Let me, however, assure any of my readers who are apt to regard as “unfriendly” or “unsympathetic” criticism which is not eulogy thick and slab, neat and unmixed, that there is no intention here of belittling Lessing’s critical qualities,[[86]] only one of indicating critically what they were and what they were not. The gift of critical expression he most certainly had in a very high degree. His exposition is masterly: though he is constantly, as has been said, leading the discussion aside from concrete to abstract, and from particular to general points, he is scarcely ever obscure, confused, or vague. His language is precise, without being technical or jargonish. He has something of the German lack of urbanity, but he often has a felicity of expression that is French rather than German, with depth and humour which are far more German than French. Never has one of the tricks of the critical pedant—common to the kind in our day as in his—been so happily described as in the opening of Wie die Alten den Tod gebildeten: “Herr Klotz always thinks he is at my heels. But when I look back at his yelp, I see him lost in a cloud of dust quite astray from the road I have trodden.”[[87]] The unlucky distraction of his later years, to theological or anti-theological squabbling may—nay, must—have lost us much. But as it is, he never fails for long together to give those fermenta cognitionis of which he speaks. He is always “for thoughts”: that fecundity, as a result of the critical congress, which we shall remark in his part-master Diderot, is everywhere present in him.
Frederic the Great.
Lessing, whom the king neglected, may suggest Frederic the Great, whose De la Littérature Allemande (1780) the Germans have most forgivingly translated into the language despised by the writer, and adopted as a “monument” of its literature.[[88]] It is certainly a monument of a kind, and the most striking contrast possible to Lessing’s work. I shall not say that it shows, as a Carlylian not less fervent than myself[[89]] has admitted of Frederic’s historian on Marryat, that Frederic “was stupid for once in his life.” But it certainly shows that he could be absurdly narrow and perverse, and could push the confidence of ignorance to a wonderful length. That Frederic was very ignorant of literature there is no doubt. It is known that he “had small Latin[[90]] and no Greek”; his expressions about English, the language and the literature, in this very tractatule, are, if possible, more impudently ignorant than those about German: he does not, I think, so much as name a Spanish author; and his references to Italian might have been, and probably were, derived from mere hearsay.
All this was a good preparation for judging a literature in the very peculiar state of German in 1780, when, to do it justice, a man should have had the knowledge, then almost impossible, of the various periods from “Middle High” onwards, the power to appreciate its very different phases, which few had, and the power, which hardly anybody ever has, of appreciating the literary present, and even future. But Frederic need not have made so near an approach to stupidity as he makes here.[[91]]
De la Littérature Allemande.
That there is considerable truth and shrewdness in the king’s censure of his subjects’ pedantry and want of taste is quite certain; that the German language was in a less favourable condition for literature than any other of the great European languages is certain also. Many of his practical precepts are as sensible as we should expect from a man so great in affairs. But his literary criticism is rather worse than we should expect even from a disciple of Voltaire, whose pet prejudices they not merely reflect but exaggerate. Of all the “answers” (a most interesting list of which, with account of them where possible, from that one of Goethe’s, which has the here most deplorable “defect of being lost,” downwards, will be found in Herr Geiger’s Introduction) the happiest is in three words of Herder’s, which describe the treatise as “ein comisches Meisterstück.”[[92]] Frederic attributes to Horace, and in the Ars Poetica too, four words[[93]] which do not occur there, which would not be very easy to get into the metre without destroying their juxtaposition, and which it would be not much easier to adjust to any context of the actual piece. He attributes to Aristotle not merely the Three Unities, but instead of the “Unity of Action” the “Unity of Interest,” thus handing over
the whole position to the anti-Aristotelians after a fashion which, if one of the king’s own generals had imitated it in actual war, would have “broken” him for life, if it had not put him against a wall, and opposite to a file of grenadiers. He thinks that Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius wrote in Latin; that Toland wrote the Leviathan; that Marot, Rabelais, and Montaigne wrote a jargon at least as bad as any German—“gross and destitute of grace.” In the most celebrated passage[[94]]—perhaps the only one generally known—he not only out-Voltaires Voltaire by speaking of the “abominable pieces of Shakespeare,” those absurd “farces worthy of Canadian savages,” but stigmatises Goetz von Berlichingen as a “detestable imitation” of them. He hardly knows of any other German writers, and of those whom he praises Gellert and Gessner are the only ones who have retained the least reputation. If for one thing that he did—the injunction to write in German and not take refuge in other languages—one is tempted to spare him, the merit almost disappears when one remembers that he meant the German to be written in the teeth of the natural bent of the language. The bulk of his positive directions has nothing to do with literature whatsoever, but with the teaching of physical science, of law, &c. And the real apex of the comisches Meisterstück (for Herder’s words are too good not to be repeated) is to be found at the end. He prophesies, and (such is the unending and unfathomable irony of Fate!) he prophesies quite truly, that “the palmy days of our Literature have not come, but they are approaching,” that he is their harbinger, that they are just about to appear, “that though he shall not see them, his age making it hopeless, he, like Moses, sees the Promised Land, but must not enter it.” The inevitable jests at Moses himself, and the bare “rocks of sterile Idumea,” follow. But it was Moses who laughed last. Every word of Frederic’s prophecy came true; but it was because Germany neglected every item of Frederic’s prescription. The palmy days did come: they lasted for fifty glorious years and (with Heine) longer. But their light was the light borrowed from the abominable Shakespeare, and their leader was the author of Goetz von Berlichingen.[[95]]