the full power of
faith and conviction to the secret thoughts of millions. Luther was but
lending words to the silent soul of suffering Germany, and no one should
call himself a Protestant who is not a Lutheran with Luther at the Diet of
Worms, and able to say with him in the face of princes and prelates, “Here
I stand; I can not do otherwise; God help me: Amen.”

As the Emperor was the representative of the nobility, as the Pope was the
representative of the clergy, Luther was the head and leader of the
people, which through him and through his fellow-workers claimed now, for
the first time, an equality with the two old estates of the realm. If this
national struggle took at first an aspect chiefly religious, it was
because the German nation had freedom of thought and of belief more at
heart than political freedom. But political rights also were soon
demanded, and demanded with such violence, that during his own life-time
Luther had to repress the excesses of enthusiastic theorists and of a
violent peasantry. Luther’s great influence on the literature of Germany,
and the gradual adoption of his dialect as the literary language, were
owing in a great measure to this, that whatever there was of literature
during the sixteenth century, was chiefly in the hands of one class of
men. After the Reformation, nearly all eminent men in Germany—poets,
philosophers, and historians—belonged to the Protestant party, and resided
chiefly in the universities.

The universities were what the monasteries had been under Charlemagne, the
castles under Frederick Barbarossa,—the centres of gravitation for the
intellectual and political life of the country. The true nobility of
Germany was no longer to be found among the priests,—Alcuin, Hrabanus
Maurus, Notker Teutonicus; nor among the knights,—Walther von der
Vogelweide, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and their patrons, Frederick II.,
Hermann von Thüringen, and Leopold of Austria. The intellectual sceptre of
Germany was wielded by a new nobility,—a nobility that had risen from the
ranks, like the priests and the knights, but which, for a time at least,
kept itself from becoming a caste, and from cutting away those roots
through which it imbibed its vigor and sustained its strength. It had its
castles in the universities, its tournaments in the diets of Worms and
Augsburg, and it counted among its members, dukes and peasants, divines
and soldiers, lawyers and artists. This was not, indeed, an hereditary
nobility, but on that very ground it is a nobility which can never become
extinct. The danger, however, which threatens all aristocracies, whether
martial, clerical, or municipal, was not averted from the intellectual
aristocracy of Germany. The rising spirit of caste deprived the second
generation of that power which men like Luther had gained at the beginning
of the Reformation. The moral influence of the universities in Germany was
great, and it is great at the present day. But it would have been greater
and more beneficial if the conceit of caste had not separated the leaders
of the nation from the ranks whence they themselves had arisen, and to
which alone they owed their position and their influence. It was the same
with the priests, who would rather form a hierarchy than be merged in the
laity. It was the same with the knights, who would rather form a select
society than live among the gentry. Both cut away the ground under their
feet; and the Reformers of the sixteenth century fell into the same snare
before they were aware of it. We wonder at the eccentricities of the
priesthood, at the conceit of the hereditary nobility, at the affectation
of majestic stateliness inherent in royalty. But the pedantic display of
learning, the disregard of the real wants of the people, the contempt of
all knowledge which does not wear the academic garb, show the same foible,
the same conceit, the same spirit of caste among those who, from the
sixteenth century to the present day, have occupied the most prominent
rank in the society of Germany. Professorial knight-errantry still waits
for its Cervantes. Nowhere have the objects of learning been so completely
sacrificed to the means of learning, nowhere has that Dulcinea,—knowledge
for its own sake,—with her dark veil and her barren heart, numbered so
many admirers; nowhere have so many windmills been fought, and so many
real enemies been left unhurt, as in Germany, particularly during the last
two centuries. New universities have been founded: Marburg, in 1527;
Königsberg, in 1547; Jena, in 1558; Helmstädt, in 1575; Giessen, in 1607.
And the more the number and the power of the professors increased, the
more they forgot that they and their learning, their universities and
their libraries, were for the benefit of the people; that a professor
might be very learned, and very accurate, and very laborious, yet worse
than useless as a member of our toiling society. It was considered more
learned and respectable to teach in Latin, and all lectures at the
universities were given in that language. Luther was sneered at because of
his little German tracts which “any village clerk might have written.”
Some of the best poets in the sixteenth century were men such as Eoban
Hessius (1540), who composed their poetry in Latin. National poems, for
instance, Brant’s “Ship of Fools,” were translated into Latin in order to
induce the German professors to read them. The learned doctors were
ashamed of their honest native names. Schwarzerd must needs call himself
Melancthon; Meissel Celtes, Schnitter Agricola; Hausschein, Œcolampadius!
All this might look very learned, and professorial, and imposing; but it
separated the professors from the people at large; it retarded the
progress of national education, and blighted the prospects of a national
policy in Germany. Everything promised well at the time of the
Reformation; and a new Germany might have risen before a new France, if,
like Luther, the leaders of the nation had remained true to their calling.
But when to speak Latin was considered more learned than to speak German,
when to amass vast information was considered more creditable than to
digest and to use it, when popularity became the same bugbear to the
professors which profanity had been to the clergy, and vulgarity to the
knights, Luther’s work was undone; and two more centuries had to be spent
in pedantic controversies, theological disputes, sectarian squabbles, and
political prostration, before a new national spirit could rise again in
men like Lessing, and Schiller, and Fichte, and Stein. Ambitious princes
and quarrelsome divines continued the rulers of Germany, and, towards the
end of the sixteenth century, everything seemed drifting back into the
Middle Ages. Then came the Thirty Years’ War, a most disastrous war for
Germany, which is felt in its results to the present day. If, as a civil
and religious contest, it had been fought out between the two parties,—the
Protestants and Roman Catholics of Germany,—it would have left, as in
England, one side victorious; it would have been brought to an end before
both were utterly exhausted. But the Protestants, weakened by their own
dissensions, had to call in foreign aid. First Denmark, then Sweden,
poured their armies into Germany, and even France—Roman Catholic
France—gave her support to Gustavus Adolphus and the Protestant cause.
England, the true ally of Germany, was too weak at home to make her
influence felt abroad. At the close of the war, the Protestants received
indeed the same rights as the Roman Catholics; but the nation was so
completely demoralized that it hardly cared for the liberties guaranteed
by the treaty of Westphalia. The physical and moral vigor of the nation
was broken. The population of Germany is said to have been reduced by one
half. Thousands of villages and towns had been burnt to the ground. The
schools, the churches, the universities, were deserted. A whole generation
had grown up during the war, particularly among the lower classes, with no
education at all. The merchants of Germany, who formerly, as Æneas Sylvius
said, lived more handsomely than the Kings of Scotland, were reduced to
small traders. The Hansa was broken up. Holland, England, and Sweden had
taken the wind out of her sails. In the Eastern provinces, commerce was
suspended by the inroads of the Turks; whilst the discovery of America,
and of the new passage to the East Indies, had reduced the importance of
the mercantile navy of Germany and Italy in the Mediterranean. Where there
was any national feeling left, it was a feeling of shame and despair, and
the Emperor and the small princes of Germany might have governed even more
selfishly than they did, without rousing opposition among the people.

What can we expect of the literature of such times? Popular poetry
preserved some of its indestructible charms. The Meistersänger went on
composing according to the rules of their guilds, but we look in vain for
the raciness and honest simplicity of Hans Sachs. Some of the professors
wrote plays in the style of Terence, or after English models, and fables
became fashionable in the style of Phædrus. But there was no trace
anywhere of originality, truth, taste, or feeling, except in that branch
which, like the palm-tree, thrives best in the desert,—sacred poetry. Paul
Gerhard is still without an equal as a poet of sacred songs; and many of
the best hymns which are heard in the Protestant churches of Germany date
from the seventeenth century. Soon, however, this class of poetry also
degenerated on one side into dry theological phraseology, on the other
into sentimental and almost erotic affectation.

There was no hope of a regeneration in German literature, unless either
great political and social events should rouse the national mind from its
languor, or the classical models of pure taste and true art should be
studied again in a different spirit from that of professorial pedantry.
Now, after the Thirty Years’ War, there was no war in Germany in which the
nation took any warm interest. The policy pursued in France during the
long reign of Louis XIV. (1643-1708) had its chief aim in weakening the
house of Hapsburg. When the Protestants would no longer fight his battles,
Louis roused the Turks. Vienna was nearly taken, and Austria owed its
delivery to Johann Sobiesky. By the treaty of Ryswick (1697), all the
country on the left side of the Rhine was ceded to France, and German
soldiers fought under the banners of the Great Monarch. The only German
prince who dared to uphold the honor of the empire, and to withstand the
encroachments of Louis, was Frederick William, the great Elector of
Prussia (1670-88). He checked the arrogance of the Swedish court, opened
his towns to French Protestant refugees, and raised the house of
Brandenburg to a European importance. In the same year in which his
successor, Frederick III., assumed the royal title as Frederick I., the
King of Spain, Charles I., died; and Louis XIV., whilst trying to add the
Spanish crown to his monarchy, was at last checked in his grasping policy
by an alliance between England and Germany. Prince Eugene and Marlborough
restored the peace and the political equilibrium of Europe. In England,
the different parties in Parliament, the frequenters of the clubs and
coffee-houses, were then watching every move on the political chess-board
of Europe, and criticising the victories of their generals and the
treaties of their ambassadors. In Germany, the nation took but a passive
part. It was excluded from all real share in the great questions of the
day; and, if it showed any sympathies, they were confined to the simple
admiration of a great general, such as Prince Eugene.

While the policy of Louis XIV. was undermining the political independence
of Germany, the literature of his court exercised an influence hardly less
detrimental on the literature of Germany. No doubt, the literature of
France stood far higher at that time than that of Germany. “Poet” was
amongst us a term of abuse, while in France the Great Monarch himself did
homage to his great poets. But the professorial poets who had failed to
learn the lessons of good taste from the Greek and Roman classics, were
not likely to profit by an imitation of the spurious classicality of
French literature. They heard the great stars of the court of Louis XIV.
praised by their royal and princely patrons, as they returned from their
travels in France and Italy, full of admiration for everything that was
not German. They were delighted to hear that in France, in Holland, and in
Italy, it was respectable to write poetry in the modern vernacular, and
set to work in good earnest. After the model of the literary academies in
Italy, academies were founded at the small courts of Germany. Men like
Opitz would hardly have thought it dignified to write verses in their
native tongue had it not been for the moral support which they received
from these academies and their princely patrons. His first poems were
written in Latin, but he afterwards devoted himself completely to German
poetry. He became a member of the “Order of the Palm-tree,” and the
founder of what is called the _First Silesian School_. Opitz is the true
representative of the classical poetry of the seventeenth century. He was
a scholar and a gentleman; most correct in his language and versification;
never venturing on ground that had not been trodden before by some
classical poet, whether of Greece, Rome, France, Holland, or Italy. In him
we also see the first traces of that baneful alliance between princes and
poets which has deprived the German nation of so many of her best sons.
But the charge of mean motives has been unjustly brought against Opitz by
many historians. Poets require an audience, and at his time there was no
class of people willing to listen to poetry, except the inmates of the
small German courts. After the Thirty Years’ War the power of these
princes was greater than ever. They divided the spoil, and there was
neither a nobility, nor a clergy, nor a national party to control or
resist them. In England, the royal power had, at that time, been brought
back to its proper limits, and it has thus been able to hold ever since,
with but short interruptions, its dignified position, supported by the
self-respect of a free and powerful nation. In France it assumed the most
enormous proportions during the long reign of Louis XIV., but its
appalling rise was followed, after a century, by a fall equally appalling,
and it has not yet regained its proper position in the political system of
that country. In Germany the royal power was less imposing, its
prerogatives being divided between the Emperor and a number of small but
almost independent vassals, remnants of that feudal system of the Middle
Ages which in France and England had been absorbed by the rise of national
monarchies. These small principalities explain the weakness of Germany in
her relation with foreign powers, and the instability of her political
constitution. Continental wars gave an excuse for keeping up large
standing armies, and these standing armies stood between the nation and
her sovereigns, and made any moral pressure of the one upon the other
impossible. The third estate could never gain that share in the government
which it had obtained, by its united action, in other countries; and no
form of government can be stable which is deprived of the support and the
active coöperation of the middle classes. Constitutions have been granted
by enlightened sovereigns, such as Joseph II. and Frederick William IV.,
and barricades have been raised by the people at Vienna and at Berlin; but
both have failed to restore the political health of the country. There is
no longer a German nobility in the usual sense of the word. Its vigor was
exhausted when the powerful vassals of the empire became powerless
sovereigns with the titles of king or duke, while what remained of the
landed nobility became more reduced with every generation, owing to the
absence of the system of primogeniture. There is no longer a clergy as a
powerful body in the state. This was broken up at the time of the
Reformation; and it hardly had time to recover and to constitute itself on
a new basis, when the Thirty Years’ War deprived it of all social
influence, and left it no alternative but to become a salaried class of
servants of the crown. No third estate exists powerful enough to defend
the interests of the commonwealth against the encroachments of the
sovereign; and public opinion, though it may pronounce itself within
certain limits, has no means of legal opposition, and must choose, at
every critical moment, between submission to the royal will and rebellion.

Thus, during the whole modern history of Germany, the political and
intellectual supremacy is divided. The former is monopolized by the
sovereigns, the latter belongs to a small class of learned men. These two
soon begin to attract each other. The kings seek the society, the advice,
and support of literary men; whilst literary men court the patronage of
kings, and acquire powerful influence by governing those who govern the
people. From the time of Opitz there have been few men of eminence in
literature or science who have not been drawn toward one of the larger or
smaller courts of Germany; and the whole of our modern literature bears
the marks of this union between princes and poets. It has been said that
the existence of these numerous centres of civilization has proved
beneficial to the growth of literature; and it has been pointed out that
some of the smallest courts, such as Weimar, have raised the greatest men
in poetry and science. Goethe himself gives expression to this opinion.
“What has made Germany great,” he says, “but the culture which is spread
through the whole country in such a marvelous manner, and pervades equally
all parts of the realm? And this culture, does it not emanate from the
numerous courts which grant it support and patronage? Suppose we had had
in Germany for centuries but two capitals, Vienna and Berlin, or but one;
I should like to know how it would have fared with German civilization, or
even with that general well-being which goes hand in hand with true
civilization.” In these words we hear Goethe, the minister of the petty
court of Weimar, not the great poet of a great nation. Has France had more
than one capital? Has England had more than one court? Great men have
risen to eminence in great monarchies like France, and they have risen to
eminence in a great commonwealth such as England, without the patronage of
courts, by the support, the sympathy, the love of a great nation. Truly
national poetry exists only where there is a truly national life; and the
poet who, in creating his works, thinks of a whole nation which will
listen to him and be proud of him, is inspired by a nobler passion than he
who looks to his royal master, or the applause even of the most refined
audience of the _dames de la cour_. In a free country, the sovereign is
the highest and most honored representative of the national will, and he
honors himself by honoring those who have well deserved of his country.
There a poet laureate may hold an independent and dignified position,
conscious of his own worth, and of the support of the nation. But in
despotic countries, the favor even of the most enlightened sovereign is
dangerous. Germany never had a more enlightened king than Frederick the
Great; and yet, when he speaks of the Queen receiving Leibnitz at court,
he says, “She believed that it was not unworthy of a queen to show honor
to a philosopher; and as those who have received from heaven a privileged
soul rise to the level of sovereigns, she admitted Leibnitz into her
familiar society.”

The seventeenth century saw the rise and fall of the first and the second
Silesian schools. The first is represented by men like Opitz and
Weckherlin, and it exercised an influence in the North of Germany on Simon
Dach, Paul Flemming, and a number of less gifted poets, who are generally
known by the name of the _Königsberg School_. Its character is
pseudo-classical. All these poets endeavored to write correctly, sedately,
and eloquently. Some of them aimed at a certain simplicity and sincerity,
which we admire particularly in Flemming. But it would be difficult to
find in all their writings one single thought, one single expression, that
had not been used before. The second Silesian school is more ambitious;
but its poetic flights are more disappointing even than the honest prose
of Opitz. The “Shepherds of the Pegnitz” had tried to imitate the
brilliant diction of the Italian poets; but the modern Meistersänger of
the old town of Nürnberg had produced nothing but wordy jingle.
Hoffmannswaldau and Lohenstein, the chief heroes of the second Silesian
school, followed in their track, and did not succeed better. Their
compositions are bombastic and full of metaphors. It is a poetry of
adjectives, without substance, truth, or taste. Yet their poetry was
admired, praised not less than Goethe and Schiller were praised by their
contemporaries, and it lived beyond the seventeenth century. There were
but few men during that time who kept aloof from the spirit of these two
Silesian schools, and were not influenced by either Opitz or
Hoffmannswaldau. Among these independent poets we have to mention
Friedrich von Logau, Andreas Gryphius, and Moscherosch. Beside these,
there were some prose writers whose works are not exactly works of art,
but works of original thought, and of great importance to us in tracing
the progress of science and literature during the dreariest period of
German history. We can only mention the “Simplicissimus,” a novel full of
clever miniature drawing, and giving a truthful picture of German life
during the Thirty Years’ War; the patriotic writings of Professor Schupp;
the historical works of Professor Pufendorf (1631-94); the pietistic
sermons of Spener, and of Professor Franke (1663-1727), the founder of the
Orphan School at Halle; Professor Arnold’s (1666-1714) Ecclesiastical
History; the first political pamphlets by Professor Thomasius (1655-1728);
and among philosophers, Jacob Böhme at the beginning, and Leibnitz at the
end of the seventeenth century.

The second Silesian school was defeated by Gottsched, professor at
Leipzig. He exercised, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the
same dictatorship as a poet and a critic which Opitz had exercised at the
beginning of the seventeenth. Gottsched was the advocate of French models
in art and poetry, and he used his wide-spread influence in recommending
the correct and so-called classical style of the poets of the time. After
having rendered good service in putting down the senseless extravagance of
the school of Lohenstein, he became himself a pedantic and arrogant
critic; and it was through the opposition which he roused by his
“Gallomania” that German poetry was delivered at last from the trammels of
that foreign school. Then followed a long literary warfare; Gottsched and
his followers at Leipzig defended the French, Bodmer and his friends in
Switzerland the English style of literature. The former insisted on
classical form and traditional rules; the latter on natural sentiment and
spontaneous expression. The question was, whether poets should imitate the
works of the classics, or imitate the classics who had become classics by
imitating nobody. A German professor wields an immense power by means of
his journals. He is the editor; he writes in them himself, and allows
others to write; he praises his friends, who are to laud him in turn; he
patronizes his pupils, who are to call him master; he abuses his
adversaries, and asks his allies to do the same. It was in this that
Professor Gottsched triumphed for a long time over Bodmer and his party,
till at last public opinion became too strong, and the dictator died the
laughing-stock of Germany. It was in the very thick of this literary
struggle that the great heroes of German poetry grew up,—Klopstock,
Lessing, Wieland, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller. Goethe, who knew both
Gottsched and Bodmer, has described that period of fermentation and
transition in which his own mind was formed, and his extracts may be read
as a commentary on the poetical productions of the first half of the
eighteenth century. He does justice to Günther, and more than justice to
Liscow. He shows the influence which men like Brockes, Hagedorn, and
Haller exercised in making poetry respectable. He points out the new
national life which, like an electric spark, flew through the whole
country when Frederick the Great said, “_J’ai jeté le bonnet pardessus les
moulins_;” and defied, like a man, the political popery of Austria. The
estimate which Goethe forms of the poets of the time, of Gleim and Uz, of
Gessner and Rabener, and more especially of Klopstock, Lessing, and
Wieland, should be read in the original, as likewise Herder’s “Rhapsody on
Shakspeare.” The latter contains the key to many of the secrets of that
new period of literature, which was inaugurated by Goethe himself and by
those who like him could dare to be classical by being true to nature and
to themselves.

My object in taking this rapid survey of German literature has been to
show that the extracts which I have collected in my “German Classics” have
not been chosen at random, and that, if properly used, they can be read as
a running commentary on the political and social history of Germany. The
history of literature is but an applied history of civilization. As in the
history of civilization we watch the play of the three constituent classes
of society,—clergy, nobility, and commoners,—we can see, in the history of
literature, how that class which is supreme politically shows for the time
being its supremacy in the literary productions of the age, and impresses
its mark on the works of poets and philosophers.

Speaking very generally, we might say that, during the first period of
German history, the really moving, civilizing, and ruling class was the
clergy; and in the whole of German literature, nearly to the time of the
Crusades, the clerical element predominates. The second period is marked
by the Crusades, and the triumph of Teutonic and Romantic chivalry, and
the literature of that period is of a strictly correspondent tone. After
the Crusades, and during the political anarchy that followed, the sole
principle of order and progress is found in the towns, and in the towns
the poetry of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries finds its new home.
At last, at the time of the Reformation, when the political life of the
country assumed for a time a national character, German literature also is
for a short time national. The hopes, however, which had been raised of a
national policy and of a national literature were soon blighted, and, from
the Thirty Years’ War to the present day, the inheritance of the nation
has been divided between princes and professors. There have been moments
when the princes had to appeal to the nation at large, and to forget for a
while their royal pretensions; and these times of national enthusiasm, as
during the wars of Frederick the Great, and during the wars against
Napoleon, have not failed to tell on the literature of Germany. They
produced a national spirit, free from professorial narrowness, such as we
find in the writings of Lessing and Fichte. But with the exception of
these short lucid intervals, Germany has always been under the absolute
despotism of a number of small sovereigns and great professors, and her
literature has been throughout in the hands of court poets and academic
critics. Klopstock, Lessing, and Schiller are most free from either
influence, and most impressed with the duties which a poet owes, before
all, to the nation to which he belongs. Klopstock’s national enthusiasm
borders sometimes on the fantastic; for, as his own times could not
inspire him, he borrowed the themes of his national panegyrics from the
distant past of Arminius and the German bards. Lessing looked more to his
own age, but he looked in vain for national heroes. “Pity the
extraordinary man,” says Goethe, “who had to live in such miserable times,
which offered him no better subjects than those which he takes for his
works. Pity him, that in his ‘Minna von Barnhelm,’ he had to take part in
the quarrel between the Saxons and the Prussians, because he found nothing
better. It was owing to the rottenness of his time that he always took,
and was forced to take, a polemical position. In his ‘Emilia Galotti,’ he
shows his _pique_ against the princes; in ‘Nathan,’ against the priests.”
But, although the subjects of these works of Lessing were small, his
object in writing was always great and national. He never condescended to
amuse a provincial court by masquerades and comedies, nor did he degrade
his genius by pandering, like Wieland, to the taste of a profligate
nobility. Schiller, again, was a poet truly national and truly liberal;
and although a man of aspirations rather than of actions, he has left a
deeper impress on the kernel of the nation than either Wieland or Goethe.
These considerations, however, must not interfere with our appreciation of
the greatness of Goethe. On the contrary, when we see the small sphere in
which he moved at Weimar, we admire the more the height to which he grew,
and the freedom of his genius. And it is, perhaps, owing to this very
absence of a strongly marked national feeling, that in Germany the first
idea of a world-literature was conceived. “National literature,” Goethe
says, “is of little importance: the age of a world-literature is at hand,
and every one ought to work in order to accelerate this new era.” Perhaps
Goethe felt that the true poet belonged to the whole of mankind, and that
he must be intelligible beyond the frontiers of his own country. And, from
this point of view, his idea of a world-literature has been realized, and
his own works have gained their place side by side with the works of
Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. But, so long as there are different
languages and different nations, let each poet think and work and write
for his own people, without caring for the applause of other countries.
Science and philosophy are cosmopolitan; poetry and art are national: and
those who would deprive the Muses of their home-sprung character, would
deprive them of much of their native charms.




LIST OF EXTRACTS FOR ILLUSTRATING THE HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE.


                       FOURTH CENTURY AFTER CHRIST.

_Gothic:_—

Ulfilas, Translation of the Bible; the Lord’s Prayer.

                             SEVENTH CENTURY.

_Old High-German:_—

Vocabulary of St. Gall.

                             EIGHTH CENTURY.

_Old High-German:_—

Interlinear Translation of the Benedictine Rules.
Translation of the Gospel of St. Matthew.
Exhortation addressed to the Christian Laity.
Literal Translations of the Hymns of the Old Church:—
1. Deus qui cordi lumen es.
2. Aurora lucis rutilat.
3. Te Deum laudamus.
The Song of Hildebrand and his son Hadubrand,—in alliterative metre.
The Prayer from the Monastery of Wessobrun,—in alliterative metre.
The Apostolic Creed.

                              NINTH CENTURY.

_Old High-German:_—

From Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne,—the German names of the Months and the
            Winds fixed by the Emperor.
Muspilli, or on the Last Judgment,—alliterative poem.
The Oaths of Lewis the German and Charles the Bald,
and their armies at Strassburg, 842, in Old
Frankish and Old French; from the History of
Nithard, the grandson of Charlemagne.
The Heliand, or the Saviour,—old Saxon poem, in alliterative metre.
The Krist, or the Gospel-book,—poem in rhyme by Otfried, the pupil of
            Hrabanus Maurus, dedicated to Lewis the German.
Translation of a Harmony of the Gospels.
Lay on St. Peter.
Song on the Victory gained by King Lewis III. at Saucourt, in 881, over
            the Normans.

                              TENTH CENTURY.

_Old High-German:_—

Notker Teutonicus of St. Gall,—
1. Translation of the Psalms.
2. Treatise on Syllogisms.
3. Translation of Aristotle.
4. Translation of Boëthius de Consolatione.

                            ELEVENTH CENTURY.

_Old High-German:_—

Williram’s Explanation of the Song of Solomon.
Merigarto, or the Earth,—fragment of a geographical poem.

                             TWELFTH CENTURY.

_Middle High-German:_—

The Life of Jesus,—poem by the Nun Ava.
Poetical Translation of the Books of Moses.
Historical Poem on Anno, Bishop of Cologne.
Poetical Chronicle of the Roman Emperors.
Nortperti Tractatus de Virtutibus, translated.
The poem of Roland, by Konrad the Priest.
The poem of Alexander, by Lamprecht the Priest.
Poem of Reinhart the Fox.
Dietmar von Aist,—lyrics.
The Spervogel,—lyrics.
The Kürenberger,—lyrics.
The Eneid, by Heinrich von Veldecke.

                           THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

_Middle High-German:_—

Hartmann von Aue; extracts from his “Iwein,”—a heroic poem.
The Old Reinmar,—lyrics.
Walther von der Vogelweide,—lyrics.
Freidank’s Bescheidenheit,—didactic poem.
Wolfram von Eschenbach,—
1. Extracts from his “Parcival,”—a heroic poem.
2. Extracts from his “Titurel,”—a heroic poem.
Gottfried von Strassburg; extracts from his “Tristan,”—a heroic poem.
The poem of the “Nibelunge,”—epic poem.
Thomasin von Zerclar; extracts from his poem on manners, called “The
            Italian Guest.”
Neidhart von Reuenthal,—lyrics.
Otto von Botenlaube,—lyrics.
Gudrun,—epic poem.
The Stricker,—extract from his satirical poem, “Amis the Priest.”
Rudolf von Ems,—extract from his “Wilhelm von Orleans.”
Christian von Hamle,—lyrics.
Gottfried von Neifen,—lyrics.
Ulrich von Lichtenstein,—lyrics.
Sermon of Friar Berthold of Regensburg.
Reinmar von Zweter,—lyrics.
Master Stolle,—satire.
The Marner,—lyrics.
Master Konrad of Würzburg,—
1. Poem.
2. Extract from the Trojan War.
Anonymous poet,—extract from the life of St. Elizabeth.
Herman der Damen.
Anonymous poet,—extract from the “Wartburg Krieg.”
Marcgrave Otto von Brandenburg,—lyrics.
Heinrich, Duke of Breslau,—lyrics.
Hugo von Trimberg,—extract from the “Renner.”

                           FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

_Middle High-German:_—

Heinrich Frauenlob,—lyrics.
Master Johann Hadlaub,—lyrics.
The Great Rosegarden,—popular epic poem.
Master Eckhart,—homily.
Hermann von Fritzlar,—life of St. Elizabeth.
Dr. Johann Tauler,—sermon.
Heinrich Suso.
Heinrich der Teichner,—fable.
Peter Suchenwirt,—on the death of Leopold, Duke of Austria, 1386.
Halbsuter’s poem on the Battle of Sempach, 1386.
Fritsche Closener’s Strassburg Chronicle.
Jacob Twinger’s Chronicle,—on the Flagellants.

                            FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

_Middle High-German:_—

Hugo von Montfort,—lyrics.
Oswald von Wolkenstein,—lyrics.
Muscatblüt,—lyrics.
Hans von Bühel’s Life of Diocletian, or The Seven Wise Masters.
Popular Songs.
Sacred Songs.
The Soul’s Comfort,—didactic prose.
Michael Beheim,—Meistergesang.
An Easter Mystery.
Popular Rhymes.
Caspar von der Roen’s Heldenbuch,—Hildebrand and his Son.
Niclas von Weyl’s Translations,—Hieronymus at the Council of Constance.
Veit Weber’s poem on the Victory of Murten, 1476.
Heinrich Steinhöwel’s Fables.
Sebastian Brant’s “Ship of Fools.”
Johann Geiler von Kaisersberg,—sermon.
Emperor Maximilian,—extract from the “Theuerdank.”

                            SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

_Modern High-German:_—

Martin Luther,—
1. Sacred Song.
2. Letter on the Diet of the Jackdaws and Crows.
3. His Last Sermon.
Ulrich Zwingle:—
1. A Poem on his Illness.
2. Criticism on Luther.
Philipp Nicolai,—sacred songs.
Justus Jonas,—sacred songs.
Ulrich von Hutten,—
1. Letter to Franz von Sickingen.
2. Political poem.
Sebastian Frank,—
1. Preface to his Germania.
2. Rudolf von Hapsburg.
3. Maximilian der Erste.
4. Fables.
Burkard Waldis,—fables.
Hans Sachs,—
1. Sacred Song.
2. Poem on the Death of Martin Luther.
3. Poem on the War.
Petermann Etterlin’s Chronicle,—William Tell and Rudolf von Hapsburg.
Ægidius Tschudi’s Chronicle,—William Tell.
Paulus Melissus Schede.
Johann Fischart,—
1. Exhortation addressed to the German people.
2. Das glückhafte Schiff.
Georg Rollenhagen,—fable.
Popular Books,—
1. Tyll Eulenspiegel.
2. Dr. Faust.
Popular Songs.

                           SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

_Modern High-German:_—

Martin Opitz, and the First Silesian School.
Georg Rudolf Weckherlin.
Anonymous Poem,—“O Ewigkeit.”
Michael Altenburg’s Camp-song (Gustavus Adolphus).
Johannes Heermann,—sacred song.
Popular Songs.
Johann Arndt,—
1. Sacred Song.
2. On the Power and Necessity of Prayer.
Jacob Böhme, Mysterium Magnum.
Johann Valentin Andreæ.
Friedrich Spee.
Julius Wilhelm Zinegreff.
Friedrich von Logau.
Simon Dach and the Königsberg School.
Paul Flemming.
Paul Gerhard.
Georg Philipp Harsdörffer and the Nürnberg School.
Johannes Rist.
Andreas Gryphius,—
1. Sonnets.
2. From the Tragedy “Cardenio and Celinde.”
Joachim Rachel,—satire.
Johann Michael Moscherosch,—satires.
Christoph von Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus,—novel.
Johann Balthasar Schupp,—on the German Language.
Angelus Silesius.
Hoffmannswaldau and Lohenstein,—Second Silesian School.
Abraham a Santa Clara,—sermon.
Philipp Jacob Spener,—on Luther.
Gottfried Arnold,—sacred poem.
Christian Weise.
Hans Assmann von Abschatz.
Friedrich R. L. von Canitz.
Christian Wernicke.
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibnitz,—on the German Language.

                           EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

_Modern High-German:_—

Johann Christoph Gottsched,—Cato.
Johann Jacob Bodmer,—Character of German Poetry.
Barthold Heinrich Brockes.
Johann Christian Günther.
Nicolaus Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf.
Christian Ludwig Liscow.
Friedrich von Hagedorn.
Albrecht von Haller.
Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener.
Ewald Christian von Kleist.
Christian Fürchtegott Gellert.
Johann Ludwig Gleim.
Johann Peter Uz.
Justus Möser.
Klopstock. See below.
Salomon Gessner.
Johann Winckelmann.
Lessing. See below.
Johann Georg Hamann.
Immanuel Kant.
Johann August Musæus.
Wieland. See below.
Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel.
Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart.
Matthias Claudius.
Johann Caspar Lavater.
Herder. See below.
Heinrich Jung, Stilling.
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg.
Gottfried August Bürger.
Johann Heinrich Voss.
Friedrich Leopold und Christian Grafen zu Stollberg.
Das Siebengestirn der Dichter des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts,—
1. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock.
2. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.
3. Christoph Martin Wieland.
4. Johann Gottfried von Herder.
5. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
6. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller.
7. Jean Paul Friedrich Richter.





II. OLD GERMAN LOVE-SONGS.(8)


Seven hundred years ago! What a long time it seems! Philip Augustus, King
of France; Henry II., King of England; Frederic I., the famous Barbarossa,
Emperor of Germany! When we read of their times, the times of the
Crusades, we feel as the Greeks felt when reading of the War of Troy. We
listen, we admire, but we do not compare the heroes of St. Jean d’Acre
with the great generals of the nineteenth century. They seem a different
race of men from those who are now living, and poetry and tradition have
lent to their royal frames such colossal proportions that we hardly dare
to criticise the legendary history of their chivalrous achievements. It
was a time of heroes, of saints, of martyrs, of miracles! Thomas à Becket
was murdered at Canterbury, but for more than three hundred years his name
lived on, and his bones were working miracles, and his soul seemed as it
were embodied and petrified in the lofty pillars that surround the spot of
his martyrdom. Abelard was persecuted and imprisoned, but his spirit
revived in the Reformers of the sixteenth century, and the shrine of
Abelard and Héloise in the Père La Chaise is still decorated every year
with garlands of _immortelles_. Barbarossa was drowned in the same river
in which Alexander the Great had bathed his royal limbs, but his fame
lived on in every cottage of Germany, and the peasant near the Kyffhäuser
still believes that some day the mighty Emperor will awake from his long
slumber, and rouse the people of Germany from their fatal dreams. We dare
not hold communion with such stately heroes as Frederick the Red-beard and
Richard the Lion-heart; they seem half to belong to the realm of fable. We
feel from our very school-days as if we could shake hands with a
Themistocles and sit down in the company of a Julius Cæsar, but we are
awed by the presence of those tall and silent knights, with their hands
folded and their legs crossed, as we see them reposing in full armor on
the tombs of our cathedrals.

And yet, however different in all other respects, these men, if they once
lift their steel beaver and unbuckle their rich armor, are wonderfully
like ourselves. Let us read the poetry which they either wrote themselves,
or to which they liked to listen in their castles on the Rhine or under
their tents in Palestine, and we find it is poetry which a Tennyson or a
Moore, a Goethe or Heine, might have written. Neither Julius Cæsar nor
Themistocles would know what was meant by such poetry. It is modern
poetry,—poetry unknown to the ancient world,—and who invented it nobody
can tell. It is sometimes called Romantic, but this is a strange misnomer.
Neither the Romans, nor the lineal descendants of the Romans, the
Italians, the Provençals, the Spaniards, can claim that poetry as their
own. It is Teutonic poetry,—purely Teutonic in its heart and soul, though
its utterance, its rhyme and metre, its grace and imagery, show the marks
of a warmer clime. It is called sentimental poetry, the poetry of the
heart rather than of the head, the picture of the inward rather than of
the outward world. It is subjective, as distinguished from objective
poetry, as the German critics, in their scholastic language, are fond of
expressing it. It is Gothic, as contrasted with classical poetry. The one,
it is said, sublimizes nature, the other bodies forth spirit; the one
deifies the human, the other humanizes the divine; the one is ethnic, the
other Christian. But all these are but names, and their true meaning must
be discovered in the works of art themselves, and in the history of the
times which produced the artists, the poets, and their ideals. We shall
perceive the difference between these two hemispheres of the Beautiful
better if we think of Homer’s “Helena” and Dante’s “Beatrice,” if we look
at the “Venus of Milo” and a “Madonna” of Francia, than in reading the
profoundest systems of æsthetics.

The work which has caused these reflections is a volume of German poetry,
just published by Lachmann and Haupt. It is called “Des Minnesangs
Frühling,”—“the Spring of the Songs of Love;” and it contains a collection
of the poems of twenty German poets, all of whom lived during the period
of the Crusades, under the Hohenstaufen Emperors, from about 1170 to 1230.
This period may well be called the spring of German poetry, though the
summer that followed was but of short duration, and the autumn was cheated
of the rich harvest which the spring had promised. Tieck, one of the first
who gathered the flowers of that forgotten spring, describes it in glowing
language. “At that time,” he says, “believers sang of faith, lovers of
love, knights described knightly actions and battles; and loving,
believing knights were their chief audience. The spring, beauty, gayety,
were objects that could never tire: great duels and deeds of arms carried
away every hearer, the more surely, the stronger they were painted; and as
the pillars and dome of the church encircle the flock, so did religion, as
the highest, encircle poetry and reality; and every heart, in equal love,
humbled itself before her.” Carlyle, too, has listened with delight to
those merry songs of spring. “Then truly,” he says, “was the time of
singing come; for princes and prelates, emperors and squires, the wise and
the simple, men, women, and children, all sang and rhymed, or delighted in
hearing it done. It was a universal noise of song, as if the spring of
manhood had arrived, and warblings from every spray—not, indeed, without
infinite twitterings also, which, except their gladness, had no music—were
bidding it welcome.” And yet it was not all gladness; and it is strange
that Carlyle, who has so keen an ear for the silent melancholy of the
human heart, should not have heard that tone of sorrow and fateful boding
which breaks, like a suppressed sigh, through the free and light music of
that Swabian era. The brightest sky of spring is not without its clouds in
Germany, and the German heart is never happy without some sadness. Whether
we listen to a short ditty, or to the epic ballads of the “Nibelunge,” or
to Wolfram’s grand poems of the “Parcival” and the “Holy Grail,” it is the
same everywhere. There is always a mingling of light and shade,—in joy a
fear of sorrow, in sorrow a ray of hope, and throughout the whole, a
silent wondering at this strange world. Here is a specimen of an anonymous
poem; and anonymous poetry is an invention peculiarly Teutonic. It was
written before the twelfth century; its language is strangely simple, and
sometimes uncouth. But there is truth in it; and it is truth after all,
and not fiction, that is the secret of all poetry:—

“It has pained me in the heart,
Full many a time,
That I yearned after that
Which I may not have,
Nor ever shall win.
It is very grievous.
I do not mean gold or silver;
It is more like a human heart.

“I trained me a falcon,
More than a year.
When I had tamed him,
As I would have him,
And had well tied his feathers
With golden chains,
He soared up very high,
And flew into other lands.

“I saw the falcon since,
Flying happily;
He carried on his foot
Silken straps,
And his plumage was
All red of gold....
May God send them together,
Who would fain be loved.”

The key-note of the whole poem of the “Nibelunge,” such as it was written
down at the end of the twelfth, or the beginning of the thirteenth
century, is “Sorrow after Joy.” This is the fatal spell against which all
the heroes are fighting, and fighting in vain. And as Hagen dashes the
Chaplain into the waves, in order to belie the prophecy of the Mermaids,
but the Chaplain rises, and Hagen rushes headlong into destruction, so
Chriemhilt is bargaining and playing with the same inevitable fate,
cautiously guarding her young heart against the happiness of love, that
she may escape the sorrows of a broken heart. She, too, has been dreaming
“of a wild young falcon that she trained for many a day, till two fierce
eagles tore it.” And she rushes to her mother Ute, that she may read the
dream for her; and her mother tells her what it means. And then the coy
maiden answers:—

              “No more, no more, dear mother, say,
From many a woman’s fortune this truth is clear as day,
That falsely smiling Pleasure with Pain requites us ever.
I from both will keep me, and thus will sorrow never.”

But Siegfried comes, and Chriemhilt’s heart does no longer cast up the
bright and the dark days of life. To Siegfried she belongs; for him she
lives, and for him, when “two fierce eagles tore him,” she dies. A still
wilder tragedy lies hidden in the songs of the “Edda,” the most ancient
fragments of truly Teutonic poetry. Wolfram’s poetry is of the same sombre
cast. He wrote his “Parcival” about the time when the songs of the
“Nibelunge” were written down. The subject was taken by him from a French
source. It belonged originally to the British cycle of Arthur and his
knights. But Wolfram took the story merely as a skeleton, to which he
himself gave a new body and soul. The glory and happiness which this world
can give is to him but a shadow,—the crown for which his hero fights is
that of the Holy Grail.

Faith, Love, and Honor are the chief subjects of the so-called
Minnesänger. They are not what we should call erotic poets. _Minne_ means
love in the old German language, but it means, originally, not so much
passion and desire, as thoughtfulness, reverence, and remembrance. In
English _Minne_ would be “Minding,” and it is different therefore from the
Greek _Eros_, the Roman Amor, and the French Amour. It is different also
from the German _Liebe_, which means originally desire, not love. Most of
the poems of the “Minnesänger” are sad rather than joyful,—joyful in
sorrow, sorrowful in joy. The same feelings have since been so often
repeated by poets in all the modern languages of Europe, that much of what
we read in the “Minnesänger” of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
sounds stale to our ears. Yet there is a simplicity about these old songs,
a want of effort, an entire absence of any attempt to please or to
surprise; and we listen to them as we listen to a friend who tells us his
sufferings in broken and homely words, and whose truthful prose appeals to
our heart more strongly than the most elaborate poetry of a Lamartine or a
Heine. It is extremely difficult to translate these poems from the
language in which they are written, the so-called Middle High-German, into
Modern German,—much more so to render them into English. But translation
is at the same time the best test of the true poetical value of any poem,
and we believe that many of the poems of the Minnesängers can bear that
test. Here is another poem, very much in the style of the one quoted
above, but written by a poet whose name is known,—Dietmar von Eist:—

“A lady stood alone,
And gazed across the heath,
And gazed for her love.
She saw a falcon flying.
“O happy falcon that thou art,
Thou fliest wherever thou likest;
Thou choosest in the forest
A tree that pleases thee.
Thus I too had done.
I chose myself a man:
Him my eyes selected.
Beautiful ladies envy me for it.
Alas! why will they not leave me my love?
I did not desire the beloved of any one of them.
Now woe to thee, joy of summer!
The song of birds is gone;
So are the leaves of the lime-tree:
Henceforth, my pretty eyes too
Will be overcast.
My love, thou shouldst take leave
Of other ladies;
Yes, my hero, thou shouldst avoid them.
When thou sawest me first,
I seemed to thee in truth
Right lovely made:
I remind thee of it, dear man!’ ”

These poems, simple and homely as they may seem to us, were loved and
admired by the people for whom they were written. They were copied and
preserved with the greatest care in the albums of kings and queens, and
some of them were translated into foreign languages. The poem which we
quoted first was translated as an Italian sonnet in the thirteenth
century, and has been published in Franc Trucchi’s “Poesie Italiane
Inedite:”—

“Tapina me, che amava uno sparviero;
amaval tanto ch’io me ne moria:
a lo richiamo ben m’era maniero
ed unque troppo pascer no’ l dovia.
or è montato e salito sì altero,
assai più altero che far non solia;
ed è assiso dentro a un verziero,
e un’altra donna l’averà in balìa.
isparvier mio, ch’io t’avea nodrito;
sonaglio d’oro ti facea portare,
perchè nell’uccellar fossi più ardito.
or sei salito siccome lo mare,
ed hai rotti li getti, e seì fuggito
quando eri fermo nel tuo uccellare.”

One of the most original and thoughtful of the “Minnesänger” is the old
Reinmar. His poems are given now for the first time in a correct and
readable text by Lachmann and Haupt, and many a difficult passage has been
elucidated by their notes. His poems, however, are not easy to read, and
we should have been thankful for some more help than the editors have
given us in their notes. The following is a specimen of Reinmar’s poetry:—

“High as the sun stands my heart;
That is because of a lady who can be without change
In her grace, wherever she be.
She makes me free from all sorrow.

“I have nothing to give her, but my own life,
That belongs to her: the beautiful woman gives me always
Joy, and a high mind,
If I think of it, what she does for me.

“Well is it for me that I found her so true!
Wherever she dwell, she alone makes every land dear to me;
If she went across the wild sea,
There I should go; I long so much for her.

“If I had the wisdom of a thousand men, it would be well
That I keep her, whom I should serve:
May she take care right well,
That nothing sad may ever befall me through her.

“I was never quite blessed, but through her:
Whatever I wish to her, may she allow it to me!
It was a blessed thing for me
That she, the Beautiful, received me into her grace.”

Carlyle, no doubt, is right when he says that, among all this warbling of
love, there are infinite twitterings which, except their gladness, have
little to charm us. Yet we like to read them as part of the bright history
of those by-gone days. One poet sings:—

“If the whole world was mine,
From the Sea to the Rhine,
I would gladly give it all,
That the Queen of England
Lay in my arms,” etc.

Who was the impertinent German that dared to fall in love with a Queen of
England? We do not know. But there can be no doubt that the Queen of
England whom he adored was the gay and beautiful Eleanor of Poitou, the
Queen of Henry II., who filled the heart of many a Crusader with unholy
thoughts. Her daughter, too, Mathilde, who was married to Henry the Lion
of Saxony, inspired many a poet of those days. Her beauty was celebrated
by the Provençal Troubadours; and at the court of her husband, she
encouraged several of her German vassals to follow the example of the
French and Norman knights, and sing the love of Tristan and Isolt, and the
adventures of the knights of Charlemagne. They must have been happy times,
those times of the Crusades! Nor have they passed away without leaving
their impress on the hearts and minds of the nations of Europe. The Holy
Sepulchre, it is true, is still in the hands of the Infidels, and the
bones of the Crusaders lie buried in unhallowed soil, and their deeds of
valor are well-nigh forgotten, and their chivalrous Tournaments and their
Courts of Love are smiled at by a wiser generation. But much that is noble
and heroic in the feelings of the nineteenth century has its hidden roots
in the thirteenth. Gothic architecture and Gothic poetry are the children
of the same mother; and if the true but unadorned language of the heart,
the aspirations of a real faith, the sorrow and joy of a true love, are
still listened to by the nations of Europe; and if what is called the
Romantic school is strong enough to hold its ground against the classical
taste and its royal patrons, such as Louis XIV., Charles II., and
Frederick the Great,—we owe it to those chivalrous poets who dared for the
first time to be what they were, and to say what they felt, and to whom
Faith, Love, and Honor were worthy subjects of poetry, though they lacked
the sanction of the Periclean and Augustan ages.

The new edition of the Poems of the “Minnesänger” is a masterpiece of
German scholarship. It was commenced by Lachmann, the greatest critic,
after Wolf, that Germany has produced. Lachmann died before the work was
finished, and Professor Haupt, his successor at Berlin, undertook to
finish it. His share in the edition, particularly in the notes, is greater
than that of Lachmann; and the accuracy with which the text has been
restored from more than twenty MSS., is worthy of the great pupil of that
great master.

1858.





III. YE SCHYPPE OF FOOLES.(9)


The critical periods in the history of the world are best studied in the
lives of a few representative men. The history of the German Reformation
assumes a living, intelligible, and human character in the biographies of
the Reformers; and no historian would imagine that he understood the
secret springs of that mighty revolution in Germany without having read
the works of Hutten, the table-talk of Luther, the letters of Melancthon,
and the sermons of Zwingle. But although it is easy to single out
representative men in the great decisive struggles of history, they are
more difficult to find during the preparatory periods. The years from 1450
to 1500 are as important as the years from 1500 to 1550,—nay, to the
thoughtful historian, that silent period of incubation is perhaps of
deeper interest than the violent outburst of the sixteenth century. But
where, during those years, are the men of sufficient eminence to represent
the age in which they lived? It was an age of transition and preparation,
of dissatisfaction and hesitation. Like the whole of the fifteenth
century, “It was rich in scholars, copious in pedants, but poor in genius,
and barren of strong thinkers.” We must not look for heroes in so unheroic
an age, but be satisfied with men if they be but a head taller than their
contemporaries.

One of the most interesting men in whose life and writings the history of
the preliminary age of the German Reformation may be studied, is Sebastian
Brant, the famous author of the famous “Ship of Fools.” He was born in the
year 1457. The Council of Basle had failed to fulfill the hopes of the
German laity as to a _reformatio ecclesiæ in capite et membris_. In the
very year of Brant’s birth, Martin Meyer, the Chancellor of Mayence, had
addressed his letter to his former friend, Æneas Sylvius,—a national
manifesto, in boldness and vigor only surpassed by the powerful pamphlet
of Luther, “To the Nobility of the German Nation.” Germany seemed to
awaken at last to her position, and to see the dangers that threatened her
political and religious freedom. The new movement which had taken place in
Italy in classical learning, supported chiefly by Greek refugees, began to
extend its quickening influence beyond the Alps. Æneas Sylvius, afterwards
Pope Pius II., 1458, writes in one of his letters, that poets were held in
no estimation in Germany, though he admits that their poetry is less to be
blamed for this than their patrons, the princes, who care far more for any
trifles than for poetry. The Germans, he says, do not care for science nor
for a knowledge of classical literature, and they have hardly heard the
name of Cicero or any other orator. In the eyes of the Italians, the
Germans were barbarians; and when Constantine Lascaris saw the first
specimen of printing, he was told by the Italian priests that this
invention had lately been made _apud barbaros in urbe __ Germaniæ_. They
were dangerous neighbors—these barbarians, who could make such discoveries
as the art of printing; and Brant lived to see the time when Joh. Cæsarius
was able to write to a friend of his: “At this moment, Germany, if she
does not surpass Italy, at least need not, and will not, yield to her, not
so much on account of her empire, as for her wonderful fecundity in
learned men, and the almost incredible growth of learning.”

This period of slow but steady progress, from the invention of printing to
the Council of Worms, is bridged over by the life of Sebastian Brant, who
lived from 1457 to 1521. Brant was very early the friend of Peter Schott,
and through him had been brought in contact with a circle of learned men,
who were busily engaged in founding one of the first schools of classical
learning at Schlettstadt. Men like Jac. Wimpheling, Joh. Torrentinus,
Florentius Hundius, and Johannes Hugo, belonged to that society. Brant
afterwards went to Basle to study law. Basle was then a young university.
It had only been founded in 1459, but it was already a successful rival of
Heidelberg. The struggle between the Realists and Nominalists was then
raging all over Europe, and it divided the University of Basle into two
parties, each of them trying to gain influence and adherents among the
young students. It has been usual to look upon the Realists as the
Conservative, and upon the Nominalists as the Liberal party of the
fifteenth century. But although at times this was the case, philosophical
opinions, on which the differences between these two parties were founded,
were not of sufficient strength to determine for any length of time the
political and religious bias of either school. The Realists were chiefly
supported by the Dominicans, the Nominalists by the Franciscans; and there
is always a more gentle expression beaming in the eyes of the followers of
the seraphic Doctor, particularly if contrasted with the stern frown of
the Dominican. Ockam himself was a Franciscan, and those who thought with
him were called _doctores renovatores_ and _sophistæ._ Suddenly, however,
the tables were turned. At Oxford, the Realists, in following out their
principles in a more independent spirit, had arrived at results dangerous
to the peace of the Church. As philosophers, they began to carry out the
doctrines of Plato in good earnest; as reformers, they looked wistfully to
the early centuries of the Christian Church. The same liberal and
independent spirit reached from Oxford to Prague, and the expulsion of the
German nation from that university may be traced to the same movement. The
Realists were at that time no longer in the good odor of orthodoxy; and,
at the Council of Constanz, the Nominalists, such as Joh. Gerson and
Petrus de Alliaco, gained triumphs which seemed for a time to make them
the arbiters of public opinion in Germany, and to give them the means of
securing the Church against the attacks of Huss on one side, and against
the more dangerous encroachments of the Pope and the monks on the other.
This triumph, however, was of short duration. All the rights which the
Germans seemed to have conquered at the Councils of Constanz and Basle
were sacrificed by their own Emperor. No one dared to say again what
Gregory von Heimburg had said to the Italian clergy,—“Quid fines alienos
invaditis? quid falcem vestram in messem alienam extenditis?” Under Æneas
Sylvius, the power of the Pope in Germany was as absolute as ever. The
Nominalist party lost all the ground which it had gained before. It was
looked upon with suspicion by Pope and Emperor. It was banished from
courts and universities, and the disciples of the Realistic school began a
complete crusade against the followers of Ockam.

Johannes Heynlin a Lapide, a former head of a house in Paris, migrated to
Basle, in order to lend his influence and authority to the Realist party
in that rising university. Trithemius says of him: “Hic doctrinam eorum
Parisiensium qui reales appellantur primus ad Basiliensium universitatem
transtulit, ibidemque plantavit, roboravit et auxit.” This Johannes
Heynlin a Lapide, however, though a violent champion of the then
victorious Realist party, was by no means a man without liberal
sentiments. On many points the Realists were more tolerant, or at least
more enlightened, than the Nominalists. They counted among themselves
better scholars than the adherents of Ockam. They were the first and
foremost to point out the uselessness of the dry scholastic system of
teaching grammar and logic, and nothing else. And though they cherished
their own ideas as to the supreme authority of the Pope, the divine right
of the Emperor, or the immaculate conception of the Virgin (a dogma denied
by the Dominicans, and defended by the Franciscans), they were always
ready to point out abuses and to suggest reforms. The age in which they
lived was not an age of decisive thought or decisive action. There was a
want of character in individuals as well as in parties; and the points in
which they differed were of small importance, though they masked
differences of greater weight. At Basle, the men who were gathered round
Johannes a Lapide were what we should call Liberal Conservatives, and it
is among them that we find Sebastian Brant. Basle could then boast of some
of the most eminent men of the time. Besides Agricola, and Wimpheling, and
Geiler von Kaisersberg, and Trithemius, Reuchlin was there for a time, and
Wessel, and the Greek Kontablacos. Sebastian Brant, though on friendly
terms with most of these men, was their junior; and, among his
contemporaries, a new generation grew up, more independent and more
free-spoken than their masters, though as yet very far from any
revolutionary views in matters of Church or State. Feuds broke out very
soon between the old and the young schools. Locher, the friend of
Brant,—the poet who had turned his “Ship of Fools” into Latin
verse,—published a poem, in which he attacked rather petulantly the
scholastic philosophy and theology. Wimpheling, at the request of Geiler
of Kaisersberg, had to punish him for this audacity, and he did it in a
pamphlet full of the most vulgar abuse. Reuchlin also had given offense,
and was attacked and persecuted; but his party retaliated by the “Epistolæ
Obscurorum Virorum.” Thus the Conservative, or Realistic party became
divided; and when, at the beginning of a new century and a new era in the
history of the world, Luther raised his voice in defense of national and
religious freedom, he was joined not only by the more advanced descendants
of the Nominalistic school, but by all the vigor, the talent, and the
intellect of the old Conservatives.

Brant himself, though he lived at Strassburg up to 1521, did not join the
standard of the Reformation. He had learned to grumble, to find fault, to
abuse, and to condemn; but his time was gone when the moment for action
arrived. And yet he helped toward the success of the Reformation in
Germany. He had been one of the first, after the discovery of printing, to
use the German language for political purposes. His fly-sheets, his
illustrated editions, had given useful hints how to address the large
masses of the people. If he looked upon the world, as it then was, as a
ship of fools, and represented every weakness, vice, and wickedness under
the milder color of foolery, the people who read his poems singled out
some of his fools, and called them knaves. The great work of Sebastian
Brant was his “Narrenschiff.” It was first published in 1497, at Basle,
and the first edition, though on account of its wood-cuts it could not
have been a very cheap book, was sold off at once. Edition after edition
followed, and translations were published in Latin, in Low-German, in
Dutch, in French, and English. Sermons were preached on the
“Narrenschiff;” Trithemius calls it _Divina Satira_, Locher compares Brant
with Dante, Hutten calls him the new lawgiver of German poetry. The
“Narrenschiff” is a work which we may still read with pleasure, though it
is difficult to account for its immense success at the time of its
publication. Some historians ascribe it to the wood-cuts. They are
certainly very clever, and there is reason to suppose that most of them
were, if not actually drawn, at least suggested by Brant himself. Yet even
a Turner has failed to render mediocre poetry popular by his
illustrations, and there is nothing to show that the caricatures of Brant
were preferred to his satires. Now his satires, it is true, are not very
powerful, nor pungent, nor original. But his style is free and easy. Brant
is not a ponderous poet. He writes in short chapters, and mixes his fools
in such a manner that we always meet with a variety of new faces. It is
true that all this would hardly be sufficient to secure a decided success
for a work like his at the present day. But then we must remember the time
in which he wrote. What had the poor people of Germany to read toward the
end of the fifteenth century? Printing had been invented, and books were
published and sold with great rapidity. People were not only fond, but
proud, of reading books. Reading was fashionable, and the first fool who
enters Brant’s ship is the man who buys books. But what were the books
that were offered for sale? We find among the early prints of the
fifteenth century religious, theological, and classical works in great
abundance, and we know that the respectable and wealthy burghers of
Augsburg and Strassburg were proud to fill their shelves with these portly
volumes. But then German aldermen had wives, and daughters, and sons, and
what were they to read during the long winter evenings? The poetry of the
thirteenth century was no longer intelligible, and the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries had produced very little that would be to the taste of
young ladies and gentlemen. The poetry of the “Meistersänger” was not very
exhilarating. The romances of “The Book of Heroes” had lost all their
native charms under the rough treatment they had experienced at the hand
of their latest editor, Casper von der Roen. The so-called “Misteries”
(not mysteries) might be very well as Christmas pantomimes once a year,
but they could not be read for their own sake, like the dramatic
literature of later times. The light literature of the day consisted
entirely in novels; and in spite of their miserable character, their
popularity was immense. Besides the “Gesta Romanorum,” which were turned
into German verse and prose, we meet with French novels, such as “Lother
and Maler,” translated by a Countess of Nassau in 1437, and printed in
1514; “Pontus and Sidonia,” translated from the French by Eleanor of
Scotland, the wife of Sigismund of Austria, published 1498; “Melusina,”
equally from the French, published 1477. The old epic poems of “Tristan,”
and “Lancelot,” and “Wigalois,” were too long and tedious. People did not
care any longer for the deep thoughts of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and the
beautiful poetry of Gottfried von Strassburg. They wanted only the plot,
the story, the dry bones; and these were dished up in the prose novels of
the fifteenth century, and afterwards collected in the so-called “Book of
Love.” There was room, therefore, at that time for a work like the “Ship
of Fools.” It was the first printed book that treated of contemporaneous
events and living persons, instead of old German battles and French
knights. People are always fond of reading the history of their own times.
If the good qualities of their age are brought out, they think of
themselves or their friends; if the dark features of their contemporaries
are exhibited, they think of their neighbors and enemies. Now, the “Ship
of Fools” is just such a satire which ordinary people would read, and read
with pleasure. They might feel a slight twinge now and then, but they
would put down the book at the end, and thank God that they were not like
other men. There is a chapter on Misers,—and who would not gladly give a
penny to a beggar? There is a chapter on Gluttony,—and who was ever more
than a little exhilarated after dinner? There is a chapter on
Church-goers,—and who ever went to church for respectability’s sake, or to
show off a gaudy dress, or a fine dog, or a new hawk? There is a chapter
on Dancing,—and who ever danced except for the sake of exercise? There is
a chapter on Adultery,—and who ever did more than flirt with his
neighbor’s wife? We sometimes wish that Brant’s satire had been a little
more searching, and that, instead of his many allusions to classical fools
(for his book is full of scholarship), he had given us a little more of
the _chronique scandaleuse_ of his own time. But he was too good a man to
do this, and his contemporaries no doubt were grateful to him for his
forbearance.

Brant’s poem is not easy to read. Though he was a contemporary of Luther,
his language differs much more from modern German than Luther’s
translation of the Bible. His “Ship of Fools” wanted a commentary, and
this want has been supplied by one of the most learned and industrious
scholars of Germany, Professor Zarncke, in his lately published edition of
the “Narrenschiff.” This must have been a work of many years of hard
labor. Nothing that is worth knowing about Brant and his works has been
omitted, and we hardly know of any commentary on Aristophanes or Juvenal
in which every difficulty is so honestly met as in Professor Zarncke’s
notes on the German satirist. The editor is a most minute and painstaking
critic. He tries to reëstablish the correct reading of every word, and he
enters upon his work with as much zeal as if the world could not be saved
till every tittle of Brant’s poem had been restored. He is, however, not
only a critic, but a sensible and honest man. He knows what is worth
knowing and what is not, and he does not allow himself to be carried away
by a desire to display his own superior acquirements,—a weakness which
makes so many of his colleagues forgetful of the real ends of knowledge,
and the real duties of the scholar and the historian.

We have to say a few words on the English translation of Brant’s “Ship of
Fools.” It was not made from the original, but from Locher’s Latin
translation. It reproduces the matter, but not the manner of the original
satire. Some portions are added by the translator, Alexander Barclay, and
in some parts his translation is an improvement on the original. It was
printed in 1508, published 1509, and went through several editions.

The following may serve as a specimen of Barclay’s translation, and of his
original contributions to Brant’s “Navis Stultifera:”—

“Here beginneth the ‘Ship of Fooles,’ and first of unprofitable books:—

“I am the first foole of all the whole navie,
To keep the Pompe, the Helme, and eke the Sayle:
For this is my minde, this one pleasure have I,
Of bookes to have great plentie and apparayle.
I take no wisdome by them, not yet avayle,
Nor them perceave not, and then I them despise:
Thus am I a foole, and all that sue that guise.

“That in this Ship the chiefe place I governe,
By this wide Sea with fooles wandring,
The cause is plaine and easy to discerne,
Still am I busy, bookes assembling,
For to have plentie it is a pleasant thing
In my conceyt, and to have them ay in hande:
But what they meane do I not understande.

“But yet I have them in great reverence
And honoure, saving them from filth and ordure,
By often brusshing and much diligence,
Full goodly bounde in pleasant coverture,
Of Damas, Sattin, or els of Velvet pure:
I keepe them sure, fearing least they should be lost,
For in them is the cunning wherein I me boast.

“But if it fortune that any learned men
Within my house fall to disputation,
I drawe the curtaynes to shewe my bokes then,
That they of my cunning should make probation:
I kepe not to fall in alterication,
And while they comment, my bookes I turne and winde,
For all is in them, and nothing in my minde.”

In the fourth chapter, “Of newe fassions and disguised garmentes,” there
is at the end what is called “The Lenvoy of Alexander Barclay,” and in it
an allusion to Henry VIII.:—

“But ye proude galants that thus your selfe disguise,
Be ye ashamed, beholde unto your prince:
Consider his sadness, his honestie devise,
His clothing expresseth his inwarde prudence,
Ye see no example of such inconvenience
In his highness, but godly wit and gravitie,
Ensue him, and sorrowe for your enormitie.”





IV. LIFE OF SCHILLER.(10)


The hundredth anniversary of the birthday of Schiller, which, according to
the accounts published in the German newspapers, seems to have been
celebrated in most parts of the civilized, nay, even the uncivilized
world, is an event in some respects unprecedented in the literary annals
of the human race. A nation honors herself by honoring her sons, and it is
but natural that in Germany every town and village should have vied in
doing honor to the memory of one of their greatest poets. The letters
which have reached us from every German capital relate no more than what
we expected. There were meetings and feastings, balls and theatrical
representations. The veteran philologist, Jacob Grimm, addressed the
Berlin Academy on the occasion in a soul-stirring oration; the directors
of the Imperial Press at Vienna seized the opportunity to publish a
splendid album, or “Schillerbuch,” in honor of the poet; unlimited
eloquence was poured forth by professors and academicians; school children
recited Schiller’s ballads; the German students shouted the most popular
of his songs; nor did the ladies of Germany fail in paying their tribute
of gratitude to him who, since the days of the Minnesängers, had been the
most eloquent herald of female grace and dignity. In the evening torch
processions might be seen marching through the streets, bonfires were
lighted on the neighboring hills, houses were illuminated, and even the
solitary darkness of the windows of the Papal Nuncio at Vienna added to
the lustre of the day.(11) In every place where Schiller had spent some
years of his life, local recollections were revived and perpetuated by
tablets and monuments. The most touching account of all came from the
small village of Cleversulzbach. On the village cemetery, or, as it is
called in German, the “God’s-acre,” there stands a tombstone, and on it
the simple inscription, “Schiller’s Mother.” On the morning of her son’s
birthday the poor people of the village were gathered together round that
grave, singing one of their sacred hymns, and planting a lime-tree in the
soil which covers the heart that loved him best.

But the commemoration of Schiller’s birthday was not confined to his
native country. We have seen, in the German papers, letters from St.
Petersburg and Lisbon, from Venice, Rome, and Florence, from Amsterdam,
Stockholm, and Christiana, from Warsaw and Odessa, from Jassy and
Bucharest, from Constantinople, Algiers, and Smyrna, and lately from
America and Australia, all describing the festive gatherings which were
suggested, no doubt, by Schiller’s cosmopolitan countrymen, but joined in
most cheerfully by all the nations of the globe. Poets of higher rank than
Schiller—Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe—have never aroused such world-wide
sympathies; and it is not without interest to inquire into the causes
which have secured to Schiller this universal popularity. However
superlative the praises which have lately been heaped on Schiller’s poetry
by those who cannot praise except in superlatives, we believe that it was
not the poet, but the man, to whom the world has paid this unprecedented
tribute of love and admiration. After reading Schiller’s works we must
read Schiller’s life,—the greatest of all his works. It is a life not
unknown to the English public, for it has been written by Carlyle. The
last festivities, however, have given birth to several new biographies.
Palleske’s “Life of Schiller” has met with such success in Germany that it
well deserved the honor which it has lately received at the hands of Lady
Wallace, and under the special patronage of the Queen, of being translated
into English. Another very careful and lucid account of the poet’s life is
due to the pen of a member of the French Institute, M. A. Regnier, the
distinguished tutor of the Comte de Paris.

In reading these lives, together with the voluminous literature which is
intended to illustrate the character of the German poet, we frequently
felt inclined to ask one question, to which none of Schiller’s biographers
has returned a satisfactory answer: “What were the peculiar circumstances
which brought out in Germany, and in the second half of the eighteenth
century, a man of the moral character, and a poet of the creative genius,
of Schiller?” Granted that he was endowed by nature with the highest
talents, how did he grow to be a poet, such as we know him, different from
all other German poets, and yet in thought, feeling, and language the most
truly German of all the poets of Germany? Are we reduced to appeal to the
mysterious working of an unknown power, if we wish to explain to ourselves
why, in the same country and at the same time, poetical genius assumed
such different forms as are seen in the writings of Schiller and Goethe?
Is it to be ascribed to what is called individuality, a word which in
truth explains nothing; or is it possible for the historian and
psychologist to discover the hidden influences which act on the growing
mind, and produce that striking variety of poetical genius which we admire
in the works of contemporaneous poets, such as Schiller and Goethe in
Germany, or Wordsworth and Byron in England? Men grow not only from
within, but also from without. We know that a poet is born,—_poeta
nascitur_,—but we also know that his character must be formed; the seed is
given, but the furrow must be ploughed in which it is to grow; and the
same grain which, if thrown on cultivated soil, springs into fullness and
vigor, will dwindle away, stunted and broken, if cast upon shallow and
untilled land. There are certain events in the life of every man which
fashion and stamp his character; they may seem small and unimportant in
themselves, but they are great and important to each of us; they mark that
slight bend where two lines which had been running parallel begin to
diverge, never to meet again. The Greeks call such events _epochs_, _i.e._
halts.

We halt for a moment, we look about and wonder, and then choose our
further way in life. It is the duty of biographers to discover such
epochs, such halting-points, in the lives of their heroes; and we shall
endeavor to do the same in the life of Schiller by watching the various
influences which determined the direction of his genius at different
periods of his poetical career.

The period of Schiller’s childhood is generally described with great
detail by his biographers. We are told who his ancestors were. I believe
they were bakers. We are informed that his mother possessed in her
_trousseau_, among other things, four pairs of stockings,—three of cotton,
one of wool. There are also long discussions on the exact date of his
birth. We hear a great deal of early signs of genius, or rather, we should
say, of things done and said by most children, but invested with
extraordinary significance if remembered of the childhood of great men. To
tell the truth, we can find nothing very important in what we thus learn
of the early years of Schiller, nor does the poet himself in later years
dwell much on the recollections of his dawning mind. If we must look for
some determinating influences during the childhood of Schiller, they are
chiefly to be found in the character of his father. The father was not
what we should call a well-educated man. He had been brought up as a
barber and surgeon; had joined a Bavarian regiment in 1745, during the
Austrian war of succession; and had acted as a non-commissioned officer,
and, when occasion required, as a chaplain. After the peace of
Aix-la-Chapelle he had married the daughter of an innkeeper. He was a
brave man, a God-fearing man, and, as is not unfrequently the case with
half-educated people, a man very fond of reading. What he had failed to
attain himself, he wished to see realized in his only son. The following
prayer was found among the papers of the father: “And Thou, Being of all
beings, I have asked Thee after the birth of my only son, that Thou
wouldst add to his powers of intellect what I from deficient instruction
was unable to attain. Thou hast heard me. Thanks be to Thee, bounteous
Being, that Thou heedest the prayers of mortals.” A man of this stamp of
mind would be sure to exercise his own peculiar influence on his children.
He would make them look on life, not as a mere profession, where the son
has only to follow in the steps of his father; his children would early
become familiar with such ideas as “_making_ one’s way in life,” and would
look forward to a steep path rather than to a beaten track. Their thoughts
would dwell on the future at a time when other children live in the
present only, and an adventurous spirit would be roused, without which no
great work has ever been conceived and carried out.

When his children, young Frederick and his sisters, were growing up, their
father read to them their morning and evening prayers; and so fond was the
boy of the Old and New Testament stories that he would often leave his
games in order to be present at his father’s readings. In 1765 the family
left Marbach on the Neckar. The father was ordered by the Duke of
Wurtemberg to Lorch, a place on the frontier, where he had to act as
recruiting officer. His son received his education in the house of a
clergyman, began Latin at six, Greek at seven; and as far as we are able
to see, he neither seems to have considered himself, nor to have been
considered by his masters, as very superior to other boys. He was a good
boy, tenderly attached to his parents, fond of games, and regular at
school. There are but two marked features which we have an opportunity of
watching in him as a boy. He knew no fear, and he was full of the warmest
sympathy for others. The first quality secured him the respect, the second
the love, of those with whom he came in contact. His parents, who were
poor, had great difficulty in restraining his generosity. He would give
away his school-books and the very buckles off his shoes. Both his
fearlessness and universal sympathy are remarkable through the whole of
his after-life. Not even his enemies could point out one trait of
cowardice or selfishness in anything he ever did, or said, or wrote. There
are some pertinent remarks on the combination of these two qualities,
sympathy with others and courage, by the author of “Friends in Council.”


    “If greatness,” he writes, “can be shut up in qualities, it will
    be found to consist in courage and in openness of mind and soul.
    These qualities may not seem at first to be so potent. But see
    what _growth_ there is in them. The education of a man of open
    mind is never ended. Then with openness of soul a man sees some
    way into all other souls that come near him, feels with them, has
    their experience, is in himself a people. Sympathy is the
    universal solvent. Nothing is understood without it.... Add
    courage to this openness, and you have a man who can own himself
    in the wrong, can forgive, can trust, can adventure, can, in
    short, use all the means that insight and sympathy endow him
    with.”


A plucky and warm-hearted boy, under the care of an honest, brave, and
intelligent father and a tender and religious mother,—this is all we know
and care to know about Schiller during the first ten years of his life. In
the year 1768 there begins a new period in the life of Schiller. His
father was settled at Ludwigsburg, the ordinary residence of the reigning
Duke of Wurtemberg, the Duke Charles. This man was destined to exercise a
decisive influence on Schiller’s character. Like many German sovereigns in
the middle of the last century, Duke Charles of Wurtemberg had felt the
influence of those liberal ideas which had found so powerful an utterance
in the works of the French and English philosophers of the eighteenth
century. The philosophy which in France was smiled at by kings and
statesmen, while it roused the people to insurrection and regicide,
produced in Germany a deeper impression on the minds of the sovereigns and
ruling classes than of the people. In the time of Frederick the Great and
Joseph II. it became fashionable among sovereigns to profess Liberalism,
and to work for the enlightenment of the human race. It is true that this
liberal policy was generally carried out in a rather despotic way, and
people were emancipated and enlightened very much as the ancient Saxons
were converted by Charlemagne. We have an instance of this in the case of
Schiller. Duke Charles had founded an institution where orphans and the
sons of poor officers were educated free of expense. He had been informed
that young Schiller was a promising boy, and likely to reflect credit on
his new institution, and he proceeded without further inquiry to place him
on the list of his _protégés_, assigning to him a place at his military
school. It was useless for the father to remonstrate, and explain to the
Duke that his son had a decided inclination for the Church. Schiller was
sent to the Academy in 1773, and ordered to study law. The young student
could not but see that an injustice had been done him, and the irritation
which it caused was felt by him all the more deeply because it would have
been dangerous to give expression to his feelings. The result was that he
made no progress in the subjects which he had been commanded to study. In
1775 he was allowed to give up law, not, however, to return to theology,
but to begin the study of medicine. But medicine, though at first it
seemed more attractive, failed, like law, to call forth his full energies.
In the mean time another interference on the part of the Duke proved even
more abortive, and to a certain extent determined the path which
Schiller’s genius was to take in life. The Duke had prohibited all German
classics at his Academy; the boys, nevertheless, succeeded in forming a
secret library, and Schiller read the works of Klopstock, Klinger,
Lessing, Goethe, and Wieland’s translations of Shakespeare with rapture,
no doubt somewhat increased by the dangers he braved in gaining access to
these treasures. In 1780, the same year in which he passed his examination
and received the appointment of regimental surgeon, Schiller wrote his
first tragedy, “The Robbers.” His taste for dramatic poetry had been
roused partly by Goethe’s “Goetz von Berlichingen” and Shakespeare’s
plays, partly by his visits to the theatre, which, under the patronage of
the Duke, was then in a very flourishing state. The choice of the subject
of his first dramatic composition was influenced by the circumstances of
his youth. His poetical sympathy for a character such as Karl Moor, a man
who sets at defiance all the laws of God and man, can only be accounted
for by the revulsion of feeling produced on his boyish mind by the strict
military discipline to which all the pupils at the Academy were subjected.
His sense of right and wrong was strong enough to make him paint his hero
as a monster, and to make him inflict on him the punishment he merited.
But the young poet could not resist the temptation of throwing a brighter
light on the redeeming points in the character of a robber and murderer by
pointedly placing him in contrast with the even darker shades of
hypocritical respectability and saintliness in the picture of his brother
Franz. The language in which Schiller paints his characters is powerful,
but it is often wild and even coarse. The Duke did not approve of his
former _protégé_; the very title-page of “The Robbers” was enough to
offend his Serene Highness,—it contained a rising lion, with the motto
“_In tyrannos_.” The Duke gave a warning to the young military surgeon,
and when, soon after, he heard of his going secretly to Mannheim to be
present at the first performance of his play, he ordered him to be put
under military arrest. All these vexations Schiller endured, because he
knew full well there was no escape from the favors of his royal protector.
But when at last he was ordered never to publish again except on medical
subjects, and to submit all his poetical compositions to the Duke’s
censorship, this proved too much for our young poet. His ambition had been
roused. He had sat at Mannheim a young man of twenty, unknown, amid an
audience of men and women who listened with rapturous applause to his own
thoughts and words. That evening at the theatre of Mannheim had been a
decisive evening,—it was an epoch in the history of his life; he had felt
his power and the calling of his genius; he had perceived, though in a dim
distance, the course he had to run and the laurels he had to gain. When he
saw that the humor of the Duke was not likely to improve, he fled from a
place where his wings were clipped and his voice silenced. Now, this
flight from one small German town to another may seem a matter of very
little consequence at present. But in Schiller’s time it was a matter of
life and death. German sovereigns were accustomed to look upon their
subjects as their property. Without even the show of a trial the poet
Schubart had been condemned to life-long confinement by this same Duke
Charles. Schiller, in fleeing his benefactor’s dominions, had not only
thrown away all his chances in life, but he had placed his safety and the
safety of his family in extreme danger. It was a bold, perhaps a reckless
step. But whatever we may think of it in a moral point of view, as
historians we must look upon it as the Hegira in the life of the poet.

Schiller was now a man of one or two and twenty, thrown upon the world
penniless, with nothing to depend on but his brains. The next ten years
were hard years for him; they were years of unsettledness, sometimes of
penury and despair, sometimes of extravagance and folly. This third period
in Schiller’s life is not marked by any great literary achievements. It
would be almost a blank were it not for the “Don Carlos,” which he wrote
during his stay near Dresden, between 1785-87. His “Fiesco” and “Cabale
und Liebe,” though they came out after his flight from Stuttgard, had been
conceived before, and they were only repeated protests, in the form of
tragedies, against the tyranny of rulers and the despotism of society.
They show no advance in the growth of Schiller’s mind. Yet that mind,
though less productive than might have been expected, was growing as every
mind grows between the years of twenty and thirty; and it was growing
chiefly through contact with men. We must make full allowance for the
powerful influence exercised at that time by the literature of the day (by
the writings of Herder, Lessing, and Goethe), and by political events,
such as the French Revolution. But if we watch Schiller’s career
carefully, we see that his character was chiefly moulded by his
intercourse with men. His life was rich in friendships, and what mainly
upheld him in his struggles and dangers was the sympathy of several
high-born and high-minded persons, in whom the ideals of his own mind
seemed to have found their fullest realization.

Next to our faith in God, there is nothing so essential to the healthy
growth of our whole being as an unshaken faith in man. This faith in man
is the great feature in Schiller’s character, and he owes it to a kind
Providence which brought him in contact with such noble natures as Frau
von Wolzogen, Körner, Dalberg; in later years with his wife; with the Duke
of Weimar, the Prince of Augustenburg, and lastly with Goethe. There was
at that time a powerful tension in the minds of men, and particularly of
the higher classes, which led them to do things which at other times men
only aspire to do. The impulses of a most exalted morality—a morality
which is so apt to end in mere declamation and deceit—were not only felt
by them, but obeyed and carried out. Frau von Wolzogen, knowing nothing of
Schiller except that he had been at the same school with her son, received
the exiled poet, though fully aware that by doing so she might have
displeased the Duke and blasted her fortunes and those of her children.
Schiller preserved the tenderest attachment to this motherly friend
through life, and his letters to her display a most charming innocence and
purity of mind.

Another friend was Körner, a young lawyer living at Leipzig, and
afterwards at Dresden—a man who had himself to earn his bread. He had
learned to love Schiller from his writings; he received him at his house,
a perfect stranger, and shared with the poor poet his moderate income with
a generosity worthy of a prince. He, too, remained his friend through
life; his son was Theodore Körner, the poet of “Lyre and Sword,” who fell
fighting as a volunteer for his country against French invaders.

A third friend and patron of Schiller was Dalberg. He was the coadjutor,
and was to have been the successor, of the Elector of Hesse, then an
ecclesiastical Electorate. His rank was that of a reigning prince, and he
was made afterwards by Napoleon Fürst-Primas—Prince Primate—of the
Confederation of the Rhine. But it was not his station, his wealth, and
influence, it was his mind and heart which made him the friend of
Schiller, Goethe, Herder, Wieland, Jean Paul, and all the most eminent
intellects of his time. It is refreshing to read the letters of this
Prince. Though they belong to a later period of Schiller’s life, a few
passages may here be quoted in order to characterize his friend and
patron. Dalberg had promised Schiller a pension of 4,000 florins (not
4,000 thalers, as M. Regnier asserts) as soon as he should succeed to the
Electorate, and Schiller in return had asked him for some hints with
regard to his own future literary occupations. The Prince answers: “Your
letter has delighted me. To be remembered by a man of your heart and mind
is a true joy to me. I do not venture to determine what Schiller’s
comprehensive and vivifying genius is to undertake. But may I be allowed
to humbly express a wish that spirits endowed with the powers of giants
should ask themselves, ‘How can I be most useful to mankind?’ This
inquiry, I think, leads most surely to immortality, and the rewards of a
peaceful conscience. May you enjoy the purest happiness, and think
sometimes of your friend and servant, Dalberg.” When Schiller was
hesitating between history and dramatic poetry, Dalberg’s keen eye
discovered at once that the stage was Schiller’s calling, and that there
his influence would be most beneficial. Schiller seemed to think that a
professorial chair in a German university was a more honorable position
than that of a poet. Dalberg writes: “Influence on mankind” (for this he
knew to be Schiller’s highest ambition) “depends on the vigor and strength
which a man throws into his works. Thucydides and Xenophon would not deny
that poets like Sophocles and Horace have had at least as much influence
on the world as they themselves.” When the French invasion threatened the
ruin of Germany and the downfall of the German sovereigns, Dalberg writes
again, in 1796, with perfect serenity: “True courage must never fail! The
friends of virtue and truth ought now to act and speak all the more
vigorously and straightforwardly. In the end, what you, excellent friend,
have so beautifully said in your ‘Ideals’ remains true: ‘The diligence of
the righteous works slowly but surely, and friendship is soothing comfort.
It is only when I hope to be hereafter of assistance to my friends that I
wish for a better fate.’ ” The society and friendship of such men, who are
rare in all countries and in all ages, served to keep up in Schiller’s
mind those ideal notions of mankind which he had first imbibed from his
own heart, and from the works of philosophers. They find expression in all
his writings, but are most eloquently described in his “Don Carlos.” We
should like to give some extracts from the dialogue between King Philip
and the Marquis Posa; but our space is precious, and hardly allows us to
do more than just to glance at those other friends and companions whose
nobility of mind and generosity of heart left so deep an impress on the
poet’s soul.

The name of Karl August, the Duke of Weimar, has acquired such a
world-wide celebrity as the friend of Goethe and Schiller that we need not
dwell long on his relation to our poet. As early as 1784 Schiller was
introduced to him at Darmstadt, where he was invited to court to read some
scenes of his “Don Carlos.” The Duke gave him then the title of “Rath,”
and from the year 1787, when Schiller first settled at Weimar, to the time
of his death, in 1804, he remained his firm friend. The friendship of the
Prince was returned by the poet, who, in the days of his glory, declined
several advantageous offers from Vienna and other places, and remained at
the court of Weimar, satisfied with the small salary which that great Duke
was able to give him.

There was but one other Prince whose bounty Schiller accepted, and his
name deserves to be mentioned, not so much for his act of generosity as
for the sentiment which prompted it. In 1792, when Schiller was ill and
unable to write, he received a letter from the Hereditary Prince of
Holstein-Augustenburg and from Count Schimmelmann. We quote from the
letter:—


    “Your shattered health, we hear, requires rest, but your
    circumstances do not allow it. Will you grudge us the pleasure of
    enabling you to enjoy that rest? We offer you for three years an
    annual present of 1,000 thalers. Accept this offer, noble man. Let
    not our titles induce you to decline it. We know what they are
    worth; we know no pride but that of being men, citizens of that
    great republic which comprises more than the life of single
    generations, more than the limits of this globe. You have to deal
    with men,—your brothers,—not with proud princes, who, by this
    employment of their wealth, would fain indulge but in a more
    refined kind of pride.”


No conditions were attached to this present, though a situation in Denmark
was offered if Schiller should wish to go there. Schiller accepted the
gift so nobly offered, but he never saw his unknown friends.(12) We owe to
them, humanly speaking, the last years of Schiller’s life, and with them
the master-works of his genius, from “Wallenstein” to “William Tell.” As
long as these works are read and admired, the names of these noble
benefactors will be remembered and revered.

The name of her whom we mentioned next among Schiller’s noble friends and
companions,—we mean his wife,—reminds us that we have anticipated events,
and that we left Schiller after his flight in 1782, at the very beginning
of his most trying years. His hopes of success at Mannheim had failed. The
director of the Mannheim theatre, also a Dalberg, declined to assist him.
He spent the winter in great solitude at the country-house of Frau von
Wolzogen, finishing “Cabale und Liebe,” and writing “Fiesco.” In the
summer of 1783 he returned to Mannheim, where he received an appointment
in connection with the theatre of about £40 a year. Here he stayed till
1785, when he went to Leipzig, and afterwards to Dresden, living chiefly
at the expense of his friend Körner. This unsettled kind of life continued
till 1787, and produced, as we saw, little more than his tragedy of “Don
Carlos.” In the mean time, however, his taste for history had been
developed. He had been reading more systematically at Dresden, and after
he had gone to Weimar in 1787 he was able to publish, in 1788, his
“History of the Revolt of the Netherlands.” On the strength of this he was
appointed professor at Jena in 1789, first without a salary, afterwards
with about £30 a year. He tells us himself how hard he had to work: “Every
day,” he says, “I must compose a whole lecture and write it out,—nearly
two sheets of printed matter, not to mention the time occupied in
delivering the lecture and making extracts.” However, he had now gained a
position, and his literary works began to be better paid. In 1790 he was
enabled to marry a lady of rank, who was proud to become the wife of the
poor poet, and was worthy to be the “wife of Schiller.” Schiller was now
chiefly engaged in historical researches. He wrote his “History of the
Thirty Years’ War” in 1791-92, and it was his ambition to be recognized as
a German professor rather than as a German poet. He had to work hard in
order to make up for lost time, and under the weight of excessive labor
his health broke down. He was unable to lecture, unable to write. It was
then that the generous present of the Duke of Augustenburg freed him for a
time from the most pressing cares, and enabled him to recover his health.

The years of thirty to thirty-five were a period of transition and
preparation in Schiller’s life, to be followed by another ten years of
work and triumph. These intermediate years were chiefly spent in reading
history and studying philosophy, more especially the then reigning
philosophy of Kant. Numerous essays on philosophy, chiefly on the Good,
the Beautiful, and the Sublime, were published during this interval. But
what is more important, Schiller’s mind was enlarged, enriched, and
invigorated; his poetical genius, by lying fallow for a time, gave promise
of a richer harvest to come; his position in the world became more
honorable, and his confidence in himself was strengthened by the
confidence placed in him by all around him. A curious compliment was paid
him by the Legislative Assembly then sitting at Paris. On the 26th of
August, 1792, a decree was passed, conferring the title of _Citoyen
Français_ on eighteen persons belonging to various countries, friends of
liberty and universal brotherhood. In the same list with Schiller were the
names of Klopstock, Campe, Washington, Kosciusko, and Wilberforce. The
decree was signed by Roland, Minister of the Interior, and countersigned
by Danton. It did not reach Schiller till after the enthusiasm which he
too had shared for the early heroes of the French Revolution had given way
to disappointment and horror. In the month of December of the very year in
which he had been thus honored by the Legislative Assembly, Schiller was
on the point of writing an appeal to the French nation in defense of Louis
XVI. The King’s head, however, had fallen before this defense was begun.
Schiller, a true friend of true liberty, never ceased to express his
aversion to the violent proceedings of the French revolutionists. “It is
the work of passion,” he said, “and not of that wisdom which alone can
lead to real liberty.” He admitted that many important ideas, which
formerly existed in books only or in the heads of a few enlightened
people, had become more generally current through the French Revolution.
But he maintained that the real principles which ought to form the basis
of a truly happy political constitution were still hidden from view.
Pointing to a volume of Kant’s “Criticism of Pure Reason,” he said, “There
they are, and nowhere else; the French republic will fall as rapidly as it
has risen; the republican government will lapse into anarchy, and sooner
or later a man of genius will appear (he may come from any place) who will
make himself not only master of France, but perhaps also of a great part
of Europe.” This was a remarkable prophecy for a young professor of
history.

The last decisive event in Schiller’s life was his friendship with Goethe.
It dates from 1794, and with this year begins the great and crowning
period of Schiller’s life. To this period belong his “Wallenstein,” his
“Song of the Bell,” his Ballads (1797-98), his “Mary Stuart” (1800), the
“Maid of Orleans” (1801), the “Bride of Messina” (1803), and “William
Tell;” in fact, all the works which have made Schiller a national poet and
gained for him a worldwide reputation and an immortal name.

Goethe’s character was in many respects diametrically opposed to
Schiller’s, and for many years it seemed impossible that there should ever
be a community of thought and feeling between the two. Attempts to bring
together these great rivals were repeatedly made by their mutual friends.
Schiller had long felt himself drawn by the powerful genius of Goethe, and
Goethe had long felt that Schiller was the only poet who could claim to be
his peer. After an early interview with Goethe, Schiller writes, “On the
whole, this meeting has not at all diminished the idea, great as it was,
which I had previously formed of Goethe; but I doubt if we shall ever come
into close communication with each other. Much that interests me has
already had its epoch with him; his world is not my world.” Goethe had
expressed the same feeling. He saw Schiller occupying the very position
which he himself had given up as untenable; he saw his powerful genius
carrying out triumphantly “those very paradoxes, moral and dramatic, from
which he was struggling to get liberated.” “No union,” as Goethe writes,
“was to be dreamt of. Between two spiritual antipodes there was more
intervening than a simple diameter of the spheres. Antipodes of that sort
act as a kind of poles, which can never coalesce.” How the first approach
between these two opposite poles took place Goethe has himself described,
in a paper entitled “Happy Incidents.” But no happy incident could have
led to that glorious friendship, which stands alone in the literary
history of the whole world, if there had not been on the part of Schiller
his warm sympathy for all that is great and noble, and on the part of
Goethe a deep interest in every manifestation of natural genius. Their
differences on almost every point of art, philosophy, and religion, which
at first seemed to separate them forever, only drew them more closely
together, when they discovered in each other those completing elements
which produced true harmony of souls. Nor is it right to say that Schiller
owes more to Goethe than Goethe to Schiller. If Schiller received from
Goethe the higher rules of art and a deeper insight into human nature,
Goethe drank from the soul of his friend the youth and vigor, the purity
and simplicity, which we never find in any of Goethe’s works before his
“Hermann and Dorothea.” And, as in most friendships, it was not so much
Goethe as he was, but Goethe as reflected in his friend’s soul, who
henceforth became Schiller’s guide and guardian. Schiller possessed the
art of admiring, an art so much more rare than the art of criticising. His
eye was so absorbed in all that was great, and noble, and pure, and high
in Goethe’s mind, that he could not, or would not, see the defects in his
character. And Goethe was to Schiller what he was to no one else. He was
what Schiller believed him to be; afraid to fall below his friend’s ideal,
he rose beyond himself until that high ideal was reached, which only a
Schiller could have formed. Without this regenerating friendship it is
doubtful whether some of the most perfect creations of Goethe and Schiller
would ever have been called into existence.

We saw Schiller gradually sinking into a German professor, the sphere of
his sympathies narrowed, the aim of his ambition lowered. His energies
were absorbed in collecting materials and elaborating his “History of the
Thirty Years’ War,” which was published in 1792. The conception of his
great dramatic Trilogy, the “Wallenstein,” which dates from 1791, was
allowed to languish until it was taken up again for Goethe, and finished
for Goethe in 1799. Goethe knew how to admire and encourage, but he also
knew how to criticise and advise. Schiller, by nature meditative rather
than observant, had been most powerfully attracted by Kant’s ideal
philosophy. Next to his historical researches, most of his time at Jena
was given to metaphysical studies. Not only his mind, but his language
suffered from the attenuating influences of that rarefied atmosphere which
pervades the higher regions of metaphysical thought. His mind was
attracted by the general and the ideal, and lost all interest in the
individual and the real. This was not a right frame of mind, either for an
historian or a dramatic poet. In Goethe, too, the philosophical element
was strong, but it was kept under by the practical tendencies of his mind.
Schiller looked for his ideal beyond the real world; and, like the
pictures of a Raphael, his conceptions seemed to surpass in purity and
harmony all that human eye had ever seen. Goethe had discovered that the
truest ideal lies hidden in real life; and like the master-works of a
Michael Angelo, his poetry reflected that highest beauty which is revealed
in the endless variety of creation, and must there be discovered by the
artist and the poet. In Schiller’s early works every character was the
personification of an idea. In his “Wallenstein” we meet for the first
time with real men and real life. In his “Don Carlos,” Schiller, under
various disguises more or less transparent, acts every part himself. In
“Wallenstein” the heroes of the “Thirty Years’ War” maintain their own
individuality, and are not forced to discuss the social problems of
Rousseau, or the metaphysical theories of Kant. Schiller was himself aware
of this change, though he was hardly conscious of its full bearing. While
engaged in composing his “Wallenstein,” he writes to a friend:—


    “I do my business very differently from what I used to do. The
    subject seems to be so much outside me that I can hardly get up
    any feeling for it. The subject I treat leaves me cold and
    indifferent, and yet I am full of enthusiasm for my work. With the
    exception of two characters to which I feel attached, Max
    Piccolomini and Thekla, I treat all the rest, and particularly the
    principal character of the play, only with the pure love of the
    artist. But I can promise you that they will not suffer from this.
    I look to history for limitation, in order to give, through
    surrounding circumstances, a stricter form and reality to my
    ideals. I feel sure that the historical will not draw me down or
    cripple me. I only desire through it to impart life to my
    characters and their actions. The life and soul must come from
    another source, through that power which I have already perhaps
    shown elsewhere, and without which even the first conception of
    this work would, of course, have been impossible.”


How different is this from what Schiller felt in former years! In writing
“Don Carlos,” he laid down as a principle, that the poet must not be the
painter but the lover of his heroes, and in his early days he found it
intolerable in Shakespeare’s dreams that he could nowhere lay his hand on
the poet himself. He was then, as he himself expresses it, unable to
understand nature, except at second-hand.

Goethe was Schiller’s friend, but he was also Schiller’s rival. There is a
perilous period in the lives of great men, namely, the time when they
begin to feel that their position is made, that they have no more rivals
to fear. Goethe was feeling this at the time when he met Schiller. He was
satiated with applause, and his bearing towards the public at large became
careless and offensive. In order to find men with whom he might measure
himself, he began to write on the history of Art, and to devote himself to
natural philosophy. Schiller, too, had gained his laurels chiefly as a
dramatic poet; and though he still valued the applause of the public, yet
his ambition as a poet was satisfied; he was prouder of his “Thirty Years’
War” than of his “Robbers” and “Don Carlos.” When Goethe became intimate
with Schiller, and discovered in him those powers which as yet were hidden
to others, he felt that there was a man with whom even he might run a
race. Goethe was never jealous of Schiller. He felt conscious of his own
great powers, and he was glad to have those powers again called out by one
who would be more difficult to conquer than all his former rivals.
Schiller, on the other hand, perceived in Goethe the true dignity of a
poet. At Jena his ambition was to have the title of Professor of History;
at Weimar he saw that it was a greater honor to be called a poet, and the
friend of Goethe. When he saw that Goethe treated him as his friend, and
that the Duke and his brilliant court looked upon him as his equal,
Schiller, too modest to suppose he had earned such favors, was filled with
a new zeal, and his poetical genius displayed for a time an almost
inexhaustible energy. Scarcely had his “Wallenstein” been finished, in
1799, when he began his “Mary Stuart.” This play was finished in the
summer of 1800, and a new one was taken in hand in the same year,—the
“Maid of Orleans.” In the spring of 1801 the “Maid of Orleans” appeared on
the stage, to be followed in 1803 by the “Bride of Messina,” and in 1804
by his last great work, his “William Tell.” During the same time Schiller
composed his best ballads, his “Song of the Bell,” his epigrams, and his
beautiful Elegy, not to mention his translations and adaptations of
English and French plays for the theatre at Weimar. After his “William
Tell” Schiller could feel that he no longer owed his place by the side of
Goethe to favor and friendship, but to his own work and worth. His race
was run, his laurels gained. His health, however, was broken, and his
bodily frame too weak to support the strain of his mighty spirit. Death
came to his relief, giving rest to his mind, and immortality to his name.

Let us look back once more on the life of Schiller. The lives of great men
are the lives of martyrs; we cannot regard them as examples to follow, but
rather as types of human excellence to study and to admire. The life of
Schiller was not one which many of us would envy; it was a life of toil
and suffering, of aspiration rather than of fulfillment, a long battle
with scarcely a moment of rest for the conqueror to enjoy his hard-won
triumphs. To an ambitious man the last ten years of the poet’s life might
seem an ample reward for the thirty years’ war of life which he had to
fight single-handed. But Schiller was too great a man to be ambitious.
Fame with him was a means, never an object. There was a higher, a nobler
aim in his life, which upheld him in all his struggles. From the very
beginning of his career Schiller seems to have felt that his life was not
his. He never lived for himself; he lived and worked for mankind. He
discovered within himself how much there was of the good, the noble, and
the beautiful in human nature; he had never been deceived in his friends.
And such was his sympathy with the world at large that he could not bear
to see in any rank of life the image of man, created in the likeness of
God, distorted by cunning, pride, and selfishness. His whole poetry may be
said to be written on the simple text, “Be true, be good, be noble!” It
may seem a short text, but truth is very short, and the work of the
greatest teachers of mankind has always consisted in the unflinching
inculcation of these short truths. There is in Schiller’s works a kernel
full of immortal growth, which will endure long after the brilliant colors
of his poetry have faded away. That kernel is the man, and without it
Schiller’s poetry, like all other poetry, is but the song of sirens.
Schiller’s character has been subjected to that painful scrutiny to which,
in modern times, the characters of great men are subjected; everything he
ever did, or said, or thought, has been published; and yet it would be
difficult, in the whole course of his life, to point out one act, one
word, one thought, that could be called mean, untrue, or selfish. From the
beginning to the end Schiller remained true to himself; he never acted a
part, he never bargained with the world. We may differ from him on many
points of politics, ethics, and religion; but though we differ, we must
always respect and admire. His life is the best commentary on his poetry;
there is never a discrepancy between the two. As mere critics, we may be
able to admire a poet without admiring the man; but poetry, it should be
remembered, was not meant for critics only, and its highest purpose is
never fulfilled, except where, as with Schiller, we can listen to the poet
and look up to the man.

1859.





V. WILHELM MÜLLER.(13) 1794-1827.


Seldom has a poet in a short life of thirty years engraven his name so
deeply on the memorial tablets of the history of German poetry as Wilhelm
Müller. Although the youthful efforts of a poet may be appreciated by
those few who are able to admire what is good and beautiful, even though
it has never before been admired by others, yet in order permanently to
win the ear and heart of his people, a poet must live with the people, and
take part in the movements and struggles of his age. Thus only can he hope
to stir and mould the thoughts of his contemporaries, and to remain a
permanent living power in the recollections of his countrymen. Wilhelm
Müller died at the very moment when the rich blossoms of his poetic genius
were forming fruit; and after he had warmed and quickened the hearts of
the youth of Germany with the lyric songs of his own youth, only a short
span of time was granted him to show the world, as he did more especially
in his “Greek Songs” and “Epigrams,” the higher goal toward which he
aspired. In these his last works one readily perceives that his poetry
would not have reflected the happy dreams of youth only, but that he could
perceive the poetry of life in its sorrows as clearly as in its joys, and
depict it in true and vivid colors.

One may, I think, divide the friends and admirers of Wilhelm Müller into
two classes: those who rejoice and delight in his fresh and joyous songs,
and those who admire the nobleness and force of his character as shown in
the poems celebrating the war of Greek independence, and in his epigrams.
All poetry is not for every one, nor for every one at all times. There are
critics and historians of literature who cannot tolerate songs of youth,
of love, and of wine; they always ask “why?” and “wherefore?” and they
demand in all poetry, before anything else, high or deep thoughts. No
doubt there can be no poetry without thought, but there are thoughts which
are poetical without being drawn from the deepest depths of the heart and
brain, nay, which are poetical just because they are as simple and true
and natural as the flowers of the field or the stars of heaven. There is a
poetry for the old, but there is also a poetry for the young. The young
demand in poetry an interpretation of their own youthful feelings, and
first learn truly to understand themselves through those poets who speak
for them as they would speak for themselves, had nature endowed them with
melody of thought and harmony of diction. Youth is and will remain the
majority of the world, and will let no gloomy brow rob it of its poetic
enthusiasm for young love and old wine. True, youth is not over-critical;
true, it does not know how to speak or write in learned phrases of the
merits of its favorite poets. But for all that, where is the poet who
would not rather live in the warm recollection of the never-dying youth of
his nation than in voluminous encyclopædias, or even in the marble
Walhallas of Germany? The story and the songs of a miller’s man who loves
his master’s daughter, and of a miller’s daughter who loves a huntsman
better, may seem very trivial, commonplace, and unpoetical to many a man
of forty or fifty. But there are men of forty and fifty who have never
lost sight of the bright but now far-off days of their own youth, who can
still rejoice with those that rejoice, and weep with those that weep, and
love with those that love,—aye, who can still fill their glasses with old
and young, and in whose eyes every-day life has not destroyed the poetic
bloom that rests everywhere on life so long as it is lived with warm and
natural feelings. Songs which, like the “Beautiful Miller’s Daughter” and
the “Winter Journey,” could so penetrate and again spring forth from the
soul of Franz Schubert, may well stir the very depths of our own hearts,
without the need of fearing the wise looks of those who possess the art of
saying nothing in many words. Why should poetry be less free than painting
to seek for what is beautiful wherever a human eye can discover, wherever
human art can imitate it? No one blames the painter if, instead of giddy
peaks or towering waves, he delineates on his canvas a quiet narrow
valley, filled with a green mist, and enlivened only by a gray mill and a
dark brown mill-wheel, from which the spray rises like silver dust, and
then floats away, and vanishes in the rays of the sun. Is what is not too
common for the painter, too common for the poet? Is an idyl in the truest,
warmest, softest colors of the soul, like the “Beautiful Miller’s
Daughter,” less a work of art than a landscape by Ruysdael? And observe in
these songs how the execution suits the subject; their tone is thoroughly
popular, and reminds many of us, perhaps too much, of the popular songs
collected by Arnim and Brentano in “Des Knaben Wunderhorn.” But this could
not be helped. Theocritus could not write his idyls in grand Attic Greek;
he needed the homeliness of the Bœotian dialect. It was the same with
Wilhelm Müller, who must not be blamed for expressions which now perhaps,
more than formerly, may sound, to fastidious ears, too homely or
commonplace.

His simple and natural conception of nature is shown most beautifully in
the “Wanderer’s Songs,” and in the “Spring Wreath from the Plauen Valley.”
Nowhere do we find a labored thought or a labored word. The lovely spring
world is depicted exactly as it is, but over all is thrown the life and
inspiration of a poet’s eye and a poet’s mind, which perceives and gives
utterance to what others fail to see, and silent nature cannot utter. It
is this recognition of the beautiful in what is insignificant, of
greatness in what is small, of the marvelous in ordinary life,—yes, this
perception of the divine in every earthly enjoyment,—which gives its own
charm to each of Wilhelm Müller’s smallest poems, and endears them so
truly to those who, amidst the hurry of life, have not forgotten the
delight of absorption in nature, who have never lost their faith in the
mystery of the divine presence in all that is beautiful, good, and true on
earth. We need only read the “Frühlingsmahl,” or “Pfingsten” to see how a
whole world, aye, a whole heaven, may be mirrored in the tiniest drop of
dew.

And as enjoyment of nature finds so clear an echo in the poetry of Wilhelm
Müller, so also does the delight which man should have in man. Drinking
songs and table songs do not belong to the highest flights of poetry; but
if the delights of friendly meetings and greetings belong to some of the
brightest moments of human happiness, why should a poet hold them to be
beneath his muse? There is something especially German in all drinking
songs, and no other nation has held its wine in such honor. Can one
imagine English poems on port and sherry? or has a Frenchman much to tell
us of his Bordeaux, or even of his Burgundy? The reason that the poetry of
wine is unknown in England and France is, that in these countries people
know nothing of what lends its poetry to wine, namely, the joyous
consciousness of mutual pleasure, the outpouring of hearts, the feeling of
common brotherhood, which makes learned professors and divines, generals
and ministers, men once more at the sound of the ringing glasses. This
purely human delight in the enjoyment of life, in the flavor of the German
wine, and in the yet higher flavor of the German Symposium, finds it
happiest expression in the drinking songs of Wilhelm Müller. They have
often been set to music by the best masters, and have long been sung by
the happy and joyous. The name of the poet is often forgotten, whilst many
of his songs have become popular songs, just because they were sung from
the heart and soul of the German people, as the people were fifty years
ago, and as the best of them still are, in spite of many changes in the
Fatherland.

It is easy to see that a serious tone is not wanting even in the drinking
songs. The wine was good, but the times were bad. Those who, like Wilhelm
Müller, had shared in the great sufferings and the great hopes of the
German people, and who then saw that after all the sacrifices that had
been made, all was in vain, all was again as bad or even worse than
before, could with difficulty conceal their disaffection, however helpless
they felt themselves against the brutalities of those in power. Many, who
like Wilhelm Müller had labored to reanimate German popular feeling; who
like him had left the university to sacrifice as common soldiers their
life and life’s happiness to the freedom of the Fatherland, and who then
saw how the terror felt by the scarcely rescued princes of their
deliverers, and the fear of foreign nations of a united and strong
Germany, joined hand in hand to destroy the precious seed sown in blood
and tears,—could not always suppress their gloomy anger at such
faint-hearted, weak-minded policy. On the first of January, 1820, Wilhelm
Müller wrote thus, in the dedication of the second part of his “Letters
from Rome” to his friend Atterbom, the Swedish poet, with whom he had but
a short time before passed the Carnival time in Italy joyously and
carelessly: “And thus I greet you in your old sacred Fatherland, not
jokingly and merrily, like the book, whose writer seems to have become a
stranger to me, but earnestly and briefly; for the great fast of the
European world, expecting the passion, and waiting for deliverance, can
endure no indifferent shrug of the shoulders and no hollow compromises and
excuses. He who cannot act at this time, can yet rest and mourn.” For such
words, veiled as they were, resigned as they were, the fortress of Mayence
was at that time the usual answer.

“Deutsch und frei und stark und lauter
  In dem deutschen Land
Ist der Wein allein geblieben
  An der Rheines Strand.
Ist _der_ nicht ein Demagoge,
  Wer soll einer sein?
Mainz, du stolze Bundesfeste,
  Sperr ihn nur nicht ein.”(14)

That Wilhelm Müller escaped the petty and annoying persecutions of the
then police system, he owed partly to the retired life he led in his
little native country, partly to his own good spirits, which prevented him
from entirely sinking the man in the politician. He had some enemies in
the little court, whose Duke and Duchess were personally so attached to
him. A prosperous life such as his could not fail to attract envy, and his
frank, guileless character gave plenty of occasion for suspicion. But the
only answer which he vouchsafed to his detractors was:—

“Und lasst mir doch mein volles Glass,
Und lasst mir meinen guten Spass,
Mit unsrer schlechten Zeit!
Wer bei dem Weine singt und lacht,
Den thut, ihr Herrn, nicht in die Acht!
Ein Kind ist Fröhligkeit.”(15)

Wilhelm Müller evidently felt that when words are not deeds, or do not
lead to deeds, silence is more worthy of a man than speech. He never
became a political poet, at least never in his own country. But when the
rising of the Greeks appealed to those human sympathies of Christian
nations which can never be quite extinguished, and when here, too, the
faint-hearted policy of the great powers played and bargained over the
great events in the east of Europe instead of trusting to those principles
which alone can secure the true and lasting well-being of states, as well
as of individuals, then the long accumulated wrath of the poet and of the
man burst forth and found utterance in the songs on the Greek war of
independence. Human, Christian, political, and classical sympathies
stirred his heart, and breathed that life into his poems, which most of
them still possess. It is astonishing how a young man in a small isolated
town like Dessau, almost shut out from intercourse with the great world,
could have followed step by step the events of the Greek revolution,
seizing on all the right, the beauty, the grandeur of the struggle, making
himself intimately acquainted with the dominant characters, whilst he at
the same time mastered the peculiar local coloring of the passing events.
Wilhelm Müller was not only a poet, but he was intimately acquainted with
classic antiquity. He _knew_ the Greeks and the Romans. And just as during
his stay in Rome he recognized at all points the old in what was new, and
everywhere sought to find what was eternal in the eternal city, so now
with him the modern Greeks were inseparably joined with the ancient. A
knowledge of the modern Greek language appeared to him the natural
completion of the study of old Greek; and it was his acquaintance with the
popular songs of modern as well as of ancient Hellas that gave the color
which imparted such a vivid expression of truth and naturalness to his own
Greek songs. It was thus that the “Griechen Lieder” arose, which appeared
in separate but rapid numbers, and found great favor with the people. But
even these “Griechen Lieder” caused anxiety to the paternal governments of
those days:—

“Ruh und Friede will Europa—warum hast du sie gestört?
Warum mit dem Wahn der Freiheit eigenmächtig dich bethört?
Hoff’ auf keines Herren Hülfe gegen eines Herren Frohn:
Auch des Türkenkaisers Polster nennt Europa einen Thron.”(16)

His last poems were suppressed by the Censor, as well as his “Hymn on the
Death of Raphael Riego.” Some of these were first published long after his
death; others must have been lost whilst in the Censor’s hands.

Two of the Greek songs, “Mark Bozzaris,” and “Song before Battle,” may
help the English reader to form his own opinion both of the poetical
genius and of the character of Wilhelm Müller:—

MARK BOZZARI.(17)

Oeffne deine hohen Thore, Missolunghi, Stadt der Ehren,
Wo der Helden Leichen ruhen, die uns fröhlich sterben lehren,
Oeffne deine hohen Thore, öffne deine tiefen Grüfte,
Auf, und streue Lorberreiser auf den Pfad und in die Lüfte;
Mark Bozzari’s edlen Leib bringen wir zu dir getragen.
Mark Bozzari’s! Wer darf’s wagen, solchen Helden zu beklagen?
Willst zuerst du seine Wunden oder seine Siege zählen?
Keinem Sieg wird eine Wunde, keiner Wund’ ein Sieg hier fehlen.
Sieh auf unsern Lanzenspitzen sich die Turbanhäupter drehen,
Sieh, wie über seiner Bahre die Osmanenfahnen wehen,
Sieh, o sieh die letzten Werke, die vollbracht des Helden Rechte
In dem Feld von Karpinissi, wo sein Stahl im Blute zechte!
In der schwarzen Geisterstunde rief er unsre Schar zusammen.
Funken sprühten unsre Augen durch die Racht wie Wetterflammen,
Uebers Knie zerbrachen wir jauchzend unsrer Schwerter Scheiden,
Um mit Sensen einzumähen in die feisten Türkenweiden;
Und wir drückten uns die Hände, und wir strichen uns die Bärte,
Und der stampfte mit dem Fusze, und der rieb an seinem Schwerte.
Da erscholl Bozzari’s Stimme: “Auf, ins Lager der Barbaren!
Auf, mir nach! Verirrt euch nicht, Brüder, in der Feinde Scharen!
Sucht ihr mich, im Zelt des Paschas werdet ihr mich sicher finden.
Auf, mit Gott! Er hilft die Feinde, hilft den Tod auch überwinden!
Auf!” Und die Trompete risz er hastig aus des Bläsers Händen
Und stiesz selbst hinein so hell, dasz es von den Felsenwänden
Heller stets und heller muszte sich verdoppelnd widerhallen;
Aber heller widerhallt’ es doch in unsern Herzen allen.
Wie des Herren Blitz und Donner aus der Wolkenburg der Nächte,
Also traf das Schwert der Freien die Tyrannen und die Knechte;
Wie die Tuba des Gerichtes wird dereinst die Sünder wecken,
Also scholl durchs Türkenlager brausend dieser Ruf der Schrecken:
“Mark Bozzari! Mark Bozzari! Sulioten! Sulioten!”
Solch ein guter Morgengrusz ward den Schläfern da entboten.
Und sie rüttelten sich auf, und gleich hirtenlosen Schafen
Rannten sie durch alle Gassen, bis sie aneinander trafen
Und, bethört von Todesengeln, die durch ihre Schwärme gingen,
Brüder sich in blinder Wuth stürzten in der Brüder Klingen.
Frag’ die Nacht nach unsern Thaten; sie hat uns im Kampf gesehen—
Aber wird der Tag es glauben, was in dieser Nacht geschehen?
Hundert Griechen, tausend Türken: also war die Saat zu schauen
Auf dem Feld von Karpinissi, als das Licht begann zu grauen.
Mark Bozzari, Mark Bozzari, und dich haben wir gefunden—
Kenntlich nur an deinem Schwerte, kenntlich nur an deinen Wunden,
An den Wunden, die du schlugest, und an denen, die dich trafen—
Wie du es verheiszen hattest, in dem Zelt des Paschas schlafen.

Oeffne deine hohen Thore, Missolunghi, Stadt der Ehren,
Wo der Helden Leichen ruhen, die uns fröhlich sterben lehren,
Oeffne deine tiefen Grüfte, dasz wir in den heil’gen Stätten
Neben Helden unsern Helden zu dem langen Schlafe betten!—
Schlafe bei dem deutschen Grafen, Grafen Normann, Fels der Ehren,
Bis die Stimmen des Gerichtes alle Gräber werden leeren.

MARK BOZZARIS.

Open wide, proud Missolonghi, open wide thy portals high,
Where repose the bones of heroes, teach us cheerfully to die!
Open wide thy lofty portals, open wide thy vaults profound;
Up, and scatter laurel garlands to the breeze and on the ground!
Mark Bozzaris’ noble body is the freight to thee we bear,—
Mark Bozzaris’! Who for hero great as he to weep will dare?
Tell his wounds, his victories over! Which in number greatest be?
Every victory has its wound, and every wound its victory!
See, a turbaned head is grimly set on all our lances here!
See, how the Osmanli’s banner swathes in purple folds his bier!
See, O see the latest trophies, which our hero’s glory sealed,
When his glaive with gore was drunken on great Karpinissi’s field!
In the murkiest hour of midnight did we at his call arise;
Through the gloom like lightning-flashes flashed the fury from our eyes;
With a shout, across our knees we snapped the scabbards of our swords,
Better down to mow the harvest of the mellow Turkish hordes;
And we clasped our hands together, and each warrior stroked his beard,
And one stamped the sward, another rubbed his blade, and vowed its wierd.
Then Bozzaris’ voice resounded: “On, to the barbarian’s lair!
On, and follow me, my brothers, see you keep together there!
Should you miss me, you will find me surely in the Pasha’s tent!
On, with God! Through Him our foemen, death itself through Him is shent!
On!” And swift he snatched the bugle from the hands of him that blew,
And himself awoke a summons that o’er dale and mountain flew,
Till each rock and cliff made answer clear and clearer to the call,
But a clearer echo sounded in the bosom of us all!
As from midnight’s battlemented keep the lightnings of the Lord
Sweep, so swept our swords, and smote the tyrants and their slavish horde;
As the trump of doom shall waken sinners in their graves that lie,
So through all the Turkish leaguer thundered his appalling cry:
“Mark Bozzaris! Mark Bozzaris! Suliotes, smite them in their lair!”
Such the goodly morning greeting that we gave the sleepers there.
And they staggered from their slumber, and they ran from street to street,
Ran like sheep without a shepherd, striking wild at all they meet;
Ran, and frenzied by Death’s angels, who amidst their myriads strayed,
Brother, in bewildered fury, dashed and fell on brother’s blade.
Ask the night of our achievements! It beheld us in the fight,
But the day will never credit what we did in yonder night.
Greeks by hundreds, Turks by thousands, there like scattered seed they
            lay,
On the field of Karpinissi, when the morning broke in gray.
Mark Bozarris, Mark Bozarris, and we found thee gashed and mown
By thy sword alone we knew thee, knew thee by thy wounds alone;
By the wounds thy hand had cloven, by the wounds that seamed thy breast,
Lying, as thou hadst foretold us, in the Pasha’s tent at rest!

Open wide, proud Missolonghi, open wide thy portals high,
Where repose the bones of heroes, teach us cheerfully to die!
Open wide thy vaults! Within their holy bounds a couch we’d make,
Where our hero, laid with heroes, may his last long slumber take!
Rest beside that Rock of Honor, brave Count Normann, rest thy head,
Till, at the archangel’s trumpet, all the graves give up their dead!

LIED VOR DER SCHLACHT.

Wer für die Freiheit kampft und fällt, desz Ruhm wird blühend stehn,
Solange frei die Winde noch durch freie Lüfte wehn,
Solange frei der Bäume Laub noch rauscht im grünen Wald,
Solang’ des Stromes Woge noch frei nach dem Meere wallt,
Solang’ des Adlers Fittich frei noch durch die Wolken fleugt,
Solang’ ein freier Odem noch aus freiem Herzen steigt.

Wer für die Freiheit kämpft und fällt, desz Ruhm wird blühend stehn,
Solange freie Geister noch durch Erd’ und Himmel gehn.
Durch Erd’ und Himmel schwebt er noch, der Helden Schattenreihn,
Und rauscht um uns in stiller Nacht, in hellem Sonnenschein,
Im Sturm, der stolze Tannen bricht, und in dem Lüftchen auch,
Das durch das Gras auf Gräbern spielt mit seinem leisen Hauch,
In ferner Enkel Hause noch um alle Wiegen kreist
Auf Hellas’ heldenreicher Flur der freien Ahnen Geist;
Der haucht in Wunderträumen schon den zarten Säugling an
Und weiht in seinem ersten Schlaf das Kind zu einem Mann;
Den Jüngling lockt sein Ruf hinaus mit nie gefühlter Lust
Zur Stätte, wo ein Freier fiel; da greift er in die Brust
Dem Zitternden, und Schauer ziehn ihm durch das tiefe Herz,
Er weisz nicht, ob es Wonne sei, ob es der erste Schmerz.
Herab, du heil’ge Geisterschar, schwell’ unsre Fahnen auf,
Beflügle unsrer Herzen Schlag und unsrer Füse Lauf;
Wir ziehen nach der Freiheit aus, die Waffen in der Hand,
Wir ziehen aus auf Kampf und Tod für Gott, fürs Vaterland!
Ihr seid mit uns, ihr rauscht um uns, eu’r Geisterodem zieht
Mit zauberischen Tönen hin durch unser Jubellied;
Ihr seid mit uns, ihr schwebt daher, ihr aus Thermopylä,
Ihr aus dem grünen Marathon, ihr von der blauen See,
Am Wolkenfelsen Mykale, am Salaminerstrand,
Ihr all’ aus Wald, Feld, Berg und Thal im weiten Griechenland!

Wer für die Freiheit kampft und fällt, desz Ruhm wird blühend stehn,
Solange frei die Winde noch durch freie Lüfte wehn,
Solange frei der Bäume Laub noch rauscht im grünen Wald,
Solang’ des Stromes Woge noch frei nach dem Meere wallt,
Solang’ des Adlers Fittich frei noch durch die Wolken fleugt,
Solang’ ein freier Odem noch aus freiem Herzen steigt.

SONG BEFORE BATTLE.

Whoe’er for freedom fights and falls, his fame no blight shall know,
As long as through heaven’s free expanse the breezes freely blow,
As long as in the forest wild the green leaves flutter free,
As long as rivers, mountain-born, roll freely to the sea,
As long as free the eagle’s wing exulting cleaves the skies,
As long as from a freeman’s heart a freeman’s breath doth rise.

Whoe’er for freedom fights and falls, his fame no blight shall know,
As long as spirits of the free through earth and air shall go;
Through earth and air a spirit-band of heroes moves always,
’Tis near us at the dead of night, and in the noontide’s blaze,
In the storm that levels towering pines, and in the breeze that waves
With low and gentle breath the grass upon our fathers’ graves.
There’s not a cradle in the bounds of Hellas broad and fair,
But the spirit of our free-born sires is surely hovering there.
It breathes in dreams of fairy-land upon the infant’s brain,
And in his first sleep dedicates the child to manhood’s pain;
Its summons lures the youth to stand, with new-born joy possessed,
Where once a freeman fell, and there it fires his thrilling breast,
And a shudder runs through all his frame; he knows not if it be
A throb of rapture, or the first sharp pang of agony.
Come, swell our banners on the breeze, thou sacred spirit-band,
Give wings to every warrior’s foot, and nerve to every hand.
We go to strike for freedom, to break the oppressor’s rod,
We go to battle and to death for our country and our God.
Ye are with us, we hear your wings, we hear in magic tone
Your spirit-voice the pæan swell, and mingle with our own.
Ye are with us, ye throng around,—you from Thermopylæ,
You from the verdant Marathon, you from the azure sea,
By the cloud-capped rocks of Mykale, at Salamis,—all you
From field and forest, mount and glen, the land of Hellas through!

Whoe’er for freedom fights and falls, his fame no blight shall know,
As long as through heaven’s free expanse the breezes freely blow,
As long as in the forest wild the green leaves flutter free,
As long as rivers, mountain-born, roll freely to the sea,
As long as free the eagle’s wing exulting cleaves the skies,
As long as from a freeman’s heart a freeman’s breath doth rise.

When we remember all that was compressed into this short life, we might
well believe that this ceaseless acquiring and creating must have tired
and weakened and injured both body and mind. Such, however, was not the
case. All who knew the poet agree in stating that he never overworked
himself, and that he accomplished all he did with the most perfect ease
and enjoyment. Let us only remember how his life as a student was broken
into by his service during the war, how his journey to Italy occupied
several years of his life, how later in Dessau he had to follow his
profession as teacher and librarian, and then let us turn our thoughts to
all the work of his hands and the creations of his mind, and we are
astonished, not only at the amount of work done, but still more at the
finished form which distinguishes all his works. He was one of the first
who with Zeune, Von der Hagen, and the brothers Grimm, labored to reawaken
an interest in ancient and mediæval German literature. He was a favorite
pupil of Wolf, and his “Homerische Vorschule” did more than any other work
at that time to propagate the ideas of Wolf. He had explored the modern
languages of Europe,—French, Italian, English, and Spanish; and his
critiques in all these fields of literature show how intimately acquainted
he was with the best authors of these nations. Besides all this, he worked
regularly for journals and encyclopædias, and was engaged co-editor of the
great “Encyclopædia of Arts and Sciences,” by Ersch and Gruber. He also
undertook the publication of a “Library of the German Poets of the
Seventeenth Century,” and all this, without mentioning his poems and
novels, in the short space of a life of thirty-three years.

I almost forget that I am speaking of my father; for indeed I hardly knew
him, and when his scientific and poetic activity reached its end, he was
far younger than I am now. I do not believe, however, that a natural
affection and veneration for the poet deprives us of the right of judging.
It is well said that love is blind, but love also strengthens and sharpens
the dull eye, so that it sees beauty where thousands pass by unmoved. If
one reads most of our critical writings, it would almost appear as if the
chief duty of the reviewer were to find out the weak points and faults of
every work of art. Nothing has so injured the art of criticism as this
prejudice. A critic is a judge; but a judge, though he is no advocate,
should also be no prosecutor. The weak points of any work of art betray
themselves only too soon; but in order to discover its beauties, not only
a sharp, but an experienced eye is needed; and love and sympathy are
necessary above anything else. It is the heart that makes the critic, not
the nose. It is well known how many of the most beautiful spots in
Scotland, and Wales, and Cornwall, were not many years ago described as
wastes and wildernesses. Richmond and Hampton Court were admired, people
travelled also to Versailles, and admired the often admired blue sky of
Italy. But poets such as Walter Scott and Wordsworth discovered the
beauties of their native land. Where others had only lamented over bare
and wearisome hills, they saw the battle-fields and burial-places of the
primeval Titan struggles of nature. Where others saw nothing but barren
moors full of heather and broom, the land in their eyes was covered as
with a carpet softer and more variegated than the most precious loom of
Turkey. Where others lost their temper at the gray cold fog, they marveled
at the silver veil of the bride of the morning, and the gold illumination
of the departing sun. Now every cockney can admire the smallest lake in
Westmoreland or the barest moor in the Highlands. Why is this? Because few
eyes are so dull that they cannot see what is beautiful after it has been
pointed out to them, and when they know that they need not feel ashamed of
admiring it. It is the same with the beauties of poetry, as with the
beauties of nature. We must first discover what is beautiful in poetry,
and, when it is discovered, communicate it; otherwise the authors of
Scotch ballads are but strolling singers, and the Niebelungen songs are,
as Frederick the Great said, not worth powder and shot. The trade of
fault-finding is quickly learnt; the art of admiration is a difficult art,
at least for little minds, narrow hearts, and timid souls, who prefer
treading broad and safe paths. Thus many critics and literary historians
have rushed by the poems of Wilhelm Müller, just like travellers, who go
on in the beaten track, passing by on the right hand and on the left the
most beautiful scenes of nature, and who only stand still and open both
eyes and mouth when their “Murray” tells them there is something they
ought to admire. Should an old man who is at home here meet them on their
way, and counsel the travellers to turn for a moment from the high road in
order to accompany him through a shady path to a mill, many may feel at
first full of uneasiness and distrust. But when they have refreshed
themselves in the dark green valley with its lively mill stream and
delicious wood fragrance, they no longer blame their guide for having
called somewhat loudly to them to pause in their journey. It is such a
pause that I have tried in these few introductory lines to enforce on the
reader, and I believe that I too may reckon on pardon, if not on thanks,
from those who have followed my sudden call.

1858





VI. ON THE LANGUAGE AND POETRY OF SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN.


After all that has been written about the Schleswig-Holstein question, how
little is known about those whom that question chiefly concerns,—the
Schleswig-Holsteiners! There may be a vague recollection that, during the
general turmoil of 1848, the German inhabitants of the Duchies rose
against the Danes; that they fought bravely, and at last succumbed, not to
the valor, but to the diplomacy of Denmark. But, after the treaty of
London in 1852 had disposed of them as the treaty of Vienna had disposed
of other brave people, they sank below the horizon of European interests,
never to rise again, it was fondly hoped, till the present generation had
passed away.

Yet these Schleswig-Holsteiners have an interest of their own, quite apart
from the political clouds that have lately gathered round their country.
Ever since we know anything of the history of Northern Europe, we find
Saxon races established as the inhabitants of that northern peninsula
which was then called the _Cimbric Chersonese_. The first writer who ever
mentions the name of Saxons is Ptolemy,(18) and he speaks of them as
settled in what is now called Schleswig-Holstein.(19) At the time of
Charlemagne the Saxon race is described to us as consisting of three
tribes: the _Ostfalai_, _Westfalai_, and _Angrarii_. The _Westphalians_
were settled near the Rhine, the _Eastphalians_ near the Elbe, and the
intermediate country, washed by the Weser, was held by the _Angrarii_.(20)
The name of Westphalia is still in existence; that of Eastphalia has
disappeared, but its memory survives in the English _sterling_.
Eastphalian traders, the ancestors of the merchant princes of Hamburg,
were known in England by the name of _Easterlings_; and their money being
of the purest quality, _easterling_, in Latin esterlingus, shortened to
_sterling_, became the general name of pure or sterling money. The name of
the third tribe, the _Angrarii_, continued through the Middle Ages as the
name of a people; and to the present day, my own sovereign, the Duke of
Anhalt, calls himself Duke of “_Sachsen_, _Engern_, und _Westphalen_.” But
the name of the Angrarii was meant to fulfill another and more glorious
destiny. The name _Angrarii_ or _Angarii_(21) is a corruption of the older
name, _Angrivarii_, the famous German race mentioned by Tacitus as the
neighbors of the _Cherusci_. These _Angrivarii_ are in later documents
called _Anglevarii_. The termination _varii_(22) represents the same word
which exists in A.-S. as _ware_; for instance, in _Cant-ware_, inhabitants
of Kent, or _Cant-ware-burh_, Canterbury; _burh-ware_, inhabitants of a
town, burghers. It is derived from _werian_, to defend, to hold, and may
be connected with _wer_, a man. The same termination is found in
_Ansivarii_ or _Ampsivarii_; probably also in _Teutonoarii_ instead of
_Teutoni_, _Chattuari_ instead of _Chatti_.

The principal seats of these _Angrarii_ were, as we saw, between the Rhine
and Elbe, but Tacitus(23) knows of _Anglii_, _i.e._ _Angrii_, east of the
Elbe; and an offshoot of the same Saxon tribe is found very early in
possession of that famous peninsula between the Schlei and the Bay of
Flensburg on the eastern coast of Schleswig,(24) which by Latin writers
was called _Anglia_, _i.e._ _Angria_. To derive the name of _Anglia_ from
the Latin _angulus_,(25) corner, is about as good an etymology as the
kind-hearted remark of St. Gregory, who interpreted the name of _Angli_ by
_angeli_. From that Anglia, the _Angli_, together with the _Saxons_ and
_Juts_, migrated to the British Isles in the fifth century, and the name
of the _Angli_, as that of the most numerous tribe, became in time the
name of _Englaland_.(26) In the Latin laws ascribed to King Edward the
Confessor, a curious supplement is found, which states “that the _Juts_
(_Guti_) came formerly from the noble blood of the _Angli_, namely, from
the state of _Engra_, and that the English came from the same blood. The
Juts, therefore like the Angli of Germany, should always be received in
England as brothers, and as citizens of the realm, because the Angli of
England and Germany had always intermarried, and had fought together
against the Danes.”(27)

Like the Angli of Anglia, the principal tribes clustering round the base
of the Cimbric peninsula, and known by the general name of _Northalbingi_
or _Transalbiani_, also _Nordleudi_, were all offshoots of the Saxon stem.
Adam of Bremen (2, 15) divides them into _Tedmarsgoi_, _Holcetae_, and
_Sturmarii_. In these it is easy to recognize the modern names of
_Dithmarschen_, _Holtseten_ or _Holsten_, and _Stormarn_. It would require
more space than we can afford, were we to enter into the arguments by
which Grimm has endeavored to identify the _Dithmarschen_ with the
_Teutoni_, the _Stormarn_ with the _Cimbri_, and the _Holsten_ with the
_Harudes_. His arguments, if not convincing, are at least highly
ingenious, and may be examined by those interested in these matters, in
his “History of the German Language,” pp. 633-640.

For many centuries the Saxon inhabitants of those regions have had to bear
the brunt of the battle between the Scandinavian and the German races.
From the days when the German Emperor Otho I. (died 973) hurled his swift
spear from the northernmost promontory of Jutland into the German Ocean to
mark the true frontier of his empire, to the day when Christian IX. put
his unwilling pen to that Danish constitution which was to incorporate all
the country north of the Eider with Denmark, they have had to share in all
the triumphs and all the humiliations of the German race, to which they
are linked by the strong ties of a common blood and a common language.

Such constant trials and vicissitudes have told on the character of these
German borderers, and have made them what they are, a hardy and
determined, yet careful and cautious race. Their constant watchings and
struggles against the slow encroachments or sudden inroads of an enemy
more inveterate even than the Danes,—namely, the sea,—had imparted to them
from the earliest times somewhat of that wariness and perseverance which
we perceive in the national character of the Dutch and the Venetians. But
the fresh breezes of the German Ocean and the Baltic kept their nerves
well braced and their hearts buoyant; and for muscular development the
arms of these sturdy ploughers of the sea and the land can vie with those
of any of their neighbors on the isles or on the Continent.
_Holsten-treue_, _i.e._ Holstein-truth, is proverbial throughout Germany,
and it has stood the test of long and fearful trials.

There is but one way of gaining an insight into the real character of a
people, unless we can actually live among them for years; and that is to
examine their language and literature. Now it is true that the language
spoken in Schleswig-Holstein is not German,—at least not in the ordinary
sense of the word,—and one may well understand how travellers and
correspondents of newspapers, who have picked up their German phrases from
Ollendorf, and who, on the strength of this, try to enter into a
conversation with Holstein peasants, should arrive at the conclusion that
these peasants speak Danish, or, at all events, that they do not speak
German.

The Germans of Schleswig-Holstein are Saxons, and all true Saxons speak
Low-German, and Low-German is more different from High-German than English
is from Lowland Scotch. Low-German, however, is not to be mistaken for
vulgar German. It is the German which from time immemorial was spoken in
the low countries and along the northern sea-coast of Germany, as opposed
to the German of the high country, of Swabia, Thuringia, Bavaria, and
Austria. These two dialects differ from each other like Doric and Ionic;
neither can be considered as a corruption of the other; and however far
back we trace these two branches of living speech, we never arrive at a
point when they diverge from one common source. The Gothic of the fourth
century, preserved in the translation of the Bible by Ulfilas, is not, as
has been so often said, the mother both of High and Low German. It is to
all intents and purposes Low-German, only Low-German in its most primitive
form, and more primitive therefore in its grammatical framework than the
earliest specimens of High-German also, which date only from the seventh
or eighth century. This Gothic, which was spoken in the east of Germany,
has become extinct. The Saxon, spoken in the north of Germany, continues
its manifold existence to the present day in the Low-German dialects, in
Frisian, in Dutch, and in English. The rest of Germany was and is occupied
by High-German. In the West the ancient High-German dialect of the Franks
has been absorbed in French, while the German spoken from the earliest
times in the centre and south of Germany has supplied the basis of what is
now called the literary and classical language of Germany.

Although the literature of Germany is chiefly High-German, there are a few
literary compositions, both ancient and modern, in the different spoken
dialects of the country, sufficient to enable scholars to distinguish at
least nine distinct grammatical settlements; in the Low-German branch,
_Gothic_, _Saxon_, _Anglo-Saxon_, _Frisian_, and _Dutch_; in the
High-German branch, _Thuringian_, _Frankish_, _Bavarian_, and
_Alemannish_. Professor Weinhold is engaged at present in publishing
separate grammars of six of these dialects, namely, of _Alemannish_,
_Bavarian_, _Frankish_, _Thuringian_, _Saxon_, and _Frisian_: and in his
great German Grammar Jacob Grimm has been able to treat these, together
with the Scandinavian tongues, as so many varieties of one common,
primitive type of Teutonic speech.

But although, in the early days of German life, the Low and High German
dialects were on terms of perfect equality, Low-German has fallen back in
the race, while High-German has pressed forward with double speed.
High-German has become the language of literature and good society. It is
taught in schools, preached in church, pleaded at the bar; and, even in
places where ordinary conversation is still carried on in Low-German,
High-German is clearly intended to be the language of the future. At the
time of Charlemagne this was not so; and one of the earliest literary
monuments of the German language, the “Heliand,” _i.e._ the Saviour, is
written in Saxon or Low-German. The Saxon Emperors, however, did little
for German literature, while the Swabian Emperors were proud of being the
patrons of art and poetry. The language spoken at their court being
High-German, the ascendency of that dialect may be said to date from their
days, though it was not secured till the time of the Reformation, when the
translation of the Bible by Luther put a firm and lasting stamp on what
has since become the literary speech of Germany.

But language, even though deprived of literary cultivation, does not
easily die. Though at present people write the same language all over
Germany, the towns and villages teem everywhere with dialects, both High
and Low. In Hanover, Brunswick, Mecklenburg, Oldenburg, the Free Towns,
and in Schleswig-Holstein, the lower orders speak their own German,
generally called _Platt-Deutsch_, and in many parts of Mecklenburg,
Oldenburg, Ostfriesland, and Holstein, the higher ranks too cling in their
every-day conversation to this more homely dialect.(28) Children
frequently speak two languages: High-German at school, Low-German at their
games. The clergyman speaks High-German when he stands in the pulpit; but
when he visits the poor, he must address them in their own peculiar
_Platt_. The lawyer pleads in the language of Schiller and Goethe; but
when he examines his witnesses he has frequently to condescend to the
vulgar tongue. That vulgar tongue is constantly receding from the towns;
it is frightened away by railways, it is ashamed to show itself in
parliament. But it is loved all the more by the people; it appeals to
their hearts, and it comes back naturally to all who have ever talked it
together in their youth. It is the same with the local patois of
High-German. Even where at school the correct High-German is taught and
spoken, as in Bavaria and Austria, each town still keeps its own patois,
and the people fall back on it as soon as they are among themselves. When
Maria Theresa went to the Burgtheater to announce to the people of Vienna
the birth of a son and heir, she did not address them in high-flown
literary German. She bent forward from her box, and called out: “_Hörts!
der Leopold hot án Buebá_”: “Hear! Leopold has a boy.” In German comedies,
characters from Berlin, Leipzig, and Vienna are constantly introduced
speaking their own local dialects. In Bavaria, Styria, and the Tyrol, much
of the poetry of the people is written in their patois; and in some parts
of Germany sermons even, and other religious tracts, continue to be
published in the local vernaculars.

There are here and there a few enthusiastic champions of dialects,
particularly of Low-German, who still cherish a hope that High-German may
be thrown back, and Low-German restored to its rights and former dominion.
Yet, whatever may be thought of the relative excellences of High and Low
German,—and in several points, no doubt, Low-German has the advantage of
High-German,—yet, practically, the battle between the two is decided, and
cannot now be renewed. The national language of Germany, whether in the
South or the North, will always be the German of Luther, Lessing,
Schiller, and Goethe. This, however, is no reason why the dialects,
whether of Low or High German, should be despised or banished. Dialects
are everywhere the natural feeders of literary languages; and an attempt
to destroy them, if it could succeed, would be like shutting up the
tributaries of great rivers.

After these remarks it will be clear that, if people say that the
inhabitants of Schleswig-Holstein do not speak German, there is some truth
in such a statement, at least just enough of truth to conceal the truth.
It might be said, with equal correctness, that the people of Lancashire do
not speak English. But, if from this a conclusion is to be drawn that the
Schleswig-Holsteiners, speaking this dialect, which is neither German nor
Danish, might as well be taught in Danish as in German, this is not quite
correct, and would deceive few if it were adduced as an argument for
introducing French instead of English in the national schools of
Lancashire.

The Schleswig-Holsteiners have their own dialect, and cling to it as they
cling to many things which, in other parts of Germany, have been discarded
as old-fashioned and useless. “_Oll Knust hölt Hus_,”—“Stale bread lasts
longest,”—is one of their proverbs. But they read their Bible in
High-German; they write their newspapers in High-German, and it is in
High-German that their children are taught, and their sermons preached in
every town and in every village. It is but lately that Low-German has been
taken up again by Schleswig-Holstein poets; and some of their poems,
though intended originally for their own people only, have been read with
delight, even by those who had to spell them out with the help of a
dictionary and a grammar. This kind of homespun poetry is a sign of
healthy national life. Like the songs of Burns in Scotland, the poems of
Klaus Groth and others reveal to us, more than anything else, the real
thoughts and feelings, the every-day cares and occupations, of the people
whom they represent, and to whose approval alone they appeal. But as
Scotland, proud though she well may be of her Burns, has produced some of
the best writers of English, Schleswig-Holstein, too, small as it is in
comparison with Scotland, counts among its sons some illustrious names in
German literature. Niebuhr, the great traveller, and Niebuhr, the great
historian, were both Schleswig-Holsteiners, though during their lifetime
that name had not yet assumed the political meaning in which it is now
used. Karsten Niebuhr, the traveller, was a Hanoverian by birth; but,
having early entered the Danish service, he was attached to a scientific
mission sent by King Frederick V. to Egypt, Arabia, and Palestine, in
1760. All the other members of that mission having died, it was left to
Niebuhr, after his return in 1767, to publish the results of his own
observations and of those of his companions. His “Description of Arabia,”
and his “Travels in Arabia and the Adjoining Countries,” though published
nearly a hundred years ago, are still quoted with respect, and their
accuracy has hardly ever been challenged. Niebuhr spent the rest of his
life as a kind of collector and magistrate at Meldorf, a small town of
between two and three thousand inhabitants, in Dithmarschen. He is
described as a square and powerful man, who lived to a good old age, and
who, even when he had lost his eyesight, used to delight his family and a
large circle of friends by telling them of the adventures in his Oriental
travels, of the starry nights of the desert, and of the bright moonlight
of Egypt, where, riding on his camel, he could, from his saddle, recognize
every plant that was growing on the ground. Nor were the listeners that
gathered round him unworthy of the old traveller. Like many a small German
town, Meldorf, the home of Niebuhr, had a society consisting of a few
government officials, clergymen, and masters at the public school; most of
them men of cultivated mind, and quite capable of appreciating a man of
Niebuhr’s powers. Even the peasants there were not the mere clods of other
parts of Germany. They were a well-to-do race, and by no means illiterate.
Their sons received at the Gymnasium of Meldorf a classical education, and
they were able to mix with ease and freedom in the society of their
betters. The most hospitable house at Meldorf was that of Boie, the High
Sheriff of Dithmarschen. He had formerly, at Göttingen, been the life and
soul of a circle of friends who have become famous in the history of
German literature, under the name of “Hainbund.” That “Hainbund,” or
Grove-club, included Bürger, the author of “Lenore;” Voss, the translator
of Homer; the Counts Stolberg, Hölty, and others. With Goethe, too, Boie
had been on terms of intimacy, and when, in after life, he settled down at
Meldorf, many of his old friends, his brother-in-law Voss, Count Stolberg,
Claudius, and others, came to see him and his illustrious townsman,
Niebuhr. Many a seed was sown there, many small germs began to ripen in
that remote town of Meldorf, which are yielding fruit at the present day,
not in Germany only, but here in England. The sons of Boie, fired by the
descriptions of the old, blind traveller, followed his example, and became
distinguished as explorers and discoverers in natural history. Niebuhr’s
son, young Barthold, soon attracted the attention of all who came to see
his father, particularly of Voss; and he was enabled by their help and
advice, to lay, in early youth, that foundation of solid learning which
fitted him, in the intervals of his checkered life, to become the founder
of a new era in the study of Ancient History. And how curious the threads
which bind together the destinies of men! how marvelous the rays of light
which, emanating from the most distant centres, cross each other in their
onward course, and give their own peculiar coloring to characters
apparently original and independent! We have read, of late, in the
Confessions of a modern St. Augustine, how the last stroke that severed
his connection with the Church of England was the establishment of the
Jerusalem bishopric. But for that event, Dr. Newman might now be a bishop,
and his friends a strong party in the Church of England. Well, that
Jerusalem bishopric owes something to Meldorf. The young schoolboy of
Meldorf was afterwards the private tutor and personal friend of the
Crown-Prince of Prussia, and he thus exercised an influence both on the
political and the religious views of King Frederick William IV. He was
likewise Prussian Ambassador at Rome, when Bunsen was there as a young
scholar, full of schemes, and planning his own journey to the East.
Niebuhr became the friend and patron of Bunsen, and Bunsen became his
successor in the Prussian embassy at Rome. It is well known that the
Jerusalem bishopric was a long-cherished plan of the King of Prussia,
Niebuhr’s pupil, and that the bill for the establishment of a Protestant
bishopric at Jerusalem was carried chiefly through the personal influence
of Bunsen, the friend of Niebuhr. Thus we see how all things are working
together for good or for evil, though we little know of the grains of dust
that are carried along from all quarters of the globe, to tell like
infinitesimal weights in the scales that decide hereafter the judgment of
individuals and the fate of nations.

If Holstein, and more particularly Dithmarschen, of which Meldorf had in
former days been the capital, may claim some share in Niebuhr the
historian,—if he himself, as the readers of his history are well aware, is
fond of explaining the social and political institutions of Rome by
references to what he had seen or heard of the little republic of
Dithmarschen,—it is certainly a curious coincidence that the only worthy
successor of Niebuhr, in the field of Roman history, Theodore Mommsen, is
likewise a native of Schleswig. His History of Rome, though it did not
produce so complete a revolution as the work of Niebuhr, stands higher as
a work of art. It contains the results of Niebuhr’s critical researches,
sifted and carried on by a most careful and thoughtful disciple. It is, in
many respects, a most remarkable work, particularly in Germany. The fact
that it is readable, and has become a popular book, has excited the wrath
of many critics, who evidently consider it beneath the dignity of a
learned professor that he should digest his knowledge, and give to the
world, not all and everything he has accumulated in his note-books, but
only what he considers really important and worth knowing. The fact,
again, that he does not load his pages with references and learned notes
has been treated like a _crimen lœsæ majestatis;_ and yet, with all the
clamor and clatter that has been raised, few authors have had so little to
alter or rectify in their later editions as Mommsen. To have produced two
such scholars, historians, and statesmen as Niebuhr and Mommsen, would be
an honor to any kingdom in Germany: how much more to the small duchy of
Schleswig-Holstein, in which we have been told so often that nothing is
spoken but Danish and some vulgar dialects of Low-German!

Well, even those vulgar dialects of Low-German, and the poems and novels
that have been written in them by true Schleswig-Holsteiners, are well
worth a moment’s consideration. In looking at their language, an
Englishman at once discovers a number of old acquaintances: words which we
would look for in vain in Schiller or Goethe. We shall mention a few.

_Black_ means black; in High-German it would be _schwarz_. _De black_ is
the black horse; _black up wit_ is black on white; _gif mek kil un blak_,
give me quill and ink. _Blid_ is _blithe_, instead of the High-German
_mild_. _Bottervogel_, or _botterhahn_, or _botterhex, is __butterfly__,
instead of __schmetterling__. It is a common superstition in_ the North of
Germany, that one ought to mark the first butterfly one sees in spring. A
white one betokens mourning, a yellow one a christening, a variegated one
a wedding. _Bregen_ or _brehm_ is used instead of the High-German
_gehirn_; it is the English _brain_. People say of a very foolish person,
that his brain is frozen, _de brehm is em verfrorn_. The peculiar English
but, which has given so much trouble to grammarians and etymologists,
exists in the Holstein _buten_, literally outside, the Dutch _buiten_, the
Old-Saxon _bi-ûtan_. _Buten_ in German is a regular contraction, just as
_binnen_, which means inside, within, during. _Heben_ is the English
heaven, while the common German name is _Himmel_. _Hückup_ is a sigh, and
no doubt the English _hiccough_. _Düsig_ is dizzy; _talkig_ is talkative.

There are some curious words which, though they have a Low-German look,
are not to be found in English or Anglo-Saxon. Thus _plitsch_, which is
used in Holstein in the sense of clever, turns out to be a corruption of
_politisch_, _i.e._ political. _Krüdsch_ means particular or over nice; it
is a corruption of _kritisch_, critical. _Katolsch_ means angry, mad, and
is a corruption of _catholic_, _i.e._ Roman Catholic. _Kränsch_ means
plucky, and stands for _courageux_. _Fränksch_, _i.e._ Frankish, means
strange; _Flämsch_, _i.e._ Flemish, means sulky, and is used to form
superlatives; _Polsch_, _i.e._ Polish, means wild. _Forsch_ means strong
and strength, and comes from the French _force_. _Klür_ is a corruption of
_couleur_, and _Kunkelfusen_ stands for confusion or fibs.

Some idiomatic and proverbial expressions, too, deserve to be noted.
Instead of saying, “The sun has set,” the Holsteiners, fond as they are of
their beer, particularly in the evening after a hard day’s work, say, “_De
Sünn geiht to Beer_,” “The sun goes to beer.” If you ask in the country
how far it is to some town or village, a peasant will answer, “_’n
Hunnblaff_,” “A dog’s bark,” if it is quite close; or “_’n Pip Toback_,”
“A pipe of tobacco,” meaning about half an hour. Of a conceited fellow
they say, “_Hê hört de Flégn hosten_,” “He hears the flies coughing.” If a
man is full of great schemes, he is told, “_In Gedanken fört de Bur ôk
in’t Kutsch_.” “In thought the peasant, too, drives in a coach.” A man who
boasts is asked, “_Pracher! häst ôk Lüs, oder schuppst di man so?_”
“Braggart! have you really lice, or do you only scratch yourself as if you
had?”

