Hence we have Germany in the mid-eighteenth century prepared to accept and adopt any literary dogma, especially when stamped with an English popularity, which shall represent an interest rather in extraordinary characters and unusual opinions than in astounding adventure; which shall display a knowledge of human feeling and foster the exuberant expression of it.
Beside the devotees of any literary fashion are those who analyze philosophically the causes, and forecast the probable results of such a following. Thinking Germany became exercised over these facts of successive intellectual and literary dependence, as indicative of national limitations or foreboding disintegration. And thought was accordingly directed to the study of the influence of imitation upon the imitator, the effects of the imitative process upon national characteristics, as well as the causes of imitation, the fundamental occasion for national bondage in matters of life and letters. The part played by Dr. Edward Young’s famous epistle to Richardson, “Conjectures on Original Composition” (London, 1759), in this struggle for originality is considerable. The essay was reprinted, translated and made the theme of numerous treatises and discussions.[13] One needs only to mention the concern of Herder, as displayed in the “Fragmente über die neuere deutsche Litteratur,” and his statement[14] with reference to the predicament as realized by thoughtful minds may serve as a summing up of that part of the situation. “Seit der Zeit ist keine Klage lauter and häufiger als über den Mangel von Originalen, von Genies, von Erfindern, Beschwerden über die Nachahmungs- und gedankenlose Schreibsucht der Deutschen.”
This thoughtful study of imitation itself was accompanied by more or less pointed opposition to the heedless importation of foreign views, and protests, sometimes vigorous and keen, sometimes flimsy and silly, were entered against the slavish imitation of things foreign. Endeavor was turned toward the establishment of independent ideals, and the fostering of a taste for the characteristically national in literature, as opposed to frank imitation and open borrowing.[15]
The story of Laurence Sterne in Germany is an individual example of sweeping popularity, servile admiration, extensive imitation and concomitant opposition.
[1.] This is well illustrated by the words prefaced to the revived and retitled Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen, which state the purpose of the periodical: “Besonders wird man für den Liebhaber der englischen Litteratur dahin sorgen, dass ihm kein einziger Artikel, der seiner Aufmerksamkeit würdig ist, entgehe, und die Preise der englischen Bücher wo möglich allzeit bemerken.” (Frankfurter gel. Anz., 1772, No. 1, January 3.)
[2.] Elze, “Die Englische Sprache und Litteratur in Deutschland,” gives what purports to be a complete list of these German-English periodicals in chronological order, but he begins his register with Eschenburg’s Brittisches Museum für die Deutschen, 1777–81, thus failing to mention the more significant, because earlier, journals: die Brittische Bibliothek, which appeared first in 1759 in Leipzig, edited by Karl Wilhelm Müller: and Bremisches Magazin zur Ausbreitung der Wissenschaften, Künste und Tugend, Von einigen Liebhabern derselben mehrentheils aus den Englischen Monatsschriften gesammelt und herausgegeben, Bremen and Leipzig, 1757–1766, when the Neues Bremisches Magazin begins.
[3.] Briefe deutscher Gelehrten aus Gleim’s Nachlass. Bd. II, p. 213.
[4.] “Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung,” V, pp. 184 ff. The comparative inferiority of the German novel is discussed by l’Abbé Dénina in “La Prusse Littéraire sous Frédéric II,” Berlin, 1791. Vol. I, pp. 112 ff. See also Julian Schmidt, “Bilder aus dem geistigen Leben unserer Zeit.” Leipzig, 1870. IV, pp. 270 ff.
[5.] III, pp. 1 ff.
[6.] Vermischte Schriften, II, p. 215.