Another mischief not less formidable sprang from the same cause. It is the tendency of all enthusiasm to concentrate all the powers and feelings of the soul in its single object. Religious enthusiasm, the most intense as its object is the highest, is of all the most jealous and exclusive, and can least bear any participation in its sovereignty over the thoughts and affections. Hence wherever it has been strongly excited, whatever bears the name or is allied to the nature of amusement and diversion has been proscribed, not so much on an ascetic principle of mortification, as sensual indulgence, but because it is thought to distract the attention from the great business of life. We are still suffering under a like effect of the puritanical spirit, the traces of which will perhaps never be effaced from our national character. Under its dominion the lower orders were deprived of their innocent and invigorating sports, and forced to supply their place by noxious stimulants, drawn first from the conventicle and afterwards from the alehouse. The pleasures of the higher classes are of a more intellectual kind; their most refined entertainments are derived from the fine arts and elegant literature. But when the productions of literature and art are considered as diversions, they are levelled before the eye of religion with the sports of the vulgar; they are perhaps less harmless, as they cost much more time and ingenuity in the production, and exercise a more powerful influence over the mind. From this point of view there is no essential difference between a puppet-show and a play of Shakespeare; only the one is a pastime for children, the other for men; a panorama is a source of amusement differing in degree only, not in kind, from a cartoon of Raphael; the former has the advantage of affording more general entertainment. A map or sea-chart are greatly superior to either, for they contribute to the practical purposes of life. But when religious feeling is very strongly excited and imperfectly regulated, art, literature and science, stand all alike in contrast with the realities of religion; and as empty fictions, worldly shows and illusions sink equally into nothing. Few men rise above this point of view. To perceive the real dignity of the arts and their intimate connexion with what is highest in human nature, with religion itself, requires both a vivid sense of beauty and a reach of speculation very rare and difficult to attain. In England the former is perhaps more common than the latter; the arts are seldom estimated at their real worth. Those who pursue amusement as the business of life, value them as they minister to that end; those whose thoughts are engrossed by religion, reject them altogether as toys and vanities; many think it allowable to indulge in them, provided it be coolly and soberly, as innocent diversions; a more numerous party, which thinks itself by far the wisest, would reconcile the two extremes, and ennoble these recreations by making them vehicles for piety and morality.
A similar feeling of hostility and contempt towards the arts, not indeed so extensively diffused as under the reign of our Puritans, but still sufficiently marked and striking, accompanied the revival of the religious spirit in Germany. In some instances it was produced by an intensity of zeal; in the greater number it proceeded from coldness of imagination and incapacity for philosophical reflexion. It may perhaps have been strengthened by a cause peculiar to that country. Every one at all conversant with the modern German literature has been struck by the frequent recurrence of that which, till a better term shall be coined for it, may be called the esthetical view of things. It is that view which regards them not as true or false, nor as good or bad, but merely with reference to art as possessing or wanting beauty. This view, the prevalence of which has been referred by Frederic Schlegel to the influence of Winkelmann over his countrymen, is on some subjects peculiar to German writers. It has been frequently applied by them, with the happiest result, as a corrective to the partiality of the moral and historical views, which, exclusively pursued, must often lead into the grossest errours. But perhaps it has itself sometimes been allowed to predominate, and been carried with an intemperate license into subjects connected with religion. Even where this was not the case its introduction may have alarmed honest prejudices, and seemed to endanger the simplicity of faith and the fervour of devotion. At all events this is one of the causes which has there contributed to widen the unfortunate breach between religion and the arts.