“_Holstein singt nicht_,” “Holstein does not sing,” is a curious proverb;
and if it is meant to express the absence of popular poetry in that
country, it would be easy to convict it of falsehood by a list of poets
whose works, though unknown to fame beyond the limits of their own
country, are cherished, and deservedly cherished, by their own countrymen.
The best known among the Holstein poets is Klaus Groth, whose poems,
published under the title of “Quickborn,” _i.e._ quick bourn, or living
spring, show that there is a well of true poetical feeling in that
country, and that its strains are all the more delicious and refreshing if
they bubble up in the native accent of the country. Klaus Groth was born
in 1819. He was the son of a miller; and, though he was sent to school, he
had frequently to work in the field in summer, and make himself generally
useful. Like many Schleswig-Holsteiners, he showed a decided talent for
mathematics; but, before he was sixteen, he had to earn his bread, and
work as a clerk in the office of a local magistrate. His leisure hours
were devoted to various studies: German, Danish, music, psychology,
successively engaged his attention. In his nineteenth year he went to the
seminary at Tondern to prepare himself to become a schoolmaster. There he
studied Latin, French, Swedish; and, after three years, was appointed
teacher at a girls’ school. Though he had to give forty-three lessons a
week, he found time to continue his own reading, and he acquired a
knowledge of English, Dutch, Icelandic, and Italian. At last, however, his
health gave way, and in 1847 he was obliged to resign his place. During
his illness his poetical talent, which he himself had never trusted,
became a source of comfort to himself and to his friends, and the warm
reception which greeted the first edition of his “Quickborn” made him what
he was meant to be,—the poet of Schleswig-Holstein.

His political poems are few; and, though a true Schleswig-Holsteiner at
heart, he has always declined to fight with his pen when he could not
fight with his sword. In the beginning of this year, however, he published
“Five Songs for Singing and Praying,” which, though they fail to give an
adequate idea of his power as a poet, may be of interest as showing the
deep feelings of the people in their struggle for independence. The text
will be easily intelligible with the help of a literal English
translation.

DUTSCHE EHR AND DUTSCHE EER.

I.

_Frühling_, 1848.

Dar keemn Soldaten æwer de Elf,
Hurah, hurah, na’t Norn!
Se keemn so dicht as Wagg an Wagg,
Un as en Koppel vull Korn.

Gundag, Soldaten! wo kamt jü her?
Vun alle Bargen de Krüz un Quer,
Ut dütschen Landen na’t dütsche Meer—
So wannert un treckt dat Heer.

Wat liggt so eben as weert de See?
Wat schint so gel as Gold?
Dat is de Marschen er Saat un Staat,
Dat is de Holsten er Stoet.

Gundag jü Holsten op dütsche Eer!
Gundag jü Friesen ant dütsche Meer!
To leben un starben vær dütsche Ehr
So wannert un treckt dat Heer.

German Honor and German Earth.

_Spring_, 1848.

There came soldiers across the Elbe,
Hurrah, hurrah, to the North!
They came as thick as wave on wave,
And like a field full of corn.

Good day, soldiers! whence do you come?
From all the hills on the right and left,
From German lands to the German sea,—
Thus wanders and marches the host.

What lies so still as it were the sea?
What shines so yellow as gold?
The splendid fields of the Marshes they are,
The pride of the Holsten race.

Good day, ye Holsten on German soil!
Good day, ye Friesians, on the German sea
To live and to die for German honor,—
Thus wanders and marches the host.

II.

_Sommer_, 1851.

Dat treckt so trurig æwer de Elf,
In Tritt un Schritt so swar—
De Swalw de wannert, de Hatbar treckt—
Se kamt wedder to tokum Jahr.

Ade, ade, du dütsches Heer!
“Ade, ade, du Holsten meer!
Ade op Hoffen un Wiederkehr!”
Wi truert alleen ant Meer.

De Storch kumt wedder, de Swalw de singt
So fröhlich as all tovær—
Wann kumt de dütsche Adler un bringt
Di wedder, du dütsche Ehr?

Wak op du Floth, wak op du Meer!
Wak op du Dunner, un week de Eer!
Wi sitt op Hæpen un Wedderkehr—
Wi truert alleen ant Meer.

_Summer_, 1851.

They march so sad across the Elbe,
So heavy, step by step,—
The swallow wanders, the stork departs,—
They come back in the year to come.

Adieu, adieu, thou German host!
“Adieu, adieu, thou Holsten sea!
Adieu, in hope, and to meet again!”
We mourn alone by the sea.

The stork comes back, the swallow sings
As blithe as ever before,—
When will the German eagle return,
And bring thee back, thou German honor!

Wake up, thou flood! wake up, thou sea!
Wake up, thou thunder, and rouse the land!
We are sitting in hope to meet again,—
We mourn alone by the sea.

III.

_Winter_, 1863.

Dar kumt en Brusen as Værjahswind,
Dat dræhnt as wær dat de Floth,—
Will’t Fröhjahr kamen to Wihnachtstid?
Hölpt Gott uns sülb’n inne Noth?

Vun alle Bargen de Krüz un Quer
Dar is dat wedder dat dütsche Heer!
Dat gelt op Nu oder Nimmermehr!
So rett se, de dütsche Ehr!

Wi hört den Adler, he kumt, he kumt!
Noch eenmal hæpt wi un harrt!
Is’t Friheit endlich, de he uns bringt?
ls’t Wahrheit, wat der ut ward?

Sunst hölp uns Himmel, nu geit’t ni mehr!
Hölp du, un bring uns den Herzog her!
Denn wüllt wi starben vær dütsche Ehr!
Denn begravt uns in dütsche Eer!

30 _December_, 1863.

_Winter_, 1863.

There comes a blast like winter storm;
It roars as it were the flood.
Is the spring coming at Christmas-tide?
Does God himself help us in our need?

From all the hills on the right and left,
There again comes the German host!
It is to be now or never!
O, save the German honor!

We hear the eagle, he comes, he comes!
Once more we hope and wait!
Is it freedom at last he brings to us?
Is it truth what comes from thence?

Else Heaven help us, now it goes no more!
Help thou, and bring us our Duke!
Then will we die for German honor!
Then bury us in German earth!

_December_ 30, 1863.

It is not, however, in war songs or political invective that the poetical
genius of Klaus Groth shows to advantage. His proper sphere is the quiet
idyl, a truthful and thoughtful description of nature, a reproduction of
the simplest and deepest feelings of the human heart, and all this in the
homely, honest, and heartfelt language of his own “Platt Deutsch.” That
the example of Burns has told on Groth, that the poetry of the Scotch poet
has inspired and inspirited the poet of Schleswig-Holstein, is not to be
denied. But to imitate Burns, and to imitate him successfully, is no mean
achievement, and Groth would be the last man to disown his master. The
poem “Min Jehann” might have been written by Burns. I shall give a free
metrical translation of it, but should advise the reader to try to spell
out the original; for much of its charm lies in its native form, and to
turn Groth even into High-German destroys his beauty as much as when Burns
is translated into English.

MIN JEHANN.

Ik wull, wi weern noch kleen, Jehann,
  Do weer de Welt so grot!
We seten op den Steen, Jehann,
  Weest noch? by Nawers Sot.
    An Heben sell de stille Maan,
    Wi segen, wa he leep,
    Un snacken, wa de Himmel hoch,
    Un wa de Sot wul deep.

Weest noch, wa still dat weer, Jehann?
  Dar röhr keen Blatt an Bom.
So is dat nu ni mehr, Jehann,
  As höchstens noch in Drom.
    Och ne, wenn do de Scheper sung—
    Alleen in’t wide Feld:
    Ni wahr, Jehann? dat weer en Ton—
    De eenzige op de Welt.

Mitünner inne Schummerntid
  Denn ward mi so to Mod,
Denn löppt mi’t langs den Rügg so hitt,
  As domals bi den Sot.
    Den dreih ik mi so hasti um,
    As weer ik nich alleen:
    Doch Allens, wat ik finn, Jehann,
    Dat is—ik stah un ween.

MY JOHN.

I wish we still were little, John,
  The world was then so wide!
When on the stone by neighbor’s bourn
  We rested side by side.
    We saw the moon in silver veiled
    Sail silent through the sky;
    Our thoughts were deeper than the bourn,
    And as the heavens high.

You know how still it was then, John;
  All nature seemed at rest;
So is it now no longer, John,
  Or in our dreams at best!
    Think when the shepherd boy then sang
    Alone o’er all the plain,
    Aye, John, you know, that was a sound
    We ne’er shall hear again.

Sometimes now, John, the eventides
  The self-same feelings bring,
My pulses beat as loud and strong
  As then beside the spring.
    And then I turn affrighted round,
    Some stranger to descry;
    But nothing can I see, my John,—
    I am alone and cry.

The next poem is a little popular ballad, relating to a tradition, very
common on the northern coast of Germany, both east and west of the
peninsula, of islands swallowed by the sea, their spires, pinnacles, and
roofs being on certain days still visible, and their bells audible, below
the waves. One of these islands was called _Büsen_, or _Old Büsum_, and is
supposed to have been situated opposite the village now called Büsen, on
the west coast of Dithmarschen. Strange to say, the inhabitants of that
island, in spite of their tragic fate, are represented rather in a comical
light, as the Bœotians of Holstein.

WAT SIK DAT VOLK VERTELLT.

_Ol Büsum._

Ol Büsen hggt int wille Haff,
De Floth de keem un wöhl en Graff.
De Floth de keem un spöl un spöl,
Bet se de Insel ünner wöhl.
Dar blev keen Steen, dar blev keen Pahl,
Dat Water schæl dat all hendal.
Dar weer keen Beest, dar weer keen Hund,
De ligt nu all in depen Grund.
Un Allens, wat der lev un lach,
Dat deck de See mit depe Nach.
Mitünner in de holle Ebb
So süht man vunne Hüs’ de Köpp.
Denn dukt de Thorn herut ut Sand,
As weert en Finger vun en Hand.
Denn hört man sach de Klocken klingn,
Denn hört man sach de Kanter singn;
Denn geit dat lisen dær de Luft:
“Begrabt den Leib in seine Gruft.”

WHAT THE PEOPLE TELL.

_Old Büsum._

Old Büsen sank into the waves;
The sea has made full many graves;
The flood came near and washed around,
Until the rock to dust was ground.
No stone remained, no belfry steep;
All sank into the waters deep.
There was no beast, there was no hound;
They all were carried to the ground.
And all that lived and laughed around
The sea now holds in gloom profound.
At times, when low the water falls,
The sailor sees the broken walls;
The church tower peeps from out the sand,
Like to the finger of a hand.
Then hears one low the church bells ringing
Then hears one low the sexton singing;
A chant is carried by the gust:
“Give earth to earth, and dust to dust.”

In the Baltic, too, similar traditions are current of sunken islands and
towns buried in the sea, which are believed to be visible at certain
times. The most famous tradition is that of the ancient town of
Vineta,—once, it is said, the greatest emporium in the north of
Europe,—several times destroyed and built up again, till, in 1183, it was
upheaved by an earthquake and swallowed by a flood. The ruins of Vineta
are believed to be visible between the coast of Pomerania and the island
of Rügen. This tradition has suggested one of Wilhelm Müller’s—my
father’s—lyrical songs, published in his “Stones and Shells from the
Island of Rügen,” 1825, of which I am able to give a translation by Mr. J.
A. Froude.

VINETA.

I.

Aus des Meeres tiefem, tiefem Grunde
  Klingen Abendglocken dumpf und matt,
Uns zu geben wunderbare Kunde
  Von der schönen alten Wunderstadt.

II.

In der Fluthen Sehooss hinabgesunken
  Blieben unten ihre Trümmer stehn,
Ihre Zinnen lassen goldne Funken
  Wiederscheinend auf dem Spiegel sehn.

III.

Und der Schiffer, der den Zauberschimmer
  Einmal sah im hellen Abendroth,
Nach derselben Stelle schifft er immer,
  Ob auch rings umher die Klippe droht.

IV.

Aus des Herzens tiefem, tiefem Grunde
  Klingt es mir, wie Glocken, dumpf und matt:
Ach, sie geben wunderbare Kunde
  Von der Liebe, die geliebt es hat.

V.

Eine schöne Welt ist da versunken,
  Ihre Trümmer blieben unten stehn,
Lassen sich als goldne Himmelsfunken
  Oft im Spiegel meiner Träume sehn.

VI.

Und dann möcht’ ich tauchen in die Tiefen,
  Mich versenken in den Wiederschein,
Und mir ist als ob mich Engel riefen
  In die alte Wunderstadt herein.

VINETA.

I.

From the sea’s deep hollow faintly pealing,
  Far off evening bells come sad and slow;
Faintly rise, the wondrous tale revealing
  Of the old enchanted town below.

II.

On the bosom of the flood reclining,
  Ruined arch and wall and broken spire,
Down beneath the watery mirror shining,
  Gleam and flash in flakes of golden fire.

III.

And the boatman who at twilight hour
  Once that magic vision shall have seen,
Heedless how the crags may round him lour,
  Evermore will haunt the charméd scene.

IV.

From the heart’s deep hollow faintly pealing,
  Far I hear them, bell-notes sad and slow,
Ah, a wild and wondrous tale revealing
  Of the drownéd wreck of love below.

V.

There a world, in loveliness decaying,
  Lingers yet in beauty ere it die;
Phantom forms, across my senses playing,
  Flash like golden fire-flakes from the sky.

VI.

Lights are gleaming, fairy bells are ringing,
  And I long to plunge and wander free,
Where I hear the angel-voices singing
  In those ancient towers below the sea.

I give a few more specimens of Klaus Groth’s poetry, which I have ventured
to turn into English verse, in the hope that my translations, though very
imperfect, may, perhaps on account of their very imperfection, excite
among some of my readers a desire to become acquainted with the originals.

HE SÄ MI SO VEL.

I.

He sä mi so vel, un ik sä em keen Wort,
Un all wat ik sä, weer: Jehann, ik mutt fort!

II.

He sä mi vun Lev un vun Himmel un Eer,
He sä mi vun allens—ik weet ni mal mehr!

III.

He sä mi so vel, un ik sä em keen Wort,
Un all wat ik sä, weer: Jehann, ik mutt fort!

IV.

He heeld mi de Hann, un he be mi so dull,
Ik schull em doch gut wen, un ob ik ni wull?

V.

Ik weer je ni bös, awer sä doch keen Wort,
Un all wat ik sä, weer: Jehann, ik mutt fort!

VI.

Nu sitt ik un denk, un denk jümmer deran
Mi düch, ik muss seggt hebbn: Wa geern, min Jehann!

VII.

Un doch, kumt dat wedder, so segg ik keen Wort,
Un hollt he mi, segg ik: Jehann, ik mutt fort!

HE TOLD ME SO MUCH.

I.

Though he told me so much, I had nothing to say,
And all that I said was, John, I must away!

II.

He spoke of his true love, and spoke of all that,
Of honor and heaven,—I hardly know what.

III.

Though he told me so much, I had nothing to say,
And all that I said was, John, I must away!

IV.

He held me, and asked me, as hard as he could,
That I too should love him, and whether I would?

V.

I never was wrath, but had nothing to say,
And all that I said was, John, I must away!

VI.

I sit now alone, and I think on and on,
Why did I not say then, How gladly, my John!

VII.

Yet even the next time, O what shall I say,
If he holds me and asks me?—John, I must away!

TÖF MAL!

Se is doch de stillste vun alle to Kark!
Se is doch de schönste vun alle to Mark!
So weekli, so bleekli, un de Ogen so grot,
So blau as en Heben un deep as en Sot.

Wer kikt wul int Water, un denkt ni sin Deel?
Wer kikt wul nan Himmel, un wünscht sik ne vel?
Wer süht er in Ogen, so blau un so fram,
Un denkt ni an Engeln, un allerhand Kram?

I.

In church she is surely the stillest of all,
She steps through the market so fair and so tall,

II.

So softly, so lightly, with wondering eyes,
As deep as the sea, and as blue as the skies.

III.

Who thinks not a deal when he looks on the main?
Who looks to the skies, and sighs not again?

IV.

Who looks in her eyes, so blue and so true,
And thinks not of angels and other things too?

KEEN GRAFF IS SO BRUT.

I.

Keen Graff is so brut un keen Müer so hoch,
Wenn Twe sik man gut sünd, so drapt se sik doch.

II.

Keen Wedder so gruli, so düster keen Nacht,
Wenn Twe sik man sehn wüllt, so seht se sik sacht.

III.

Dat gif wul en Maanschin, dar schint wul en Steern,
Dat gift noch en Licht oder Lücht un Lantern.

IV.

Dar fiunt sik en Ledder, en Stegelsch un Steg:
Wenn Twe sik man leef hebbt—keen Sorg vaer den Weg.

I.

No ditch is so deep, and no wall is so high,
If two love each other, they’ll meet by and by.

II.

No storm is so wild, and no night is so black,
If two wish to meet, they will soon find a track.

III.

There is surely the moon, or the stars shining bright,
Or a torch, or a lantern, or some sort of light;

IV.

There is surely a ladder, a step, or a stile,
If two love each other, they’ll meet ere long while.

JEHANN, NU SPANN DE SCHIMMELS AN!

I.

Jehann, nu spann de Schimmels an!
Nu fahr wi na de Brut!
Un hebbt wi nix as brune Per,
Jehann, so is’t ok gut!

II.

Un hebbt wi nix as swarte Per,
Jehann, so is’t ok recht!
Un bün ik nich uns Weerth sin Sœn,
So bün’k sin jüngste Knecht!

III.

Un hebbt wi gar keen Per un Wag’,
So hebbt wi junge Been!
Un de so glückli is as ik,
Jehann, dat wüll wi sehn!

MAKE HASTE, MY JOHN, PUT TO THE GRAYS.

I.

Make haste, my John, put to the grays,
We’ll go and fetch the bride,
And if we have but two brown hacks,
They’ll do as well to ride.

II.

And if we’ve but a pair of blacks,
We still can bear our doom,
And if I’m not my master’s son,
I’m still his youngest groom.

III.

And have we neither horse nor cart,
Still strong young legs have we,—
And any happier man than I,
John, I should like to see.

DE JUNGE WETFRU.

Wenn Abends roth de Wulken treckt,
So denk ik och! an di!
So trock verbi dat ganze Heer,
Un du weerst mit derbi.

Wenn ut de Böm de Blaeder fallt,
So denk ik glik an di:
So full so menni brawe Jung,
Un du weerst mit derbi.

Denn sett ik mi so truri hin,
Un denk so vel an di,
Ik et alleen min Abendbrot—
Un du büst nich derbi.

THE SOLDIER’S WIDOW.

When ruddy clouds are driving past,
’Tis more than I can bear;
Thus did the soldiers all march by,
And thou, too, thou wert there.

When leaves are falling on the ground,
’Tis more than I can bear;
Thus fell full many a valiant lad,
And thou, too, thou wert there.

And now I sit so still and sad,
’Tis more than I can bear;
My evening meal I eat alone,
For thou, thou art not there.

I wish I could add one of Klaus Groth’s tales (“Vertellen,” as he calls
them), which give the most truthful description of all the minute details
of life in Dithmarschen, and bring the peculiar character of the country
and of its inhabitants vividly before the eyes of the reader. But, short
as they are, even the shortest of them would fill more pages than could
here be spared for Schleswig-Holstein. I shall, therefore, conclude this
sketch with a tale which has no author,—a simple tale from one of the
local Holstein newspapers. It came to me in a heap of other papers,
fly-sheets, pamphlets, and books, but it shone like a diamond in a heap of
rubbish; and, as the tale of “The Old Woman of Schleswig-Holstein,” it may
help to give to many who have been unjust to the inhabitants of the
Duchies some truer idea of the stuff there is in that strong and staunch
and sterling race to which England owes its language, its best blood, and
its honored name.

“When the war against Denmark began again in the winter of 1863, offices
were opened in the principal towns of Germany for collecting charitable
contributions. At Hamburg, Messrs. L. and K. had set apart a large room
for receiving lint, linen, and warm clothing, or small sums of money. One
day, about Christmas, a poorly clad woman from the country stepped in and
inquired, in the pure Holstein dialect, whether contributions were
received here for Schleswig-Holstein. The clerk showed her to a table
covered with linen rags and such like articles. But she turned away and
pulled out an old leather purse, and, taking out pieces of money, began to
count aloud on the counter: ‘One mark, two marks, three marks,’ till she
had finished her ten marks. ‘That makes ten marks,’ she said, and shoved
the little pile away. The clerk, who had watched the poor old woman while
she was arranging her small copper and silver coins, asked her,—‘From whom
does the money come?’

“ ‘From me,’ she said, and began counting again, ‘One mark, two marks,
three marks.’ Thus she went on emptying her purse, till she had counted
out ten small heaps of coin, of ten marks each. Then, counting each heap
once over again, she said: ‘These are my hundred marks for
Schleswig-Holstein; be so good as to send them to the soldiers.’

“While the old peasant woman was doing her sums, several persons had
gathered round her; and, as she was leaving the shop, she was asked again
in a tone of surprise from whom the money came.

“ ‘From me,’ she said; and, observing that she was closely scanned, she
turned back, and looking the man full in the face, she added, smiling: ‘It
is all honest money; it won’t hurt the good cause.’

“The clerk assured her that no one had doubted her honesty, but that she
herself had, no doubt, often known want, and that it was hardly right to
let her contribute so large a sum, probably the whole of her savings.

“The old woman remained silent for a time, but, after she had quietly
scanned the faces of all present, she said: ‘Surely it concerns no one how
I got the money. Many a thought passed through my heart while I was
counting that money. You would not ask me to tell you all? But you are
kind gentlemen, and you take much trouble for us poor people. So I’ll tell
you whence the money came. Yes, I have known want; food has been scarce
with me many a day, and it will be so again, as I grow older. But our
gracious Lord watches over us. He has helped me to bear the troubles which
He sent. He will never forsake me. My husband has been dead this many and
many a year. I had one only son; and my John was a fine stout fellow, and
he worked hard, and he would not leave his old mother. He made my home
snug and comfortable. Then came the war with the Danes. All his friends
joined the army; but the only son of a widow, you know, is free. So he
remained at home, and no one said to him, “Come along with us,” for they
knew that he was a brave boy, and that it broke his very heart to stay
behind. I knew it all. I watched him when the people talked of the war, or
when the schoolmaster brought the newspaper. Ah, how he turned pale and
red, and how he looked away, and thought his old mother did not see it!
But he said nothing to me, and I said nothing to him, Gracious God, who
could have thought that it was so hard to drive our oppressors out of the
land? Then came the news from Fredericia! That was a dreadful night. We
sat in silence opposite each other. We knew what was in our hearts, and we
hardly dared to look at each other. Suddenly he rose and took my hand, and
said, “Mother!”—God be praised, I had strength in that moment—“John,” I
said, “our time has come; go in God’s name. I know how thou lovest me, and
what thou hast suffered. God knows what will become of me if I am left
quite alone, but our Lord Jesus Christ will forsake neither thee nor me.”
John enlisted as a volunteer. The day of parting came. Ah, I am making a
long story of it all! John stood before me in his new uniform. “Mother,”
he said, “one request before we part—if it is to be”—“John,” I said to
him, “I know what thou meanest,—O, I shall weep, I shall weep very much
when I am alone; but my time will come, and we shall meet again in the day
of our Lord, John! and the land shall be free, John! the land shall be
free!” ’

“Heavy tears stood in the poor old woman’s eyes as she repeated her sad
tale; but she soon collected herself, and continued: ‘I did not think then
it would be so hard. The heart always hopes even against hope. But for all
that’—and here the old woman drew herself up, and looked at us like a
queen—‘I have never regretted that I bade him go. Then came dreadful days;
but the most dreadful of all was when we read that the Germans had
betrayed the land, and that they had given up our land with all our dead
to the Danes! Then I called on the Lord and said, “O Lord, my God, how is
that possible? Why lettest Thou the wicked triumph and allowest the just
to perish?” And I was told that the Germans were sorry for what they had
done, but that they could not help it. But that, gentlemen, I could never
understand. We should never do wrong, nor allow wrong to be done. And,
therefore, I thought, it cannot always remain so; our good Lord knows his
own good time, and in his own good time He will come and deliver us. And I
prayed every evening that our gracious Lord would permit me to see that
day when the land should be free, and our dear dead should sleep no more
in Danish soil. And, as I had no other son against that day, I saved every
year what I could save, and on every Christmas Eve I placed it before me
on a table, where, in former years, I had always placed a small present
for my John, and I said in my heart, The war will come again, and the land
will be free, and thou shalt sleep in a free grave, my only son, my John!
And now, gentlemen, the poor old woman has been told that the day has
come, and that her prayer has been heard, and that the war will begin
again; and that is why she has brought her money, the money she saved for
her son. Good morning, gentlemen,’ she said, and was going quickly away.

“But, before she had left the room, an old gentleman said, loud enough for
her to hear, ‘Poor body! I hope she may not be deceived.’

“ ‘Ah,’ said the old woman, turning back, ‘I know what you mean; I have
been told all is not right yet. But have faith, men! the wicked cannot
prevail against the just; man cannot prevail against the Lord. Hold to
that, gentlemen; hold fast together, gentlemen! This very day I—begin to
save up again.’

“Bless her, good old soul! And, if Odin were still looking out of his
window in the sky as of yore, when he granted victory to the women of the
Lombards, might he not say even now:—

“ ‘When women are heroes,
What must the men be like?
Theirs is the victory;
No need of me.’ ”

1864.





VII. JOINVILLE.(29)


Our attention was attracted a few months ago by a review published in the
“Journal des Débats,” in which a new translation of Joinville’s “Histoire
de Saint Louis,” by M. Natalis de Wailly, a distinguished member of the
French Institute, was warmly recommended to the French public. After
pointing out the merits of M. de Wailly’s new rendering of Joinville’s
text, and the usefulness of such a book for enabling boys at school to
gain an insight into the hearts and minds of the Crusaders, and to form to
themselves a living conception of the manners and customs of the people of
the thirteenth century, the reviewer, whose name is well known in this
country as well as in France by his valuable contributions to the history
of medicine, dwelt chiefly on the fact that through the whole of
Joinville’s “Mémoires” there is no mention whatever of surgeons or
physicians. Nearly the whole French army is annihilated, the King and his
companions lie prostrate from wounds and disease, Joinville himself is
several times on the point of death; yet nowhere, according to the French
reviewer, does the chronicler refer to a medical staff attached to the
army or to the person of the King. Being somewhat startled at this remark,
we resolved to peruse once more the charming pages of Joinville’s History;
nor had we to read far before we found that one passage at least had been
overlooked, a passage which establishes beyond the possibility of doubt
the presence of surgeons and physicians in the camp of the French
Crusaders. On page 78 of M. de Wailly’s spirited translation, in the
account of the death of Gautier d’Autrèche, we read that when that brave
knight was carried back to his tent nearly dying, “several of the surgeons
and physicians of the camp came to see him, and not perceiving that he was
dangerously injured, they bled him on both his arms.” The result was what
might be expected: Gautier d’Autrèche soon breathed his last.

Having once opened the “Mémoires” of Joinville, we could not but go on to
the end, for there are few books that carry on the reader more pleasantly,
whether we read them in the quaint French of the fourteenth century, or in
the more modern French in which they have just been clothed by M. Natalis
de Wailly. So vividly does the easy gossip of the old soldier bring before
our eyes the days of St. Louis and Henry III., that we forget that we are
reading an old chronicle, and holding converse with the heroes of the
thirteenth century. The fates both of Joinville’s “Mémoires” and of
Joinville himself suggest in fact many reflections apart from mere
mediæval history; and a few of them may here be given in the hope of
reviving the impressions left on the minds of many by their first
acquaintance with the old Crusader, or of inviting others to the perusal
of a work which no one who takes an interest in man, whether past or
present, can read without real pleasure and real benefit.

It is interesting to watch the history of books, and to gain some kind of
insight into the various circumstances which contribute to form the
reputation of poets, philosophers, or historians. Joinville, whose name is
now familiar to the student of French history, as well as to the lover of
French literature, might fairly have expected that his memory would live
by his acts of prowess, and by his loyal devotion and sufferings when
following the King of France, St. Louis, on his unfortunate crusade. When,
previous to his departure for the Holy Land, the young Sénéchal de
Champagne, then about twenty-four years of age, had made his confession to
the Abbot of Cheminon; when, barefoot and in a white sheet, he was
performing his pilgrimages to Blehecourt (Blechicourt), St. Urbain, and
other sacred shrines in his neighborhood, and when on passing his own
domain he would not once turn his eyes back on the castle of Joinville,
“_pour ce que li cuers ne me attendrisist dou biau chastel que je lessoie
et de mes dous enfans_” (“that the heart might not make me pine after the
beautiful castle which I left behind, and after my two children”), he must
have felt that, happen what might to himself, the name of his family would
live, and his descendants would reside from century to century in those
strong towers where he left his young wife, Alix de Grandpré, and his son
and heir Jean, then but a few months old. After five years he returned
from his crusade, full of honors and full of wounds. He held one of the
highest positions that a French nobleman could hold. He was Sénéchal de
Champagne, as his ancestors had been before him. Several members of his
family had distinguished themselves in former crusades, and the services
of his uncle Geoffroi had been so highly appreciated by Richard Cœur de
Lion that he was allowed by that King to quarter the arms of England with
his own. Both at the court of the Comtes de Champagne, who were Kings of
Navarre, and at the court of Louis IX., King of France, Joinville was a
welcome guest. He witnessed the reigns of six kings,—of Louis VIII.,
1223-26; Louis IX., or St. Louis, 1226-70; Philip III., le Hardi, 1270-85
; Philip IV., le Bel, 1285-1314; Louis X., le Hutin, 1314-16 ; and Philip
V., le Long, 1316-22. Though later in life Joinville declined to follow
his beloved King on his last and fatal crusade in 1270, he tells us
himself how, on the day on which he took leave of him, he carried his
royal friend, then really on the brink of death, in his arms from the
residence of the Comte d’Auxerre to the house of the Cordeliers. In 1282
he was one of the principal witnesses when, previous to the canonization
of the King, an inquest was held to establish the purity of his life, the
sincerity of his religious professions, and the genuineness of his
self-sacrificing devotion in the cause of Christendom. When the daughter
of his own liege lord, the Comte de Champagne, Jeanne de Navarre, married
Philip le Bel, and became Queen of France, she made Joinville Governor of
Champagne, which she had brought as her dowry to the grandson of St.
Louis. Surely, then, when the old Crusader, the friend and counselor of
many kings, closed his earthly career, at the good age of ninety-five, he
might have looked forward to an honored grave in the Church of St.
Laurent, and to an eminent place in the annals of his country, which were
then being written in more or less elegant Latin by the monks of St.
Denis.

But what has happened? The monkish chroniclers, no doubt, have assigned
him his proper place in their tedious volumes, and there his memory would
have lived with that kind of life which belongs to the memory of Geoffroi,
his illustrious uncle, the friend of Philip Augustus, the companion of
Richard Cœur de Lion, whose arms were to be seen in the Church of St.
Laurent, at Joinville, quartered with the royal arms of England. Such
parchment or hatchment glory might have been his, and many a knight, as
good as he, has received no better, no more lasting reward for his loyalty
and bravery. His family became extinct in his grandson. Henri de
Joinville, his grandson, had no sons; and his daughter, being a wealthy
heiress, was married to one of the Dukes of Lorraine. The Dukes of
Lorraine were buried for centuries in the same Church of St. Laurent where
Joinville reposed, and where he had founded a chapel dedicated to his
companion in arms, Louis IX., the Royal Saint of France; and when, at the
time of the French Revolution, the tombs of St. Denis were broken open by
an infuriated people, and their ashes scattered abroad, the vaults of the
church at Joinville, too, shared the same fate, and the remains of the
brave Crusader suffered the same indignity as the remains of his sainted
King. It is true that there were some sparks of loyalty and self-respect
left in the hearts of the citizens of Joinville. They had the bones of the
old warrior and of the Dukes of Lorraine reinterred in the public
cemetery; and there they now rest, mingled with the dust of their faithful
lieges and subjects. But the Church of St. Laurent, with its tombs and
tombstones, is gone. The property of the Joinvilles descended from the
Dukes of Lorraine to the Dukes of Guise, and, lastly, to the family of
Orleans. The famous Duke of Orleans, Egalité, sold Joinville in 1790, and
stipulated that the old castle should be demolished. Poplars and fir-trees
now cover the ground of the ancient castle, and the name of Joinville is
borne by a royal prince, the son of a dethroned king, the grandson of
Louis Egalité, who died on the guillotine.

Neither his noble birth, nor his noble deeds, nor the friendship of kings
and princes, would have saved Joinville from that inevitable oblivion
which has blotted from the memory of living men the names of his more
eminent companions,—Robert, Count of Artois; Alphonse, Count of Poitiers;
Charles, Count of Anjou; Hugue, Duke of Burgundy; William, Count of
Flanders, and many more. A little book which the old warrior wrote or
dictated,—for it is very doubtful whether he could have written it
himself,—a book which for many years attracted nobody’s attention, and
which even now we do not possess in the original language of the
thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth centuries—has secured to the
name of Jean de Joinville a living immortality, and a fame that will last
long after the bronze statue which was erected in his native place in 1853
shall have shared the fate of his castle, of his church, and of his tomb.
Nothing could have been further from the mind of the old nobleman when, at
the age of eighty-five, he began the history of his royal comrade, St.
Louis, than the hope of literary fame. He would have scouted it. That kind
of fame might have been good enough for monks and abbots, but it would
never at that time have roused the ambition of a man of Joinville’s stamp.
How the book came to be written he tells us himself in his dedication,
dated in the year 1309, and addressed to Louis le Hutin, then only King of
Navarre and Count of Champagne, but afterwards King of France. His mother,
Jeanne of Navarre, the daughter of Joinville’s former liege lord, the last
of the Counts of Champagne, who was married to Philip le Bel, the grandson
of St. Louis, had asked him “to have a book made for her, containing the
sacred words and good actions of our King, St. Looys.” She died before the
book was finished, and Joinville, therefore, sent it to her son. How it
was received by him we do not know; nor is there any reason to suppose
that there were more than a few copies made of a work which was intended
chiefly for members of the royal family of France and of his own family.
It is never quoted by historical writers of that time; and the first
historian who refers to it is said to be Pierre le Baud, who, toward the
end of the fifteenth century, wrote his “Histoire de Bretagne.” It has
been proved that for a long time no mention of the dedication copy occurs
in the inventories of the private libraries of the Kings of France. At the
death of Louis le Hutin his library consisted of twenty-nine volumes, and
among them the History of St. Louis does not occur. There is, indeed, one
entry, “Quatre caiers de Saint Looys;” but this could not be meant for the
work of Joinville, which was in one volume. These four _cahiers_ or quires
of paper were more likely manuscript notes of St. Louis himself. His
confessor, Geoffroy de Beaulieu, relates that the King, before his last
illness, wrote down with his own hand some salutary counsels in French, of
which he, the confessor, procured a copy before the King’s death, and
which he translated from French into Latin.

Again, the widow of Louis X. left at her death a collection of forty-one
volumes, and the widow of Charles le Bel a collection of twenty volumes;
but in neither of them is there any mention of Joinville’s History.

It is not till we come to the reign of Charles V. (1364-80) that
Joinville’s book occurs in the inventory of the royal library, drawn up in
1373 by the King’s valet de chambre, Gilles Mallet. It is entered as “La
vie de Saint Loys, et les fais de son voyage d’outre mer;” and in the
margin of the catalogue there is a note, “Le Roy l’a par devers soy,”—“The
King has it by him.” At the time of his death the volume had not yet been
returned to its proper place in the first hall of the Louvre; but in the
inventory drawn up in 1411 it appears again, with the following
description:(30)—


    “Une grant partie de la vie et des fais de Monseigneur Saint Loys
    que fist faire le Seigneur de Joinville; très-bien escript et
    historié. Convert de cuir rouge, à empreintes, à deux fermoirs
    d’argent. Escript de lettres de forme en françois à deux
    coulombes; commençant au deuxième folio ‘et porceque,’ et au
    derrenier ‘en tele maniere.’ ”


This means, “A great portion of the life and actions of St. Louis which
the Seigneur de Joinville had made, very well written and illuminated.
Bound in red leather, tooled, with two silver clasps. Written in formal
letters in French, in two columns, beginning on the second folio with the
words ‘_et porceque_,’ and on the last with ‘_en tele maniere_.’ ”

During the Middle Ages and before the discovery of printing, the task of
having a literary work published, or rather of having it copied, rested
chiefly with the author; and as Joinville himself, at his time of life,
and in the position which he occupied, had no interest in what we should
call “pushing” his book, this alone is quite sufficient to explain its
almost total neglect. But other causes, too, have been assigned by M.
Paulin Paris and others for what seems at first sight so very strange,—the
entire neglect of Joinville’s work. From the beginning of the twelfth
century the monks of St. Denis were the recognized historians of France.
They at first collected the most important historical works of former
centuries, such as Gregory of Tours, Eginhard, the so-called Archbishop
Turpin, Nithard, and William of Jumièges. But beginning with the first
year of Philip I., 1060-1108, the monks became themselves the chroniclers
of passing events. The famous Abbot Suger, the contemporary of Abelard and
St. Bernard, wrote the life of Louis le Gros; Rigord and Guillaume de
Nangis followed with the history of his successors. Thus the official
history of St. Louis had been written by Guillaume de Nangis long before
Joinville thought of dictating his personal recollections of the King.
Besides the work of Guillaume de Nangis, there was the “History of the
Crusades,” including that of St. Louis, written by Guillaume, Archbishop
of Tyre, and translated into French, so that even the ground which
Joinville had more especially selected as his own was preoccupied by a
popular and authoritative writer. Lastly, when Joinville’s History
appeared, the chivalrous King, whose sayings and doings his old brother in
arms undertook to describe in his homely and truthful style, had ceased to
be an ordinary mortal. He had become a saint, and what people were anxious
to know of him were legends rather than history. With all the sincere
admiration which Joinville entertained for his King, he could not compete
with such writers as Geoffroy de Beaulieu (Gaufridus de Belloloco), the
confessor of St. Louis, Guillaume de Chartres (Guillelmus Carnotensis),
his chaplain, or the confessor of his daughter Blanche, each of whom had
written a life of the royal saint. Their works were copied over and over
again, and numerous MSS. have been preserved of them in public and private
libraries. Of Joinville one early MS. only was saved, and even that not
altogether a faithful copy of the original.

The first edition of Joinville was printed at Poitiers in 1547, and
dedicated to François I. The editor, Pierre Antoine de Rieux, tells us
that when, in 1542, he examined some old documents at Beaufort en Valée,
in Anjou, he found among the MSS. the Chronicle of King Louis, written by
a Seigneur de Joinville, Sénéchal de Champagne, who lived at that time,
and had accompanied the said St. Louis in all his wars. But because it was
badly arranged or written in a very rude language, he had it polished and
put in better order, a proceeding of which he is evidently very proud, as
we may gather from a remark of his friend Guillaume de Perrière, that “it
is no smaller praise to polish a diamond than to find it quite raw”
(_toute brute_).

This text, which could hardly be called Joinville’s, remained for a time
the received text. It was reproduced in 1595, in 1596, and in 1609.

In 1617 a new edition was published by Claude Menard. He states that he
found at Laval a heap of old papers, which had escaped the ravages
committed by the Protestants in some of the monasteries at Anjou. When he
compared the MS. of Joinville with the edition of Pierre Antoine de Rieux,
he found that the ancient style of Joinville had been greatly changed. He
therefore undertook a new edition, more faithful to the original.
Unfortunately, however, his original MS. was but a modern copy, and his
edition, though an improvement on that of 1547, was still very far from
the style and language of the beginning of the fourteenth century.

The learned Du Cange searched in vain for more trustworthy materials for
restoring the text of Joinville. Invaluable as are the dissertations which
he wrote on Joinville, his own text of the History, published in 1668,
could only be based on the two editions that had preceded his own.

It was not till 1761 that real progress was made in restoring the text of
Joinville. An ancient MS. had been brought from Brussels by the Maréchal
Maurice de Saxe. It was carefully edited by M. Capperonnier, and it has
served, with few exceptions, as the foundation of all later editions. It
is now in the Imperial Library. The editors of the “Recueil des Historiens
de France” express their belief that the MS. might actually be the
original. At the end of it are the words, “Ce fu escript en l’an de grâce
mil CCC et IX, on moys d’octovre.” This, however, is no real proof of the
date of the MS. Transcribers of MSS., it is well known, were in the habit
of mechanically copying all they saw in the original, and hence we find
very commonly the date of an old MS. repeated over and over again in
modern copies.

The arguments by which in 1839 M. Paulin Paris proved that this, the
oldest MS. of Joinville, belongs not to the beginning, but to the end of
the fourteenth century, seem unanswerable, though they failed to convince
M. Daunou, who, in the twentieth volume of the “Historiens de France,”
published in 1840, still looks upon this MS. as written in 1309, or at
least during Joinville’s life-time. M. Paulin Paris establishes, first of
all, that this MS. cannot be the same as that which was so carefully
described in the catalogue of Charles V. What became of that MS. once
belonging to the private library of the Kings of France, no one knows, but
there is no reason, even now, why it should not still be recovered. The
MS. of Joinville, which now belongs to the Imperial Library, is written by
the same scribe who wrote another MS. of “La Vie et les Miracles de Saint
Louis.” Now, this MS. of “La Vie et les Miracles” is a copy of an older
MS., which likewise exists at Paris. This more ancient MS., probably the
original, and written, therefore, in the beginning of the fourteenth
century, had been carefully revised before it served as the model for the
later copy, executed by the same scribe who, as we saw, wrote the old MS.
of Joinville. A number of letters were scratched out, words erased, and
sometimes whole sentences altered or suppressed, a red line being drawn
across the words which had to be omitted. It looks, in fact, like a
manuscript prepared for the printer. Now, if the same copyist who copied
this MS. copied likewise the MS. of Joinville, it follows that he was
separated from the original of Joinville by the same interval which
separates the corrected MSS. of “La Vie et les Miracles” from their
original, or from the beginning of the fourteenth century. This line of
argument seems to establish satisfactorily the approximate date of the
oldest MS. of Joinville as belonging to the end of the fourteenth century.

Another MS. was discovered at Lucca. As it had belonged to the Dukes of
Guise, great expectations were at one time entertained of its value. It
was bought by the Royal Library at Paris in 1741 for 360 livres, but it
was soon proved not to be older than about 1500, representing the language
of the time of François I. rather than of St. Louis, but nevertheless
preserving occasionally a more ancient spelling than the other MS. which
was copied two hundred years before. This MS. bears the arms of the
Princess Antoinette de Bourbon and of her husband, Claude de Lorraine, who
was “Duc de Guise, Comte d’Aumale, Marquis de Mayence et d’Elbeuf, and
Baron de Joinville.” Their marriage took place in 1513; he died in 1550,
she in 1583.

There is a third MS. which has lately been discovered. It belonged to M.
Brissart-Binet of Rheims, became known to M. Paulin Paris, and was lent to
M. de Wailly for his new edition of Joinville. It seems to be a copy of
the so-called MS. of Lucca, the MS. belonging to the Princess Antoinette
de Bourbon, and it is most likely the very copy which that Princess
ordered to be made for Louis Lasséré, canon of St. Martin of Tours who
published an abridgment of it in 1541. By a most fortunate accident it
supplies the passages from page 88 to 112, and from page 126 to 139, which
are wanting in the MS. of Lucca.

It must be admitted, therefore, that for an accurate study of the
historical growth of the French language, the work of Joinville is of less
importance than it would have been if it had been preserved in its
original orthography, and with all the grammatical peculiarities which
mark the French of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth
century. There may be no more than a distance of not quite a hundred years
between the original of Joinville and the earliest MS. which we possess.
But in those hundred years the French language did not remain stationary.
Even as late as the time of Montaigne, when French has assumed a far
greater literary steadiness, that writer complains of its constant change.
“I wrote my book,” he says in a memorable passage (“Essais,” liv. 3, c.
9)—


    “For few people and for a few years. If it had been a subject that
    ought to last, it should have been committed to a more stable
    language (_Latin_). After the continual variation which has
    followed our speech to the present day, who can hope that its
    present form will be used fifty years hence? It glides from our
    hands every day, and since I have lived it has been half changed.
    We say that at present it is perfect, but every century says the
    same of its own. I do not wish to hold it back, if it will fly
    away and go on deteriorating as it does. It belongs to good and
    useful writers to nail the language to themselves” (_de le clouer
    à eux_).


On the other hand, we must guard against forming an exaggerated notion of
the changes that could have taken place in the French language within the
space of less than a century. They refer chiefly to the spelling of words,
to the use of some antiquated words and expressions, and to the less
careful observation of the rules by which in ancient French the nominative
is distinguished from the oblique cases, both in the singular and the
plural. That the changes do not amount to more than this can be proved by
a comparison of other documents which clearly preserve the actual language
of Joinville. There is a letter of his which is preserved at the Imperial
Library at Paris, addressed to Louis X. in 1315. It was first published by
Du Cange, afterwards by M. Daunou, in the twentieth volume of the
“Historiens de France,” and again by M. de Wailly. There are, likewise,
some charters of Joinville, written in his _chancellerie_, and in some
cases with additions from his own hand. Lastly, there is Joinville’s
“Credo,” containing his notes on the Apostolic Creed, preserved in a
manuscript of the thirteenth century. This was published in the
“Collection des Bibliophiles Français,” unfortunately printed in
twenty-five copies only. The MS. of the “Credo,” which formerly belonged
to the public library of Paris, disappeared from it about twenty years
ago; and it now forms No. 75 of a collection of MSS. bought in 1849 by
Lord Ashburnham from M. Barrois. By comparing the language of these
thirteenth century documents with that of the earliest MS. of Joinville’s
History, it is easy to see that although we have lost something, we have
not lost very much, and that, at all events, we need not suspect in the
earliest MS. any changes that could in any way affect the historical
authenticity of Joinville’s work.(31)

To the historian of the French language, the language of Joinville, even
though it gives us only a picture of the French spoken at the time of
Charles V. or contemporaneously with Froissart, is still full of interest.
That language is separated from the French of the present day by nearly
five centuries, and we may be allowed to give a few instances to show the
curious changes both of form and meaning which many words have undergone
during that interval.

Instead of _sœur_, sister, Joinville still uses _sereur_, which was the
right form of the oblique case, but was afterwards replaced by the
nominative _suer_ or _sœur_. Thus, p. 424 E, we read, _quant nous menames
la serour le roy_, _i.e._ _quand nous menâmes la sœur du roi_; but p. 466
A, _l’abbaïe que sa suer fonda_, _i.e._ _l’abbaïe que sa sœur fonda_.
Instead of _ange_, angel, he has both _angle_ and _angre_, where the _r_
stands for the final _l_ of _angele_, the more ancient French form of
_angelus_. The same transition of final _l_ into _r_ may be observed in
_apôtre_ for _apostolus_, _chapitre_ for _capitulum_, _chartre_ for
_cartula_, _esclandre_ for _scandalum_. Instead of _vieux_, old, Joinville
uses _veil_ or _veel_ (p. 132 C, _le veil le fil au veil_, _i.e._ _le
vieux fils du vieux_); but in the nom. sing., _viex_, which is the Latin
_vetulus_ (p. 302 A, _li Viex de __ la Montaingne_, _i.e._ _le Vieux de la
Montagne_; but p. 304 A, _li messaige le Vieil_, _i.e._ _les messagers du
Vieux_.) Instead of _coude_, m., elbow, we find _coute_, which is nearer
to the Latin _cubitus_, cubit. The Latin _t_ in words like _cubitus_ was
generally softened in old French, and was afterwards dropped altogether.
As in _coude_, the _d_ is preserved in _aider_ for _adjutare_, in _fade_
for _fatuus_. In other words, such as _chaîne_ for _catena_, _roue_ for
_rota_, _épée_ for _spatha_, _aimêe_ for _amata_, it has disappeared
altogether. _True_ is _voir_, the regular modification of _verum_, like
_soir_ of _serum_, instead of the modern French _vrai_; _e.g._, p. 524 B,
_et sachiez que voirs estait_, _i.e._ _et sachez que c’était vrai_. We
still find _ester_, to stand (“_Et ne pooit ester sur ses pieds_,” “He
could not stand on his legs”). At present the French have no single word
for “standing,” which has often been pointed out as a real defect of the
language. “To stand” is _ester_, in Joinville; “to be” is _estre_.

In the grammatical system of the language of Joinville we find the
connecting link between the case terminations of the classical Latin and
the prepositions and articles of modern French. It is generally supposed
that the terminations of the Latin declension were lost in French, and
that the relations of the cases were expressed by prepositions, while the
_s_ as the sign of the plural was explained by the _s_ in the nom. plur.
of nouns of the third declension. But languages do not thus advance _per
saltum_. They change slowly and gradually, and we can generally discover
in what is, some traces of what has been.

Now the fact is that in ancient French, and likewise in Provençal, there
is still a system of declension more or less independent of prepositions.
There are, so to say, three declensions in old French, of which the second
is the most important and the most interesting. If we take a Latin word
like _annus_, we find in old French two forms in the singular, and two in
the plural. We find sing. _an-s_, _an_, plur. _an_, _ans_. If _an_ occurs
in the nom. sing. or as the subject, it is always _ans_; if it occur as a
gen., dat., or acc., it is always _an_. In the plural, on the contrary, we
find in the nom. _an_, and in all the oblique cases _ans_. The origin of
this system is clear enough, and it is extraordinary that attempts should
have been made to derive it from German or even from Celtic, when the
explanation could be found so much nearer home. The nom. sing. has the
_s_, because it was there in Latin; the nom. plur. has no _s_, because
there was no _s_ there in Latin. The oblique cases in the singular have no
_s_, because the accusative in Latin, and likewise the gen., dat., and
abl., ended either in vowels, which became mute, or in _m_, which was
dropped. The oblique cases in the plural had the _s_, because it was there
in the acc. plur., which became the general oblique case, and likewise in
the dat. and abl. By means of these fragments of the Latin declension, it
was possible to express many things without prepositions which in modern
French can no longer be thus expressed. _Le fils Roi_ was clearly the son
of the King; _il fil Roi_, the sons of the King. Again we find _li roys_,
the King, but _au roy_, to the King. Pierre Sarrasin begins his letter on
the crusade of St. Louis by _A seigneur Nicolas Arode, Jehan-s Sarrasin,
chambrelen-s le roy de France, salut et bonne amour_.

