TWO DREAMS.
The Germans and French differ more from each other in the art and mystery of story-telling than either of them do from the English. It would be very easy to point out tales which are very popular in Paris, that would make no sensation at Vienna or Berlin; and, vice versa, we cannot imagine how the French can possibly enter into the spirit of many of the best known authors of Deutschland. In England, we are happy to say we can appreciate them all. History, philology, philosophy—in short, all the modes and subdivisions of heavy authorship—we leave out of the question, and address ourselves, on this occasion, to the distinctive characteristics of the two schools of light literature—schools which have a wider influence, and number more scholars, than all the learned academies put together.
In this country an outcry has been raised against the French authors in this department, and in favour of the Germans, on the ground of the frightful immorality of the first, and the sound principles of the other. French impiety is not a more common expression, applied to their writings, than German honesty. It will, perhaps, be right at starting to state, that, in regard to decency and propriety, the two nations are on a par; if there is any preponderance, one way or other, it certainly is not in favour of the Germans, whose derelictions in those respects are more solemn, and apparently sincere, than their flippant and superficial rivals. Many authors there are, of course, in both countries, whose works are unexceptionable in spirit and intention; but as to the assertion, that one literature is of a higher tone of morals than the other, it is a mistake. The great majority of the entertaining works in both are unfit pueris virginibusque.
Before the Revolution, Voltaire was as popular in England as in the rest of Europe; his powers as highly admired, and his short historiettes as much quoted: their wit being considered a sufficient counterbalance of their coarseness. But with the war between the two nations, arose a hatred between the two literatures; with Swift and Tristram Shandy in our hands, we turned up our eyes in holy indignation at Candide; we saw nothing to admire in any thing French; and as our condition in politics became more isolated, and we grew like our ancestors, toto divisos orbe Britannos— we could see no beauty in any thing foreign. The Orders in Council extended to criticism; and all continental languages were placed in blockade. The first nation who honestly and zealously took our part against the enemy was the German; and from that time we began to study achs and dochs. Leipsic, that made Napoleon little, made Goethe great; and to Waterloo we are indebted for peace and freedom, and also for a belief in the truth and talent of a host of German authors, whose principal merit consisted in the fact of their speaking the same language in which Blucher called for his tobacco. The opposite feelings took rise from our enmity to the French; and though by this time we have sense enough to be on good terms with the crapauds, and on visiting terms with Louis Philippe, we have not got over our antipathy to their tongue. During the contest, we had constantly refreshed our zeal by fervent declarations of contempt for the frog-eating, spindle shanked mounseers, and persuaded ourselves that their whole literature consisted in atheism and murder, and though we now know that frogs are by no means the common food of the peasantry—costing about a guinea a dish—and that it is possible for a Frenchman to be a strapping fellow of six feet high, the taint of our former persuasion remains with us still as to their books; and, in some remote districts, we have no doubt that Peter Pindar would be thought a more harmless volume in a young lady's hands than Pascal's Thoughts—in French.
It is not unlikely that the Customs' Union may lower our estimate of Weimar; a five years' war with Austria and Prussia, especially if we were assisted by the French, would make us rank Schiller himself—the greatest of German names—on the same humble level where we now place Victor Hugo. But there are thousands, of people in this good realm of England, who actually consider such beings a Spindler and Vandervelde superior to the noble genius who created Notre Dame de Paris. Poor as our own novel-writers, by profession, have shown themselves of late years, their efforts are infinitely superior to the very best of the German novelists; and yet we see advertisements every day in the newspapers, of new translations from fourth or fifth-rate scribblers for Leipsic fair, which would lead one to expect a far higher order of merit than any of our living authors can show. "A new work by the Walter Scott of Germany!" A new work by the Newton of Stoke Pogis! A new picture by the Apelles of the Isle of Man! The Walter Scott of Germany, according to somebody's saying about Milton, is a very German Walter Scott; and, if under this ridiculous pull is concealed some drivelling historical hash by Spindler or Tromlits, the force of impudence can no farther go.
