Germany from the Earliest Period, vol 4 | Page 7

became the champion of liberty, justice, and his country, things from which the love of pleasure and the aristocratic self-complacency, exemplified in Goethe, had gradually and completely Weaned succeeding poets. Klinger, at the same time, coarsely portrayed the vices of the church and state, and Meyern extravagated in his romance "Dya-Na-Sore" on Utopian happiness. The poems of Muller, the painter, are full of latent warmth. Burger, Pfeffel, the blind poet, and Claudius, gave utterance, in Schubart's coarse manner, to a few trite truisms. Mus?us was greatly admired for his amusing popular stories. As for the rest, it seemed as though the spiritless writers of that day had found it more convenient to be violent and savage in their endless chivalric pieces and romances than, like Schiller, steadily and courageously to attack the vices and evils of their age. Their fire but ended in smoke. Babo and Ziegler alone, among the dramatists, have a liberal tendency. The spirit that had been called forth also degenerated into mere bacchanalian license, and, in order to return to nature, the limits set by decency and custom were, as by Heinse, for instance, who thus disgraced his genius, wantonly overthrown.
In contradistinction to these wild spirits, which, whether borne aloft by their genius or impelled by ambition, quitted the narrow limits of daily existence, a still greater number of poets employed their talents in singing the praise of common life, and brought domesticity and household sentimentality into vogue. The very prose of life, so unbearable to the former, was by them converted into poetry. Although the ancient idyls and the family scenes of English authors were at first imitated, this style of poetry retained an essentially German originality; the hero of the modern idyl, unlike his ancient model, was a fop tricked out with wig and cane, and the domestic hero of the tale, unlike his English counterpart, was a mere political nullity. It is perhaps well when domestic comforts replace the want of public life, but these poets hugged the chain they had decked with flowers, and forgot the reality. They forgot that it is a misfortune and a disgrace for a German to be without a country, without a great national interest, to be the most unworthy descendant of the greatest ancestors, the prey and the jest of the foreigner; to this they were indifferent, insensible; they laid down the maxim that a German has nothing more to do than "to provide for" himself and his family, no other enemy to repel than domestic trouble, no other duty than "to keep his German wife in order," to send his sons to the university, and to marry his daughters. These commonplace private interests were withal merely adorned with a little sentimentality. No noble motive is discoverable in Voss's celebrated "Louisa" and Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea." This style of poetry was so easy that hundreds of weak-headed men and women made it their occupation, and family scenes and plays speedily surpassed the romances of chivalry in number. The poet, nevertheless, exercised no less an influence, notwithstanding his voluntary renunciation of his privilege to elevate the sinking minds of his countrymen by the great memories of the past or by ideal images, and his degradation of poetry to a mere palliation of the weaknesses of humanity.
[Footnote 1: He was a friend of Grotius and is styled the father of German poetry.--Trans.]
[Footnote 2: Of which an edition, much esteemed, was published by Lessing and Ramler.]
[Footnote 3: Adam Elschlager or Olearius, an eminent traveller and mathematician, a native of Anhalt. He became secretary to an embassy sent to Russia and Persia by the duke of Holstein.--Trans.]

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PART XXII
THE GREAT WARS WITH FRANCE
CCXLVI. The French Revolution
In no other European state had despotism arrived at such a pitch as in France; the people groaned beneath the heavy burdens imposed by the court, the nobility, and the clergy, and against these two estates there was no appeal, their tyranny being protected by the court, to which they had servilely submitted. The court had rendered itself not only unpopular, but contemptible, by its excessive license, which had also spread downward among the higher classes; the government was, moreover, impoverished by extravagance and weakened by an incapable administration, the helm of state, instead of being guided by a master-hand, having fallen under Louis XV. into that of a woman.
In France, where the ideas of modern philosophy emanated from the court, they spread more rapidly than in any other country among the tiers-etat, and the spirit of research, of improvement, of ridicule of all that was old, naturally led the people to inquire into the administration, to discover and to ridicule its errors. The natural wit of the people, sharpened by daily oppression and emboldened by Voltaire's unsparing ridicule of objects hitherto