But if we apply the same principle to nouns of the first declension, we
shall see at once that they could not have lent themselves to the same
contrivance. Words like _corona_ have no _s_ in the nom. sing., nor in any
of the oblique cases; it would therefore be in French _corone_ throughout.
In the plural indeed there might have been a distinction between the nom.
and the acc. The nom. ought to have been without an _s_, and the acc. with
an _s_. But with the exception of some doubtful passages, where a nom.
plur. is supposed to occur in old French documents without an _s_, we find
throughout, both in the nom. and the other cases, the _s_ of the
accusative as the sign of the plural.

Nearly the same applies to certain words of the third declension. Here we
find indeed a distinction between the nom. and the oblique cases of the
singular, such as _flor-s_, the flower, with _flor_, of the flower; but
the plural is _flor-s_ throughout. This form is chiefly confined to
feminine nouns of the third declension.

There is another very curious contrivance by which the ancient French
distinguished the nom. from the acc. sing., and which shows us again how
the consciousness of the Latin grammar was by no means entirely lost in
the formation of modern French. There are many words in Latin which change
their accent in the oblique cases from what it was in the nominative. For
instance, _cantátor_, a singer, becomes _cantatórem_, in the accusative.
Now in ancient French the nom., corresponding to _cantator_, is
_chántere_, but the gen. _chanteór_, and thus again a distinction is
established of great importance for grammatical purposes. Most of these
words followed the analogy of the second declension, and added an _s_ in
the nom. sing., dropped it in the nom. plur., and added it again in the
oblique cases of the plural. Thus we get—

SINGULAR.                         PLURAL.
Nom.             Oblique Cases.   Nom.         Oblique Cases.
_chántere_       _chanteór_       _chanteór_   _chanteórs_
From _baro,      _baron_          _baron_      _barons_
baronis_
(O. Fr. _ber_)
_latro,          _larron_         _larron_     _larrons_
latronis_
(O. Fr.
_lierre_)
_senior,         _seignor_        _seignor_    _seignors_
senioris_
(O. Fr.
_sendre_)
(sire)

Thus we read in the beginning of Joinville’s History:—

_A son bon signour Looys, Jehans sires de Joinville salut et amour;_

and immediately afterwards, _Chiers sire_, not _Chiers seigneur_.

If we compare this old French declension with the grammar of modern
French, we find that the accusative or the oblique form has become the
only recognized form, both in the singular and plural. Hence—

[Corone]    [Ans]   [Flors]   [Chántere] le
                              chantre.
Corone      An      Flor      Chanteór le
                              chanteur.
[Corones]   [An]    [Flors]   [Chanteór].
Corones     Ans     Flors     Chanteórs.

A few traces only of the old system remain in such words as _fils_,
_bras_, _Charles_, _Jacques_, etc.

Not less curious than the changes of form are the changes of meaning which
have taken place in the French language since the days of Joinville. Thus,
_la viande_, which now only means meat, is used by Joinville in its
original and more general sense of _victuals_, the Latin _vivenda_. For
instance (p. 248 D), “_Et nous requeismes que en nous donnast la viande_,”
“And we asked that one might give us something to eat.” And soon after,
“_Les viandes que il nous donnèrent, ce furent begniet de fourmaiges qui
estoient roti au soliel, pour ce que li ver n’i venissent, et oef dur __
cuit de quatre jours ou de cinc_,” “And the viands which they gave us were
cheese-cakes roasted in the sun, that the worms might not get at them, and
hard eggs boiled four or five days ago.”

_Payer_, to pay, is still used in its original sense of pacifying or
satisfying, the Latin _pacare_. Thus a priest who has received from his
bishop an explanation of some difficulty and other ghostly comfort “_se
tint bin pour paié_” (p. 34 C), he “considered himself well satisfied.”
When the King objected to certain words in the oath which he had to take,
Joinville says that he does not know how the oath was finally arranged,
but he adds, “_Li amiral se tindrent lien apaié_,” “The admirals
considered themselves satisfied” (p. 242 C). The same word, however, is
likewise used in the usual sense of paying.

_Noise_, a word which has almost disappeared from modern French, occurs
several times in Joinville; and we can watch in different passages the
growth of its various meanings. In one passage Joinville relates (p. 198)
that one of his knights had been killed, and was lying on a bier in his
chapel. While the priest was performing his office, six other knights were
talking very loud, and “_Faisoient noise au prestre_,” “They annoyed or
disturbed the priest; they caused him annoyance.” Here _noise_ has still
the same sense as the Latin _nausea_, from which it is derived. In another
passage, however, Joinville uses _noise_ as synonymous with _bruit_ (p.
152 A), _Vint li roys à toute sa bataille, à grant noyse et à grant bruit
de trompes et nacaires_, _i.e._ _vint le roi avec tout son corps de
bataille, à grand cris et à grand bruit de trompettes et de timbales._
Here _noise_ may still mean an annoying noise, but we can see the easy
transition from that to noise in general.

Another English word, “to purchase,” finds its explanation in Joinville.
Originally _pourchasser_ meant to hunt after a thing, to pursue it.
Joinville frequently uses the expression “_par son pourchas_” (p. 458 E)
in the sense of “by his endeavors.” When the King had reconciled two
adversaries, peace is said to have been made _par son pourchas_.
“_Pourchasser_” afterwards took the sense of “procuring,” “catering,” and
lastly, in English, of “buying.”

To return to Joinville’s History, the scarcity of MSS. is very instructive
from an historical point of view. As far as we know at present, his great
work existed for centuries in two copies only, one preserved in his own
castle, the other in the library of the Kings of France. We can hardly say
that it was published, even in the restricted sense which that word had
during the fourteenth century, and there certainly is no evidence that it
was read by any one except by members of the royal family of France, and
possibly by descendants of Joinville. It exercised no influence; and if
two or three copies had not luckily escaped (one of them, it must be
confessed, clearly showing the traces of mice’s teeth), we should have
known very little indeed either of the military or of the literary
achievements of one who is now ranked among the chief historians of
France, or even of Europe. After Joinville’s History had once emerged from
its obscurity, it soon became the fashion to praise it, and to praise it
somewhat indiscriminately. Joinville became a general favorite both in and
out of France; and after all had been said in his praise that might be
truly and properly said, each successive admirer tried to add a little
more, till at last, as a matter of course, he was compared to Thucydides,
and lauded for the graces of his style, the vigor of his language, the
subtlety of his mind, and his worship of the harmonious and the beautiful,
in such a manner that the old bluff soldier would have been highly
perplexed and disgusted, could he have listened to the praises of his
admirers. Well might M. Paulin Paris say, “I shall not stop to praise what
everybody has praised before me; to recall the graceful _naïveté_ of the
good Sénéchal, would it not be, as the English poet said, ‘to gild the
gold and paint the lily white?’ ”

It is surprising to find in the large crowd of indiscriminate admirers a
man so accurate in his thoughts and in his words as the late Sir James
Stephen. Considering how little Joinville’s History was noticed by his
contemporaries, how little it was read by the people before it was printed
during the reign of François I., it must seem more than doubtful whether
Joinville really deserved a place in a series of lectures, “On the Power
of the Pen in France.” But, waiving that point, is it quite exact to say,
as Sir James Stephen does, “that three writers only retain, and probably
they alone deserve, at this day the admiration which greeted them in their
own,—I refer to Joinville, Froissart, and to Philippe de Comines?” And is
the following a sober and correct description of Joinville’s style?—


    “Over the whole picture the genial spirit of France glows with all
    the natural warmth which we seek in vain among the dry bones of
    earlier chroniclers. Without the use of any didactic forms of
    speech, Joinville teaches the highest of all wisdom—the wisdom of
    love. Without the pedantry of the schools, he occasionally
    exhibits an eager thirst of knowledge, and a graceful facility of
    imparting it, which attest that he is of the lineage of the great
    father of history, and of those modern historians who have taken
    Herodotus for their model.” (Vol. ii. pp. 209, 219.)


Now, all this sounds to our ears just an octave too high. There is some
truth in it, but the truth is spoilt by being exaggerated. Joinville’s
book is very pleasant to read, because he gives himself no airs, and tells
us as well as he can what he recollects of his excellent King, and of the
fearful time which they spent together during the crusade. He writes very
much as an old soldier would speak. He seems to know that people will
listen to him with respect, and that they will believe what he tells them.
He does not weary them with arguments. He rather likes now and then to
evoke a smile, and he maintains the glow of attention by thinking more of
his hearers than of himself. He had evidently told his stories many times
before he finally dictated them in the form in which we read them, and
this is what gives to some of them a certain finish and the appearance of
art. Yet, if we speak of style at all,—not of the style of thought, but of
the style of language,—the blemishes in Joinville’s History are so
apparent that one feels reluctant to point them out. He repeats his words,
he repeats his remarks, he drops the thread of his story, begins a new
subject, leaves it because, as he says himself, it would carry him too
far, and then, after a time, returns to it again. His descriptions of the
scenery where the camp was pitched, and the battles fought, are neither
sufficiently broad nor sufficiently distinct to give the reader that view
of the whole which he receives from such writers as Cæsar, Thiers,
Carlyle, or Russell. Nor is there any attempt at describing or analyzing
the character of the principal actors in the crusade of St. Louis, beyond
relating some of their remarks or occasional conversations. It is an
ungrateful task to draw up these indictments against a man whom one
probably admires much more sincerely than those who bespatter him with
undeserved praise. Joinville’s book is readable, and it is readable even
in spite of the antiquated and sometimes difficult language in which it is
written. There are few books of which we could say the same. What makes
his book readable is partly the interest attaching to the subject of which
it treats, but far more the simple, natural, straightforward way in which
Joinville tells what he has to tell. From one point of view it may be
truly said that no higher praise could be bestowed on any style than to
say that it is simple, natural, straightforward, and charming. But if his
indiscriminate admirers had appreciated this artless art, they would not
have applied to the pleasant gossip of an old general epithets that are
appropriate only to the masterpieces of classical literature.

It is important to bear in mind what suggested to Joinville the first idea
of writing his book. He was asked to do so by the Queen of Philip le Bel.
After the death of the Queen, however, Joinville did not dedicate his work
to the King, but to his son, who was then the heir apparent. This may be
explained by the fact that he himself was Sénéchal de Champagne, and
Louis, the son of Philip le Bel, Comte de Champagne. But it admits of
another and more probable explanation. Joinville was dissatisfied with the
proceedings of Philip le Bel, and from the very beginning of his reign he
opposed his encroachments on the privileges of the nobility and the
liberties of the people. He was punished for his opposition, and excluded
from the assemblies in Champagne in 1287; and though his name appeared
again on the roll in 1291, Joinville then occupied only the sixth instead
of the first place. In 1314 matters came to a crisis in Champagne, and
Joinville called together the nobility in order to declare openly against
the King. The opportune death of Philip alone prevented the breaking out
of a rebellion. It is true that there are no direct allusions to these
matters in the body of Joinville’s book, yet an impression is left on the
reader that he wrote some portion of the Life of St. Louis as a lesson to
the young prince to whom it is dedicated. Once or twice, indeed, he uses
language which sounds ominous, and which would hardly be tolerated in
France, even after the lapse of five centuries. When speaking of the great
honor which St. Louis conferred on his family, he says “that it was,
indeed, a great honor to those of his descendants who would follow his
example by good works, but a great dishonor to those who would do evil.
For people would point at them with their fingers, and would say that the
sainted King from whom they descended would have despised such
wickedness.” There is another passage even stronger than this. After
relating how St. Louis escaped from many dangers by the grace of God, he
suddenly exclaims, “Let the King who now reigns (Philip le Bel) take care,
for he has escaped from as great dangers—nay, from greater ones—than we;
let him see whether he cannot amend his evil ways, so that God may not
strike him and his affairs cruelly.”

This surely is strong language, considering that it was used in a book
dedicated to the son of the then reigning King. To the father of Philip le
Bel, Joinville seems to have spoken with the same frankness as to his son;
and he tells us himself how he reproved the King, Philip le Hardi, for his
extravagant dress, and admonished him to follow the example of his father.
Similar remarks occur again and again; and though the Life of St. Louis
was certainly not written merely for didactic purposes, yet one cannot
help seeing that it was written with a practical object. In the
introduction Joinville says, “I send the book to you, that you and your
brother and others who hear it may take an example, and that they may
carry it out in their life, for which God will bless them.” And again (p.
268), “These things shall I cause to be written, that those who hear them
may have faith in God in their persecutions and tribulations, and God will
help them, as He did me.” Again (p. 380), “These things I have told you,
that you may guard against taking an oath without reason, for, as the wise
say, ‘He who swears readily, forswears himself readily.’ ”

It seems, therefore, that when Joinville took to dictating his
recollections of St. Louis, he did so partly to redeem a promise given to
the Queen, who, he says, loved him much, and whom he could not refuse,
partly to place in the hands of the young princes a book full of
historical lessons which they might read, mark, and inwardly digest.

And well might he do so, and well might his book be read by all young
princes, and by all who are able to learn a lesson from the pages of
history; for few kings, if any, did ever wear their crowns so worthily as
Louis IX. of France; and few saints, if any, did deserve their halo better
than St. Louis. Here lies the deep and lasting interest of Joinville’s
work. It allows us an insight into a life which we could hardly realize,
nay, which we should hardly believe in, unless we had the testimony of
that trusty witness, Joinville, the King’s friend and comrade. The
legendary lives of St. Louis would have destroyed in the eyes of posterity
the real greatness and the real sanctity of the King’s character. We
should never have known the man, but only his saintly caricature. After
reading Joinville, we must make up our mind that such a life as he there
describes was really lived, and was lived in those very palaces which we
are accustomed to consider as the sinks of wickedness and vice. From other
descriptions we might have imagined Louis IX. as a bigoted, priest-ridden,
credulous King. From Joinville we learn that, though unwavering in his
faith, and most strict in the observance of his religious duties, the King
was by no means narrow in his sympathies, or partial to the encroachments
of priestcraft. We find Joinville speaking to the King on subjects of
religion with the greatest freedom, and as no courtier would have dared to
speak during the later years of Louis XIV.’s reign. When the King asked
him whether in the holy week he ever washed the feet of the poor,
Joinville replied that he would never wash the feet of such villains. For
this remark he was, no doubt, reproved by the King, who, as we are told by
Beaulieu, with the most unpleasant details, washed the feet of the poor
every Saturday. But the reply, though somewhat irreverent, is,
nevertheless, highly creditable to the courtier’s frankness. Another time
he shocked his royal friend still more by telling him, in the presence of
several priests, that he would rather have committed thirty mortal sins
than be a leper. The King said nothing at the time, but he sent for him
the next day, and reproved him in the most gentle manner for his
thoughtless speech.

Joinville, too, with all the respect which he entertained for his King,
would never hesitate to speak his mind when he thought that the King was
in the wrong. On one occasion the Abbot of Cluny presented the King with
two horses, worth five hundred _livres_. The next day the Abbot came again
to the King to discuss some matters of business. Joinville observed that
the King listened to him with marked attention. After the Abbot was gone,
he went to the King, and said, “ ‘Sire, may I ask you whether you listened
to the Abbot more cheerfully because he presented you yesterday with two
horses?’ The King meditated for a time, and then said to me, ‘Truly, yes.’
‘Sire,’ said I, ‘do you know why I asked you this question?’ ‘Why?’ said
he. ‘Because, Sire,’ I said, ‘I advise you, when you return to France, to
prohibit all sworn counselors from accepting anything from those who have
to bring their affairs before them. For you may be certain, if they accept
anything, they will listen more cheerfully and attentively to those who
give, as you did yourself with the Abbot of Cluny.’ ”

Surely a king who could listen to such language is not likely to have had
his court filled with hypocrites, whether lay or clerical. The bishops,
though they might count on the King for any help he could give them in the
great work of teaching, raising, and comforting the people, tried in vain
to make him commit an injustice in defense of what they considered
religion. One day a numerous deputation of prelates asked for an
interview. It was readily granted. When they appeared before the King,
their spokesman said, “Sire, these lords who are here, archbishops and
bishops, have asked me to tell you that Christianity is perishing at your
hands.” The King signed himself with the cross, and said, “Tell me how can
that be?” “Sire,” he said, “it is because people care so little nowadays
for excommunication that they would rather die excommunicated than have
themselves absolved and give satisfaction to the Church. Now, we pray you,
Sire, for the sake of God, and because it is your duty, that you command
your provosts and bailiffs that by seizing the goods of those who allow
themselves to be excommunicated for the space of one year, they may force
them to come and be absolved.” Then the King replied that he would do this
willingly with all those of whom it could be _proved_ that they were in
the wrong (which would, in fact, have given the King jurisdiction in
ecclesiastical matters). The bishops said that they could not do this at
any price; they would never bring their causes before his court. Then the
King said he could not do it otherwise, for it would be against God and
against reason. He reminded them of the case of the Comte de Bretagne, who
had been excommunicated by the prelates of Brittany for the space of seven
years, and who, when he appealed to the Pope, gained his cause, while the
prelates were condemned. “Now then,” the King said, “if I had forced the
Comte de Bretagne to get absolution from the prelates after the first
year, should I not have sinned against God and against him?”

This is not the language of a bigoted man; and if we find in the life of
St. Louis traces of what in our age we might feel inclined to call bigotry
or credulity, we must consider that the religious and intellectual
atmosphere of the reign of St. Louis was very different from our own.
There are, no doubt, some of the sayings and doings recorded by Joinville
of his beloved King which at present would be unanimously condemned even
by the most orthodox and narrow-minded. Think of an assembly of
theologians in the monastery of Cluny who had invited a distinguished
rabbi to discuss certain points of Christian doctrine with them. A knight,
who happened to be staying with the abbot, asked for leave to open the
discussion, and he addressed the Jew in the following words: “Do you
believe that the Virgin Mary was a virgin and Mother of God?” When the Jew
replied, “No!” the knight took his crutch and felled the poor Jew to the
ground. The King, who relates this to Joinville, draws one very wise
lesson from, it—namely, that no one who is not a very good theologian
should enter upon a controversy with Jews on such subjects. But when he
goes on to say that a layman who hears the Christian religion evil spoken
of should take to the sword as the right weapon of defense, and run it
into the miscreant’s body as far as it would go, we perceive at once that
we are in the thirteenth and not in the nineteenth century. The
punishments which the King inflicted for swearing were most cruel. At
Cesarea, Joinville tells us that he saw a goldsmith fastened to a ladder,
with the entrails of a pig twisted round his neck right up to his nose,
because he had used irreverent language. Nay, after his return from the
Holy Land, he heard that the King ordered a man’s nose and lower lip to be
burnt for the same offense. The Pope himself had to interfere to prevent
St. Louis from inflicting on blasphemers mutilation and death. “I would
myself be branded with a hot iron,” the King said, “if thus I could drive
away all swearing from my kingdom.” He himself, as Joinville assures us,
never used an oath, nor did he pronounce the name of the Devil except when
reading the lives of the saints. His soul, we cannot doubt, was grieved
when he heard the names which to him were the most sacred, employed for
profane purposes; and this feeling of indignation was shared by his honest
chronicler. “In my castle,” says Joinville, “whosoever uses bad language
receives a good pommeling, and this has nearly put down that bad habit.”
Here again we see the upright character of Joinville. He does not, like
most courtiers, try to outbid his sovereign in pious indignation; on the
contrary, while sharing his feelings, he gently reproves the King for his
excessive zeal and cruelty, and this after the King had been raised to the
exalted position of a saint.

To doubt of any points of the Christian doctrine was considered at
Joinville’s time, as it is even now, as a temptation of the Devil. But
here again we see at the court of St. Louis a wonderful mixture of
tolerance and intolerance. Joinville, who evidently spoke his mind freely
on all things, received frequent reproofs and lessons from the King; and
we hardly know which to wonder at most, the weakness of the arguments, or
the gentle and truly Christian spirit in which the King used them. The
King once asked Joinville how he knew that his father’s name was Symon.
Joinville replied he knew it because his mother had told him so. “Then,”
the King said, “you ought likewise firmly to believe all the articles of
faith which the Apostles attest, as you hear them sung every Sunday in the
Creed.” The use of such an argument by such a man leaves an impression on
the mind that the King himself was not free from religious doubts and
difficulties, and that his faith was built upon ground which was apt to
shake. And this impression is confirmed by a conversation which
immediately follows after this argument. It is long, but it is far too
important to be here omitted. The Bishop of Paris had told the King,
probably in order to comfort him after receiving from him the confession
of some of his own religious difficulties, that one day he received a
visit from a great master in divinity. The master threw himself at the
Bishop’s feet and cried bitterly. The Bishop said to him,—

“ ‘Master, do not despair; no one can sin so much that God could not
forgive him.’

“The master said, ‘I cannot help crying, for I believe I am a miscreant:
for I cannot bring my heart to believe the sacrament of the altar, as the
holy Church teaches it, and I know full well that it is the temptation of
the enemy.’

“ ‘Master,’ replied the Bishop, ‘tell me, when the enemy sends you this
temptation, does it please you?’

“And the master said, ‘Sir, it pains me as much as anything can pain.’

“ ‘Then I ask you,’ the Bishop continued, ‘would you take gold or silver
in order to avow with your mouth anything that is against the sacrament of
the altar, or against the other sacred sacraments of the Church?’

“And the master said, ‘Know, sir, that there is nothing in the world that
I should take; I would rather that all my limbs were torn from my body
than openly avow this.’

“ ‘Then,’ said the Bishop, ‘I shall tell you something else. You know that
the King of France made war against the King of England, and you know that
the castle which is nearest to the frontier is La Rochelle, in Poitou.
Now, I shall ask you, if the King had trusted you to defend La Rochelle,
and he had trusted me to defend the Castle of Laon, which is in the heart
of France, where the country is at peace, to whom ought the King to be
more beholden at the end of the war,—to you who had defended La Rochelle
without losing it, or to me who kept the Castle of Laon?’

“ ‘In the name of God,’ said the master, ‘to me who had kept La Rochelle
with losing it.’

“ ‘Master,’ said the Bishop, ‘I tell you that my heart is like the Castle
of Laon (Montleheri), for I feel no temptation and no doubt as to the
sacrament of the altar; therefore, I tell you, if God gives me one reward
because I believe firmly and in peace, He will give you four, because you
keep your heart for Him in this fight of tribulation, and have such
goodwill toward Him that for no earthly good, nor for any pain inflicted
on your body, you would forsake Him. Therefore, I say to you, be at ease;
your state is more pleasing to our Lord than my own.’ ”

When the master had heard this, he fell on his knees before the Bishop,
and felt again at peace.

Surely, if the cruel punishment inflicted by St. Louis on blasphemers is
behind our age, is not the love, the humility, the truthfulness of this
Bishop,—is not the spirit in which he acted toward the priest, and the
spirit in which he related this conversation to the King, somewhat in
advance of the century in which we live?

If we only dwell on certain passages of Joinville’s memoirs, it is easy to
say that he and his King, and the whole age in which they moved, were
credulous, engrossed by the mere formalities of religion, and fanatical in
their enterprise to recover Jerusalem and the Holy Land. But let us
candidly enter into their view of life, and many things which at first
seem strange and startling will become intelligible. Joinville does not
relate many miracles; and such is his good faith that we may implicitly
believe the facts, such as he states them, however we may differ as to the
interpretation by which, to Joinville’s mind, these facts assumed a
miraculous character. On their way to the Holy Land it seems that their
ship was windbound for several days, and that they were in danger of being
taken prisoners by the pirates of Barbary. Joinville recollected the
saying of a priest who had told him that, whatever had happened in his
parish, whether too much rain or too little rain, or anything else, if he
made three processions for three successive Saturdays, his prayer was
always heard. Joinville, therefore, recommended the same remedy. Seasick
as he was, he was carried on deck, and the procession was formed round the
two masts of the ship. As soon as this was done, the wind rose, and the
ship arrived at Cyprus the third Saturday. The same remedy was resorted to
a second time, and with equal effect. The King was waiting at Damietta for
his brother, the Comte de Poitiers, and his army, and was very uneasy
about the delay in his arrival. Joinville told the legate of the miracle
that had happened on their voyage to Cyprus. The legate consented to have
three processions on three successive Saturdays, and on the third Saturday
the Comte de Poitiers and his fleet arrived before Damietta. One more
instance may suffice. On their return to France a sailor fell overboard,
and was left in the water. Joinville, whose ship was close by, saw
something in the water; but, as he observed no struggle, he imagined it
was a cask. The man, however, was picked up; and when asked why he did not
exert himself, he replied that he saw no necessity for it. As soon as he
fell into the water he commended himself to _Nostre Dame_, and she
supported him by his shoulders till he was picked up by the King’s galley.
Joinville had a window painted in his chapel to commemorate this miracle;
and there, no doubt, the Virgin would be represented as supporting the
sailor exactly as he described it.

Now, it must be admitted that before the tribunal of the ordinary
philosophy of the nineteenth century, these miracles would be put down
either as inventions or as exaggerations. But let us examine the thoughts
and the language of that age, and we shall take a more charitable, and, we
believe, a more correct view. Men like Joinville did not distinguish
between a general and a special providence, and few who have carefully
examined the true import of words would blame him for that. Whatever
happened to him and his friends, the smallest as well as the greatest
events were taken alike as so many communications from God to man. Nothing
could happen to any one of them unless God willed it. “God wills it,” they
exclaimed, and put the cross on their breasts, and left house and home,
and wife and children, to fight the infidels in the Holy Land. The King
was ill and on the point of death, when he made a vow that if he
recovered, he would undertake a crusade. In spite of the dangers which
threatened him and his country, where every vassal was a rival, in spite
of the despair of his excellent mother, the King fulfilled his vow, and
risked not only his crown, but his life, without a complaint and without a
regret. It may be that the prospect of Eastern booty, or even of an
Eastern throne, had some part in exciting the pious zeal of the French
chivalry. Yet if we read of Joinville, who was then a young and gay
nobleman of twenty-four, with a young wife and a beautiful castle in
Champagne, giving up everything, confessing his sins, making reparation,
performing pilgrimages, and then starting for the East, there to endure
for five years the most horrible hardships; when we read of his sailors
singing a _Veni, Creator Spiritus_, before they hoisted their sails; when
we see how every day, in the midst of pestilence and battle, the King and
his Sénéchal and his knights say their prayers and perform their religious
duties; how in every danger they commend themselves to God or to their
saints; how for every blessing, for every escape from danger, they return
thanks to Heaven,—we easily learn to understand how natural it was that
such men should see miracles in every blessing vouchsafed to them, whether
great or small, just as the Jews of old, in that sense the true people of
God, saw miracles, saw the finger of God in every plague that visited
their camp, and in every spring of water that saved them from destruction.
When the Egyptians were throwing the Greek fire into the camp of the
Crusaders, St. Louis raised himself in his bed at the report of every
discharge of those murderous missiles, and, stretching forth his hands
towards heaven, he said, crying, “Good Lord God, protect my people.”
Joinville, after relating this, remarks, “And I believe truly that his
prayers served us well in our need.” And was he not right in this belief,
as right as the Israelites were when they saw Moses lifting up his heavy
arms, and they prevailed against Amalek? Surely this belief was put to a
hard test when a fearful plague broke out in the camp, when nearly the
whole French army was massacred, when the King was taken prisoner, when
the Queen, in childbed, had to make her old chamberlain swear that he
would kill her at the first approach of the enemy, when the small remnant
of that mighty French army had to purchase its return to France by a heavy
ransom. Yet nothing could shake Joinville’s faith in the ever-ready help
of our Lord, of the Virgin, and of the saints. “Be certain,” he writes,
“that the Virgin helped us, and she would have helped us more if we had
not offended her, her and her Son, as I said before.” Surely, with such
faith, credulity ceases to be credulity. Where there is credulity without
that living faith which sees the hand of God in everything, man’s
indignation is rightly roused. That credulity leads to self-conceit,
hypocrisy, and unbelief. But such was not the credulity of Joinville or of
his King, or of the Bishop who comforted the great master in theology. A
modern historian would not call the rescue of the drowning sailor, nor the
favorable wind which brought the Crusaders to Cyprus, nor the opportune
arrival of the Comte de Poitiers miracles, because the word “miracle” has
a different sense with us from what it had during the Middle Ages, from
what it had at the time of the Apostles, and from what it had at the time
of Moses. Yet to the drowning sailor his rescue was miraculous; to the
despairing King the arrival of his brother was a godsend; and to Joinville
and his crew, who were in imminent danger of being carried off as slaves
by Moorish pirates, the wind that brought them safe to Cyprus was more
than a fortunate accident. Our language differs from the language of
Joinville, yet in our heart of hearts we mean the same thing.

And nothing shows better the reality and healthiness of the religion of
those brave knights than their cheerful and open countenance, their
thorough enjoyment of all the good things of this life, their freedom in
thought and speech. You never catch Joinville canting, or with an
expression of blank solemnity. When his ship was surrounded by the galleys
of the Sultan, and when they held a council as to whether they should
surrender themselves to the Sultan’s fleet or to his army on shore, one of
his servants objected to all surrender. “Let us all be killed,” he said to
Joinville, “and then we shall all go straight to Paradise.” His advice,
however, was not followed, because, as Joinville says, “we did not believe
it.”

If we bear in mind that Joinville’s History was written after Louis has
been raised to the rank of a saint, his way of speaking of the King,
though always respectful, strikes us, nevertheless, as it must have struck
his contemporaries, as sometimes very plain and familiar. It is well known
that an attempt was actually made by the notorious Jesuit, le Père
Hardouin, to prove Joinville’s work as spurious, or, at all events, as
full of interpolations, inserted by the enemies of the Church. It was an
attempt which thoroughly failed, and which was too dangerous to be
repeated; but, on reading Joinville after reading the life and miracles of
St. Louis, one can easily understand that the soldier’s account of the
brave King was not quite palatable or welcome to the authors of the
legends of the royal saint. At the time when the King’s bones had begun to
work wretched miracles, the following story could hardly have sounded
respectful: “When the King was at Acre,” Joinville writes, “some pilgrims
on their way to Jerusalem wished to see him. Joinville went to the King,
and said, ‘Sire, there is a crowd of people who have asked me to show them
the royal saint, though _I_ have no wish as yet to kiss your bones.’ The
King laughed loud, and asked me to bring the people.”

In the thick of the battle, in which Joinville received five wounds and
his horse fifteen, and when death seemed almost certain, Joinville tells
us that the good Count of Soissons rode up to him and chaffed him, saying,
“Let those dogs loose, for, _par la quoife Dieu_,”—as he always used to
swear,—“we shall still talk of this day in the rooms of our ladies.”

The Crusades and the Crusaders, though they are only five or six centuries
removed from us, have assumed a kind of romantic character, which makes it
very difficult even for the historian to feel towards them the same human
interest which we feel for Cæsar or Pericles. Works like that of Joinville
are most useful in dispelling that mist which the chroniclers of old and
the romances of Walter Scott and others have raised round the heroes of
these holy wars. St. Louis and his companions, as described by Joinville,
not only in their glistening armor, but in their everyday attire, are
brought nearer to us, become intelligible to us, and teach us lessons of
humanity which we can learn from men only, and not from saints and heroes.
Here lies the real value of real history. It makes us familiar with the
thoughts of men who differ from us in manners and language, in thought and
religion, and yet with whom we are able to sympathize, and from whom we
are able to learn. It widens our minds and our hearts, and gives us that
true knowledge of the world and of human nature in all its phases which
but few can gain in the short span of their own life, and in the narrow
sphere of their friends and enemies. We can hardly imagine a better book
for boys to read or for men to ponder over; and we hope that M. de
Wailly’s laudable efforts may be crowned with complete success, and that,
whether in France or in England, no student of history will in future
imagine that he knows the true spirit of the Crusades and the Crusaders
who has not read once, and more than once, the original Memoirs of
Joinville, as edited, translated, and explained by the eminent Keeper of
the Imperial Library at Paris, M. Natalis de Wailly.

1866.





VIII. THE JOURNAL DES SAVANTS AND THE JOURNAL DE TRÉVOUX.(32)


For a hundred persons who, in this country, read the “Revue des Deux
Mondes,” how many are there who read the “Journal des Savants?” In France
the authority of that journal is indeed supreme; but its very title
frightens the general public, and its blue cover is but seldom seen on the
tables of the _salles de lecture_. And yet there is no French periodical
so well suited to the tastes of the better class of readers in England.
Its contributors are all members of the Institut de France; and, if we may
measure the value of a periodical by the honor which it reflects on those
who form its staff, no journal in France can vie with the “Journal des
Savants.” At the present moment we find on its roll such names as Cousin,
Flourens, Villemain, Mignet, Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire, Naudet, Prosper
Mérimé, Littré, Vitet—names which, if now and then seen on the covers of
the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” the “Revue Contemporaine,” or the “Revue
Moderne,” confer an exceptional lustre on these fortnightly or monthly
issues. The articles which are admitted into this select periodical may be
deficient now and then in those outward charms of diction by which French
readers like to be dazzled; but what in France is called _trop savant,
trop lourd_, is frequently far more palatable than the highly spiced
articles which are no doubt delightful to read, but which, like an
excellent French dinner, make you almost doubt whether you have dined or
not. If English journalists are bent on taking for their models the
fortnightly or monthly contemporaries of France, the “Journal des Savants”
might offer a much better chance of success than the more popular
_revues_. We should be sorry indeed to see any periodical published under
the superintendence of the “Ministre de l’Instruction Publique,” or of any
other member of the Cabinet; but, apart from that, a literary tribunal
like that formed by the members of the “Bureau du Journal des Savants”
would certainly be a great benefit to literary criticism. The general tone
that runs through their articles is impartial and dignified. Each writer
seems to feel the responsibility which attaches to the bench from which he
addresses the public, and we can of late years recall hardly any case
where the dictum of “noblesse oblige” has been disregarded in this the
most ancient among the purely literary journals of Europe.

The first number of the “Journal des Savants” was published more than two
hundred years ago, on the 5th of January, 1655. It was the first small
beginning in a branch of literature which has since assumed immense
proportions. Voltaire speaks of it as “le père de tous les ouvrages de ce
genre, dont l’Europe est aujourd’hui remplie.” It was published at first
once a week, every Monday; and the responsible editor was M. de Sallo,
who, in order to avoid the retaliations of sensitive authors, adopted the
name of Le Sieur de Hedouville, the name, it is said, of his _valet de
chambre_. The articles were short, and in many cases they only gave a
description of the books, without any critical remarks. The Journal
likewise gave an account of important discoveries in science and art, and
of other events that might seem of interest to men of letters. Its success
must have been considerable, if we may judge by the number of rival
publications which soon sprang up in France and in other countries of
Europe. In England, a philosophical journal on the same plan was started
before the year was over. In Germany, the “Journal des Savants” was
translated into Latin by F. Nitzschius in 1668, and before the end of the
seventeenth century the “Giornale de’ Letterati” (1668), the “Bibliotheca
Volante” (1677), the “Acta Eruditorum” (1682), the “Nouvelles de la
République des Lettres” (1684), the “Bibliothèque Universelle et
Historique” (1686), the “Histoire des Ouvrages des Savants” (1687), and
the “Monatliche Unterredungen” (1689), had been launched in the principal
countries of Europe. In the next century it was remarked of the journals
published in Germany, “Plura dixeris pullulasse brevi tempore quam fungi
nascuntur unâ nocte.”

Most of these journals were published by laymen, and represented the
purely intellectual interests of society. It was but natural, therefore,
that the clergy also should soon have endeavored to possess a journal of
their own. The Jesuits, who at that time were the most active and
influential order, were not slow to appreciate this new opportunity for
directing public opinion, and they founded in 1701 their famous journal,
the “Mémoires de Trévoux.” Famous indeed it might once be called, and yet
at present how little is known of that collection! how seldom are its
volumes called for in our public libraries! It was for a long time the
rival of the “Journal des Savants.” Under the editorship of Le Père
Berthier it fought bravely against Diderot, Voltaire, and other heralds of
the French Revolution. It weathered even the fatal year of 1762, but,
after changing its name, and moderating its pretensions, it ceased to
appear in 1782. The long rows of its volumes are now piled up in our
libraries likes rows of tombstones, which we pass by without even stopping
to examine the names and titles of those who are buried in these vast
catacombs of thought.

It was a happy idea that led the Père P. C. Sommervogel, himself a member
of the order of the Jesuits, to examine the dusty volumes of the “Journal
de Trévoux,” and to do for it the only thing that could be done to make it
useful once more, at least to a certain degree, namely, to prepare a
general index of the numerous subjects treated in its volumes, on the
model of the great index, published in 1753, of the “Journal des Savants.”
His work, published at Paris in 1865, consists of three volumes. The first
gives an index of the original dissertations; the second and third, of the
works criticised in the “Journal de Trévoux.” It is a work of much smaller
pretensions than the index to the “Journal des Savants;” yet, such as it
is, it is useful, and will amply suffice for the purposes of those few
readers who have from time to time to consult the literary annals of the
Jesuits in France.

The title of the “Mémoires de Trévoux” was taken from the town of Trévoux,
the capital of the principality of Dombes, which Louis XIV. had conferred
on the Duc de Maine, with all the privileges of a sovereign. Like Louis
XIV., the young prince gloried in the title of a patron of art and
science, but, as the pupil of Madame de Maintenon, he devoted himself even
more zealously to the defense of religion. A printing-office was founded
at Trévoux, and the Jesuits were invited to publish a new journal, “où
l’on eût principalement en vûë la défense de la religion.” This was the
“Journal de Trévoux,” published for the first time in February, 1701,
under the title of “Mémoires pour l’Histoire des Sciences et des Beaux
Arts, recueillis par l’ordre de Son Altesse Sérénissime, Monseigneur
Prince Souverain de Dombes.” It was entirely and professedly in the hands
of the Jesuits, and we find among its earliest contributors such names as
Catrou, Tournemine, and Hardouin. The opportunities for collecting
literary and other intelligence enjoyed by the members of that order were
extraordinary. We doubt whether any paper, even in our days, has so many
intelligent correspondents in every part of the world. If any astronomical
observation was to be made in China or America, a Jesuit missionary was
generally on the spot to make it. If geographical information was wanted,
eye-witnesses could write from India or Africa to state what was the exact
height of mountains or the real direction of rivers. The architectural
monuments of the great nations of antiquity could easily be explored and
described, and the literary treasures of India or China or Persia could be
ransacked by men ready for any work that required devotion and
perseverance, and that promised to throw additional splendor on the order
of Loyola. No missionary society has ever understood how to utilize its
resources in the interest of science like the Jesuits; and if our own
missionaries may on many points take warning from the history of the
Jesuits, on that one point at least they might do well to imitate their
example.

Scientific interests, however, were by no means the chief motive of the
Jesuits in founding their journal, and the controversial character began
soon to preponderate in their articles. Protestant writers received but
little mercy in the pages of the “Journal de Trévoux,” and the battle was
soon raging in every country of Europe between the flying batteries of the
Jesuits and the strongholds of Jansenism, of Protestantism, or of liberal
thought in general. Le Clerc was attacked for his “Harmonia Evangelica;”
Boileau even was censured for his “Epître sur l’Amour de Dieu.” But the
old lion was too much for his reverend satirists. The following is a
specimen of his reply:—

“Mes Révérends Pères en Dieu,
Et mes confrères en Satire.
Dans vos Escrits dans plus d’un lieu
Je voy qu’à mes dépens vous affectés de rire;
Mais ne craignés-vous point, que pour rire de Vous,
Relisant Juvénal, refeuilletant Horace,
Je ne ranime encor ma satirique audace?
Grands Aristarques de Trévoux,
N’allés point de nouveau faire courir aux armes,
Un athlète tout prest à prendre son congé,
Qui par vos traits malins au combat rengagé
Peut encore aux Rieurs faire verser des larmes.
Apprenés un mot de Régnier,
Notre célèbre Devancier,
_Corsaires attaquant Corsaires_
_No font pas_, dit-il, _leurs affaires_.”

Even stronger language than this became soon the fashion in journalistic
warfare. In reply to an attack on the Marquis Orsi, the “Giornale de’
Letterati d’Italia” accused the “Journal de Trévoux” of _menzogna_ and
_impostura_, and in Germany the “Acta Eruditorum Lipsiensium” poured out
even more violent invectives against the Jesuitical critics. It is
wonderful how well Latin seems to lend itself to the expression of angry
abuse. Few modern writers have excelled the following tirade, either in
Latin or in German:—


    “Quæ mentis stupiditas! At si qua est, Jesuitarum est.... Res est
    intoleranda, Trevoltianos Jesuitas, toties contusos, iniquissimum
    in suis diariis tribunal erexisse, in eoque non ratione duce, sed
    animi impotentia, non æquitatis legibus, sed præjudiciis, non
    veritatis lance, sed affectus aut odi pondere, optimis
    exquisitissimisque operibus detrahere, pessima ad cœlum usque
    laudibus efferre: ignaris auctoribus, modo secum sentiant, aut
    sibi faveant, ubique blandiri, doctissimos sibi non plane pleneque
    deditos plus quam canino dente mordere.”


What has been said of other journals was said of the “Journal de
Trévoux:”—


    “Les auteurs de ce journal, qui a son mérite, sont constants à
    louer tous les ouvrages de ceux qu’ils affectionnent, et pour
    éviter une froide monotonie, ils exercent quelquefois la critique
    sur les écrivans à qui rien ne les oblige de faire grâce.”


It took some time before authors became at all reconciled to these new
tribunals of literary justice. Even a writer like Voltaire, who braved
public opinion more than anybody, looked upon journals, and the influence
which they soon gained in France and abroad, as a great evil. “Rien n’a
plus nui à la littérature,” he writes, “plus répandu le mauvais goût, et
plus confondu le vrai avec le faux.” Before the establishment of literary
journals, a learned writer had indeed little to fear. For a few years, at
all events, he was allowed to enjoy the reputation of having published a
book; and this by itself was considered a great distinction by the world
at large. Perhaps his book was never noticed at all, or, if it was, it was
only criticised in one of those elaborate letters which the learned men of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries used to write to each other, which
might be forwarded indeed to one or two other professors, but which never
influenced public opinion. Only in extreme cases a book would be answered
by another book, but this would necessarily require a long time; nor would
it at all follow that those who had read and admired the original work
would have an opportunity of consulting the volume that contained its
refutation. This happy state of things came to an end after the year 1655.
Since the invention of printing, no more important event had happened in
the republic of letters than the introduction of a periodical literature.
It was a complete revolution, differing from other revolutions only by the
quickness with which the new power was recognized even by its fiercest
opponents.

The power of journalism, however, soon found its proper level, and the
history of its rise and progress, which has still to be written, teaches
the same lesson as the history of political powers. Journals which
defended private interests, or the interests of parties, whether
religious, political, or literary, never gained that influence which was
freely conceded to those who were willing to serve the public at large in
pointing out real merit wherever it could be found, and in unmasking
pretenders, to whatever rank they might belong. The once all-powerful
organ of the Jesuits, the “Journal de Trèvoux,” has long ceased to exist,
and even to be remembered; the “Journal des Savants” still holds, after
more than two hundred years, that eminent position which was claimed for
it by its founder, as the independent advocate of justice and truth.

1866.





IX. CHASOT.(33)


History is generally written _en face_. It reminds us occasionally of
certain royal family pictures, where the centre is occupied by the king
and queen, while their children are ranged on each side like organ-pipes,
and the courtiers and ministers are grouped behind, according to their
respective ranks. All the figures seem to stare at some imaginary
spectator, who would require at least a hundred eyes to take in the whole
of the assemblage. This place of the imaginary spectator falls generally
to the lot of the historian, and of those who read great historical works;
and perhaps this is inevitable. But it is refreshing for once to change
this unsatisfactory position, and, instead of always looking straight in
the faces of kings, and queens, and generals, and ministers, to catch, by
a side-glance, a view of the times, as they appeared to men occupying a
less central and less abstract position than that of the general
historian. If we look at the Palace of Versailles from the terrace in
front of the edifice, we are impressed with its broad magnificence, but we
are soon tired, and all that is left in our memory is a vast expanse of
windows, columns, statues, and wall. But let us retire to some of the
_bosquets_ on each side of the main avenue, and take a diagonal view of
the great mansion of Louis XIV., and though we lose part of the palace,
the whole picture gains in color and life, and it brings before our mind
the figure of the great monarch himself, so fond of concealing part of his
majestic stateliness under the shadow of those very groves where we are
sitting.

It was a happy thought of M. Kurd von Schlözer to try a similar experiment
with Frederic the Great, and to show him to us, not as the great king,
looking history in the face, but as seen near and behind another person,
for whom the author has felt so much sympathy as to make him the central
figure of a very pretty historical picture. This person is Chasot.
Frederic used to say of him, _C’est le matador de ma jeunesse_,—a saying
which is not found in Frederic’s works, but which is nevertheless
authentic. One of the chief magistrates of the old Hanseatic town of
Lübeck, Syndicus Curtius,—the father, we believe, of the two distinguished
scholars, Ernst and Georg Curtius,—was at school with the two sons of
Chasot, and he remembers these royal words, when they were repeated in all
the drawing-rooms of the city where Chasot spent many years of his life.
Frederic’s friendship for Chasot is well known, for there are two poems of
the king addressed to this young favorite. They do not give a very high
idea either of the poetical power of the monarch, or of the moral
character of his friend; but they contain some manly and straightforward
remarks, which make up for a great deal of shallow declamation. This young
Chasot was a French nobleman, a fresh, chivalrous, buoyant
nature,—adventurous, careless, extravagant, brave, full of romance, happy
with the happy, and galloping through life like a true cavalry officer. He
met Frederic in 1734. Louis XV. had taken up the cause of Stanislas
Lesczynski, King of Poland, his father-in-law, and Chasot served in the
French army which, under the Duke of Berwick, attacked Germany on the
Rhine, in order to relieve Poland from the simultaneous pressure of
Austria and Russia. He had the misfortune to kill a French officer in a
duel, and was obliged to take refuge in the camp of the old Prince Eugène.
Here the young Prince of Prussia soon discovered the brilliant parts of
the French nobleman, and when his father, Frederic William I., no longer
allowed him to serve under Eugène, he asked Chasot to follow him to
Prussia. The years from 1735 to 1740 were happy years for the prince,
though he, no doubt, would have preferred taking an active part in the
campaign. He writes to his sister:—


    “J’aurais répondu plus tôt, si je n’avais été très-affligé de ce
    que le roi ne veut pas me permettre d’aller en campagne. Je le lui
    ai demandé quatre fois, et lui ai rappelé la promesse qu’il m’en
    avait faite; mais point de nouvelle; il m’a dit qu’il avait des
    raisons très-cachées qui l’en empêchaient. Je le crois, car je
    suis persuadé qu’il ne les sait pas lui-même.”


But, as he wished to be on good terms with his father, he stayed at home,
and travelled about to inspect his future kingdom. “C’est un peu plus
honnête qu’en Sibérie,” he writes, “mais pas de beaucoup.” Frederic, after
his marriage, took up his abode in the Castle of Rheinsberg, near
Neu-Ruppin, and it was here that he spent the happiest part of his
existence. M. de Schlözer has described this period in the life of the
king with great art; and he has pointed out how Frederic, while he seemed
to live for nothing but pleasure,—shooting, dancing, music, and
poetry,—was given at the same time to much more serious
occupations,—reading and composing works on history, strategy, and
philosophy, and maturing plans which, when the time of their execution
came, seemed to spring from his head full-grown and full-armed. He writes
to his sister, the Markgravine of Baireuth, in 1737:—


    “Nous nous divertissons de rien, et n’avons aucun soin des choses
    de la vie, qui la rendent désagréable et qui jettent du dégoût sur
    les plaisirs. Nous faisons la tragédie et la comédie, nous avons
    bal, mascarade, et musique à toute sauce. Voilà un abrégé de nos
    amusements.”


And again, he writes to his friend Suhm, at Petersburg:—


    “Nous allons représenter l’_Œdipe_ de Voltaire, dans lequel je
    ferai le héros de théâtre; j’ai choisi le rôle de Philoctéte.”


A similar account of the royal household at Rheinsberg is given by
Bielfeld:—


    “C’est ainsi que les jours s’écoulent ici dans une tranquillité
    assaisonneé de tous les plaisirs qui peuvent flatter une âme
    raisonnable. Chère de roi, vin des dieux, musique des anges,
    promenades délicieuses dans les jardins et dans les bois, parties
    sur l’eau, culture des lettres et des beaux-arts, conversation
    spirituelle, tout concourt à repandre dans ce palais enchanté des
    charmes sur la vie.”


Frederic, however, was not a man to waste his time in mere pleasure. He
shared in the revelries of his friends, but he was perhaps the only person
at Rheinsberg who spent his evenings in reading Wolff’s “Metaphysics.” And
here let us remark, that this German prince, in order to read that work,
was obliged to have the German translated into French by his friend Suhm,
the Saxon minister at Petersburg. Chasot, who had no very definite duties
to perform at Rheinsberg, was commissioned to copy Suhm’s manuscript,—nay,
he was nearly driven to despair when he had to copy it a second time,
because Frederic’s monkey, Mimi, had set fire to the first copy. We have
Frederic’s opinion on Wolff’s “Metaphysics,” in his “Works,” vol. i. p.
263:—


    “Les universités prosperaient en même temps. Halle et Francfort
    étaient fournies de savants professeurs: Thomasius, Gundling,
    Ludewig, Wolff, et Stryke tenaient le premier rang pour la
    célébrité et faisaient nombre de disciples. Wolff commenta
    l’ingénieux système de Leibnitz sur les monades, et noya dans un
    déluge de paroles, d’arguments, de corollaires, et de citations,
    quelques problèmes que Leibnitz avait jetées peut-être comme une
    amorce aux métaphysiciens. Le professeur de Halle écrivait
    laborieusement nombre de volumes, qui, au lieu de pouvoir
    instruire des hommes faits, servirent tout au plus de catéchisme
    de didactique pour des enfants. Les monades ont mis aux prises les
    métaphysiciens et les géomêtres d’Allemagne, et ils disputent
    encore sur la divisibilité de la matière.”


In another place, however, he speaks of Wolff with greater respect, and
acknowledges his influence in the German universities. Speaking of the
reign of his father, he writes:—


    “Mais la faveur et les brigues remplissaient les chaires de
    professeurs dans les universités; les dévots, qui se mêlent de
    tout, acquirent une part à la direction des universités; ils y
    persécutaient le bon sens, et surtout la classe des philosophes:
    Wolff fut exilé pour avoir dèduit avec un ordre admirable les
    preuves sur l’existence de Dieu. La jeune noblesse qui se vouait
    aux armes, crût déroger en étudiant, et comme l’esprit humain
    donne toujours dans les excès, ils regardèrent l’ignorance comme
    un titre de mérite, et le savoir comme une pédanterie absurde.”


During the same time, Frederic composed his “Refutation of Macchiavelli,”
which was published in 1740, and read all over Europe; and besides the gay
parties of the court, he organized the somewhat mysterious society of the
_Ordre de Bayard_, of which his brothers, the Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick,
the Duke Wilhelm of Brunswick-Bevern, Keyserling, Fouqué, and Chasot, were
members. Their meetings had reference to serious political matters, though
Frederic himself was never initiated by his father into the secrets of
Prussian policy till almost on his death-bed. The king died in 1740, and
Frederic was suddenly called away from his studies and pleasures at
Rheinsberg, to govern a rising kingdom which was watched with jealousy by
all its neighbors. He describes his state of mind, shortly before the
death of his father, in the following words:—


    “Vous pouvez bien juger que je suis assez tracassé dans la
    situation où je me trouve. On me laisse peu de repos, mais
    l’intérieur est tranquille, et je puis vous assurer que je n’ai
    jamais été plus philosophe qu’en cette occasion-ci. Je regards
    avec des yeux d’indifférence tout ce qui m’attend, sans désirer la
    fortune ni la craindre, plein de compassion pour ceux qui
    souffrent, d’estime pour les honnêtes gens, et de tendresse pour
    mes amis.”


As soon, however as he had mastered his new position, the young king was
again the patron of art, of science, of literature, and of social
improvements of every kind. Voltaire had been invited to Berlin, to
organize a French theatre, when suddenly the news of the death of Charles
VI., the Emperor of Germany, arrived at Berlin. How well Frederic
understood what was to follow, we learn from a letter to Voltaire:—


    “Mon cher Voltaire,—L’événement le moins prévu du monde m’empêche,
    pour cette fois, d’ouvrir mon âme à la vôtre comme d’ordinaire, et
    de bavarder comme je le voudrais. L’empereur est mort. Cette mort
    dérange toutes mes idées pacifiques, et je crois qu’il s’agira, au
    mois de juin, plutôt de poudre à canon, de soldats, de tranchées,
    que d’actrices, de ballets et de théâtre.”


He was suffering from fever, and he adds:—


    “Je vais faire passer ma fièvre, car j’ai besoin de ma machine, et
    il en faut tirer à présent tout le parti possible.”


Again he writes to Algarotti:—


    “Une bagatelle comme est la mort de l’empereur ne demande pas de
    grands mouvements. Tout était prévu, tout était arrangé. Ainsi il
    ne s’agit que d’exécuter des desseins que j’ai roulés depuis long
    temps dans ma tête.”


We need not enter into the history of the first Silesian war; but we see
clearly from these expressions, that the occupation of Silesia, which the
house of Brandenburg claimed by right, had formed part of the policy of
Prussia long before the death of the emperor; and the peace of Breslau, in
1742, realized a plan which had probably been the subject of many debates
at Rheinsberg. During this first war, Chasot obtained the most brilliant
success. At Mollwitz, he saved the life of the king; and the following
account of this exploit was given to M. de Schlözer by members of Chasot’s
family: An Austrian cavalry officer, with some of his men, rode up close
to the king. Chasot was near. “Where is the king?” the officer shouted;
and Chasot, perceiving the imminent danger, sprang forward, declared
himself to be the king, and sustained for some time single-handed the most
violent combat with the Austrian soldiers. At last he was rescued by his
men, but not without having received a severe wound across his forehead.
The king thanked him, and Voltaire afterwards celebrated his bravery in
the following lines:—

“Il me souvient encore de ce jour mémorable
Où l’illustre Chasot, ce guerrier formidable,
Sauva par sa valeur le plus grand de nos rois.
O Prusse! élève un temple à ses fameux exploits.”

Chasot soon rose to the rank of major, and received large pecuniary
rewards from the king. The brightest event, however, of his life was still
to come; and this was the battle of Hohenfriedberg, in 1745. In spite of
Frederic’s successes, his position before that engagement was extremely
critical. Austria had concluded a treaty with England, Holland and Saxony
against Prussia. France declined to assist Frederic, Russia threatened to
take part against him. On the 19th of April, the king wrote to his
minister:—


    “La situation présente est aussi violente que désagréable. Mon
    parti est tout pris. S’il s’agit de se battre, nous le ferons en
    désespérés. Enfin, jamais crise n’a été plus grande que la mienne.
    Il faut laisser au temps de débrouiller cette fusée, et au destin,
    s’il y en a un, à décider de l’événement.”


And again:—


    “J’ai jeté le bonnet pardessus les moulins; je me prépare à tous
    les événements qui peuvent m’arriver. Que la fortune me soit
    contraire ou favorable, cela ne m’abaissera ni m’enorgueillira; et
    s’il faut périr, ce sera avec gloire et l’épée à la main.”


The decisive day arrived—“le jour le plus décisif de ma fortune.” The
night before the battle, the king said to the French ambassador—“Les
ennemis sont où je les voulais, et je les attaque demain;” and on the
following day the battle of Hohenfriedberg was won. How Chasot
distinguished himself, we may learn from Frederic’s own description:—

“Muse dis-moi, comment en ces moments
Chasot brilla, faisant voler des têtes,
De maints uhlans faisant de vrais squelettes,
Et des hussards, devant lui s’echappant,
Fandant les uns, les autres transperçant,
Et, maniant sa flamberge tranchante,
Mettait en fuite, et donnait l’épouvante
Aux ennemis effarés et tremblants.
Tel Jupiter est peint armé du foudre,
Et tel Chasot réduit l’uhlan en poudre.”

In his account of the battle, the king wrote:—


    “Action inouie dans l’histoire, et dont le succès est dû aux
    Généraux Gessler et Schmettau, au Colonel Schwerin _et au brave
    Major Chasot, dont la valeur et la conduite se sont fait connaître
    dans trois batailles également_.”


And in his “Histoire de mon Temps,” he wrote:—


    “Un fait aussi rare, aussi glorieux, mérite d’être écrit en
    lettres d’or dans les fastes prussiens. Le Général Schwerin, _le
    Major Chasot_ et beaucoup d’officiers s’y firent un nom immortel.”


How, then, is it that, in the later edition of Frederic’s “Histoire de mon
Temps,” the name of Chasot is erased? How is it that, during the whole of
the Seven Years’ War, Chasot is never mentioned? M. de Schlözer gives us a
complete answer to this question, and we must say that Frederic did not
behave well to the _matador de sa jeunesse_. Chasot had a duel with a
Major Bronickowsky, in which his opponent was killed. So far as we can
judge from the documents which M. de Schlözer has obtained from Chasot’s
family, Chasot had been forced to fight; but the king believed that he had
sought a quarrel with the Polish officer, and, though a court-martial
found him not guilty, Frederic sent him to the fortress of Spandau. This
was the first estrangement between Chasot and the king; and though after a
time he was received again at court, the friendship between the king and
the young nobleman who had saved his life had received a rude shock.

Chasot spent the next few years in garrison at Treptow; and, though he was
regularly invited by Frederic to be present at the great festivities at
Berlin, he seems to have been a more constant visitor at the small court
of the Duchess of Strelitz, not far from his garrison, than at Potsdam.
The king employed him on a diplomatic mission, and in this also Chasot was
successful. But notwithstanding the continuance of this friendly
intercourse, both parties felt chilled, and the least misunderstanding was
sure to lead to a rupture. The king, jealous perhaps of Chasot’s frequent
visits at Strelitz, and not satisfied with the drill of his regiment,
expressed himself in strong terms about Chasot at a review in 1751. The
latter asked for leave of absence in order to return to his country and
recruit his health. He had received fourteen wounds in the Prussian
service, and his application could not be refused. There was another cause
of complaint, on which Chasot seems to have expressed himself freely. He
imagined that Frederic had not rewarded his services with sufficient
liberality. He expressed himself in the following words:—


    “Je ne sais quel malheureux guignon poursuit le roi: mais ce
    guignon se reproduit dans tout ce que sa majesté entrepend ou
    ordonne. Toujours ses vues sont bonnes, ses plans sont sages,
    réfléchis et justes; et toujours le succès est nul ou
    très-imparfait, et pourquoi? Toujours pour la même cause! parce
    qu’il manque un louis à l’exécution! un louis de plus, et tout
    irait à merveille. Son guignon veut que partout il retienne ce
    maudit louis; et tout se fait mal.”


How far this is just, we are unable to say. Chasot was reckless about
money, and whatever the king might have allowed him, he would always have
wanted one louis more. But on the other hand, Chasot was not the only
person who complained of Frederic’s parsimony; and the French proverb, “On
ne peut pas travailler pour le roi de Prusse,” probably owes its origin to
the complaints of Frenchmen who flocked to Berlin at that time in great
numbers, and returned home disappointed. Chasot went to France, where he
was well received, and he soon sent an intimation to the king that he did
not mean to return to Berlin. In 1752 his name was struck off the Prussian
army-list. Frederic was offended, and the simultaneous loss of many
friends, who either died or left his court, made him _de mauvaise humeur_.
It is about this time that he writes to his sister:—


    “J’étudie beaucoup, et cela me soulage réellement; mais lorsque
    mon esprit fait des retours sur les temps passés, alors les plaies
    du cœur se rouvrent et je regrette inutilement les pertes que j’ai
    faites.”


Chasot, however, soon returned to Germany, and probably in order to be
near the court of Strelitz, took up his abode in the old free town of
Lübeck. He became a citizen of Lübeck in 1754, and in 1759 was made
commander of its militia. Here his life seems to have been very agreeable,
and he was treated with great consideration and liberality. Chasot was
still young, as he was born in 1716, and he now thought of marriage. This
he accomplished in the following manner. There was at that time an artist
of some celebrity at Lübeck,—Stefano Torelli. He had a daughter whom he
had left at Dresden to be educated, and whose portrait he carried about on
his snuff-box. Chasot met him at dinner, saw the snuff-box, fell in love
with the picture, and proposed to the father to marry his daughter
Camilla. Camilla was sent for. She left Dresden, travelled through the
country, which was then occupied by Prussian troops, met the king in his
camp, received his protection, arrived safely at Lübeck, and in the same
year was married to Chasot. Frederic was then in the thick of the Seven
Years’ War, but Chasot, though he was again on friendly terms with the
king, did not offer him his sword. He was too happy at Lübeck with his
Camilla, and he made himself useful to the king by sending him recruits.
One of the recruits he offered was his son, and in a letter, April 8,
1760, we see the king accepting this young recruit in the most gracious
terms:—


    “J’accepte volontiers, cher de Chasot, la recrue qui vous doit son
    être, et je serai parrain de l’enfant qui vous naîtra, au cas que
    ce soit un fils. Nous tuons les hommes, tandis que vous en
    faites.”


It was a son, and Chasot writes:—


    “Si ce garçon me ressemble, Sire, il n’aura pas une goutte de sang
    dans ses veines qui ne soit à vous.”


M. de Schlözer, who is himself a native of Lübeck, has described the later
years of Chasot’s life in that city with great warmth and truthfulness.
The diplomatic relations of the town with Russia and Denmark were not
without interest at that time, because Peter III., formerly Duke of
Holstein, had declared war against Denmark in order to substantiate his
claims to the Danish crown. Chasot had actually the pleasure of fortifying
Lübeck, and carrying on preparations for war on a small scale, till Peter
was dethroned by his wife, Catherine. All this is told in a very
comprehensive and luminous style; and it is not without regret that we
find ourselves in the last chapter, where M. de Schlözer describes the
last meetings of Chasot and Frederic in 1779, 1784, and 1785. Frederic had
lost nearly all his friends, and he was delighted to see the _matador de
sa jeunesse_ once more. He writes:—


    “Une chose qui n’est presque arrivée qu’à moi est que j’ai perdu
    tous mes amis de cœur et mes anciennes connaissances; ce sont des
    plaies dont le cœur saigne long-temps, que la philosophie apaise,
    mais que sa main ne saurait guérir.”


How pleasant for the king to find at least one man with whom he could talk
of the old days of Rheinsberg,—of Fräulein von Schack and Fräulein von
Walmoden, of Cæsarion and Jordan, of Mimi and le Tourbillon! Chasot’s two
sons entered the Prussian service, though, in the manner in which they are
received, we find Frederic again acting more as king than as friend.
Chasot in 1784 was still as lively as ever, whereas the king: was in bad
health. The latter writes to his old friend, “Si nous ne nous revoyons
bientôt, nous ne nous reverrons jamais;” and when Chasot had arrived,
Frederic writes to Prince Heinrich, “Chasot est venu ici de Lübeck; il ne
parle que de mangeaille, de vins de Champagne, du Rhin, de Madère, de
Hongrie, et du faste de messieurs les marchands de la bourse de Lübeck.”

Such was the last meeting of these two knights of the _Ordre de Bayard_.
The king died in 1786, without seeing the approach of the revolutionary
storm which was soon to upset the throne of the Bourbons. Chasot died in
1797. He began to write his memoirs in 1789, and it is to some of their
fragments, which had been preserved by his family, and were handed over to
M. Kurd de Schlözer, that we owe this delightful little book. Frederic the
Great used to complain that Germans could not write history:—


    “Ce siècle ne produisit aucun bon historien. On chargea Teissier
    d’écrire l’histoire de Brandebourg: il en fit le panégyrique.
    Pufendorf écrivit la vie de Frédéric-Guillaume, et, pour ne rien
    omettre, il n’oublia ni ses clercs de chancellerie, ni ses valets
    de chambre dont il put recueillir les noms. Nos auteurs ont, ce me
    semble, toujours péché, faute de discerner les choses essentielles
    des accessoires, d’éclaircir les faits, de reserrer leur prose
    traînante et excessivement sujette aux inversions, aux nombreuses
    épithètes, et d’écrire en pédants plutôt qu’en hommes de génie.”


We believe that Frederic would not have said this of a work like that of
M. de Schlözer; and as to Chasot, it is not too much to say that, after
the days of Mollwitz and Hohenfriedberg, the day on which M. de Schlözer
undertook to write his biography was perhaps the most fortunate for his
fame.

1856.





X. SHAKESPEARE.(34)


The city of Frankfort, the birthplace of Goethe, sends her greeting to the
city of Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of Shakespeare. The old free
town of Frankfort, which, since the days of Frederick Barbarossa, has seen
the Emperors of Germany crowned within her walls, might well at all times
speak in the name of Germany. But to-day she sends her greeting, not as
the proud mother of German Emperors, but as the prouder mother of the
greatest among the poets of Germany; and it is from the very house in
which Goethe lived, and which has since become the seat of “the Free
German Institute for Science and Art,” that this message of the German
admirers and lovers of Shakespeare has been sent, which I am asked to
present to you, the Mayor and Council of Stratford-on-Avon.

When honor was to be done to the memory of Shakespeare, Germany could not
be absent, for next to Goethe and Schiller there is no poet so truly loved
by us, so thoroughly our own, as your Shakespeare. He is no stranger with
us, no mere classic, like Homer, or Virgil, or Dante, or Corneille, whom
we admire as we admire a marble statue. He has become one of ourselves,
holding his own place in the history of our literature, applauded in our
theatres, read in our cottages, studied, known, loved, “as far as sounds
the German tongue.” There is many a student in Germany who has learned
English solely in order to read Shakespeare in the original, and yet we
possess a translation of Shakespeare with which few translations of any
work can vie in any language. What we in Germany owe to Shakespeare must
be read in the history of our literature. Goethe was proud to call himself
a pupil of Shakespeare. I shall at this moment allude to one debt of
gratitude only which Germany owes to the poet of Stratford-on-Avon. I do
not speak of the poet only, and of his art, so perfect because so artless;
I think of the man with his large, warm heart, with his sympathy for all
that is genuine, unselfish, beautiful, and good; with his contempt for all
that is petty, mean, vulgar, and false. It is from his plays that our
young men in Germany form their first ideas of England and the English
nation, and in admiring and loving him we have learned to admire and to
love you who may proudly call him your own. And it is right that this
should be so. As the height of the Alps is measured by Mont Blanc, let the
greatness of England be measured by the greatness of Shakespeare. Great
nations make great poets, great poets make great nations. Happy the nation
that possesses a poet like Shakespeare. Happy the youth of England whose
first ideas of this world in which they are to live are taken from his
pages. The silent influence of Shakespeare’s poetry on millions of young
hearts in England, in Germany, in all the world, shows the almost
superhuman power of human genius. If we look at that small house, in a
small street of a small town of a small island, and then think of the
world-embracing, world-quickening, world-ennobling spirit that burst forth
from that small garret, we have learned a lesson and carried off a
blessing for which no pilgrimage would have been too long. Though the
great festivals which in former days brought together people from all
parts of Europe to worship at the shrine of Canterbury exist no more, let
us hope, for the sake of England, more even than for the sake of
Shakespeare, that this will not be the last Shakespeare festival in the
annals of Stratford-on-Avon. In this cold and critical age of ours the
power of worshipping, the art of admiring, the passion of loving what is
great and good are fast dying out. May England never be ashamed to show to
the world that she can love, that she can admire, that she can worship the
greatest of her poets! May Shakespeare live on in the love of each
generation that grows up in England! May the youth of England long
continue to be nursed, to be fed, to be reproved and judged by his spirit!
With that nation—that truly English, because truly Shakespearian
nation—the German nation will always be united by the strongest
sympathies; for, superadded to their common blood, their common religion,
their common battles and victories, they will always have in Shakespeare a
common teacher, a common benefactor, and a common friend.

_April, 1864._





XI. BACON IN GERMANY.(35)


“If our German philosophy is considered in England and in France as German
dreaming, we ought not to render evil for evil, but rather to prove the
groundlessness of such accusations by endeavoring ourselves to appreciate,
without any prejudice, the philosophers of France and England, such as
they are, and doing them that justice which they deserve; especially as,
in scientific subjects, injustice means ignorance.” With these words M.
Kuno Fischer introduces his work on Bacon to the German public; and what
he says is evidently intended, not as an attack upon the conceit of
French, and the exclusiveness of English philosophers, but rather as an
apology which the author feels that he owes to his own countrymen. It
would seem, indeed, as if a German was bound to apologize for treating
Bacon as an equal of Leibnitz, Kant, Hegel, and Schelling. Bacon’s name is
never mentioned by German writers without some proviso that it is only by
a great stretch of the meaning of the word, or by courtesy, that he can be
called a philosopher. His philosophy, it is maintained, ends where all
true philosophy begins; and his style or method has frequently been
described as unworthy of a systematic thinker. Spinoza, who has exercised
so great an influence on the history of thought in Germany, was among the
first who spoke slightingly of the inductive philosopher. When treating of
the causes of error, he writes, “What he (Bacon) adduces besides, in order
to explain error, can easily be traced back to the Cartesian theory; it is
this, that the human will is free and more comprehensive than the
understanding, or, as Bacon expresses himself in a more confused manner,
in the forty-ninth aphorism, ‘The human understanding is not a pure light,
but obscured by the will.’ ” In works on the general history of
philosophy, German authors find it difficult to assign any place to Bacon.
Sometimes he is classed with the Italian school of natural philosophy,
sometimes he is contrasted with Jacob Boehme. He is named as one of the
many who helped to deliver mankind from the thralldom of scholasticism.
But any account of what he really was, what he did to immortalize his
name, and to gain that prominent position among his own countrymen which
he has occupied to the present day, we should look for in vain even in the
most complete and systematic treatises on the history of philosophy
published in Germany. Nor does this arise from any wish to depreciate the
results of English speculation in general. On the contrary, we find that
Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume are treated with great respect. They
occupy well-marked positions in the progress of philosophic thought. Their
names are written in large letters on the chief stations through which the
train of human reasoning passed before it arrived at Kant and Hegel.
Locke’s philosophy took for a time complete possession of the German mind,
and called forth some of the most important and decisive writings of
Leibnitz; and Kant himself owed his commanding position to the battle
which he fought and won against Hume. Bacon alone has never been either
attacked or praised, nor have his works, as it seems, ever been studied
very closely by Germans. As far as we can gather, their view of Bacon and
of English philosophy is something as follows. Philosophy, they say,
should account for experience; but Bacon took experience for granted. He
constructed a cyclopædia of knowledge, but he never explained what
knowledge itself was. Hence philosophy, far from being brought to a close
by his “Novum Organon,” had to learn again to make her first steps
immediately after his time. Bacon had built a magnificent palace, but it
was soon found that there was no staircase in it. The very first question
of all philosophy, “How do we know?” or, “How can we know?” had never been
asked by him. Locke, who came after him, was the first to ask it, and he
endeavored to answer it in his “Essay concerning Human Understanding.” The
result of his speculations was, that the mind is a _tabula rasa_, that
this _tabula rasa_ becomes gradually filled with sensuous perceptions, and
that these sensuous perceptions arrange themselves into classes, and thus
give rise to more general ideas or conceptions. This was a step in
advance; but there was again one thing taken for granted by Locke,—the
perceptions. This led to the next step in English philosophy, which was
made by Berkeley. He asked the question, “What are perceptions?” and he
answered it boldly: “Perceptions are the things themselves, and the only
cause of these perceptions is God.” But this bold step was in reality but
a bold retreat. Hume accepted the results both of Locke and Berkeley. He
admitted with Locke that the impressions of the senses are the source of
all knowledge; he admitted with Berkeley that we know nothing beyond the
impressions of our senses. But when Berkeley speaks of the cause of these
impressions, Hume points out that we have no right to speak of anything
like cause and effect, and that the idea of causality, of necessary
sequence, on which the whole fabric of our reasoning rests, is an
assumption; inevitable, it may be, yet an assumption. Thus English
philosophy, which seemed to be so settled and positive in Bacon, ended in
the most unsettled and negative skepticism in Hume; and it was only
through Kant that, according to the Germans, the great problem was solved
at last, and men again knew _how_ they knew.

From this point of view, which we believe to be that generally taken by
German writers of the historical progress of modern philosophy, we may
well understand why the star of Bacon should disappear almost below their
horizon. And if those only are to be called philosophers who inquire into
the causes of our knowledge, or into the possibility of knowing and being,
a new name must be invented for men like him, who are concerned alone with
the realities of knowledge. The two are antipodes,—they inhabit two
distinct hemispheres of thought. But German Idealism, as M. Kuno Fischer
says, would have done well if it had become more thoroughly acquainted
with its opponent:—


    “And if it be objected,” he says, “that the points of contact
    between German and English philosophy, between Idealism and
    Realism, are less to be found in Bacon than in other philosophers
    of his kind; that it was not Bacon, but Hume, who influenced Kant;
    that it was not Bacon, but Locke, who influenced Leibnitz; that
    Spinoza, if he received any impulse at all from those quarters,
    received it from Hobbes, and not from Bacon, of whom he speaks in
    several places very contemptuously,—I answer, that it was Bacon
    whom Des Cartes, the acknowledged founder of dogmatic Idealism,
    chose for his antagonist. And as to those realistic philosophers
    who have influenced the opposite side of philosophy in Spinoza,
    Leibnitz, and Kant, I shall be able to prove that Hobbes, Locke,
    Hume, are all descendants of Bacon, that they have their roots in
    Bacon, that without Bacon they cannot be truly explained and
    understood, but only be taken up in a fragmentary form, and, as it
    were, plucked off. Bacon is the creator of realistic philosophy.
    Their age is but a development of the Baconian germs; every one of
    their systems is a metamorphosis of Baconian philosophy. To the
    present day, realistic philosophy has never had a greater genius
    than Bacon, its founder; none who has manifested the truly
    realistic spirit that feels itself at home in the midst of life,
    in so comprehensive, so original and characteristic, so sober, and
    yet at the same time so ideal and aspiring a manner; none, again,
    in whom the limits of this spirit stand out in such distinct and
    natural relief. Bacon’s philosophy is the most healthy and quite
    inartificial expression of Realism. After the systems of Spinoza
    and Leibnitz had moved me for a long time, had filled, and, as it
    were, absorbed me, the study of Bacon was to me like a new life,
    the fruits of which are gathered in this book.”


After a careful perusal of M. Fischer’s work, we believe that it will not
only serve in Germany as a useful introduction to the study of Bacon, but
that it will be read with interest and advantage by many persons in
England who are already acquainted with the chief works of the
philosopher. The analysis which he gives of Bacon’s philosophy is accurate
and complete; and, without indulging in any lengthy criticisms, he has
thrown much light on several important points. He first discusses the aim
of his philosophy, and characterizes it as Discovery in general, as the
conquest of nature by man (_Regnum hominis, interpretatio naturæ_). He
then enters into the means which it supplies for accomplishing this
conquest, and which consist chiefly in experience:—


    “The chief object of Bacon’s philosophy is the establishment and
    extension of the dominion of man. The means of accomplishing this
    we may call culture, or the application of physical powers toward
    human purposes. But there is no such culture without discovery,
    which produces the means of culture; no discovery without science,
    which understands the laws of nature; no science without natural
    science; no natural science without an interpretation of nature;
    and this can only be accomplished according to the measure of our
    experience.”


M. Fischer then proceeds to discuss what he calls the negative or
destructive part of Bacon’s philosophy (_pars destruens_),—that is to say,
the means by which the human mind should be purified and freed from all
preconceived notions before it approaches the interpretation of nature. He
carries us through the long war which Bacon commenced against the idols of
traditional or scholastic science. We see how the _idola tribus_, the
_idola specus_, the _idola fori_, and the _idola theatri_, are destroyed
by his iconoclastic philosophy. After all these are destroyed, there
remains nothing but uncertainty and doubt; and it is in this state of
nudity, approaching very nearly to the _tabula rasa_ of Locke, that the
human mind should approach the new temple of nature. Here lies the radical
difference between Bacon and Des Cartes, between Realism and Idealism. Des
Cartes also, like Bacon, destroys all former knowledge. He proves that we
know nothing for certain. But after he has deprived the human mind of all
its imaginary riches, he does not lead it on, like Bacon, to a study of
nature, but to a study of itself as the only subject which can be known
for certain, _Cogito, ergo sum_. His philosophy leads to a study of the
fundamental laws of knowing and being; that of Bacon enters at once into
the gates of nature, with the innocence of a child (to use his own
expression) who enters the kingdom of God. Bacon speaks, indeed, of a
_Philosophia prima_ as a kind of introduction to Divine, Natural, and
Human Philosophy; but he does not discuss in this preliminary chapter the
problem of the possibility of knowledge, nor was it with him the right
place to do so. It was destined by him as a “receptacle for all such
profitable observations and axioms as fall not within the compass of the
special parts of philosophy or sciences, but are more common, and of a
higher stage.” He mentions himself some of these axioms, such as—“_Si
inæqualibus æqualia addas, omnia erunt inæqualia;_” “_Quæ in eodem tertio
conveniunt, et inter se conveniunt;_” “_Omnia mutantur, nil interit._” The
problem of the possibility of knowledge would generally be classed under
metaphysics; but what Bacon calls _Metaphysique_ is, with him, a branch of
philosophy treating only on Formal and Final Causes, in opposition to
_Physique_, which treats on Material and Efficient Causes. If we adopt
Bacon’s division of philosophy, we might still expect to find the
fundamental problem discussed in his chapter on Human Philosophy; but
here, again, he treats man only as a part of the continent of Nature, and
when he comes to consider the substance and nature of the soul or mind, he
declines to enter into this subject, because “the true knowledge of the
nature and state of soul must come by the same inspiration that gave the
substance.” There remains, therefore, but one place in Bacon’s cyclopædia
where we might hope to find some information on this subject,—namely,
where he treats on the faculties and functions of the mind, and in
particular, of understanding and reason. And here he dwells indeed on the
doubtful evidence of the senses as one of the causes of error so
frequently pointed out by other philosophers. But he remarks that, though
they charged the deceit upon the senses, their chief errors arose from a
different cause, from the weakness of their intellectual powers, and from
the manner of collecting and concluding upon the reports of the senses.
And he then points to what is to be the work of his life,—an improved
system of invention, consisting of the _Experientia Literata_, and the
_Interpretatio Naturæ_.

It must be admitted, therefore, that one of the problems which has
occupied most philosophers,—nay, which, in a certain sense, may be called
the first impulse to all philosophy,—the question whether we can know
anything, is entirely passed over by Bacon; and we may well understand why
the name and title of philosopher has been withheld from one who looked
upon human knowledge as an art, but never inquired into its causes and
credentials. This is a point which M. Fischer has not overlooked; but he
has not always kept it in view, and in wishing to secure to Bacon his
place in the history of philosophy, he has deprived him of that more
exalted place which Bacon himself wished to occupy in the history of the
world. Among men like Locke, Hume, Kant, and Hegel, Bacon is, and always
will be, a stranger. Bacon himself would have drawn a very strong line
between their province and his own. He knows where their province lies;
and if he sometimes speaks contemptuously of formal philosophy, it is only
when formal philosophy has encroached on his own ground, or when it breaks
into the enclosure of revealed religion, which he wished to be kept
sacred. There, he holds, the human mind should not enter, except in the
attitude of the Semnones, with chained hands.

Bacon’s philosophy could never supplant the works of Plato and Aristotle,
and though his method might prove useful in every branch of
knowledge,—even in the most abstruse points of logic and metaphysics,—yet
there has never been a Baconian school of philosophy, in the sense in
which we speak of the school of Locke or Kant. Bacon was above or below
philosophy. Philosophy, in the usual sense of the word, formed but a part
of his great scheme of knowledge. It had its place therein, side by side
with history, poetry, and religion. After he had surveyed the whole
universe of knowledge, he was struck by the small results that had been
obtained by so much labor, and he discovered the cause of this failure in
the want of a proper method of investigation and combination. The
substitution of a new method of invention was the great object of his
philosophical activity; and though it has been frequently said that the
Baconian method had been known long before Bacon, and had been practiced
by his predecessors with much greater success than by himself or his
immediate followers, it was his chief merit to have proclaimed it, and to
have established its legitimacy against all gainsayers. M. Fischer has
some very good remarks on Bacon’s method of induction, particularly on the
_instantiæ prærogativæ_ which, as he points out, though they show the
weakness of his system, exhibit at the same time the strength of his mind,
which rises above all the smaller considerations of systematic
consistency, where higher objects are at stake.

M. Fischer devotes one chapter to Bacon’s relation to the ancient
philosophers, and another to his views on poetry. In the latter, he
naturally compares Bacon with his contemporary, Shakespeare. We recommend
this chapter, as well as a similar one in a work on Shakespeare by
Gervinus, to the author of the ingenious discovery that Bacon was the real
author of Shakespeare’s plays. Besides an analysis of the constructive
part of Bacon’s philosophy, or the _Instauratio Magna_, M. Fischer gives
us several interesting chapters, in which he treats of Bacon as an
historical character, of his views on religion and theology, and of his
reviewers. His defense of Bacon’s political character is the weakest part
of his work. He draws an elaborate parallel between the spirit of Bacon’s
philosophy and the spirit of his public acts. Discovery, he says, was the
object of the philosopher; success that of the politician. But what can be
gained by such parallels? We admire Bacon’s ardent exertions for the
successful advancement of learning, but, if his acts for his own
advancement were blamable, no moralist, whatever notions he may hold on
the relation between the understanding and the will, would be swayed in
his judgment of Lord Bacon’s character by such considerations. We make no
allowance for the imitative talents of a tragedian, if he stands convicted
of forgery, nor for the courage of a soldier, if he is accused of murder.
Bacon’s character can only be judged by the historian, and by a careful
study of the standard of public morality in Bacon’s times. And the same
may be said of the position which he took with regard to religion and
theology. We may explain his inclination to keep religion distinct from
philosophy by taking into account the practical tendencies of all his
labors. But there is such a want of straightforwardness, and we might
almost say, of real faith, in his theological statements, that no one can
be surprised to find that, while he is taken as the representative of
orthodoxy by some, he has been attacked by others as the most dangerous
and insidious enemy of Christianity. Writers of the school of De Maistre
see in him a decided atheist and hypocrite.

In a work on Bacon, it seems to have become a necessity to discuss Bacon’s
last reviewer, and M. Fischer therefore breaks a lance with Mr. Macaulay.
We give some extracts from this chapter (page 358 _seq._), which will
serve, at the same time, as a specimen of our author’s style:—


    “Mr. Macaulay pleads unconditionally in favor of practical
    philosophy, which he designates by the name of Bacon, against all
    theoretical philosophy. We have two questions to ask: 1. What does
    Mr. Macaulay mean by the contrast of practical and theoretical
    philosophy, on which he dwells so constantly? and 2. What has his
    own practical philosophy in common with that of Bacon?


    “Mr. Macaulay decides on the fate of philosophy with a ready
    formula, which, like many of the same kind, dazzles by means of
    words which have nothing behind them,—words which become more
    obscure and empty the nearer we approach them. He says, Philosophy
    was made for Man, not Man for Philosophy. In the former case it is
    practical; in the latter, theoretical. Mr. Macaulay embraces the
    first, and rejects the second. He cannot speak with sufficient
    praise of the one, nor with sufficient contempt of the other.
    According to him, the Baconian philosophy is practical; the
    pre-Baconian, and particularly the ancient philosophy,
    theoretical. He carries the contrast between the two to the last
    extreme, and he places it before our eyes, not in its naked form,
    but veiled in metaphors, and in well-chosen figures of speech,
    where the imposing and charming image always represents the
    practical, the repulsive the theoretical, form of philosophy. By
    this play he carries away the great mass of people, who, like
    children, always run after images. Practical philosophy is not so
    much a conviction with him, but it serves him to make a point;
    whereas theoretical philosophy serves as an easy butt. Thus the
    contrast between the two acquires a certain dramatic charm. The
    reader feels moved and excited by the subject before him, and
    forgets the scientific question. His fancy is caught by a kind of
    metaphorical imagery, and his understanding surrenders what is due
    to it.... What is Mr. Macaulay’s meaning in rejecting theoretical
    philosophy, because philosophy is here the object, and man the
    means; whereas he adopts practical philosophy, because man is here
    the object, and philosophy the means? What do we gain by such
    comparisons, as when he says that practical and theoretical
    philosophy are like works and words, fruits and thorns, a
    high-road and a treadmill? Such phrases always remind us of the
    remark of Socrates: They are said indeed, but are they well and
    truly said? According to the strict meaning of Mr. Macaulay’s
    words, there never was a practical philosophy; for there never was
    a philosophy which owed its origin to practical considerations
    only. And there never was a theoretical philosophy, for there
    never was a philosophy which did not receive its impulse from a
    human want, that is to say, from a practical motive. This shows
    where playing with words must always lead. He defines theoretical
    and practical philosophy in such a manner that his definition is
    inapplicable to any kind of philosophy. His antithesis is entirely
    empty. But if we drop the antithesis, and only keep to what it
    means in sober and intelligible language, it would come to
    this,—that the value of a theory depends on its usefulness, on its
    practical influence on human life, on the advantage which we
    derive from it. Utility alone is to decide on the value of a
    theory. Be it so. But who is to decide on utility? If all things
    are useful which serve to satisfy human wants, who is to decide on
    our wants? We take Mr. Macaulay’s own point of view. Philosophy
    should be practical; it should serve man, satisfy his wants, or
    help to satisfy them; and if it fails in this, let it be called
    useless and hollow. But if there are wants in human nature which
    demand to be satisfied, which make life a burden unless they are
    satisfied, is that not to be called practical which answers to
    these wants? And if some of them are of that peculiar nature that
    they can only be satisfied by knowledge, or by theoretical
    contemplation, is this knowledge, is this theoretical
    contemplation, not useful,—useful even in the eyes of the most
    decided Utilitarian? Might it not happen that what he calls
    theoretical philosophy seems useless and barren to the
    Utilitarian, because his ideas of men are too narrow? It is
    dangerous, and not quite becoming, to lay down the law, and say
    from the very first, ‘You must not have more than certain wants,
    and therefore you do not want more than a certain philosophy!’ If
    we may judge from Mr. Macaulay’s illustrations, his ideas of human
    nature are not very liberal. ‘If we were forced,’ he says, ‘to
    make our choice between the first shoemaker and Seneca, the author
    of the books on Anger, we should pronounce for the shoemaker. It
    may be worse to be angry than to be wet. But shoes have kept
    millions from being wet; and we doubt whether Seneca ever kept
    anybody from being angry.’ I should not select Seneca as the
    representative of theoretical philosophy, still less take those
    for my allies whom Mr. Macaulay prefers to Seneca, in order to
    defeat theoretical philosophers. Brennus threw his sword into the
    scale in order to make it more weighty. Mr. Macaulay prefers the
    awl. But whatever he may think about Seneca, there is another
    philosopher more profound than Seneca, but in Mr. Macaulay’s eyes
    likewise an unpractical thinker. And yet in him the power of
    theory was greater than the powers of nature and the most common
    wants of man. His meditations alone gave Socrates his serenity
    when he drank the fatal poison. Is there, among all evils, one
    greater than the dread of death? And the remedy against this, the
    worst of all physical evils, is it not practical in the best sense
    of the word? True, some people might here say, that it would have
    been more practical if Socrates had fled from his prison, as
    Criton suggested, and had died an old and decrepit man in Bœotia.
    But to Socrates it seemed more practical to remain in prison, and
    to die as the first witness and martyr of the liberty of
    conscience, and to rise from the sublime height of his theory to
    the seats of the immortals. Thus it is the want of the individual
    which decides on the practical value of an act or of a thought,
    and this want depends on the nature of the human soul. There is a
    difference between individuals in different ages, and there is a
    difference in their wants.... As long as the desire after
    knowledge lives in our hearts, we must, with the purely practical
    view of satisfying this want, strive after knowledge in all
    things, even in those which do not contribute towards external
    comfort, and have no use except that they purify and invigorate
    the mind.... What is theory in the eyes of Bacon? ‘A temple in the
    human mind, according to the model of the world.’ What is it in
    the eyes of Mr. Macaulay? A snug dwelling, according to the wants
    of practical life. The latter is satisfied if knowledge is carried
    far enough to enable us to keep ourselves dry. The magnificence of
    the structure, and its completeness according to the model of the
    world, is to him useless by-work, superfluous and even dangerous
    luxury. This is the view of a respectable rate-payer, not of a
    Bacon. Mr. Macaulay reduces Bacon to his own dimensions, while he
    endeavors at the same time to exalt him above all other people....
    Bacon’s own philosophy was, like all philosophy, a theory; it was
    the theory of the inventive mind. Bacon has not made any great
    discoveries himself. He was less inventive than Leibnitz, the
    German metaphysician. If to make discoveries be practical
    philosophy, Bacon was a mere theorist, and his philosophy nothing
    but the theory of practical philosophy.... How far the spirit of
    theory reached in Bacon may be seen in his own works. He did not
    want to fetter theory, but to renew and to extend it to the very
    ends of the universe. His practical standard was not the comfort
    of the individual, but human happiness, which involves theoretical
    knowledge.... That Bacon is not the Bacon of Mr. Macaulay. What
    Bacon wanted was new, and it will be eternal. What Mr. Macaulay
    and many people at the present day want, in the name of Bacon, is
    not new, but novel. New is what opposes the old, and serves as a
    model for the future. Novel is what flatters our times, gains
    sympathies, and dies away.... And history has pronounced her final
    verdict. It is the last negative instance which we oppose to Mr.
    Macaulay’s assertion. Bacon’s philosophy has not been the end of
    all theories, but the beginning of new theories,—theories which
    flowed necessarily from Bacon’s philosophy, and not one of which
    was practical in Mr. Macaulay’s sense. Hobbes was the pupil of
    Bacon. His ideal of a State is opposed to that of Plato on all
    points. But one point it shares in common,—it is as unpractical a
    theory as that of Plato. Mr. Macaulay, however, calls Hobbes the
    most acute and vigorous spirit. If, then, Hobbes was a practical
    philosopher, what becomes of Macaulay’s politics? And if Hobbes
    was not a practical philosopher, what becomes of Mr. Macaulay’s
    philosophy, which does homage to the theories of Hobbes?”


We have somewhat abridged M. Fischer’s argument, for, though he writes
well and intelligibly, he wants condensation; and we do not think that his
argument has been weakened by being shortened. What he has extended into a
volume of nearly five hundred pages, might have been reduced to a pithy
essay of one or two hundred, without sacrificing one essential fact, or
injuring the strength of any one of his arguments. The art of writing in
our times is the art of condensing; and those who cannot condense write
only for readers who have more time at their disposal than they know what
to do with.

Let us ask one question in conclusion. Why do all German writers change
the thoroughly Teutonic name of Bacon into Baco? It is bad enough that we
should speak of Plato; but this cannot be helped. But unless we protest
against Baco, _gen._ Baconis, we shall soon be treated to Newto, Newtonis,
or even to Kans, Kantis.

1857.





XII. A GERMAN TRAVELLER IN ENGLAND.(36)


A. D. 1598.

Lessing, when he was Librarian at Wolfenbüttel, proposed to start a review
which should only notice forgotten books,—books written before reviewing
was invented, published in the small towns of Germany, never read,
perhaps, except by the author and his friends, then buried on the shelves
of a library, properly labeled and catalogued, and never opened again,
except by an inquisitive inmate of these literary mausoleums. The number
of those forgotten books is great, and as in former times few authors
wrote more than one or two works during the whole of their lives, the
information which they contain is generally of a much more substantial and
solid kind than our literary palates are now accustomed to. If a man now
travels to the unexplored regions of Central Africa, his book is written
and out in a year. It remains on the drawing-room table for a season; it
is pleasant to read, easy to digest, and still easier to review and to
forget. Two or three hundred years ago this was very different. Travelling
was a far more serious business, and a man who had spent some years in
seeing foreign countries, could do nothing better than employ the rest of
his life in writing a book of travels, either in his own language, or,
still better, in Latin. After his death his book continued to be quoted
for a time in works on history and geography, till a new traveller went
over the same ground, published an equally learned book, and thus
consigned his predecessor to oblivion. Here is a case in point: Paul
Hentzner, a German, who, of course, calls himself Paulus Hentznerus,
travelled in Germany, France, England, and Italy; and after his return to
his native place in Silesia, he duly published his travels in a portly
volume, written in Latin. There is a long title-page, with dedications,
introductions, a preface for the _Lector benevolus_, Latin verses, and a
table showing what people ought to observe in travelling. Travelling,
according to our friend, is the source of all wisdom; and he quotes Moses
and the Prophets in support of his theory. We ought all to travel, he
says,—“vita nostra peregrinatio est;” and those who stay at home like
snails (_cochlearum instar_) will remain “inhumani, insolentes, superbi,”
etc.

It would take a long time to follow Paulus Hentznerus through all his
peregrinations; but let us see what he saw in England. He arrived here in
the year 1598. He took ship with his friends at _Depa_, vulgo _Dieppe_,
and after a boisterous voyage, they landed at _Rye_. On their arrival they
were conducted to a _Notarius_, who asked their names, and inquired for
what object they came to England. After they had satisfied his official
inquiries, they were conducted to a _Diversorium_, and treated to a good
dinner, _pro regionis more_, according to the custom of the country. From
_Rye_ they rode to _London_, passing _Flimwolt_, _Tumbridge_, and
_Chepsted_ on their way. Then follows a long description of London, its
origin and history, its bridges, churches, monuments, and palaces, with
extracts from earlier writers, such as Paulus Jovius, Polydorus Vergilius,
etc. All inscriptions are copied faithfully, not only from tombs and
pictures, but also from books which the travellers saw in the public
libraries. Whitehall seems to have contained a royal library at that time,
and in it Hentzner saw, besides Greek and Latin MSS., a book written in
French by Queen Elizabeth, with the following dedication to Henry VIII.:—


    “A Tres haut et Tres puissant et Redoubte Prince Henry VIII. de ce
    nom, Roy d’Angleterre, de France, et d’Irlande, defenseur de la
    foy, Elizabeth, sa Tres humble fille, rend salut et obedience.”


After the travellers had seen St. Paul’s, Westminster, the House of
Parliament, Whitehall, Guildhall, the Tower, and the Royal Exchange,
commonly called _Bursa_,—all of which are minutely described,—they went to
the theatres and to places _Ursorum et Taurorum venationibus destinata_,
where bears and bulls, tied fast behind, were baited by bull-dogs. In
these places, and everywhere, in fact, as our traveller says, where you
meet with Englishmen, they use _herba nicotiana_, which they call by an
American name _Tobaca_ or _Paetum_. The description deserves to be quoted
in the original:—


    “Fistulæ in hunc finem ex argillâ factæ orificio posteriori dictam
    herbam probe exiccatam, ita ut in pulverem facile redigi possit,
    immittunt, et igne admoto accendunt, unde fumus ab anteriori parte
    ore attrahitur, qui per nares rursum, tamquam per infurnibulum
    exit, et phlegma ac capitis defluxiones magnâ copiâ secum educit.”


After they had seen everything in London—not omitting the ship in which
Francis Drake, _nobilissimus pyrata_, was said to have circumnavigated the
world,—they went to Greenwich. Here they were introduced into the
presence-chamber, and saw the Queen. The walls of the room were covered
with precious tapestry, the floor strewed with hay. The Queen had to pass
through on going to chapel. It was a Sunday, when all the nobility came to
pay their respects. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London
were present. When divine service began, the Queen appeared, preceded and
followed by the court. Before her walked two barons, carrying the sceptre
and the sword, and between them the Great Chancellor of England with the
seal. The Queen is thus minutely described:—


    “She was said (_rumor erat_) to be fifty-five years old. Her face
    was rather long, white, and a little wrinkled. Her eyes small,
    black, and gracious; her nose somewhat bent; her lips compressed,
    her teeth black (from eating too much sugar). She had ear-rings of
    pearls; red hair, but artificial, and wore a small crown. Her
    breast was uncovered (as is the case with all unmarried ladies in
    England), and round her neck was a chain with precious gems. Her
    hands were graceful, her fingers long. She was of middle stature,
    but stepped on majestically. She was gracious and kind in her
    address. The dress she wore was of white silk, with pearls as
    large as beans. Her cloak was of black silk with silver lace, and
    a long train was carried by a marchioness. As she walked along she
    spoke most kindly with many people, some of them ambassadors. She
    spoke English, French, and Italian; but she knows also Greek and
    Latin, and understands Spanish, Scotch, and Dutch. Those whom she
    addressed bent their knees, and some she lifted up with her hand.
    To a Bohemian nobleman of the name of Slawata, who had brought
    some letters to the Queen, she gave her right hand after taking
    off her glove, and he kissed it. Wherever she turned her eyes,
    people fell on their knees.”


There was probably nobody present who ventured to scrutinize the poor
Queen so impertinently as Paulus Hentznerus. He goes on to describe the
ladies who followed the Queen, and how they were escorted by fifty
knights. When she came to the door of the chapel, books were handed to
her, and the people called out, “God save the Queen Elizabeth!” whereupon
the Queen answered, “I thanke you myn good peuple.” Prayers did not last
more than half an hour, and the music was excellent. During the time that
the Queen was in chapel, dinner was laid, and this again is described in
full detail.

But we cannot afford to tarry with our German observer, nor can we follow
him to Grantbridge (Cambridge) or Oxenford, where he describes the
colleges and halls (each of them having a library), and the life of the
students. From Oxford he went to Woodstock, then back to Oxford, and from
thence to Henley and Madenhood to Windsor. Eton also was visited, and
here, he says, sixty boys were educated gratuitously, and afterwards sent
to Cambridge. After visiting Hampton Court and the royal palace of
Nonesuch, our travellers returned to London.

We shall finish our extracts with some remarks of Hentzner on the manners
and customs of the English:—


    “The English are grave, like the Germans, magnificent at home and
    abroad. They carry with them a large train of followers and
    servants. These have silver shields on their left arm, and a
    pig-tail. The English excel in dancing and music. They are swift
    and lively, though stouter than the French. They shave the middle
    portion of the face, but leave the hair untouched on each side.
    They are good sailors and famous pirates; clever, perfidious, and
    thievish. About three hundred are hanged in London every year. At
    table they are more civil than the French. They eat less bread,
    but more meat, and they dress it well. They throw much sugar into
    their wine. They suffer frequently from leprosy, commonly called
    the white leprosy, which is said to have come to England in the
    time of the Normans. They are brave in battle, and always conquer
    their enemies. At home they brook no manner of servitude. They are
    very fond of noises that fill the ears, such as explosions of
    guns, trumpets, and bells. In London, persons who have got drunk
    are wont to mount a church tower, for the sake of exercise, and to
    ring the bells for several hours. If they see a foreigner who is
    handsome and strong, they are sorry that he is not an
    Anglicus,—_vulgo_ Englishman.”


On his return to France, Hentzner paid a visit to Canterbury, and, after
seeing some ghosts on his journey, arrived safely at Dover. Before he was
allowed to go on board, he had again to undergo an examination, to give
his name, to explain what he had done in England, and where he was going;
and, lastly, his luggage was searched most carefully, in order to see
whether he carried with him any English money, for nobody was allowed to
carry away more than ten pounds of English money: all the rest was taken
away and handed to the royal treasury. And thus farewell, Carissime
Hentzneri! and slumber on your shelf until the eye of some other
benevolent reader, glancing at the rows of forgotten books, is caught by
the quaint lettering on your back, “_Hentzneri Itin_.”

1857.





XIII. CORNISH ANTIQUITIES.(37)


It is impossible to spend even a few weeks in Cornwall without being
impressed with the air of antiquity which pervades that county, and seems,
like a morning mist, half to conceal and half to light up every one of its
hills and valleys. It is impossible to look at any pile of stones, at any
wall, or pillar, or gate-post, without asking one’s self the question, Is
this old, or is this new? Is it the work of Saxon, or of Roman, or of
Celt? Nay, one feels sometimes tempted to ask, Is this the work of Nature
or of man?

“Among these rocks and stones, methinks I see
More than the heedless impress that belongs
To lonely Nature’s casual work: they bear
A semblance strange of power intelligent,
And of design not wholly worn away.”—_Excursion_.

The late King of Prussia’s remark about Oxford, that in it everything old
seemed new, and everything new seemed old, applies with even greater truth
to Cornwall. There is a continuity between the present and the past of
that curious peninsula, such as we seldom find in any other place. A
spring bubbling up in a natural granite basin, now a meeting-place for
Baptists or Methodists, was but a few centuries ago a holy well, attended
by busy friars, and visited by pilgrims, who came there “nearly lame,” and
left the shrine “almost able to walk.” Still further back the same spring
was a centre of attraction for the Celtic inhabitants, and the rocks piled
up around it stand there as witnesses of a civilization and architecture
certainly more primitive than the civilization and architecture of Roman,
Saxon, or Norman settlers. We need not look beyond. How long that granite
buttress of England has stood there, defying the fury of the Atlantic, the
geologist alone, who is not awed by ages, would dare to tell us. But the
historian is satisfied with antiquities of a more humble and homely
character; and in bespeaking the interest, and, it may be, the active
support of our readers, in favor of the few relics of the most ancient
civilization of Britain, we promise to keep within strictly historical
limits, if by historical we understand, with the late Sir G. C. Lewis,
that only which can be authenticated by contemporaneous monuments.

But even thus, how wide a gulf seems to separate us from the first
civilizers of the West of England, from the people who gave names to every
headland, bay, and hill of Cornwall, and who first planned those lanes
that now, like throbbing veins, run in every direction across that
heath-covered peninsula! No doubt it is well known that the original
inhabitants of Cornwall were Celts, and that Cornish is a Celtic language;
and that, if we divide the Celtic languages into two classes, Welsh with
Cornish and Breton forms one class, the _Cymric_; while the Irish with its
varieties, as developed in Scotland and the Isle of Man, forms another
class, which is called the _Gaelic_ or _Gadhelic_. It may also be more or
less generally known that Celtic, with all its dialects, is an Aryan or
Indo-European language, closely allied to Latin, Greek, German, Slavonic,
and Sanskrit, and that the Celts, therefore, were not mere barbarians, or
people to be classed together with Finns and Lapps, but heralds of true
civilization wherever they settled in their worldwide migrations, the
equals of Saxons and Romans and Greeks, whether in physical beauty or in
intellectual vigor. And yet there is a strange want of historical reality
in the current conceptions about the Celtic inhabitants of the British
Isles; and while the heroes and statesmen and poets of Greece and Rome,
though belonging to a much earlier age, stand out in bold and sharp relief
on the table of a boy’s memory, his notions of the ancient Britons may
generally be summed up “in houses made of wicker-work, Druids with long
white beards, white linen robes, and golden sickles, and warriors painted
blue.” Nay, strange to say, we can hardly blame a boy for banishing the
ancient bards and Druids from the scene of real history, and assigning to
them that dark and shadowy corner where the gods and heroes of Greece live
peacefully together with the ghosts and fairies from the dreamland of our
own Saxon forefathers. For even the little that is told in “Little
Arthur’s History of England” about the ancient Britons and the Druids is
extremely doubtful. Druids are never mentioned before Cæsar. Few writers,
if any, before him were able to distinguish between Celts and Germans, but
spoke of the barbarians of Gaul and Germany as the Greeks spoke of
Scythians, or as we ourselves speak of the negroes of Africa, without
distinguishing between races so different from each other as Hottentots
and Kaffirs. Cæsar was one of the first writers who knew of an
ethnological distinction between Celtic and Teutonic barbarians, and we
may therefore trust him when he says that the Celts had Druids, and the
Germans had none. But his further statements about these Celtic priests
and sages are hardly more trustworthy than the account which an ordinary
Indian officer at the present day might give us of the Buddhist priests
and the Buddhist religion of Ceylon. Cæsar’s statement that the Druids
worshipped Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva, is of the same
base metal as the statements of more modern writers that the Buddhists
worship the Trinity, and that they take Buddha for the Son of God. Cæsar
most likely never conversed with a Druid, nor was he able to control, if
he was able to understand, the statements made to him about the ancient
priesthood, the religion and literature of Gaul. Besides, Cæsar himself
tells us very little about the priests of Gaul and Britain; and the
thrilling accounts of the white robes and the golden sickles belong to
Pliny’s “Natural History,” by no means a safe authority in such
matters.(38)

We must be satisfied, indeed, to know very little about the mode of life,
the forms of worship, the religious doctrines, or the mysterious wisdom of
the Druids and their flocks. But for this very reason it is most essential
that our minds should be impressed strongly with the historical reality
that belongs to the Celtic inhabitants, and to the work which they
performed in rendering these islands for the first time fit for the
habitation of man. That historical lesson, and a very important lesson it
is, is certainly learned more quickly, and yet more effectually, by a
visit to Cornwall or Wales, than by any amount of reading. We may doubt
many things that Celtic enthusiasts tell us; but where every village and
field, every cottage and hill, bear names that are neither English, nor
Norman, nor Latin, it is difficult not to feel that the Celtic element has
been something real and permanent in the history of the British Isles. The
Cornish language is no doubt extinct, if by extinct we mean that it is no
longer spoken by the people. But in the names of towns, castles, rivers,
mountains, fields, manors, and families, and in a few of the technical
terms of mining, husbandry, and fishing, Cornish lives on, and probably
will live on, for many ages to come. There is a well-known verse:—

“By Tre, Ros, Pol, Lan, Caer, and Pen,
You may know most Cornish men.”(39)

But it will hardly be believed that a Cornish antiquarian, Dr. Bannister,
who is collecting materials for a glossary of Cornish proper names, has
amassed no less than 2,400 names with Tre, 500 with Fen, 400 with Ros, 300
with Lan, 200 with Pol, and 200 with Caer.

A language does not die all at once, nor is it always possible to fix the
exact date when it breathed its last. Thus, in the case of Cornish, it is
by no means easy to reconcile the conflicting statements of various
writers as to the exact time when it ceased to be the language of the
people, unless we bear in mind that what was true with regard to the
higher classes was not so with regard to the lower, and likewise that in
some parts of Cornwall the vitality of the language might continue, while
in others its heart had ceased to beat. As late as the time of Henry
VIII., the famous physician Andrew Borde tells us that English was not
understood by many men and women in Cornwall. “In Cornwal is two
speeches,” he writes; “the one is naughty Englyshe, and the other the
Cornyshe speche. And there be many men and women the which cannot speake
one worde of Englyshe, but all Cornyshe.” During the same King’s reign,
when an attempt was made to introduce a new church service composed in
English, a protest was signed by the Devonshire and Cornish men utterly
refusing this new English:—


    “We will not receive the new Service, because it is but like a
    Christmas game; but we will have our old Service of Matins, Mass,
    Evensong, and Procession, in Latin as it was before. And so we the
    Cornish men (whereof certain of us understand no English) utterly
    refuse this new English.”(40)


Yet in the reign of Elizabeth, when the liturgy was appointed by authority
to take the place of the mass, the Cornish, it is said,(41) desired that
it should be in the English language. About the same time we are told that
Dr. John Moreman(42) taught his parishioners the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed,
and the Ten Commandments, in the English tongue. From the time of the
Reformation onward, Cornish seems constantly to have lost ground against
English, particularly in places near Devonshire. Thus Norden, whose
description of Cornwall was probably written about 1584, though not
published till 1728, gives a very full and interesting account of the
struggle between the two languages:—


    “Of late,” he says (p. 26), “the Cornishe men have muche conformed
    themselves to the use of the Englishe tounge, and their Englishe
    is equall to the beste, espetially in the easterne partes; even
    from Truro eastwarde it is in manner wholly Englishe. In the weste
    parte of the countrye, as in the hundreds of Penwith and Kerrier,
    the Cornishe tounge is moste in use amongste the inhabitantes, and
    yet (whiche is to be marveyled), though the husband and wife,
    parentes and children, master and servantes, doe mutually
    communicate in their native language, yet ther is none of them in
    manner but is able to convers with a straunger in the Englishe
    tounge, unless it be some obscure people, that seldome conferr
    with the better sorte: But it seemeth that in few yeares the
    Cornishe language will be by litle and litle abandoned.”


Carew, who wrote about the same time, goes so far as to say that most of
the inhabitants “can no word of Cornish, but very few are ignorant of the
English, though they sometimes affect to be.” This may have been true with
regard to the upper classes, particularly in the west of Cornwall, but it
is nevertheless a fact that, as late as 1640, Mr. William Jackman, the
vicar of Feock,(43) was forced to administer the sacrament in Cornish,
because the aged people did not understand English; nay, the rector of
Landewednak preached his sermons in Cornish as late as 1678. Mr. Scawen,
too, who wrote about that time, speaks of some old folks who spoke Cornish
only, and would not understand a word of English; but he tells us at the
same time that Sir Francis North, the Lord Chief Justice, afterwards Lord
Keeper, when holding the assizes at Lanceston in 1678, expressed his
concern at the loss and decay of the Cornish language. The poor people, in
fact, could speak, or at least understand, Cornish, but he says, “They
were laughed at by the rich, who understood it not, which is their own
fault in not endeavoring after it.” About the beginning of the last
century, Mr. Ed. Lhuyd (died 1709), the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum,
was still able to collect from the mouths of the people a grammar of the
Cornish language, which was published in 1707. He says that at this time
Cornish was only retained in five or six villages towards the Land’s End;
and in his “Archæologia Britannica” he adds, that although it was spoken
in most of the western districts from the Land’s End to the Lizard, “a
great many of the inhabitants, especially the gentry, do not understand
it, there being no necessity thereof in regard there’s no Cornish man but
speaks good English.” It is generally supposed that the last person who
spoke Cornish was Dolly Pentreath, who died in 1778, and to whose memory
Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte has lately erected a monument in the
churchyard at Paul. The inscription is:—


    “Here lieth interred Dorothy Pentreath, who died in 1778, said to
    have been the last person who conversed in the ancient Cornish,
    the peculiar language of this country from the earliest records
    till it expired in this parish of St. Paul. This stone is erected
    by the Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, in union with the Rev. John
    Garret, vicar of St. Paul, June, 1860.”


It seems hardly right to deprive the old lady of her fair name; but there
are many people in Cornwall who maintain that when travellers and grandees
came to see her, she would talk anything that came into her head, while
those who listened to her were pleased to think that they had heard the
dying echoes of a primeval tongue.(44) There is a letter extant, written
in Cornish by a poor fisherman of the name of William Bodener. It is dated
July 3, 1776, that is, two years before the death of Dolly Pentreath; and
the writer says of himself in Cornish:—


    “My age is threescore and five. I am a poor fisherman. I learnt
    Cornish when I was a boy. I have been to sea with my father and
    five other men in the boat, and have not heard one word of English
    spoke in the boat for a week together. I never saw a Cornish book.
    I learned Cornish going to sea with old men. There is not more
    than four or five in our town can talk Cornish now,—old people
    fourscore years old. Cornish is all forgot with young people.”(45)


It would seem, therefore, that Cornish died with the last century, and no
one now living can boast to have heard its sound when actually spoken for
the sake of conversation. It seems to have been a melodious and yet by no
means an effeminate language, and Scawen places it in this respect above
most of the other Celtic dialects:—


    “Cornish,” he says, “is not to be gutturally pronounced, as the
    Welsh for the most part is, nor mutteringly, as the Armorick, nor
    whiningly as the Irish (which two latter qualities seem to have
    been contracted from their servitude), but must be lively and
    manly spoken, like other primitive tongues.”


Although Cornish must now be classed with the extinct languages, it has
certainly shown a marvelous vitality. More than four hundred years of
Roman occupation, more than six hundred years of Saxon and Danish sway, a
Norman conquest, a Saxon Reformation, and civil wars, have all passed over
the land; but, like a tree that may bend before a storm but is not to be
rooted up, the language of the Celts of Cornwall has lived on in an
unbroken continuity for at least two thousand years. What does this mean?
It means that through the whole of English history to the accession of the
House of Hanover, the inhabitants of Cornwall and the western portion of
Devonshire, in spite of intermarriages with Romans, Saxons, and Normans,
were Celts, and remained Celts. People speak indeed of blood, and
intermingling of blood, as determining the nationality of a people; but
what is meant by blood? It is one of those scientific idols, that crumble
to dust as soon as we try to define or grasp them; it is a vague, hollow,
treacherous term, which, for the present at least, ought to be banished
from the dictionary of every true man of science. We can give a scientific
definition of a Celtic language; but no one has yet given a definition of
Celtic blood, or a Celtic skull. It is quite possible that hereafter
chemical differences may be discovered in the blood of those who speak a
Celtic, and of those who speak a Teutonic language. It is possible, also,
that patient measurements, like those lately published by Professor
Huxley, in the “Journal of Anatomy and Physiology,” may lead in time to a
really scientific classification of skulls, and that physiologists may
succeed in the end in carrying out a classification of the human race,
according to tangible and unvarying physiological criteria. But their
definitions and their classifications will hardly ever square with the
definitions or classifications of the student of language, and the use of
common terms can only be a source of constant misunderstandings. We know
what we mean by a Celtic language, and in the grammar of each language we
are able to produce a most perfect scientific definition of its real
character. If, therefore, we transfer the term Celtic to people, we can,
if we use our words accurately, mean nothing but people who speak a Celtic
language, the true exponent, aye, the very life of Celtic nationality.
Whatever people, whether Romans, or Saxons, or Normans, or, as some think,
even Phœnicians and Jews, settled in Cornwall, if they ceased to speak
their own language and exchanged it for Cornish, they are, before the
tribunal of the science of language, Celts, and nothing but Celts; while,
whenever Cornishmen, like Sir Humphrey Davy or Bishop Colenso, have ceased
to speak Cornish, and speak nothing but English, they are no longer Celts,
but true Teutons or Saxons, in the only scientifically legitimate sense of
that word. Strange stories, indeed, would be revealed, if blood could cry
out and tell of its repeated mixtures since the beginning of the world. If
we think of the early migrations of mankind; of the battles fought before
there were hieroglyphics to record them; of conquests, leadings into
captivity, piracy, slavery, and colonization, all without a sacred poet to
hand them down to posterity,—we shall hesitate, indeed, to speak of pure
races, or unmixed blood, even at the very dawn of real history. Little as
we know of the early history of Greece, we know enough to warn us against
looking upon the Greeks of Asia or Europe as an unmixed race. Ægyptus,
with his Arabian, Ethiopian, and Tyrian wives; Cadmus, the son of Libya;
Phœnix, the father of Europa,—all point to an intercourse of Greece with
foreign countries, whatever else their mythological meaning may be. As
soon as we know anything of the history of the world, we know of wars and
alliances between Greeks and Lydians and Persians, of Phœnician
settlements all over the world, of Carthaginians trading in Spain and
encamped in Italy, of Romans conquering and colonizing Gaul, Spain,
Britain, the Danubian Principalities and Greece, Western Asia and Northern
Africa. Then again, at a later time, follow the great ethnic convulsions
of Eastern Europe, and the devastation and re-population of the ancient
seats of civilization by Goths, and Lombards, and Vandals, and Saxons;
while at the same time, and for many centuries to come, the few
strongholds of civilization in the East were again and again overwhelmed
by the irresistible waves of Hunnish, Mongolic, and Tartaric invaders.
And, with all this, people at the latter end of the nineteenth century
venture to speak, for instance, of pure Norman blood as something definite
or definable, forgetting how the ancient Norsemen carried their wives away
from the coasts of Germany or Russia, from Sicily or from the very Piræus;
while others married whatever wives they could find in the North of
France, whether of Gallic, Roman, or German extraction, and then settled
in England, where they again contracted marriages with Teutonic, Celtic,
or Roman damsels. In our own days, if we see the daughter of an English
officer and an Indian Ranee married to the son of a Russian nobleman, how
are we to class the offspring of that marriage? The Indian Ranee may have
had Mongol blood, so may the Russian nobleman; but there are other
possible ingredients of pure Hindu and pure Slavonic, of Norman, German,
and Roman blood,—and who is the chemist bold enough to disengage them all?
There is, perhaps, no nation which has been exposed to more frequent
admixture of foreign blood, during the Middle Ages, than the Greeks.
Professor Fallmerayer maintained that the Hellenic population was entirely
exterminated, and that the people who at the present day call themselves
Greeks are really Slavonians. It would be difficult to refute him by
arguments drawn either from the physical or the moral characteristics of
the modern Greeks as compared with the many varieties of the Slavonic
stock. But the following extract from “Felton’s Lectures on Greece,
Ancient and Modern,” contains the only answer that can be given to such
charges, without point or purpose: “In one of the courses of lectures,” he
says, “which I attended in the University of Athens, the Professor of
History, a very eloquent man as well as a somewhat fiery Greek, took this
subject up. His audience consisted of about two hundred young men from
every part of Greece. His indignant comments on the learned German, that
notorious Μισέλλην or Greek-hater, as he stigmatized him, were received by
his hearers with a profound sensation. They sat with expanded nostrils and
flashing eyes—a splendid illustration of the old Hellenic spirit, roused
to fury by the charge of barbarian descent. ‘It is true,’ said the
eloquent professor, ‘that the tide of barbaric invaders poured down like a
deluge upon Hellas, filling with its surging floods our beautiful plains,
our fertile valleys. The Greeks fled to their walled towns and mountain
fastnesses. By and by the water subsided and the soil of Hellas
reappeared. The former inhabitants descended from the mountains as the
tide receded, resumed their ancient lands and rebuilt their ruined
habitations, and, the reign of the barbarians over, Hellas was herself
again.’ Three or four rounds of applause followed the close of the
lectures of Professor Manouses, in which I heartily joined. I could not
help thinking afterwards what a singular comment on the German
anti-Hellenic theory was presented by this scene,—a Greek professor in a
Greek university, lecturing to two hundred Greeks in the Greek language,
to prove that the Greeks were Greeks, and not Slavonians.”(46)

And yet we hear the same arguments used over and over again, not only with
regard to the Greeks, but with regard to many other modern nations; and
even men whose minds have been trained in the school of exact science, use
the term “bloods,” in this vague and thoughtless manner. The adjective
Greek may connote many things, but what it denotes is language. People who
speak Greek as their mother tongue are Greeks, and if a Turkish-speaking
inhabitant of Constantinople could trace his pedigree straight to
Pericles, he would still be a Turk, whatever his name, his faith, his
hair, features, and stature—whatever his blood might be. We can classify
languages, and as languages presuppose people that speak them, we can so
far classify mankind, according to their grammars and dictionaries; while
all who possess scientific honesty must confess and will confess that, as
yet, it has been impossible to devise any truly scientific classification
of skulls, to say nothing of blood, or bones, or hair. The label on one of
the skulls in the Munich Collection, “Etruscan-Tyrol, or Inca-Peruvian,”
characterizes not too unfairly the present state of ethnological
craniology. Let those who imagine that the great outlines, at least, of a
classification of skulls have been firmly established, consult Mr. Brace’s
useful manual of “The Races of the World,” where he has collected the
opinions of some of the best judges on the subject. We quote a few
passages:(47)—


    “Dr. Bachmann concludes, from the measurements of Dr. Tiedemann
    and Dr. Morton, that the negro skull, though less than the
    European, is within one inch as large as the Persian and the
    Armenian, and three square inches larger than the Hindu and
    Egyptian. The scale is thus given by Dr. Morton: European skull,
    87 cubic inches; Malay, 85; Negro 83; Mongol, 82; Ancient
    Egyptian, 80; American, 79. The ancient Peruvians and Mexicans,
    who constructed so elaborate a civilization, show a capacity only
    of from 75 to 79 inches.... Other observations by Huschke make the
    average capacity of the skull of Europeans 40.88 oz.; of
    Americans, 39.13; of Mongols, 38.39; of Negroes, 37.57; of Malays,
    36.41.”


    “Of the shape of the skull, as distinctive of different origin,
    Professor M. J. Weber has said there is no proper mark of a
    definite race from the cranium so firmly attached that it may not
    be found in some other race. Tiedemann has met with Germans whose
    skulls bore all the characters of the negro race; and an
    inhabitant of Nukahiwa, according to Silesius and Blumenbach,
    agreed exactly in his proportions with the Apollo Belvedere.”


Professor Huxley, in his “Observations on the Human Skulls of Engis and
Neanderthal,” printed in Sir Charles Lyell’s “Antiquity of Man,” p. 81,
remarks that “the most capacious European skull yet measured had a
capacity of 114 cubic inches, the smallest (as estimated by weight of
brain) about 55 cubic inches; while, according to Professor Schaaffhausen,
some Hindu skulls have as small a capacity as 46 cubic inches (27 oz. of
water);” and he sums up by stating that “cranial measurements alone afford
no safe indication of race.”

And even if a scientific classification of skulls were to be carried out,
if, instead of merely being able to guess that this may be an Australian
and this a Malay skull, we were able positively to place each individual
skull under its own definite category, what should we gain in the
classification of mankind? Where is the bridge from skull to man in the
full sense of that word? Where is the connecting link between the cranial
proportions and only one other of man’s characteristic properties, such as
language? And what applies to skulls applies to color and all the rest.
Even a black skin and curly hair are mere outward accidents as compared
with language. We do not classify parrots and magpies by the color of
their plumage, still less by the cages in which they live; and what is the
black skin or the white skin but the mere outward covering, not to say the
mere cage, in which that being which we call man lives, moves, and has his
being? A man like Bishop Crowther, though a negro in blood, is, in thought
and speech, an Aryan. He speaks English, he thinks English, he acts
English; and, unless we take English in a purely historical, and not in
its truly scientific, _i.e._ linguistic sense, he is English. No doubt
there are many influences at work—old proverbs, old songs and traditions,
religious convictions, social institutions, political prejudices, besides
the soil, the food, and the air of a country—that may keep up, even among
people who have lost their national language, that kind of vague
similarity which is spoken of as national character.(48) This is a subject
on which many volumes have been written, and yet the result has only been
to supply newspapers with materials for international insults or
international courtesies, as the case may be. Nothing sound or definite
has been gained by such speculations, and in an age that prides itself on
the careful observance of the rules of inductive reasoning, nothing is
more surprising than the sweeping assertions with regard to national
character, and the reckless way in which casual observations that may be
true of one, two, three, or it may be ten or even a hundred individuals,
are extended to millions. However, if there is one safe exponent of
national character, it is language. Take away the language of a people,
and you destroy at once that powerful chain of tradition in thought and
sentiment which holds all the generations of the same race together, if we
may use an unpleasant simile, like the chain of a gang of galley-slaves.
These slaves, we are told, very soon fall into the same pace, without
being aware that their movements depend altogether on the movements of
those who walk before them. It is nearly the same with us. We imagine we
are altogether free in our thoughts, original and independent, and we are
not aware that our thoughts are manacled and fettered by language, and
that, without knowing and without perceiving it, we have to keep pace with
those who walked before us thousands and thousands of years ago. Language
alone binds people together, and keeps them distinct from others who speak
different tongues. In ancient times particularly, “languages and nations”
meant the same thing; and even with us our real ancestors are those whose
language we speak, the fathers of our thoughts, the mothers of our hopes
and fears. Blood, bones, hair, and color, are mere accidents, utterly
unfit to serve as principles of scientific classification for that great
family of living beings, the essential characteristics of which are
thought and speech, not fibrine, serum, coloring matter, or whatever else
enters into the composition of blood.

If this be true, the inhabitants of Cornwall, whatever the number of
Roman, Saxon, Danish, or Norman settlers within the boundaries of that
county may have been, continued to be Celts as long as they spoke Cornish.
They ceased to be Celts when they ceased to speak the language of their
forefathers. Those who can appreciate the charms of genuine antiquity will
not, therefore, find fault with the enthusiasm of Daines Barrington or Sir
Joseph Banks in listening to the strange utterances of Dolly Pentreath;
for her language, if genuine, carried them back and brought them, as it
were, into immediate contact with people who, long before the Christian
era, acted an important part on the stage of history, supplying the world
with two of the most precious metals, more precious then than gold or
silver, with copper and tin, the very materials, it may be, of the finest
works of art in Greece, aye, of the armor wrought for the heroes of the
Trojan War, as described so minutely by the poets of the “Iliad.” There is
a continuity in language which nothing equals, and there is an historical
genuineness in ancient words, if but rightly interpreted, which cannot be
rivaled by manuscripts, or coins, or monumental inscriptions.

But though it is right to be enthusiastic about what is really ancient in
Cornwall,—and there is nothing so ancient as language,—it is equally right
to be discriminating. The fresh breezes of antiquity have intoxicated many
an antiquarian. Words, purely Latin or English, though somewhat changed
after being admitted into the Cornish dictionary, have been quoted as the
originals from which the Roman or English were in turn derived. The Latin
_liber_, book, was supposed to be derived from the Welsh _llyvyr; litera_,
letter, from Welsh _llythyr; persona_, person, from Welsh _person_, and
many more of the same kind. Walls built within the memory of men have been
admitted as relics of British architecture; nay, Latin inscriptions of the
simplest character have but lately been interpreted by means of Cornish,
as containing strains of a mysterious wisdom. Here, too, a study of the
language gives some useful hints as to the proper method of disentangling
the truly ancient from the more modern elements. Whatever in the Cornish
dictionary cannot be traced back to any other source, whether Latin,
Saxon, Norman, or German, may safely be considered as Cornish, and
therefore as ancient Celtic. Whatever in the antiquities of Cornwall
cannot be claimed by Romans, Saxons, Danes, or Normans, may fairly be
considered as genuine remains of the earliest civilization of this island,
as the work of the Celtic discoverers of Britain.

The Cornish language is by no means a pure or unmixed language,—at least
we do not know it in its pure state. It is, in fact, a mere accident that
any literary remains have been preserved, and three or four small volumes
would contain all that is left to us of Cornish literature. “There is a
poem,” to quote Mr. Norris, “which we may by courtesy call epic, entitled
‘Mount Calvary.’ ” It contains 259 stanzas of eight lines each, in
heptasyllabic metre, with alternate rhyme. It is ascribed to the fifteenth
century, and was published for the first time by Mr. Davies Gilbert in
1826.(49) There is, besides, a series of dramas, or mystery-plays, first
published by Mr. Norris for the University Press of Oxford, in 1858. The
first is called “The Beginning of the World,” the second “The Passion of
our Lord,” the third “The Resurrection.” The last is interrupted by
another play, “The Death of Pilate.” The oldest MS. in the Bodleian
Library belongs to the fifteenth century, and Mr. Norris is not inclined
to refer the composition of these plays to a much earlier date. Another
MS., likewise in the Bodleian Library, contains both the text and a
translation by Keigwyn (1695). Lastly, there is another sacred drama,
called “The Creation of the World, with Noah’s Flood.” It is in many
places copied from the dramas, and, according to the MS., it was written
by William Jordan in 1611. The oldest MS. belongs again to the Bodleian
Library, which likewise possesses a MS. of the translation by Keigwyn in
1691.(50)

These mystery-plays, as we may learn from a passage in Carew’s “Survey of
Cornwall” (p. 71), were still performed in Cornish in his time, _i.e._ at
the beginning of the seventeenth century. He says:—


    “Pastimes to delight the minde, the Cornish men have Guary
    miracles and three mens songs; and, for the exercise of the body,
    hunting, hawking, shooting, wrastling, hurling, and such other
    games.


    “The Guary miracle—in English, a miracle-play—is a kind of
    enterlude, compiled in Cornish out of some Scripture history, with
    that grossenes which accompanied the Romanes _vetus Comedia_. For
    representing it, they raise an earthen amphitheatre in some open
    field, having the diameter of his enclosed playne some forty or
    fifty foot. The country people flock from all sides, many miles
    off, to heare and see it, for they have therein devils and
    devices, to delight as well the eye as the eare; the players conne
    not their parts without booke, but are prompted by one called the
    Ordinary, who followeth at their back with the booke in his hand,
    and telleth them softly what they must pronounce aloud. Which
    manner once gave occasion to a pleasant conceyted gentleman, of
    practising a mery pranke; for he undertaking (perhaps of set
    purpose) an actor’s roome, was accordingly lessoned (beforehand)
    by the Ordinary, that he must say after him. His turn came. Quoth
    the Ordinary, Goe forth man and shew thy selfe. The gentleman
    steps out upon the stage, and like a bad Clarke in Scripture
    matters, cleaving more to the letter than the sense, pronounced
    those words aloud. Oh! (sayes the fellowe softly in his eare) you
    marre all the play. And with this his passion the actor makes the
    audience in like sort acquainted. Hereon the prompter falls to
    flat rayling and cursing in the bitterest termes he could devise:
    which the gentleman, with a set gesture and countenance, still
    soberly related, untill the Ordinary, driven at last into a madde
    rage, was faine to give all over. Which trousse, though it brake
    off the enterlude, yet defrauded not the beholders, but dismissed
    them with a great deale more sport and laughter than such Guaries
    could have afforded.”(51)


Scawen, at the end of the seventeenth century, speaks of these
miracle-plays, and considers the suppression of the _Guirrimears_,(52) or
Great Plays or Speeches,(53) as one of the chief causes of the decay of
the Cornish language.


    “These _Guirrimears_,” he says, “which were used at the great
    conventions of the people, at which they had famous interludes
    celebrated with great preparations, and not without shows of
    devotion in them, solemnized in great and spacious downs of great
    capacity, encompassed about with earthen banks, and some in part
    stone-work, of largeness to contain thousands, the shapes of which
    remain in many places at this day, though the use of them long
    since gone.... This was a great means to keep in use the tongue
    with delight and admiration. They had recitations in them,
    poetical and divine, one of which I may suppose this small relique
    of antiquity to be, in which the passion of our Saviour, and his
    resurrection, is described.”


If to these mystery-plays and poems we add some versions of the Lord’s
Prayer, the Commandments, and the Creed, a protestation of the bishops in
Britain to Augustine the monk, the Pope’s legate, in the year 600 after
Christ (MS. Gough, 4), the first chapter of Genesis, and some songs,
proverbs, riddles, a tale and a glossary, we have an almost complete
catalogue of what a Cornish library would be at the present day.

Now if we examine the language as preserved to us in these fragments, we
find that it is full of Norman, Saxon, and Latin words. No one can doubt,
for instance, that the following Cornish words are all taken from Latin,
that is, from the Latin of the Church:—

_Abat_, an abbot; Lat. _abbas_.
_Alter_, altar; Lat. _altare_.
_Apostol_, apostle; Lat. _apostolus_.
_Clauster_, cloister; Lat. _claustrum_.
_Colom_, dove; Lat. _columba_.
_Gwespar_, vespers; Lat. _vesper_.
_Cantuil_, candle; Lat. _candela_.
_Cantuilbren_, candlestick; Lat. _candelabrum_.
_Ail_, angel; Lat. _angelus_.
_Archail_, archangel; Lat. _archangelus_.

Other words, though not immediately connected with the service and the
doctrine of the Church, may nevertheless have passed from Latin into
Cornish, either directly from the daily conversation of monks, priests,
and schoolmasters, or indirectly from English or Norman, in both of which
the same Latin words had naturally been adopted, though slightly modified
according to the phonetic peculiarities of each. Thus:—


    _Ancar_, anchor; the Latin, _ancora_. This might have come
    indirectly through English or Norman-French.


    _Aradar_, plough; the Latin, _aratrum_. This must have come direct
    from Latin, as it does not exist in Norman or English.


    _Arghans_, silver; _argentum_.


    _Keghin_, kitchen; _coquina_. This is taken from the same Latin
    word from which the Romance languages formed _cuisine, cucina_;
    not from the classical Latin, _culina_.


    _Liver_, book; _liber_, originally the bark of trees on which
    books were written.


    _Dinair_, coin; _denarius. Seth_, arrow; _sagitta. Caus_, cheese;
    _caseus_. _Caul_, cabbage; _caulis_.


These words are certainly foreign words in Cornish and the other Celtic
languages in which they occur, and to attempt to supply for some of them a
purely Celtic etymology shows a complete want of appreciation both of the
history of words and of the phonetic laws that govern each family of the
Indo-European languages. Sometimes, no doubt, the Latin words have been
considerably changed and modified, according to the phonetic peculiarities
of the dialects into which they were received. Thus, _gwespar_ for
_vesper_, _seth_ for _sagitta_, _caus_ for _caseus_, hardly look like
Latin words. Yet no real Celtic scholar would claim them as Celtic; and
the Rev. Robert Williams, the author of the “Lexicon Cornu-Britannicum,”
in speaking of a list of words borrowed from Latin by the Welsh during the
stay of the Romans in Britain, is no doubt right in stating “that it will
be found much more extensive than is generally imagined.”

Latin words which have reached the Cornish after they had assumed a French
or Norman disguise, are, for instance,—


    _Emperur_, instead of Latin _imperator_ (Welsh, _ymherawdwr_).


    _Laian_, the French _loyal_, but not the Latin _legalis_.
    Likewise, _dislaian_, disloyal.


    _Fruit_, fruit; Lat. _fructus_; French, _fruit_.


    _Funten_, fountain, commonly pronounced _fenton_; Lat. _fontana_;
    French, _fontaine_.


    _Gromersy_, _i.e._ grand mercy, thanks.


    _Hoyz, hoyz, hoyz!_ hear, hear! The Norman-French, _Oyez_.


The town-crier of Aberconwy may still be heard prefacing his notices with
the shout of “Hoyz, hoyz, hoyz!” which in other places has been corrupted
to “O yes.”

The following words, adopted into Cornish and other Celtic dialects,
clearly show their Saxon origin:—


    _Cafor_, a chafer; Germ, _käfer_. _Craft_, art, craft. _Redior_, a
    reader. _Storc_, a stork. _Let_, hindrance, let; preserved in the
    German, _verletzen_.(54)


Considering that Cornish and other Celtic dialects are members of the same
family to which Latin and German belong, it is sometimes difficult to tell
at once whether a Celtic word was really borrowed, or whether it belongs
to that ancient stock of words which all the Aryan languages share in
common. This is a point which can be determined by scholars only, and by
means of phonetic tests. Thus the Cornish _huir_, or _hoer_, is clearly
the same word as the Latin _soror_, sister. But the change of _s_ into _h_
would not have taken place if the word had been simply borrowed from
Latin, while many words beginning with _s_ in Sanskrit, Latin, and German,
change the _s_ into _h_ in Cornish as well as in Greek and Persian. The
Cornish _hoer_, sister, is indeed curiously like the Persian _kháher_, the
regular representative of the Sanskrit _svasar_, the Latin _soror_. The
same applies to _braud_, brother, _dedh_, day, _dri_, three, and many more
words which form the primitive stock of Cornish, and were common to all
the Aryan languages before their earliest dispersion.

What applies to the language of Cornwall, applies with equal force to the
other relics of antiquity of that curious county. It has been truly said
that Cornwall is poor in antiquities, but it is equally true that it is
rich in antiquity. The difficulty is to discriminate, and to distinguish
what is really Cornish or Celtic from what may be later additions, of
Roman, Saxon, Danish, and Norman origin. Now here, as we said before, the
safest rule is clearly the same as that which we followed in our analysis
of language. Let everything be claimed for English, Norman, Danish, and
Roman sources that can clearly be proved to come from thence; but let what
remains unclaimed be considered as Cornish or Celtic. Thus, if we do not
find in countries exclusively inhabited by Romans or Saxons anything like
a cromlech, surely we have a right to look upon these strange structures
as remnants of Celtic times. It makes no difference if it can be shown
that below these cromlechs coins have occasionally been found of the Roman
Emperors. This only proves that even during the days of Roman supremacy
the Cornish style of public monuments, whether sepulchral or otherwise,
remained. Nay, why should not even a Roman settled in Cornwall have
adopted the monumental style of his adopted country? Roman and Saxon hands
may have helped to erect some of the cromlechs which are still to be seen
in Cornwall, but the original idea of such monuments, and hence their
name, is purely Celtic.

_Cromlêh_ in Cornish, or _cromlech_ in Welsh, means a bent slab, from the
Cornish _crom_, bent, curved, rounded, and _lêh_, a slab. Though many of
these cromlechs have been destroyed, Cornwall still possesses some fine
specimens of these ancient stone tripods. Most of them are large granite
slabs, supported by three stones fixed in the ground. These supporters are
likewise huge flat stones, but the capstone is always the largest, and its
weight inclining towards one point, imparts strength to the whole
structure. At Lanyon, however, where the top-stone of a cromlech was
thrown down in 1816 by a violent storm, the supporters remained standing,
and the capstone was replaced in 1824, though not, it would seem, at its
original height. Dr. Borlase relates that in his time the monument was
high enough for a man to sit on horseback under it. At present such a feat
would be impossible, the cover-stone being only about five feet from the
ground. These cromlechs, though very surprising when seen for the first
time, represent in reality one of the simplest achievements of primitive
architecture. It is far easier to balance a heavy weight on three uneven
props than to rest it level on two or four even supporters. There are,
however, cromlechs resting on four or more stones, these stones forming a
kind of chamber, or a _kist-vaen_, which is supposed to have served
originally as a sepulchre. These structures presuppose a larger amount of
architectural skill; still more so the gigantic portals of Stonehenge,
which are formed by two pillars of equal height, joined by a
superincumbent stone. Here weight alone was no longer considered
sufficient for imparting strength and safety, but holes were worked in the
upper stones, and the pointed tops of the pillars were fitted into them.
In the slabs that form the cromlechs we find no such traces of careful
workmanship; and this, as well as other considerations, would support the
opinion, that in Stonehenge we have one of the latest specimens of Celtic
architecture. Marvelous as are the remains of that primitive style of
architectural art, the only real problem they offer is, how such large
stones could have been brought together from a distance, and how such
enormous weights could have been lifted up. The first question is answered
by ropes and rollers; and the mural sculptures of Nineveh show us what can
be done by such simple machinery. We there see the whole picture of how
these colossal blocks of stone were moved from the quarry on to the place
where they were wanted. Given plenty of time, and plenty of men and oxen,
and there is no block that could not be brought to its right place by
means of ropes and rollers. And that our forefathers did not stint
themselves either in time, or in men, or other cattle, when engaged in
erecting such monuments, we know even from comparatively modern times.
Under Harold Harfagr, two kings spent three whole years in erecting one
single tumulus; and Harold Blatand is said to have employed the whole of
his army and a vast number of oxen in transporting a large stone which he
wished to place on his mother’s tomb. As to the second question, we can
readily understand how, after the supporters had once been fixed in the
ground, an artificial mound might be raised, which, when the heavy slab
had been rolled up on an inclined plane, might be removed again, and thus
leave the heavy stone poised in its startling elevation.

As skeletons have been found under some of the cromlechs, there can be
little doubt that the chambers inclosed by them, the so-called
_kist-vaens_, were intended to receive the remains of the dead, and to
perpetuate their memory. And as these sepulchral monuments are most
frequent in those parts of the British Isles which from the earliest to
the latest times were inhabited by Celtic people, they may be considered
as representative of the Celtic style of public sepulture. _Kist-vaen_, or
_cist-vaen_, means a stone-chamber, from _cista_, a chest, and _vaen_, the
modified form of _maen_ or _mên_, stone. Their size is, with few
exceptions, not less than the size of a human body. But although these
monuments were originally sepulchral, we may well understand that the
burying-places of great men, of kings, or priests, or generals, were
likewise used for the celebration of other religious rites. Thus we read
in the Book of Lecan, “that Amhalgaith built a cairn, for the purpose of
holding a meeting of the Hy-Amhalgaith every year, and to view his ships
and fleet going and coming, and as a place of interment for himself.”(55)
Nor does it follow, as some antiquarians maintain, that every structure in
the style of a cromlech, even in England, is exclusively Celtic. We
imitate pyramids and obelisks: why should not the Saxons have built the
Kitts Cotty House, which is found in a thoroughly Saxon neighborhood,
after Celtic models and with the aid of Celtic captives? This cromlech
stands in Kent, on the brow of a hill about a mile and a half from
Aylesford, to the right of the great road from Rochester to Maidstone.
Near it, across the Medway, are the stone circles of Addington. The stone
on the south side is 8 ft. high by 7-½ broad, and 2 ft. thick; weight,
about 8 tons. That on the north is 8 ft. by 8, and 2 thick; weight, 8 tons
10 cwt. The end stone, 5 ft. 6 in. high by 5 ft. broad; thickness, 14 in.;
weight, 2 tons 8-¼ cwt. The impost is 11 ft. long by 8 ft. broad, and 2
ft. thick; weight, 10 tons 7 cwt. It is higher, therefore, than the
Cornish cromlechs, but in other respects it is a true specimen of that
class of Celtic monuments. The cover-stone of the cromlech at Molfra is 9
ft. 8 in. by 14 ft. 3 in.; its supporters are 5 ft. high. The cover-stone
of the Chûn cromlech measures 12-½ ft. in length and 11 ft. in width. The
largest slab is that at Lanyon, which measures 18-½ ft. in length and 9
ft. at the broadest part.

The cromlechs are no doubt the most characteristic and most striking among
the monuments of Cornwall. Though historians have differed as to their
exact purpose, not even the most careless traveller could pass them by
without seeing that they do not stand there without a purpose. They speak
for themselves, and they certainly speak in a language that is neither
Roman, Saxon, Danish, nor Norman. Hence in England they may, by a kind of
exhaustive process of reasoning, be claimed as relics of Celtic
civilization. The same argument applies to the cromlechs and stone avenues
of Carnac, in Brittany. Here, too, language and history attest the former
presence of Celtic people; nor could any other race, that influenced the
historical destinies of the North of Gaul, claim such structures as their
own. Even in still more distant places, in the South of France, in
Scandinavia, or Germany, where similar monuments have been discovered,
they may, though more hesitatingly, be classed as Celtic, particularly if
they are found near the natural high roads on which we know that the Celts
in their westward migrations preceded the Teutonic and Slavonic Aryans.
But the case is totally different when we hear of cromlechs, cairns, and
kist-vaens in the North of Africa, in Upper Egypt, on the Lebanon, near
the Jordan, in Circassia, or in the South of India. Here, and more
particularly in the South of India, we have no indications whatever of
Celtic Aryans; on the contrary, if that name is taken in its strict
scientific meaning, it would be impossible to account for the presence of
Celtic Aryans in those southern latitudes at any time after the original
dispersion of the Aryan family. It is very natural that English officers
living in India should be surprised at monuments which cannot but remind
them of what they had seen at home, whether in Cornwall, Ireland, or
Scotland. A description of some of these monuments, the so-called Pandoo
Coolies in Malabar, was given by Mr. J. Babington, in 1820, and published
in the third volume of the “Transactions of the Literary Society of
Bombay,” in 1823. Captain Congreve called attention to what he considered
Scythic Druidical remains in the Nilghiri hills, in a paper published in
1847, in the “Madras Journal of Literature and Science,” and the same
subject was treated in the same journal by the Rev. W. Taylor. A most
careful and interesting description of similar monuments has lately been
published in the “Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy,” by Captain
Meadows Taylor, under the title of “Description of Cairns, Cromlechs,
Kist-vaens, and other Celtic, Druidical, or Scythian Monuments in the
Dekhan.” Captain Taylor found these monuments near the village of
Rajunkolloor, in the principality of Shorapoor, an independent native
state, situated between the Bheema and Krishna rivers, immediately above
their junction. Others were discovered near Huggeritgi, others on the hill
of Yemmee Gooda, others again near Shapoor, Hyderabad, and other places.
All these monuments in the South of India are no doubt extremely
interesting; but to call them Celtic, Druidical, or Scythic, is
unscientific, or, at all events, exceedingly premature. There is in all
architectural monuments a natural or rational, and a conventional, or, it
may be, irrational element. A striking agreement in purely conventional
features may justify the assumption that monuments so far distant from
each others as the cromlechs of Anglesea and the “Mori-Munni” of Shorapoor
owe their origin to the same architects, or to the same races. But an
agreement in purely natural contrivances goes for nothing, or, at least,
for very little. Now there is very little that can be called conventional
in a mere stone pillar, or in a cairn, that is, an artificial heap of
stones. Even the erection of a cromlech can hardly be claimed as a
separate style of architecture. Children, all over the world, if building
houses with cards, will build cromlechs; and people, all over the world,
if the neighborhood supplies large slabs of stone, will put three stones
together to keep out the sun or the wind, and put a fourth stone on the
top to keep out the rain. Before monuments like those described by Captain
Meadows Taylor can be classed as Celtic or Druidical, a possibility, at
all events, must be shown that Celts, in the true sense of the word, could
ever have inhabited the Dekhan. Till that is done, it is better to leave
them anonymous, or to call them by their native names, than to give to
them a name which is apt to mislead the public at large, and to encourage
theories which exceed the limits of legitimate speculation.

Returning to Cornwall, we find there, besides the cromlechs, pillars,
holed stones, and stone circles, all of which may be classed as public
monuments. They all bear witness to a kind of public spirit, and to a
certain advance in social and political life, at the time of their
erection. They were meant for people living at the time, who understood
their meaning, if not as messages to posterity, and, if so, as truly
historical monuments; for history begins when the living begin to care
about a good opinion of those who come after them. Some of the single
Cornish pillars tell us little indeed; nothing, in reality, beyond the
fact that they were erected by human skill, and with some human purpose.
Some of these monoliths seem to have been of a considerable size. In a
village called Mên Perhen, in Constantine parish, there stood, “about five
years ago,”—so Dr. Borlase relates in the year 1769,—a large pyramidal
stone, twenty feet above the ground, and four feet in the ground; it made
above twenty stone posts for gates when it was clove up by the farmer who
gave the account to the Doctor.(56) Other stones, like the Mên Scrifa,
have inscriptions, but these inscriptions are Roman, and of comparatively
late date. There are some pillars, like the Pipers at Bolleit, which are
clearly connected with the stone circles close by, remnants, it may be, of
old stone avenues, or beacons, from which signals might be sent to other
distant settlements. The holed stones, too, are generally found in close
proximity to other large stone monuments. They are called _mên-an-tol_,
hole-stones, in Cornwall; and the name of _tol-men_, or _dol-men_, which
is somewhat promiscuously used by Celtic antiquarians, should be
restricted to monuments of this class, _toll_ being the Cornish word for
_hole_, _mên_ for _stone_, and _an_ the article. French antiquarians,
taking _dol_ or _tôl_ as a corruption of _tabula_, use _dolman_ in the
sense of table-stones, and as synonymous with _cromlech_, while they
frequently use _cromlech_ in the sense of stone circles. This can hardly
be justified, and leads at all events to much confusion.

The stone circles, whether used for religious or judicial purposes,—and
there was in ancient times very little difference between the two,—were
clearly intended for solemn meetings. There is a very perfect circle at
Boscawen-ûn, which consisted originally of nineteen stones. Dr. Borlase,
whose work on the Antiquities of the County of Cornwall contains the most
trustworthy information as to the state of Cornish antiquities about a
hundred years ago, mentions three other circles which had the same number
of stones, while others vary from twelve to seventy-two.


    “The figure of these monuments,” he says, “is either simple, or
    compounded. Of the first kind are exact circles; elliptical or
    semicircular. The construction of these is not always the same,
    some having their circumference marked with large separate stones
    only; others having ridges of small stones intermixed, and
    sometimes walls and seats, serving to render the inclosure more
    complete. Other circular monuments have their figure more complex
    and varied, consisting, not only of a circle, but of some other
    distinguishing properties. In or near the centre of some stands a
    stone taller than the rest, as at Boscawen-ûn; in the middle of
    others, a kist-vaen. A cromlêh distinguishes the centre of some
    circles, and one remarkable rock that of others; some have only
    one line of stones in their circumference, and some have two; some
    circles are adjacent, some contiguous, and some include, and some
    intersect each other. Sometimes urns are found in or near them.
    Some are curiously erected on geometrical plans, the chief
    entrance facing the cardinal points of the heavens; some have
    avenues leading to them, placed exactly north and south, with
    detached stones, sometimes in straight lines to the east and west,
    sometimes triangular. These monuments are found in many foreign
    countries, in Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, as well as in
    all the isles dependent upon Britain (the Orkneys, Western Isles,
    Jersey, Ireland, and the Isle of Man), and in most parts of
    Britain itself.”


