Germany from the Earliest Period, vol 4 | Page 7

on corrupt and barren ground, it found a fostering soil in the warm,
unadulterated hearts of the youth of both sexes. He recalled his
fellow-men, in those frivolous times, to a sense of self-respect, he
restored to innocence the power and dignity of which she had been
deprived by ridicule, and 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. Musæus 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