Authors and Books
Gutzkow's Ritter vom Geiste (Knights of the Spirit) is at last finished, the ninth volume having made its appearance. It has faults of detail, and there are deficiencies in spots, but as a whole it is praised as eminently successful, and truly a new work. The idea in some respects recalls the Wilhelm Meister of Goethe, and the Nathan the Wise of Lessing, but the execution has more force and a larger and more imperious movement than either. The Knights of the Spirit are a body of men who are combined in an order to which they give that name, and this book is their history and that of the order. At the same time there is nothing mystical, supernatural, or merely fantastic about it, though its spirit is humanitary and even socialistic. The scene is in modern times, but though the names of the heroes are German, and the circumstances in which they are placed German, the author has succeeded in producing a truly cosmopolitan romance. The nine volumes are sold in Germany for about $8 00.
Henry Taylor, the author of Philip Van Artevelde, is the subject of an article in the Grenzboten. The writer takes him, as the acknowledged first living dramatic poet of England, to be the best illustration of the nature and characteristics of the English drama. This drama is said to be more remarkable for sharply-outlined and detailed characters, than for the invention of exciting and consistent action. The characters in all their peculiarities are first created, and situations are made and arranged for them afterward. The evil of this is, that the whole thus becomes fragmentary, and the particulars outweigh and obscure the general spirit and intention of the piece. Even Shakspeare, with his gigantic genius, was not free from this defect. His Merry Wives of Windsor, for instance, is rich in comic situations and figures, but they are arbitrarily put together, and every scene has the character of an episode; the action does not go forward in a true and consistent course. Now-a-days the evil is worse, because it is the fashion to substitute reflection for natural feeling. Taylor is like those portrait painters who paint the features so carefully as to destroy the general character of the face. His men and women are not alive and genuine. Still their language is grave and noble, their thoughts comprehensive, often striking, and their emotions, though artificial, are elaborated with great insight and knowledge of the world. Compared with the wretched creations of the French romanticists, they are worthy of all praise. The critic then proceeds to analyze Isaac Comnenus, Philip Van Atevelde, and Fair Edwin, setting forth with great fairness the excellencies and faults of each.
A new contribution to an obscure but most interesting part of European history is Deutschland in der Revolutions periode von 1522-26, (Germany, in the Revolutionary Period from 1522 to 26,) by Joseph Edmund Jörg. The author has had access to a great mass of original and hitherto unused materials, especially diplomatic correspondence and other documents in the Bavarian archives. His view of the subject is very different from that taken by Zimmermann, in his Peasants' War, or by any other writer. He mocks at the idea that this revolution grew out of the evils and oppressions suffered by the people, and finds its most powerful impulse in the passion for innovation that sprung up along with the revival of classical studies in the middle ages.
The antique fashion of presenting poetic works to the public, is revived in Germany with great success. Professor Griepenkerl of Brunswick, whose tragedy of Robespierre made a great sensation a year or more since, is now reading his new play of the Girondists to large audiences in the principal cities. He has already been heard at Brunswick, Leipzig, Dresden, and Bremen, and proposes to visit other places on the same errand. The play, which is a tragedy of course, is much admired, though it is not thought to be adapted to the stage. The Girondists were not men of action, but orators and thinkers. The final scene in the play is the famous banquet before they were taken to execution. Charlotte Corday is among the characters; the women are said not to be drawn as truly and powerfully as the men.
Carlyle's Life of Stirling is criticised in the Grenzboten, which calls Carlyle the strangest of all philosophers. This book is said, however, to be, on the whole, clearer and more intelligible than most of his former productions. Still, like most works of the new romantic school in England, of which Carlyle is the chief, it aims rather to give expression to the ideas and abilities of the author, than to do justice to its subject. But it is in Warren's Lily and the Bee, that the school appears in full bloom. This is said to consist mostly of exclamation points, and is written in a sort of lapidary style, that deals in riddles, pathos without object, sentimentality with irony, world-pain, and allusions to all the kingdoms of heaven and earth, without any explanation as to what relation these allusions bear to each other, and with a Titanic pessimism as its predominating tone, which first rouses itself up to take all by storm, and finishes by being soothed into happy intoxication by the odors of a lily. This is better treatment than The Lily and the Bee gets at home.
In the second volume of Shakspeare as Protestant, Politician, Psychologist and Poet, by Dr. Ed. Vehse—spoken of as being "even more uninteresting than the first," we find the two following extraordinary ideas. Firstly, that Shakspeare followed a theory of physical temperaments in his characters—that Hamlet was a representative of the melancholy or nervous, Othello of the choleric, Romeo of the sanguine, and Falstaff of the phlegmatic. Secondly, that in Falstaff, Shakspeare parodied—himself! Or to give his own words, "We may suppose that Shakspeare's physical constitution inclined to corpulence, and inspired in him the disposition to the life of a bon vivant. His intimacy with the Earl of Southampton may have favored this disposition, since they led for a long time a dissipated tavern-life, and were rivals in love matters!" The work is principally made up of extracts from Shakspeare's plays, to every which extract we find appended "How admirable,"—"Excellent," and similar aids to those who are not familiar with the English bard.
We commend to the attention of philologists Das Gothische Runenalphabet, (or The Gothic Runic Alphabet,) recently published by Hertz of Berlin. "Before Wulfila, the Goths had an alphabet of twenty-five letters, formed according to the same principles, and bearing nearly the same names as the Runes of the Anglo-Saxons and Northmen, and probably arranged in the same order of succession. Wulfila adopted the Grecian alphabet, which through his modification was received by the Goths to the old twenty-five letters." This is the theory propounded in the work, which is not wanting, as we learn, in instructive information. In connection with this we may notice a book which has been deemed worthy of a modern English republication in elegant style, the often referred to Scriptural Poems of Cædmon, in Anglo-Saxon, an edition of which, by R. W. Bouterwek, with an Anglo-Saxon Glossary, has recently been published by Bædeher of Elberfeldt.
The Preussische Zeitung states that M. Hanke, a learned Bohemian, is publishing, in Prague, a fac-simile of the Gospels on which the Kings of France have always been sworn at their coronation at Rheims. The manuscript volume is in the Slavonian language, and has been preserved at Rheims ever since the twelfth century, but it has only been lately discovered in what language it was written.
The eleventh volume of the Monumenta Germaniæ Historica inde ab anno Christi 500 usque ad annum 1500 auspiciis societ, aperiendis fontibus serum German medii ævi edid, G. H. Pertz, has just made its appearance. This work is regarded as a stupendous effort of erudition and historical acumen, even in Germany.