Specimens and Remarks.
But, owing to the enormous dissipation,—the constant flitting from flower to flower which his task imposed on him,—Herder was not and could not be a very important critic on particular points. He was bound to share the over-valuation of Ossian[[669]]—for was not Ossian exactly what was wanted to dissolve and lubricate the sècheresse of French-German enlightenment, and did it not appear to give a brilliant new example of “national” literature? So we must not overblame him for this, any more than we must overpraise him—while praising him heartily—for having been undoubtedly the main agent in inoculating the Germans with Shakespeare.[[670]] Elias Schlegel had begun the process, and Hamann had continued it; but the first was cut off too early for him to do more than make a beginning, and Hamann’s mission was rather to send others, including Herder himself, than to work directly upon the general. It is also fair to say that, with all his soaring ideals and world-wide aspirations of mental travel, there was little Schwärmerei about Herder, except in a few semi-poetical passages, which can easily be skipped. His judgment is a pretty sound and sensible one, if his taste is not infallible—see for instance his remarks on political poetry (xvi. 169, op. cit.), and the equally modest and intelligent observations which follow on the impossibility of emulating or surpassing the special qualities of foreign literatures, however useful these literatures may be for study.[[671]] To any nation Herder must have been a useful and stimulating teacher; to the Germans at this time he was simply invaluable. But the definition of his general scope, and these few particulars of his procedure, must suffice us here.[[672]]
Wieland.
Wieland, the other chief of German belles lettres between Lessing and Goethe, is also one of those writers—necessarily thickening upon us as we proceed—who were very important to their own times and countries, but whose importance historically is here less a matter for detailed investigation than for general summary. His extensive work[[673]] is full of criticism; indeed his position as editor of the Teutsche Merkur was one of the most responsible and not of the least influential in the great German period. The curious modernised-classical or classicalised-modern novels and miscellanies of which he was so fond—especially the Abderiten—abound in it, in a more or less dissolved and diffused state; the seven or eight volumes of his miscellaneous works[[674]] contain more in a precipitated and concentrated condition. Now he will ask—but perhaps not answer—the question, “Was ist eine schöne Seele?”[[675]] then discourse (after the fashion of Burke and Barnwell and Bulwer) on “the Relation of the Agreeable and Beautiful to the Useful”;[[676]] then come closer still to real practical criticism in the interesting “Sendschriften an einen Jungen Dichter” of 1784.[[677]] The alphabetically arranged reviews and notices which fill, or help to fill, the three last volumes deal with all manner of authors and books, from Aristophanes to the Amadis, and from Louise Labé to Luis Vivès. In all, modified to some extent by the influence which his greater juniors exercised latterly on him, there appears that somewhat rococo, but interesting, attractive, and very largely beneficent blend or coupling of wit and imagination (or at least fancy) which is Wieland’s characteristic, and which undoubtedly did much—very much—to raise the Germans out of another and much less attractive mixture of pedantry and horse-play and bombast. But his individual critical utterances are of less importance to us. And so to Goethe himself.
Goethe.
In a certain sense the whole six-and-thirty volumes[[678]] of Goethe’s work, with all the Letters and Conversations added, may be said to be a record of his criticism: in this sense he certainly deserved the hackneyed “nothing if not—--” But for our purposes, though we may step beyond them now and then, the famous passages in Wilhelm Meister and elsewhere (especially “Shakespeare und Keine Ende”) on Shakespeare, the Sprüche in Prosa, the collected papers on German and other literature, and the Conversations with Eckermann, will give a sufficient collection of texts. The Xenien will be more conveniently postponed till we deal with their other author.
The Hamlet criticism, &c.