“It is not true!” cried the king. “The old Roman maxim is not applicable to our effeminate, degraded people. Nowadays, whoever flatters the people and glorifies their weaknesses, is a good fellow, and he is extolled to the skies. Public opinion calls him a genius and a Messiah. Away with your nonsense! The ‘Werther’ of Herr Goethe has wrought no good; it has made the healthy sick, and has not restored invalids to health. Since its appearance a mad love-fever has seized all the young people, and silly sentimentalities and flirtations have become the fashion. These modern Werthers behave as if love were a tarantula, with the bite of which they must become mad, to be considered model young men. They groan and sigh, take moonlight walks, but they have no courage in their souls, and will never make good soldiers. This is the fault of Herr Werther, and his abominable lamentations. It is a miserable work, and not worth the trouble of talking about, for no earnest man will read it!”
“Pardon me, sire; your majesty has graciously permitted me to enter the lists as knight and champion of German literature, and sometimes to defend the German Muse, who stands unnoticed and unknown under the shadow of your throne; while the French lady, with her brilliant attire and painted cheeks, is always welcomed. I beg your majesty to believe that, although this romance may have done some harm, it has, on the other hand, done infinite service. A great and immortal merit cannot be denied to it.”
“What merit?” demanded the king, slowly taking a pinch of snuff; “I am very curious to know what merit that crazy, love-sick book has.”
“Sire, it has the great merit to have enriched the German literature with a work whose masterly language alone raises it above every thing heretofore produced by a German author. It has emancipated our country’s literature from its clumsy, awkward childhood, and presented it as an ardent, inspired youth, ready for combat, upon the lips of whom the gods have placed the right word to express every feeling and every thought—a youth who is capable of probing the depths of the human heart.”
“I wish all this might have remained in the depths,” cried Frederick, annoyed. “You have defended the German Muse before; but you remember that I am incorrigible. You cannot persuade me that bungling is master-work. It is not the poverty of the mind, but the fault of the language, which is not capable of expressing with brevity and precision. For how could any one translate Tacitus into German without adding a mass of words and phrases? In French it is not necessary; one can express himself with brevity, and to the point.”
“Sire, I shall permit myself to prove to you that the brevity of Tacitus can be imitated in the German language. I will translate a part of Tacitus, to give your majesty a proof.”
“I will take you at your word! And I will answer you in a treatise upon German literature, its short-comings, and the means for its improvement. [Footnote: This treatise appeared during the Bavarian war of succession, in the winter of 1779] Until then, a truce. I insist upon it—good German authors are entirely wanting to us Germans. They may appear a long time after I have joined Voltaire and Algarotti in the Elysian Fields.”[Footnote: The king’s words.—See “Posthumous Works,” vol. II., p. 293.]
“They are already here,” cried Herzberg, zealously. “We have, for example, Lessing, who has written two dramas, of which every nation might be proud—‘Minna von Barnhelm, and Emilia Calotti.’”
“I know nothing of them,” said the king, with indifference. “I have never heard of your Lessing.”
“Your majesty, this wonderful comedy, ‘Minna von Barnhelm,’ was written for your majesty’s glorification.”