Modern traditions have everywhere clustered round these curious stone
circles. Being placed in a circular order, so as to make an area for
dancing, they were naturally called _Dawns-mên_, _i.e._ dancing stones.
This name was soon corrupted into dancemen, and a legend sprang up at once
to account for the name, namely, that these men had danced on a Sunday and
been changed into stones. Another corruption of the same name into
_Danis-mên_ led to the tradition that these circles were built by the
Danes. A still more curious name for these circles is that of “_Nine
Maidens_,” which occurs at Boscawen-ûn, and in several other places in
Cornwall. Now the Boscawen-ûn circle consists of nineteen stones, and
there are very few “Nine Maidens” that consist of nine stones only. Yet
the name prevails, and is likewise supported by local legends of nine
maidens having been changed into stones for dancing on a Sunday, or some
other misdeed. One part of the legend may perhaps be explained by the fact
that _mêdn_ would be a common corruption in modern Cornish for _mên_,
stone, as _pen_ becomes _pedn_, and _gwyn_, _gwydn_, etc., and that the
Saxons mistook Cornish _mêdn_ for their own _maiden_. But even without
this, legends of a similar character would spring up wherever the popular
mind is startled by strange monuments, the history and purpose of which
has been forgotten. Thus Captain Meadows Taylor tells us that at
Vibat-Hullie the people told him “that the stones were men who, as they
stood marking out the places for the elephants of the king of the dwarfs,
were turned into stone by him, because they would not keep quiet.” And M.
de Cambry, as quoted by him, says in regard to Carnac, “that the rocks
were believed to be an army turned into stone, or the work of the
Croins,—men or demons, two or three feet high, who carried these rocks in
their hands, and placed them there.”

A second class of Cornish antiquities comprises private buildings, whether
castles or huts or caves. What are called castles in Cornwall are simple
intrenchments, consisting of large and small stones piled up about ten or
twelve feet high, and held together by their own weight, without any
cement. There are everywhere traces of a ditch, then of a wall; sometimes,
as at Chûn Castle, of another ditch and another wall; and there is
generally some contrivance for protecting the principal entrance by walls
overlapping the ditches. Near these castles barrows are found, and in
several cases there are clear traces of a communication between them and
some ancient Celtic villages and caves, which seem to have been placed
under the protection of these primitive strongholds. Many of the cliffs in
Cornwall are fortified towards the land by walls and ditches, thus cutting
off these extreme promontories from communication with the land, as they
are by nature inaccessible from the sea. Some antiquarians ascribed these
castles to the Danes, the very last people, one would think, to shut
themselves up in such hopeless retreats. Here, too, as in other cases, a
popular etymology may have taken the place of an historical authority, and
the Cornish word for castle being _Dinas_ as in _Castle-an-Dinas_,
_Pendennis_, etc., the later Saxon-speaking population may have been
reminded by _Dinas_ of the Danes, and on the strength of this vague
similarity have ascribed to these pirates the erection of the Cornish
castles.

It is indeed difficult, with regard to these castles, to be positive as to
the people by whom they were constructed. Tradition and history point to
Romans and Saxons, as well as to Celts; nor is it at all unlikely that
many of these half-natural, half-artificial strongholds, though originally
planned by the Celtic inhabitants, were afterwards taken possession of and
strengthened by Romans or Saxons.

But no such doubts are allowed with regard to Cornish huts, of which some
striking remains have been preserved in Cornwall and other parts of
England, particularly in those which, to the very last, remained the true
home of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain. The houses and huts of the
Romans were rectangular, nor is there any evidence to show that the Saxon
ever approved of the circular style in domestic architecture.

If, then, we find these so-called bee-hive huts in places peculiarly
Celtic, and if we remember that so early a writer as Strabo(57) was struck
with the same strange style of Celtic architecture, we can hardly be
suspected of Celtomania, if we claim them as Celtic workmanship, and dwell
with a more than ordinary interest on these ancient chambers, now long
deserted and nearly smothered with ferns and weeds, but in their general
planning, as well as in their masonry, clearly exhibiting before us
something of the arts and the life of the earliest inhabitants of these
isles. Let anybody who has a sense of antiquity, and who can feel the
spark which is sent on to us through an unbroken chain of history, when we
stand on the Acropolis or on the Capitol, or when we read a ballad of
Homer or a hymn of the Veda,—nay, if we but read in a proper spirit a
chapter of the Old Testament too,—let such a man look at the Celtic huts
at Bosprennis or Chysauster, and discover for himself, through the ferns
and brambles, the old gray walls, slightly sloping inward, and arranged
according to a design that cannot be mistaken; and miserable as these
shapeless clumps may appear to the thoughtless traveller, they will convey
to the true historian a lesson which he could hardly learn anywhere else.
The ancient Britons will no longer be a mere name to him, no mere
Pelasgians or Tyrrhenians. He has seen their homes and their handiwork; he
has stood behind the walls which protected their lives and property; he
has touched the stones which their hands piled up rudely, yet
thoughtfully. And if that small spark of sympathy for those who gave the
honored name of Britain to these islands has once been kindled among a few
who have the power of influencing public opinion in England, we feel
certain that something will be done to preserve what can still be
preserved of Celtic remains from further destruction. It does honor to the
British Parliament that large sums are granted, when it is necessary, to
bring to these safe shores whatever can still be rescued from the ruins of
Greece and Italy, of Lycia, Pergamos, Palestine, Egypt, Babylon, or
Nineveh. But while explorers and excavators are sent to those distant
countries, and the statues of Greece, the coffins of Egypt, and the winged
monsters of Nineveh, are brought home in triumph to the portals of the
British Museum, it is painful to see the splendid granite slabs of British
cromlechs thrown down and carted away, stone circles destroyed to make way
for farming improvements, and ancient huts and caves broken up to build
new houses and stables, with the stones thus ready to hand. It is high
time, indeed, that something should be done; and nothing will avail but to
place every truly historical monument under national protection.
Individual efforts may answer here and there, and a right spirit may be
awakened from time to time by local societies; but during intervals of
apathy mischief is done that can never be mended; and unless the damaging
of national monuments, even though they should stand on private ground, is
made a misdemeanor, we doubt whether, two hundred years hence, any
enterprising explorer would be as fortunate as Mr. Layard and Sir H.
Rawlinson have been in Babylon and Nineveh, and whether one single
cromlech would be left for him to carry away to the National Museum of the
Maoris. It is curious that the willful damage done to Logan Stones, once
in the time of Cromwell by Shrubsall, and more recently by Lieutenant
Goldsmith, should have raised such indignation, while acts of Vandalism,
committed against real antiquities, are allowed to pass unnoticed. Mr.
Scawen, in speaking of the mischief done by strangers in Cornwall, says:—


    “Here, too, we may add, what wrong another sort of strangers has
    done to us, especially in the civil wars, and in particular by
    destroying of Mincamber, a famous monument, being a rock of
    infinite weight, which, as a burden, was laid upon other great
    stones, and yet so equally thereon poised up by Nature only, as a
    little child could instantly move it, but no one man or many
    remove it. This natural monument all travellers that came that way
    desired to behold; but in the time of Oliver’s usurpation, when
    all monumental things became despicable, one Shrubsall, one of
    Oliver’s heroes, then Governor of Pendennis, by labor and much
    ado, caused to be undermined and thrown down, to the great grief
    of the country; but to his own great glory, as he thought, doing
    it, as he said, with a small cane in his hand. I myself have heard
    him to boast of this act, being a prisoner then under him.”


Mr. Scawen, however, does not tell us that this Shrubsall, in throwing
down the Mincamber, _i.e._ the Mênamber, acted very like the old
missionaries in felling the sacred oaks in Germany. Merlin, it was
believed, had proclaimed that this stone should stand until England had no
king; and as Cornwall was a stronghold of the Stuarts, the destruction of
this loyal stone may have seemed a matter of wise policy.

Even the foolish exploit of Lieutenant Goldsmith, in 1824, would seem to
have had some kind of excuse. Dr. Borlase had asserted “that it was
_morally_ impossible that any lever, or indeed force, however applied in a
mechanical way, could remove the famous Logan rock at Trereen Dinas from
its present position.” Ptolemy, the son of Hephæstion, had made a similar
remark about the Gigoman rock,(58) stating that it might be stirred with
the stalk of an asphodel, but could not be removed by any force.
Lieutenant Goldsmith, living in an age of experimental philosophy,
undertook the experiment, in order to show that it was _physically_
possible to overthrow the Logan; and he did it. He was, however, very
properly punished for this unscientific experiment, and he had to replace
the stone at his own expense.

As this matter is really serious, we have drawn up a short list of acts of
Vandalism committed in Cornwall within the memory of living man. That list
could easily be increased, but even as it is, we hope it may rouse the
attention of the public:—

Between St. Ives and Zennor, on the lower road over Tregarthen Downs,
stood a Logan rock. An old man, perhaps ninety years of age, told Mr.
Hunt, who mentions this and other cases in the preface to his charming
collection of Cornish tales and legends, that he had often logged it, and
that it would make a noise which could _be heard for miles_.

At Balnoon, between Nancledrea and Knill’s Steeple, some miners came upon
“two slabs of granite cemented together,” which covered a walled grave
three feet square, an ancient kist-vaen. In it they found an earthenware
vessel, containing some black earth and a leaden spoon. The spoon was
given to Mr. Praed, of Trevethow; the kist-vaen was utterly destroyed.

In Bosprennis Cross there was a very large coit or cromlech. It is said to
have been fifteen feet square, and not more than one foot thick in any
part. This was broken in two parts some years since, and taken to Penzance
to form the beds of two ovens.

The curious caves and passages at Chysauster have been destroyed for
building purposes within living memory.

Another Cornishman, Mr. Bellows, reports as follows:—


    “In a field between the recently discovered Beehive hut and the
    Boscawen-ûn circle, out of the public road, we discovered part of
    a ‘Nine Maidens,’ perhaps the third of the circle, the rest of the
    stones being dragged out and placed against the hedge, to make
    room for the plough.”


The same intelligent antiquarian remarks:—


    “The Boscawen-ûn circle seems to have consisted originally of
    twenty stones. Seventeen of them are upright, two are down, and a
    gap exists of exactly the double space for the twentieth. We found
    the missing stone not twenty yards off. A farmer had removed it,
    and made it into a gate-post. He had cut a road through the
    circle, and in such a manner that he was obliged to remove the
    offending stone to keep it straight. Fortunately the present
    proprietress is a lady of taste, and has surrounded the circle
    with a good hedge to prevent further Vandalism.”


Of the Mên-an-tol, at Boleit, we have received the following description
from Mr. Botterell, who supplied Mr. Hunt with so many of his Cornish
tales:—


    “These stones are from twenty to twenty-five feet above the
    surface, and we were told by some folks of Boleit that more than
    ten feet had been sunk near, without finding the base. The
    Mên-an-tol have both been displaced, and removed a considerable
    distance from their original site. They are now placed in a hedge,
    to form the side of a gateway. The upper portion of one is so much
    broken that one cannot determine the angle, yet that it worked to
    an angle is quite apparent. The other is turned downward, and
    serves as the hanging-post of a gate. From the head being buried
    so deep in the ground, only part of the hole (which is in both
    stones about six inches diameter) could be seen; though the hole
    is too small to pop the smallest, or all but the smallest, baby
    through, the people call them _crick-stones_, and maintain they
    were so called before they were born. Crick-stones were used for
    dragging people through, to cure them of various diseases.”


The same gentleman, writing to one of the Cornish papers, informs the
public that a few years ago a rock known by the name of Garrack-zans might
be seen in the town-place of Sawah, in the parish of St. Levan; another in
Roskestal, in the same parish. One is also said to have been removed from
near the centre of Trereen, by the family of Jans, to make a grander
approach to their mansion. The ruins, which still remain, are known by the
name of the Jans House, although the family became extinct soon after
perpetrating what was regarded by the old inhabitants as a sacrilegious
act. The Garrack-zans may still be remaining in Roskestal and Sawah, but,
as much alteration has recently taken place in these villages, in
consequence of building new farm-houses, making new roads, etc., it is a
great chance if they have not been either removed or destroyed.

Mr. J. T. Blight, the author of one of the most useful little guide-books
of Cornwall, “A Week at the Land’s End,” states that some eight or ten
years ago the ruins of the ancient Chapel of St. Eloy, in St. Burian, were
thrown over the cliff by the tenant of the estate, without the knowledge
or permission of the owner of the property. Chûn Castle, he says, one of
the finest examples of early military architecture in this kingdom, has
for many years been resorted to as a sort of quarry. The same applies to
Castle-an-Dinas.

From an interesting paper on Castallack Round by the same antiquarian, we
quote the following passages, showing the constant mischief that is going
on, whether due to downright Vandalism or to ignorance and indifference:—


    “From a description of Castallack Round, in the parish of St.
    Paul, written by Mr. Crozier, perhaps fourteen or fifteen years
    ago, it appears that there was a massive outer wall, with an
    entrance on the south; from which a colonnade of stones led to an
    inner inclosure, also formed with stones, and nine feet in
    diameter. Mr. Haliwell, so recently as 1861, refers to the avenue
    of upright stones leading from the outer to the inner inclosure.


    “On visiting the spot a few days ago (in 1865), I was surprised to
    find that not only were there no remains of an avenue of stones,
    but that the existence of an inner inclosure could scarcely be
    traced. It was, in fact, evident that some modern Vandal had here
    been at work. A laborer, employed in the field close by, with a
    complaisant smile, informed me that the old Round had been dug
    into last year, for the sake of the stones. I found, however,
    enough of the work left to be worthy of a few notes, sufficient to
    show that it was a kindred structure to that at Kerris, known as
    the Roundago, and described and figured in Borlase’s ‘Antiquities
    of Cornwall.’ ... Mr. Crozier also refers to a stone, five feet
    high, which stood within a hundred yards of the Castallack Round,
    and from which the Pipers at Boleit could be seen.


    “The attention of the Royal Institution of Cornwall has been
    repeatedly called to the destruction of Cornish antiquities, and
    the interference of landed proprietors has been frequently invoked
    in aid of their preservation; but it unfortunately happens, in
    most cases, that important remains are demolished by the tenants
    without the knowledge or consent of the landlords. On comparing
    the present condition of the Castallack Round with a description
    of its appearance so recently as in 1861, I find that the greater
    and more interesting part has been barbarously and irreparably
    destroyed; and I regret to say, I could draw up a long list of
    ancient remains in Cornwall, partially or totally demolished
    within the last few years.”


We can hardly hope that the wholesome superstition which prevented people
in former days from desecrating their ancient monuments will be any
protection to them much longer, though the following story shows that some
grains of the old leaven are still left in the Cornish mind. Near Carleen,
in Breage, an old cross has been removed from its place, and now does duty
as a gate-post. The farmer occupying the farm where the cross stood, set
his laborer to sink a pit in the required spot for the gate-post, but when
it was intimated that the cross standing at a little distance off was to
be erected therein, the man absolutely refused to have any hand in the
matter, not on account of the beautiful or the antique, but for fear of
the old people. Another farmer related that he had a neighbor who “haeled
down a lot of stoans called the Roundago, and sold ’em for building the
docks at Penzance. But not a penny of the money he got for ’em ever
prospered, and there wasn’t wan of the hosses that haeld ’em that lived
out the twelvemonth; and they do say that some of the stoans do weep
blood, but I don’t believe that.”

There are many antiquarians who affect to despise the rude architecture of
the Celts, nay, who would think the name of architecture disgraced if
applied to cromlechs and bee-hive huts. But even these will perhaps be
more willing to lend a helping hand in protecting the antiquities of
Cornwall when they hear that even ancient Norman masonry is no longer safe
in that country. An antiquarian writes to us from Cornwall: “I heard of
some farmers in Meneage (the Lizard district) who dragged down an ancient
well and rebuilt it. When called to task for it, they said, ‘The ould
thing was so shaky that a wasn’t fit to be seen, so we thought we’d putten
to rights and build’un up _fitty_.’ ”

Such things, we feel sure, should not be, and would not be, allowed any
longer, if public opinion, or the public conscience, was once roused. Let
people laugh at Celtic monuments as much as they like, if they will only
help to preserve their laughing-stocks from destruction. Let antiquarians
be as skeptical as they like, if they will only prevent the dishonest
withdrawal of the evidence against which their skepticism is directed. Are
lake-dwellings in Switzerland, are flint-deposits in France, is
kitchen-rubbish in Denmark, so very precious, and are the magnificent
cromlechs, the curious holed stones, and even the rock-basins of Cornwall,
so contemptible? There is a fashion even in scientific tastes. For thirty
years M. Boucher de Perthes could hardly get a hearing for his
flint-heads, and now he has become the centre of interest for geologists,
anthropologists, and physiologists. There is every reason to expect that
the interest, once awakened in the early history of our own race, will go
on increasing; and two hundred years hence the antiquarians and
anthropologists of the future will call us hard names if they find out how
we allowed these relics of the earliest civilization of England to be
destroyed. It is easy to say, What is there in a holed stone? It is a
stone with a hole in it, and that is all. We do not wish to propound new
theories; but in order to show how full of interest even a stone with a
hole in it may become, we will just mention that the _Mên-an-tol_, or the
holed stone which stands in one of the fields near Lanyon, is flanked by
two other stones standing erect on each side. Let any one go there to
watch a sunset about the time of the autumnal equinox, and he will see
that the shadow thrown by the erect stone would fall straight through the
hole of the _Mên-an-tol_. We know that the great festivals of the ancient
world were regulated by the sun, and that some of these festive
seasons—the winter solstice about Yule-tide or Christmas, the vernal
equinox about Easter, the summer solstice on Midsummer-eve, about St. John
Baptist’s day, and the autumnal equinox about Michaelmas—are still kept,
under changed names and with new objects, in our own time. This
_Mên-an-tol_ may be an old dial erected originally to fix the proper time
for the celebration of the autumnal equinox; and though it may have been
applied to other purposes likewise, such as the curing of children by
dragging them several times through the hole, still its original intention
may have been astronomical. It is easy to test this observation, and to
find out whether the same remark does not hold good of other stones in
Cornwall, as, for instance, the Two Pipers. We do not wish to attribute to
this guess as to the original intention of the _Mên-an-tol_ more
importance than it deserves, nor would we in any way countenance the
opinion of those who, beginning with Cæsar, ascribe to the Celts and their
Druids every kind of mysterious wisdom. A mere shepherd, though he had
never heard the name of the equinox, might have erected such a stone for
his own convenience, in order to know the time when he might safely bring
his flocks out, or take them back to their safer stables. But this would
in no way diminish the interest of the _Mên-an-tol_. It would still remain
one of the few relics of the childhood of our race; one of the witnesses
of the earliest workings of the human mind in its struggle against, and in
its alliance with, the powers of nature; one of the vestiges of the first
civilization of the British Isles. Even the Romans, who carried their
Roman roads in a straight line through the countries they had conquered,
undeterred by any obstacles, unawed by any sanctuaries, respected, as can
hardly be doubted, Silbury Hill, and made the road from Bath to London
diverge from the usual straight line, instead of cutting through that
time-honored mound. Would the engineers of our railways show a similar
regard for any national monument, whether Celtic, Roman, or Saxon? When
Charles II., in 1663, went to see the Celtic remains of Abury, sixty-three
stones were still standing within the intrenched inclosure. Not quite a
hundred years later they had dwindled down to forty-four, the rest having
been used for building purposes. Dr. Stukeley, who published a description
of Abury in 1743, tells us that he himself saw the upper stone of the
great cromlech there broken and carried away, the fragments of it making
no less than twenty cart-loads. After another century had passed,
seventeen stones only remained within the great inclosure, and these, too,
are being gradually broken up and carted away. Surely such things ought
not to be. Let those whom it concerns look to it before it is too late.
These Celtic monuments are public property as much as London Stone,
Coronation Stone, or Westminster Abbey, and posterity will hold the
present generation responsible for the safe keeping of the national
heirlooms of England.(59)





XIV. ARE THERE JEWS IN CORNWALL?


There is hardly a book on Cornish history or antiquities in which we are
not seriously informed that at some time or other the Jews migrated to
Cornwall, or worked as slaves in Cornish mines. Some writers state this
simply as a fact requiring no further confirmation; others support it by
that kind of evidence which Herodotus, no doubt, would have considered
sufficient for establishing the former presence of Pelasgians in different
parts of Greece, but which would hardly have satisfied Niebuhr, still less
Sir G. C. Lewis. Old smelting-houses, they tell us, are still called
_Jews’ houses_ in Cornwall; and if, even after that, anybody could be so
skeptical as to doubt that the Jews, after the destruction of Jerusalem,
were sent in large numbers to work as slaves in the Cornish mines, he is
silenced at once by an appeal to the name of _Marazion_, the well-known
town opposite St. Michael’s Mount, which means the “bitterness of Zion,”
and is also called _Market Jew_. Many a traveller has no doubt shaken his
unbelieving head, and asked himself how it is that no real historian
should ever have mentioned the migration of the Jews to the Far West,
whether it took place under Nero or under one of the later Flavian
Emperors. Yet all the Cornish guides are positive on the subject, and the
_primâ facie_ evidence is certainly so startling that we can hardly wonder
if certain anthropologists discovered even the sharply marked features of
the Jewish race among the sturdy fishermen of Mount’s Bay.

Before we examine the facts on which this Jewish theory is founded,—facts,
as will be seen, chiefly derived from names of places, and other relics of
language,—it will be well to inquire a little into the character of the
Cornish language, so that we may know what kind of evidence we have any
right to expect from such a witness.

The ancient language of Cornwall, as is well known, was a Celtic dialect,
closely allied to the languages of Brittany and Wales, and less nearly,
though by no means distantly, related to the languages of Ireland,
Scotland, and the Isle of Man. Cornish began to die out in Cornwall about
the time of the Reformation, being slowly but surely supplanted by
English, till it was buried with Dolly Pentreath and similar worthies
about the end of the last century.(60) Now there is in most languages, but
more particularly in those which are losing their consciousness or their
vitality, what, by a name borrowed from geology, may be called a
_metamorphic process_. It consists chiefly in this, that words, as they
cease to be properly understood, are slightly changed, generally with the
object of imparting to them once more an intelligible meaning. This new
meaning is mostly a mistaken one, yet it is not only readily accepted, but
the word in its new dress and with its new character is frequently made to
support facts or fictions which could be supported by no other evidence.
Who does not believe that sweetheart has something to do with _heart_? Yet
it was originally formed like _drunk-ard_, _dull-ard_, and _nigg-ard_; and
poets, not grammarians, are responsible for the mischief it may have done
under its plausible disguise. By the same process, _shamefast_, formed
like _steadfast_ and still properly spelt by Chaucer and in the early
editions of the Authorized Version of the Bible, has long become
_shamefaced_, bringing before us the blushing roses of a lovely face. The
_Vikings_, mere pirates from the _viks_ or creeks of Scandinavia, have, by
the same process, been raised to the dignity of kings; just as _coat
cards_—the king, and queen, and knave in their gorgeous gowns—were exalted
into _court cards_.

Although this kind of metamorphosis takes place in every language, yet it
is most frequent in countries where two languages come in contact with
each other, and where, in the end, one is superseded by the other.
_Robertus Curtus_, the eldest son of the Conqueror, was by the Saxons
called _Curt-hose_. The name of _Oxford_ contains in its first syllable an
old Celtic word, the well-known term for water or river, which occurs as
_ux_ in _Uxbridge_, as _ex_ in _Exmouth_, as _ax_ in _Axmouth_, and in
many more disguises down to the _whisk_ of _whiskey_, the Scotch
_Usquebaugh_.(61) In the name of the _Isis_, and of the suburb of _Osney_,
the same Celtic word has been preserved. The Saxons kept the Celtic name
of the river, and they called the place where one of the Roman roads
crossed the river Ox, _Oxford_. The name, however, was soon mistaken, and
interpreted as purely Saxon; and if any one should doubt that Oxford was a
kind of _Bosphorus_, and meant a ford for oxen, the ancient arms of the
city were readily appealed to in order to cut short all doubts on the
subject. The Welsh name _Ryt-yhcen_ for Oxford was a retranslation into
Welsh of an original Celtic name, to which a new form and a new meaning
had been given by the Saxon conquerors.

Similar accidents happened to Greek words after they were adopted by the
people of Italy, particularly by the Romans. The Latin _orichalcum_, for
instance, is simply the Greek word ὀρείχαλκος, from ὄρος, mountain, and
χαλκός, copper. Why it was called mountain-copper, no one seems to know.
It was originally a kind of fabulous metal, brought to light from the
brains of the poet rather than from the bowels of the earth. Though the
poets, and even Plato, speak of it as, after gold, the most precious of
metals, Aristotle sternly denies that there ever was any real metal
corresponding to the extravagant descriptions of the ὀρείχαλκος.
Afterwards the same word was used in a more sober and technical sense,
though it is not always easy to say when it means copper, or bronze
(_i.e._ copper and tin), or brass (_i.e._ copper and zinc). The Latin
poets not only adopted the Greek word in the fabulous sense in which they
found it used in Homer, but forgetting that the first portion of the name
was derived from the Greek ὄρος, hill, they pronounced and even spelt it
as if derived from the Latin _aurum_, gold, and thus found a new
confirmation of its equality with gold, which would have greatly surprised
the original framers of that curious compound.(62)

In a county like Cornwall, where the ancient Celtic dialect continued to
be spoken, though disturbed and overlaid from time to time by Latin,
Saxon, and Norman, where Celts had to adopt certain Saxon and Norman, and
Saxons and Normans certain Celtic words, we have a right to expect an
ample field for observing this metamorphic process, and for tracing its
influence in the transformation of names, and in the formation of legends,
traditions, nay even, as we shall see, in the production of generally
accepted historical facts. To call this process _metamorphic_, using that
name in the sense given to it by geologists, may at first sight seem
pedantic and far-fetched. But if we see how a new language forms what may
be called a new stratum covering the old language; how the life or heat of
the old language, though apparently extinct, breaks forth again through
the superincumbent crust, destroys its regular features and assimilates
its stratified layers with its own igneous or volcanic nature, our
comparison, though somewhat elaborate, will be justified to a great
extent, and we shall only have to ask our geological readers to make
allowance for this, that, in languages, the foreign element has always to
be considered as the superincumbent stratum, Cornish forming the crust to
English or English to Cornish, according as the speaker uses the one or
the other as his native or as his acquired speech.

Our first witness in support of this metamorphic process is Mr. Scawen,
who lived about two hundred years ago, a true Cornishman, though he wrote
in English, or in what he is pleased so to call. In blaming the Cornish
gentry and nobility for having attempted to give to their ancient and
honorable names a kind of Norman varnish, and for having adopted
new-fangled coats of arms, Mr. Scawen remarks on the several mistakes,
intentional or unintentional, that occurred in this foolish process. “The
grounds of two several mistakes,” he writes, “are very obvious: 1st, upon
the _Tre_ or _Ter_; 2d, upon the _Ross_ or _Rose_. _Tre_ or _Ter_ in
Cornish commonly signifies a town, or rather place, and it has always an
adjunct with it. _Tri_ is the number 3. Those men willingly mistake one
for another. And so, in French heraldry terms, they used to fancy and
contrive those with any such three things as may be like, or cohere with,
or may be adapted to anything or things in their surnames, whether very
handsome or not is not much stood upon. Another usual mistake is upon
_Ross_, which, as they seem to fancy, should be a Rose, but _Ross_ in
Cornish is a vale or valley. Now for this their French-Latin tutors, when
they go into the field of Mars, put them in their coat armor prettily to
smell out a Rose or flower (a fading honor instead of a durable one); so
any three such things, agreeable perhaps a little to their names, are
taken up and retained from abroad, when their own at home have a much
better scent and more lasting.”

Some amusing instances of what may be called Saxon puns on Cornish words
have been communicated to me by a Cornish friend of mine, Mr. Bellows.
“The old Cornish name for Falmouth,” he writes, “was _Penny come
quick_,(63) and they tell a most improbable story to account for it. I
believe the whole compound is the Cornish _Pen y cwm gwic_, ‘Head of the
creek valley.’ In like manner they have turned _Bryn uhella_ (highest
hill) into _Brown Willy_, and _Cwm ty goed_ (woodhouse valley) into _Come
to good_.” To this might be added the common etymologies of _Helstone_ and
_Camelford_. The former name has nothing to do with the Saxon _helstone_,
a covering stone, or with the infernal regions, but meant “place on the
river;” the latter, in spite of the camel in the arms of the town, meant
the ford of the river Camel. A frequent mistake arises from the
misapprehension of the Celtic _dun_, hill, which enters in the composition
of many local names, and was changed by the Saxons into _town_ or _tun_.
Thus _Meli-dunum_ is now _Moulton_, _Seccan-dun_ is _Seckington_, and
_Beamdun_ is _Bampton_.(64)

This transformation of Celtic into Saxon or Norman terms is not confined,
however, to the names of families, towns, and villages; and we shall see
how the fables to which it has given rise have not only disfigured the
records of some of the most ancient families in Cornwall, but have thrown
a haze over the annals of the whole county.

Returning to the Jews in their Cornish exile, we find, no doubt, as
mentioned before, that even in the Ordnance maps the little town opposite
St. Michael’s Mount is called _Marazion_ and _Market Jew_. _Marazion_
sounds decidedly like Hebrew, and might signify _Mârâh_, “bitterness,
grief,” _Zion_, “of Zion.” M. Esquiros, a believer in Cornish Jews, thinks
that _Mara_ might be a corruption of the Latin _Amara_, bitter; but he
forgets that this etymology would really defeat its very object, and
destroy the Hebrew origin of the name. The next question therefore is,
What is the real origin of the name _Marazion_, and of its _alias_,
_Market Jew_? It cannot be too often repeated that inquiries into the
origin of local names are, in the first place, historical, and only in the
second place, philological. To attempt an explanation of any name, without
having first traced it back to the earliest form in which we can find it,
is to set at defiance the plainest rules of the science of language as
well as of the science of history. Even if the interpretation of a local
name should be right, it would be of no scientific value without the
preliminary inquiry into its history, which frequently consists in a
succession of the most startling changes and corruptions. Those who are at
all familiar with the history of Cornish names of places will not be
surprised to find the same name written in four or five, nay, in ten
different ways. The fact is that those who pronounced the names were
frequently ignorant of their real import, and those who had to write them
down could hardly catch their correct pronunciation. Thus we find that
Camden calls Marazion _Merkiu_; Carew, _Marcaiew_. Leland in his
“Itinerary” (about 1538) uses the names _Markesin_, _Markine_ (vol. iii.
fol. 4); and in another place (vol. vii. fol. 119) he applies, it would
seem, to the same town the name of _Marasdeythyon_. William of Worcester
(about 1478) writes promiscuously _Markysyoo_ (p. 103), _Marchew_ and
_Margew_ (p. 133), _Marchasyowe_ and _Markysyow_ (p. 98). In a charter of
Queen Elizabeth, dated 1595, the name is written _Marghasiewe_; in another
of the year 1313, _Markesion_; in another of 1309, _Markasyon_; in another
of Richard, Earl of Cornwall (_Rex Romanorum_, 1257), _Marchadyon_, which
seems the oldest, and at the same time the most primitive form.(65)
Besides these, Dr. Oliver has found in different title-deeds the following
varieties of the same name:—_Marghasion_, _Markesiow_, _Marghasiew_,
_Maryazion_, and _Marazion_. The only explanation of the name which we
meet with in early writers, such as Leland, Camden, and Carew, is that it
meant “Thursday Market.” Leland explains _Marasdeythyon_ by _forum Jovis_.
Camden explains _Merkiu_ in the same manner, and Carew takes _Marcaiew_ as
originally _Marhas diew_, _i.e._ “Thursdaies market, for then it useth
this traffike.”

This interpretation of _Marhasdiew_ as Thursday Market, appears at first
very plausible, and it has at all events far better claims on our
acceptance than the modern Hebrew etymology of “Bitterness of Zion.” But,
strange to say, although from a charter of Robert, Earl of Cornwall, it
appears that the monks of the Mount had the privilege of holding a market
on Thursday (_die quintæ feriæ_), there is no evidence, and no
probability, that a town so close to the Mount as Marazion ever held a
market on the same day.(66) Thursday in Cornish was called _deyow_, not
_diew_. The only additional evidence we get is this, that in the taxation
of Bishop Walter Bronescombe, made August 12, 1261, and quoted in Bishop
Stapledon’s register of 1313, the place is called _Markesion de parvo
mercato_,(67) and that in a charter of Richard, King of the Romans and
Earl of Cornwall, permission was granted to the prior of St. Michael’s
Mount that three markets, which formerly had been held in _Marghasbigan_,
on ground not belonging to him, should in future be held on his own ground
in _Marchadyon_. _Parvus mercatus_ is evidently the same place as
_Marghasbigan_, for _Marghas-bigan_ means in Cornish the same as _Mercatus
parvus_, namely, “Little Market.” The charter of Richard, Earl of
Cornwall, is more perplexing, and it would seem to yield no sense, unless
we again take _Marchadyon_ as a mere variety of _Marghasbigan_, and
suppose that the privilege granted to the prior of St. Michael’s Mount
consisted really in transferring the fair from land in Marazion not
belonging to him, to land in Marazion belonging to him. Anyhow, it is
clear that in _Marazion_ we have some kind of name for market.

The old Cornish word for market is _marchas_, a corruption of the Latin
_mercatus_. Originally the Cornish word must have been _marchad_, and this
form is preserved in Armorican, while in Cornish the _ch_ gradually sunk
to _h_, and the final _d_ to _s_. This change of _d_ into _s_ is of
frequent occurrence in modern as compared with ancient Cornish, and the
history of our word will enable us, to a certain extent, to fix the time
when that change took place. In the charter of Richard, Earl of Cornwall
(about 1257), we find _Marchadyon_; in a charter of 1309, _Markasyon_. The
change of _d_ into _s_ had taken place during these fifty years.(68) But
what is the termination _yon?_ Considering that Marazion is called the
Little Market, I should like to see in _yon_ the diminutive Cornish
suffix, corresponding to the Welsh _yn_. But if this should be objected
to, on the ground that no such diminutives occur in the literary monuments
of the Cornish language, another explanation is open, which was first
suggested to me by Mr. Bellows: _Marchadion_ may be taken as a perfectly
regular plural in Cornish, and we should then have to suppose that,
instead of being called the Market or the Little Market, the place was
called, from its three statute markets, “The Markets.” And this would help
us to explain, not only the gradual growth of the name Marazion, but
likewise, I think, the gradual formation of “Market Jew;” for another
termination of the plural in Cornish is _ieu_, which, added to _Marchad_,
would give us _Marchadieu_.(69)

Now it is perfectly true that no real Cornishman, I mean no man who spoke
Cornish, would ever have taken _Marchadiew_ for Market Jew, or Jews’
Market. The name for Jew in Cornish is quite different. It is _Edhow_,
_Yedhow_, _Yudhow_, corrupted likewise into _Ezow_; plural, _Yedhewon_,
etc. But to a Saxon ear the Cornish name _Marchadiew_ might well convey
the idea of _Market Jew_, and thus, by a metamorphic process, a name
meaning in Cornish the Markets would give rise in a perfectly natural
manner, not only to the two names, Marazion and Market Jew, but likewise
to the historical legends of Jews settled in the county of Cornwall.(70)

But there still remain the _Jews’ houses_, the name given, it is said, to
the old, deserted smelting-houses in Cornwall, and in Cornwall only.
Though, in the absence of any historical evidence as to the employment of
this term _Jew’s house_ in former ages, it will be more difficult to
arrive at its original form and meaning, yet an explanation offers itself
which, by a procedure very similar to that which was applied to _Marazion_
and _Market Jew_, may account for the origin of this name likewise.

The Cornish name for house was originally _ty_. In modern Cornish,
however, to quote from Lhuyd’s Grammar, _t_ has been changed to _tsh_, as
_ti_, thou, _tshei_; _ty_, a house, _tshey_; which _tsh_ is also sometimes
changed to _dzh_, as _ol mein y dzkyi_, “all in the house.” Out of this
_dzhyi_ we may easily understand how a Saxon mouth and a Saxon ear might
have elicited a sound somewhat like the English _Jew_.

But we do not get at _Jews’ house_ by so easy a road, if indeed we get at
it at all. We are told that a smelting-house was called a White-house, in
Cornish _Chiwidden_, _widden_ standing for _gwydn_, which is a corruption
of the old Cornish _gwyn_, white. This name of Chiwidden is a famous name
in Cornish hagiography. He was the companion of St. Perran, or St. Piran,
the most popular saint among the mining population of Cornwall.

Mr. Hunt, who in his interesting work, “The Popular Romances of the West
of England,” has assigned a separate chapter to Cornish saints, tells us
how St. Piran, while living in Ireland, fed ten Irish kings and their
armies, for ten days together, with three cows. Notwithstanding this and
other miracles, some of these kings condemned him to be cast off a
precipice into the sea, with a millstone round his neck. St. Piran,
however, floated on safely to Cornwall, and he landed, on the 5th of
March, on the sands which still bear his name, _Perranzabuloe_, or _Perran
on the Sands_.

The lives of saints form one of the most curious subjects for the
historian, and still more for the student of language; and the day, no
doubt, will come when it will be possible to take those wonderful
conglomerates of fact and fiction to pieces, and, as in one of those huge
masses of graywacke or rubblestone, to assign each grain and fragment to
the stratum from which it was taken, before they were all rolled together
and cemented by the ebb and flow of popular tradition. With regard to the
lives of Irish and Scotch and British saints, it ought to be stated, for
the credit of the pious authors of the “Acta Sanctorum,” that even they
admit their tertiary origin. “During the twelfth century,” they say, “when
many of the ancient monasteries in Ireland were handed over to monks from
England, and many new houses were built for them, these monks began to
compile the acts of the saints with greater industry than judgment. They
collected all they could find among the uncertain traditions of the
natives and in obscure Irish writings, following the example of Jocelin,
whose work on the acts of St. Patrick had been received everywhere with
wonderful applause. But many of them have miserably failed, so that the
foolish have laughed at them, and the wise been filled with indignation.”
(“Bollandi Acta,” 5th of March, p. 390, B). In the same work (p. 392, A),
it is pointed out that the Irish monks, whenever they heard of any saints
in other parts of England whose names and lives reminded them of Irish
saints, at once concluded that they were of Irish origin; and that the
people in some parts of England, as they possessed no written acts of
their popular saints, were glad to identify their own with the famous
saints of the Irish Church. This has evidently happened in the case of St.
Piran. St. Piran, in one of his characters, is certainly a truly Cornish
saint; but when the monks in Cornwall heard the wonderful legends of the
Irish saint, St. Kiran, they seem to have grafted their own St. Piran on
the Irish St. Kiran. The difference in the names must have seemed less to
them than to us; for words which in Cornish are pronounced with _p_, are
pronounced, as a rule, in Irish with _k_. Thus, head in Cornish is _pen_,
in Irish _ceann_, son is _map_, in Irish _mac_. The town built at the
eastern extremity of the wall of Severus, was called _Penguaul_, _i.e._
_pen_, caput, _guaul_, walls; the English call it _Penel-tun_, while in
Scotch it was pronounced _Cenail_.(71) That St. Kiran had originally
nothing to do with St. Piran can still be proved, for the earlier Lives of
St. Kiran, though full of fabulous stories, represent him as dying in
Ireland. His saint’s day was the 5th of March; that of St. Piran, the 2d
of May. The later Lives, however, though they say nothing as yet of the
millstone, represent St. Kiran, when a very old man, as suddenly leaving
his country in order that he might die in Cornwall. We are told that
suddenly, when already near his death, he called together his little
flock, and said to them: “My dear brothers and sons, according to a divine
disposition I must leave Ireland and go to Cornwall, and wait for the end
of my life there. I cannot resist the will of God.” He then sailed to
Cornwall, and built himself a house, where he performed many miracles. He
was buried in Cornwall on the sandy sea, fifteen miles from Petrokstowe,
and twenty-five miles from Mousehole.(72) In this manner the Irish and the
Cornish saints, who originally had nothing in common but their names,
became amalgamated,(73) and the saint’s day of St. Piran was moved from
the 2d of May to the 5th of March. Yet although thus welded into one,
nothing could well be imagined more different than the characters of the
Irish and of the Cornish saint. The Irish saint lived a truly ascetic
life; he preached, wrought miracles, and died. The Cornish saint was a
jolly miner, not always very steady on his legs.(74) Let us hear what the
Cornish have to tell of him. His name occurs in several names of places,
such as Perran Zabuloe, Perran Uthno, in Perran the Little, and in Perran
Ar-worthall. His name, pronounced Perran, or Piran, has been further
corrupted into Picras, and Picrous, though some authorities suppose that
this is again a different saint from St. Piran. Anyhow, both St. Perran
and St. Picras live in the memory of the Cornish miner as the discoverers
of tin; and the tinners’ great holiday, the Thursday before Christmas, is
still called Picrou’s day.(75) The legend relates that St. Piran, when
still in Cornwall, employed a heavy black stone as a part of his
fire-place. The fire was more intense than usual, and a stream of
beautiful white metal flowed out of the fire. Great was the joy of the
saint, and he communicated his discovery to St. Chiwidden. They examined
the stone together, and Chiwidden, who was learned in the learning of the
East, soon devised a process for producing this metal in large quantities.
The two saints called the Cornishmen together. They told them of their
treasures, and they taught them how to dig the ore from the earth, and
how, by the agency of fire, to obtain the metal. Great was the joy in
Cornwall, and many days of feasting followed the announcement. Mead and
metheglin, with other drinks, flowed in abundance; and vile rumor says the
saints and their people were rendered equally unstable thereby. “Drunk as
a Perraner” has certainly passed into a proverb from that day.

It is quite clear from these accounts that the legendary discoverer of tin
in Cornwall was originally a totally different character from the Irish
saint, St. Kiran. If one might indulge in a conjecture, I should say that
there probably was in the Celtic language a root _kar_, which in the
Cymbric branch would assume the form _par_. Now _cair_ in Gaelic means to
dig, to raise; and from it a substantive might be derived, meaning digger
or miner. In Ireland, _Kiran_ seems to have been simply a proper name,
like Smith or Baker, for there is nothing in the legends of St. Kiran that
points to mining or smelting. In Cornwall, on the contrary, St. Piran,
before he was engrafted on St. Kiran, was probably nothing but a
personification or apotheosis of the Miner, as much as Dorus was the
personification of the Dorians, and Brutus the first King of Britain.

The rule, “noscitur a sociis,” may be applied to St. Piran. His friend and
associate, St. Chiwidden, or St. Whitehouse, is a personification of the
white-house, _i.e._ the smelting-house, without which St. Piran, the
miner, would have been a very useless saint. If Chywidden, _i.e._ the
smelting-house, became the St. Chywidden, why should we look in the
Cornish St. Piran for anything beyond Piran, _i.e._ the miner?

However, what is of importance to us for our present object is not St.
Piran, but St. Chywidden, the white-house or smelting-house. We are
looking all this time for the original meaning of the Jews’ houses, and
the question is, how can we, starting from Chywidden, arrive at
Jews’-house? I am afraid we can not do so without a jump or two; all we
can do is to show that they are jumps which language herself is fond of
taking, and which therefore we must not shirk, if we wish to ride straight
after her.

Well, then, the first jump which language frequently takes is this, that
instead of using a noun with a qualifying adjective, such as white-house,
the noun by itself is used without any such qualification. This can, of
course, be done with very prominent words only, words which are used so
often, and which express ideas so constantly present to the mind of the
speaker, that no mistake is likely to arise. In English, “the House” is
used for the House of Commons; in later Latin “domus” was used for the
House of God. Among fisherman in Scotland “fish” means salmon. In Greek
λίθος, stone, in the feminine, is used for the magnet, originally Μαγνῆτις
λίθος while the masculine λίθος means a stone in general. In Cornwall,
_ore_ by itself means copper ore only, while tin ore is called black tin.
In times, therefore, when the whole attention of Cornwall was absorbed by
mining and smelting, and when smelting-houses were most likely the only
large buildings that seemed to deserve the name of houses, there is
nothing extraordinary in _tshey_ or _dzhyi_, even without _widden_, white,
having become the recognized name for smelting-houses.

But now comes a second jump, and again one that can be proved to have been
a very favorite one with many languages. When people speaking different
languages live together in the same country, they frequently, in adopting
a foreign term, add to it, by way of interpretation, the word that
corresponds to it in their own language. Thus _Portsmouth_ is a name half
Latin and half English. _Portus_ was the Roman name given to the harbor.
This was adopted by the Saxons, but interpreted at the same time by a
Saxon word, namely, _mouth_, which really means harbor. This
interpretation was hardly intentional, but arose naturally. _Port_ first
became a kind of proper name, and then _mouth_ was added, so that “the
mouth of Port,” _i.e._ of the place called _Portus_ by the Romans, became
at last Portsmouth. But this does not satisfy the early historians, and,
as happens so frequently when there is anything corrupt in language, a
legend springs up almost spontaneously to remove all doubts and
difficulties. Thus we read in the venerable Saxon Chronicle under the year
501, “that Port came to Britain with his two sons, Bieda and Maegla, with
two ships, and their place was called Portsmouth; and they slew a British
man, a very noble man.”(76) Such is the growth of legends, aye, and in
many cases the growth of history.

Formed on the same principle as Portsmouth we find such words as
_Hayle-river_, the Cornish _hal_ by itself meaning salt marsh, moor, or
estuary; _Treville_ or _Trou-ville_, where the Celtic _tre_, town, is
explained by the French _ville_; the _Cotswold_ Hills, where the Celtic
word _cot_, wood, is explained by the Saxon _wold_ or _weald_, a wood. In
_Dun-bar-ton_, the Celtic word _dun_, hill, is explained by the Saxon
_bar_ for _byrig_, burg, _ton_ being added to form the name of the town
that rose up under the protection of the hill-castle. In _Penhow_ the same
process has been suspected; _how_, the German Höhe,(77) expressing nearly
the same idea as _pen_, head. In Constantine, in Cornwall, one of the
large stones with rock-basins is called the _Mên-rock_,(78) rock being
simply the interpretation of the Cornish _mên_.

If, then, we suppose that in exactly the same manner the people of
Cornwall spoke of _Tshey-houses_, or _Dshyi-houses_, is it so very
extraordinary that this hybrid word should at last have been interpreted
as _Jew-houses_ or _Jews’ houses_? I do not say that the history of the
word can be traced through all its phases with the same certainty as that
of Marazion; all I maintain is that, in explaining its history, no step
has been admitted that cannot be proved by sufficient evidence to be in
strict keeping with the well-known movements, or, if it is respectful to
say so, the well-known antics of language.

Thus vanish the Jews from Cornwall; but there still remain the _Saracens_.
One is surprised to meet with Saracens in the West of England; still more,
to hear of their having worked in the tin-mines, like the Jews. According
to some writers, however, Saracen is only another name for Jews, though no
explanation is given why this detested name should have been applied to
the Jews in Cornwall, and nowhere else. This view is held, for instance,
by Carew, who writes: “The Cornish maintain these works to have been very
ancient, and the first wrought by the Jews with pickaxes of holm, box,
hartshorn; they prove this by the names of those places yet enduring, to
wit, _Attall-Sarazin_ (or, as in some editions, _Sazarin_); in English,
the Jews’ Offcast.”

Camden (p. 69) says: “We are taught from Diodorus and Æthicus that the
ancient Britons had worked hard at the mines, but the Saxons and Normans
seem to have neglected them for a long time, or to have employed the labor
of Arabs or Saracens, for the inhabitants call deserted shafts,
_Attall-Sarazin_, _i.e._ the leavings of the Saracens.”

Thus, then, we have not only the Saracens in Cornwall admitted as simply a
matter of history, but their presence actually used in order to prove that
the Saxons and Normans neglected to work the mines in the West of England.

A still more circumstantial account is given by Hals, as quoted by Gilbert
in his “Parochial History of Cornwall.” Here we are told that King Henry
III., by proclamation, let out all Jews in his dominions at a certain rent
to such as would poll and rifle them, and amongst others to his brother
Richard, King of the Romans, who, after he had plundered their estates,
committed their bodies, as his slaves, to labor in the tin-mines of
Cornwall; the memory of whose workings is still preserved in the names of
several tin works, called _Towle Sarasin_, and corruptly _Attall Saracen_;
_i.e._ the refuse or outcast of Saracens; that is to say, of those Jews
descended from Sarah and Abraham. Other works were called _Whele Etherson_
(alias _Ethewon_), the Jews’ Works, or Unbelievers’ Works, in Cornish.

Here we see how history is made; and if our inquiries led to no other
result, they would still be useful as a warning against putting implicit
faith in the statements of writers who are separated by several centuries
from the events they are relating. Here we have men like Carew and Camden,
both highly cultivated, learned, and conscientious, and yet neither of
them hesitating, in a work of historical character, to assert as a fact,
what, after making every allowance, can only be called a very bold gue