But we must take care not to be carried too far in our depreciation of German light literature by our indignation at the over-estimate formed of some of its professors. Let us admit that there are admirable authors—a fact which it would be impossible to deny with such works before us as Tieck's, and Hoffman's, and a host of others—quos nunc perscribere longum est. Let us leave the small fry to the congenial admiration of the devourers of our circulating libraries, and form our judgment of the respective methods of conducting a story of the French and Germans, from a comparison of the heroes of each tongue. Let us judge of Greek and Roman war from the Phalanx and the Legion, and not from the suttlers of the two camps. A great excellence in a German novelist is the prodigious faith he seems to have in his own story; he relates incidents as if he knew them of his own knowledge; and the wilder and more incredible they are, the more firm and solemn becomes his belief. The Frenchman never descends from holding the wires of the puppets to be a puppet himself, or even to delude spectators with the idea that they are any thing but puppets; he never forfeits his superiority over the personages of the story, by allowing the reader to lose sight of the author; no, he piques himself on being the great showman, and would scarcely take it as a compliment if you entered into the interest of the tale, unless as an exhibition of the narrator's talent. But then he handles his wires so cleverly, and is really so immensely superior to the fictitious individuals whom he places before us, that it is no great wonder if we prefer Alexander Dumas or Jules Janin to their heroes. The Germans, relying on their own powers of belief, have taxed their readers' credulity to a pitch which sober Protestants find it very difficult to attain. Old Tieck or Hoffman introduces you to ghouls and ghosts, and they look on them, themselves, with such awestruck eyes, and treat them in every way with such demonstrations of perfect credence in their being really ghouls and ghosts, that it is not to be denied that strange feelings creep over one in reading their stories at the witching hour, when the fire is nearly out, and the candle-wicks are an inch and a half long. The Frenchman seldom introduces a ghost—never a ghoul; but he makes up for it by describing human beings with sentiments which would probably make the ghoul feel ashamed to associate with them. The utmost extent of human profligacy is depicted, but still the profligacy is human; it is only an amplification—very clever and very horrid—of a real character; but never borrows any additional horrors from the other world. A French author knows very well that the wickedness of this world is quite enough to set one's hair on end—for we suspect that the Life in Paris would supply any amount of iniquity—and professors of the shocking, like Frederick Soulie or Eugene Sue, can afford very well to dispense with vampires and gentlemen who have sold their shadows to the devil. The German, in fact, takes a short cut to the horrible and sublime, by bringing a live demon into his story, and clothing him with human attributes; the Frenchman takes the more difficult way, and succeeds in it, by introducing a real man, and endowing him with the sentiments of a fiend. The fault of the one is exaggeration; of the other, miscreation: redeemed in the first by extraordinary cleverness; in the other, by wonderful belief. What a contrast between La Motte Fouqué and Balzac! how national and characteristic both! No one can read a chapter of the Magic Ring without seeing that the Baron believes in all the wonders of his tale; a page of the other suffices to show that there are few things on the face of the earth in which he believes at all. Dim, mystic, childish, with open mouth and staring eyes, the German sees the whole phantasmagoria of the nether world pass before him: keen, biting, sarcastic—egotistic as a beauty, and cold-hearted as Mephistopheles—the Frenchman walks among his figures in a gilded drawing room; probes their spirits, breaks their hearts, ruins their reputation, and seems to have a profound contempt for any reader who is so carried away by his power as to waste a touch of sympathy on the unsubstantial pageants he has clothed for a brief period in flesh and blood. We confess the sober super-naturalism of the German has less attractions with us, than the grinning infra-naturalism of the Frenchman. There is more sameness in it, and, besides, it is to be hoped we have at all tines less sympathy for the very best of devils than for the very worst of men. Luckily for the Frenchman, he has no need to go to the lower regions to procure monsters to make us shudder. His own tremendous Revolution furnishes him with names before which Lucifer must hide his diminished head; and from this vast repertory of all that is horrid and grotesque—more horrid on account of its grotesqueness—the feuilletonists, or short story-tellers, are not indisposed to draw. We back Danton any day against Old Nick. And how infinitely better the effect of introducing a true villain in plain clothes, relying for his power only on the known and undeniable atrocity of his character, than all the pale-faced, hollow-eyed denizens of the lower pit, concealing their cloven feet in polished-leather Wellington boots, and their tails in a fashionable surtout. We shall translate a short story of Balzac, which will illustrate these remarks, only begging the reader to fancy to himself how different the denouément would have been in the hands of a German; how demons, instead of surgeons and attorneys, would have disclosed themselves at the end of the story, how blue the candles would have burned; and what an awful smell of brimstone would have been perceptible when they disappeared. It is called the Two Dreams, and, we think, is a sketch of great power.