To expose these and the various other false tendencies, perversions and exaggerations of religious feeling in Germany, for all of which, when a slight allowance is made for the difference of national manners and characters, the reader will be at no loss to discover parallels at home, is the Author's design in the second of these Novels. No man was better qualified for this undertaking than one who, living almost wholly in a poetical world, has never ceased to keep a watchful eye on the fluctuations of opinion and feeling among his contemporaries. To him too it peculiarly belonged to apply a corrective to the now prevailing extravagances, who formerly attacked, with satire the most powerful perhaps to be found in modern literature, errours and follies of an opposite description, and contributed, at least as efficaciously as any writer in Germany, to produce the moral revolution, of which this volume exhibits the dark side. It is this that gives a peculiar charm to the homage which he incidentally pays to Göthe, a charm indeed inevitably lost on the English reader; but to one who has marked the progress of these two great poets, their singular diversity of genius and the seeming divergency of their course, this tribute of veneration under such circumstances has in it something beautiful and almost affecting. The passage in other respects is unhappily as intelligible to the English reader as any in the volume; here too Göthe had scarcely acquired a partial celebrity before he was attacked on similar grounds, with perhaps as much sincerity and certainly not less scurrility. In the execution of his delicate task, the Author has displayed the temper and spirit befitting a theme, the treatment of which, without the nicest impartiality, might be mischievous or offensive. In the midst of the keenest ridicule and the warmest glow of feeling he preserves an ironical self-possession, such as only a consummate artist can command. The keeping is every where perfect; the living scene is presented to us rather in a mirror than a picture.
Though these two little works, especially the latter, are occasional and even polemical in their origin, they have a value quite independent of the temporary effect they may produce, not only as possessing a sort of historical interest from the view they afford of a remarkable period, but as nearly perfect models of composition in their kind. It is one of which we can hardly be said to have a specimen in our literature. We have indeed two or three names for prose works of fiction, but the chief difference between them is one of quantity. The novel is only a longer tale, or the tale a shorter novel. Even in Spanish or Italian literature it would not be easy to find an exact parallel; for the novelas and novelle are in general only circumstantial anecdotes. The name however adopted from them by Tieck has been retained, though as applied to a work of less than three volumes it has now become obsolete. The peculiarity of these Novels is the dramatic concentration, the compression of all the elements which compose them within the smallest possible compass, within which they can fully expand and display themselves. It is the most common fault even of the ablest writers to exceed or fall short of that compass, and both faults are often committed in the same work; some of the component parts are left undeveloped, others dilated to an arbitrary extent. The exact medium is the highest mystery, and its attainment the greatest triumph of art. It is this which, among the many admirable things in the present volume, is perhaps most worthy of admiration. The variety and originality of the characters here introduced would under any circumstances be remarkable, but it excites peculiar surprize and delight, that in so small a space they find room to act so freely and to shew themselves so fully. There are enough of them to furnish richly as many novels of the modern size, yet, had the Author indulged his fancy in multiplying situations and weaving new intrigues for never so many volumes, they could not have stood before us more clearly and distinctly, with more of life and nature. They have been scarcely an hour in our company before they become old acquaintance; we should know no more of them if we were to hear the whole history of their lives.
But to point out the Author's merits was not the object of this Preface, which has already grown to what may appear an inordinate length. The Translator wishes he could have believed it altogether superfluous, and will not add to it anything which he knows to be so. Indeed he thinks himself fortunate in not being obliged to vindicate the morality of these Novels. For with us this is esteemed, not only by most well-disposed readers, but by almost all our periodical critics great and small, a very essential point in a work of fiction, and it is therefore usual for a novel-writer, who wishes to secure their approbation, to indicate, either in the title or at the conclusion, the branch of morality to which his work is to be referred. But the best German writers have some strange notions on this subject; they believe that a tale may have a high value, though its moral essence cannot be extracted in a precept or an aphorism; they even think it the better for having no didactic object, and Göthe goes the length of saying that a good tale can have none. Such being the case, it would not have been surprizing if in these Novels the moral lesson had been somewhat obscure, and had required some ingenuity to deduce. The Translator then has reason to congratulate himself, that it is as obvious and striking as if the Author's main end had been to convey it, and that he has even been spared the trouble of construing it. He will therefore no longer detain the reader from better company.
THE PICTURES.
"Have the goodness, Sir, in the meantime to step into the picture gallery," said the servant as he let young Edward in; "my master will come to you directly."
With a heavy heart the young man entered.
"With what different feelings," thought he to himself, "did I once pace through this room with my worthy father! It is the first instance of my descending to such a step as this, and it must be the last too. That it really must! And it is time for me to take a different view of myself and the world."