“The rarer and the more beautiful is the noble, religious spirit that breathes through the Poet’s Garden, the more do I wish that its authors might put forth all their strength. And so it would be, if it were not for a particular theory which lies at the bottom of the poetry—a theory whose foundation I do not know, but whose evident peculiarity strikes the eye, bewilders the reader, forces the Muse, and in its purposed negligence of language goes so far as even to disfigure it. The Muse craves freedom above all things, if she is to express what comes from the innermost of our heart or our mind. Every trace of art lames poetry, and theory often misleads, because it is born of human philosophy, while poetry is something divine. Therefore poets always succeed best in rhythm where the inspiration is great and noble, and the quickly-passing images, thoughts, sensations only group themselves well and naturally when they are conjured up by an infallible, all-subduing inspiration, without the poet knowing how it happens.”
Of Niebuhr’s Roman history he writes, in 1812—not, perhaps, in the sense that most of the readers of that work will endorse:
“I marvel at the deep learning, and often at the penetration, of our friend; but who will read him? What a bulwark of tedious researches, the result of which is often nothing more than a learned outwork! It is strange that, with this fault of historical pedantry, he could not avoid the contrary one of reasoning à priori, so common to the German professors. There is much understanding in the book, and in a few places one is pleasantly surprised at its spirit; but this spirit is neither a joyful nor a certain one. He fails in simplicity. From this springs his heavy style, despite his choice use of words. He is too forward in making hypotheses and foregone conclusions; for instance, his open partisanship with the plebeians leads him to make false and hasty judgments. His pragmatical tendency makes him unjust even to Livy, and he has no appreciation of the noble amiability of Plutarch. Yet, with all these faults, he must ever remain a valuable historian—not a star of the first magnitude, but still too good to be a mere famulus,[[90]] to gather material for great historians. Among other things, he lacks the art of managing his style so as to appear to be led by it and yet to make it convey exactly what the writer pleases. But concerning his principles, some of which, however, I do not endorse, his conscience always appears as it is, noble and tender, while his love of truth follows him even on his hobby—hypothesis.”
It may be interesting to give the opinion of some of the same men on Stolberg himself as a historian and writer. The History of Religion, which was his great work, and which he mainly attributed to the suggestion, encouragement, and interest of Princess Gallitzin, became a topic of discussion and interest all through Germany. Many were brought by it to the Catholic Church, and of these most wrote to him first, asking advice and making confidences, before they read further or asked instructions from a priest. It was a source of deep thankfulness to him that he had thus been the means of making others share in the same blessings and peace which he had won through the grace and leading of God. But his History was no controversial work; it was very comprehensive, and embraced the whole subject of true religion from the beginning of the world, tracing the connection between Judaism and Christianity; the fulfilment of the prophecies in Christ; the spirit of aloofness from the world, first symbolized in the national exclusiveness of the Hebrews, and then proved in the persecutions under the Roman emperors in the struggle between Christianity and heathendom; and, lastly, the gradual, onward sway which the truth at last won over error, and which, speaking in a certain sense, culminated in the conversion of Constantine. Here Stolberg ended his history, feeling that his life would not be spared much longer, and that he had done his work, so far as he felt called upon by God to witness to the truth that was in him. The unhappy struggles, rents, and abuses of later church history he left untouched; surely there were counterparts to them in earlier days, but no such embittering could come from a relation of the old heresies and divisions as would have sprung from even the most impartial discussion of recent and more local ones. Schlegel took the greatest interest in this work, and of the least important part he spoke thus admiringly:
“I am especially delighted at the strength and simple beauty of your style; whoso compares it with what is called nowadays the art of representing things will easily discover where is to be found the true source of even this beauty.”
Again, of the second part of the history (it was divided into fifteen parts) he says:
“I found myself much steadied and strengthened by the whole, and particularly enlightened by the exposition on the Hebrew belief in the immortality of the soul and on the Mosaic code. May you in the future of your work, as often as opportunity allows, return to and dwell upon the immortality of the soul. It seems to me the path by which mankind at present can best be led towards truth, better than by any other teaching regarding the Godhead.”
He then says that pantheism and a vague sentimentality had perverted everything distinctly Christian into an empty shadow-form, but that few were so absolutely dead to all higher feeling as not to distinguish between the “real personal immortality, and the mere metaphysical image of it, without a hereafter, and without a continuance of the memory.”
“Bring vividly before them the true personal immortality, and you will often find those whom you had thought most spiritually dead and careless to be palpably roused. To me the doctrine of the Trinity is the central point of Christianity, and therefore the foundation and source of all my convictions, views, and aspirations.... The unfolding and representation of this secret of love (the Trinity) I have found to permeate every doctrine, principle, and even custom or rubric of the Catholic Church; although even in her pale many good individuals are less impressed with the divine spirit of the whole than with some one or other literal regulation.”
Johann von Müller wrote thus of Stolberg’s work: