In this elaboration, however, the French mode of treatment was necessarily most suitable to him. Serenity, wit, spirit, and elegance are already at hand in France; his luxuriant imagination, which now desires to be occupied only with light and joyous themes, turns to tales of fairies and knights, which grant it the greatest freedom. Here, again, in the Arabian Nights and in the Bibliotheque universelle des romans, France offered him materials half-prepared and adapted, while the ancient treasures of this sort, which Germany possesses, still remained crude and unavailable.
It is precisely these poems which have most widely spread and most firmly established Wieland's fame. Their light-heartedness gained them access to everyone, and even the serious Germans deigned to be pleased with them; for all these works appeared indeed at a happy and favorable time. They were all written in the spirit which we have developed above. Frequently the fortunate poet undertook the artistic task of giving a high value to very mediocre materials by revising them; and though it cannot be denied that he sometimes permits reason to triumph over the higher powers, and at other times allows sensuality to prevail over the moral qualities, yet we must also grant that, in its proper place, everything which can possibly adorn noble souls gains supremacy.
Earlier than most of these works, though not the earliest of all, was the translation of Shakespeare. Wieland did not fear impairment of his originality by study; on the contrary, he was convinced at an early date that a lively, fertile spirit found its best stimulus not only in the adaptation of material that was already well known, but also in the translation of extant works.
In those days the translation of Shakespeare was a daring thought, for even trained litterateurs denied the possibility of the success of such an undertaking. Wieland translated freely, grasped the sense of his author, and omitted what appeared to him untranslatable; and thus he gave to his nation a general idea of the most magnificent works of another people, and to his generation an insight into the lofty culture of by-gone centuries.
Great as was the effect of this translation in Germany, it appears to have exercised little influence upon Wieland himself. He was too thoroughly antagonistic to his author, as is sufficiently obvious from the passages omitted and passed over, and still more from the appended notes, in which the French type of thought is evident.
On the other hand, the Greeks, with their moderation and clarity, are to him most precious models. He feels himself allied with them in taste; religion, customs, and legislation all give him opportunity to exercise his versatility, and since neither the gods nor the philosophers, and neither the nation nor the nations are any more compatible than politicians and soldiers, he everywhere finds the desired opportunity, amid his apparent doubts and jests, of repeatedly inculcating his equitable, tolerant, human doctrines.
At the same time, he takes delight in presenting problematical characters, and he finds pleasure, for example, in emphasizing the lovable qualities of a Musarion, a Lais, and a Phryne without regard to womanly chastity, and in exalting their practical wisdom above the scholastic wisdom of the philosophers.
But among these he also finds a man whom he can develop and set forth as the representative of his own convictions—I mean Aristippus. Here philosophy and worldly pleasure are through wise moderation so united in serene and welcome fashion that the wish arises to be a contemporary in so fair a land, and in such goodly company. Union with these educated, right-thinking, cultivated, joyous men is so welcome, and it even seems that so long as one may walk with them in thought, one's mind will be as theirs, and one will think as they.
In these circles our friend maintained himself by careful experiments, which are still more necessary to the translator than to the poet; and thus arose the German Lucian, which necessarily presented the Greek to us the more vividly since the author and the translator could be regarded as true kindred spirits.
But however much a man of such talents preaches decency, he will, nevertheless, sometimes feel himself tempted to transgress the boundaries of propriety and decorum, since from time immemorial genius has reckoned such escapades among its prerogatives. Wieland indulged this impulse when he sought to assimilate himself to the daring, extraordinary Aristophanes, and when he was able to translate his jests, as audacious as they were witty, though he toned them down with his own innate grace.