'There is a series of ideal occurrences running parallel with reality. They seldom coincide. Men and chances usually modify the ideal occurrence, so that it appears imperfect, and its results likewise. Thus it was in the Reformation. Instead of Protestantism appeared Lutheranism.
'What fashions the man, but his Life-History? In like manner nothing fashions great men, but the World's-History.
'Many men live better in the past and future time, than in the present.
'The Present indeed is not at all comprehensible without the Past, and without a high degree of culture, an impregnation with the highest products, with the pure spirits of the present and of previous ages; all which assimilating guides and strengthens the human prophetic glance, which is more indispensable to the human historian, to the active, ideal elaborator of historic facts, than to the grammatical and rhetorical annalist.'
[III].
Novalis seems here to rehearse his whole poetic creed; or rather, he seems to be reviewing his own poems. What he deprecates, are the faults he most avoids. He is distinguished for extreme simplicity, both in style and language; and the thoughts, though lofty and sometimes vast, are yet fresh, chaste, and comprehensible. They have a domestic sublimity. They indicate simply an infinite expansion of the poet's heart, whose mild and primeval denizens are undisturbed by the forced, the foreign, or the shadowy. They have a oneness of design, and are finished and luminous to the most minute criticism. If we say that Novalis wrote as he was inspired, never attempting to superinduce what was only galvanic upon the true life, and never daring to write when he was not inspired, we both describe his genius and discover the secret of his beauty.
With one or two exceptions, the present romance is an unfavorable specimen of his poetic powers. The subjects of most of the songs require only that luminous simplicity alluded to, and are only fine examples of a lyrical style, with a few glimpses of his true genius. "Astralis," the poem that introduces the second part, is unlike the rest of the volume, being an irregular, mystic embodyment of the hero's destinies,--a recapitulation of the past and a presentiment of the future. The romance is unfavorable, excepting one or two prose passages of great sublimity, much resembling the "Hymns to the Night," one or two of which are given below. The dream at the close of the sixth chapter may be particularly designated. "The image of Death, and of the River being the Sky in that other and eternal Country, seems to us a fine and touching one: there is in it a trace of that simplicity, that soft, still pathos, which are characteristics of Novalis, and doubtless the highest of his specially poetic gifts." But it is in his Spiritual Songs that we gain a glimpse of his true genius. They are eminently devotional, and indiscriminately addressed to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Virgin. A translation of the mass of them would form a most desirable hymn book for the Christian, though, to be sure, it would be very graceless to supplant worthy old Dr. Watts. But they are very sweet and touching, and full of pious fervor. We have been struck with the similarity of their tone to those of George Herbert, who stands with the Father and the Son at the very door of his heart, with tearful and familiar supplication for them to enter.
"Geusz, Vater, Ihn gewaltig aus,
Gib Ihn aus deinem Arm heraus:
Nur Unschuld, Lieb' und süsze Scham