Lessing, by his triumph over the scholastic pedants, completed what Thomasius had begun, by his irresistible criticism drove French taste from the literary arena, aided Winckelmann to promote the study of the ancients and to foster the love of art, and raised the German theatre to an unprecedented height. His native language, in which he always wrote, breathes, even in his most trifling works, a free and lofty spirit, which, fascinating in every age, was more peculiarly so at that emasculated period. He is, however, totally devoid of patriotism. In his "Minna von Barnhelm," he inculcates the finest feelings of honor; his "Nathan" is replete with the wisdom "that cometh from above" and with calm dignity; and in "Emilia Galotti" he has been the first to draw the veil, hitherto respected, from scenes in real life. His life was, like his mind, independent. He scorned to cringe for favor, even disdained letters of recommendation when visiting Italy (Winckelmann had deviated from the truth for the sake of pleasing a patron), contented himself with the scanty lot of a librarian at Wolfenbüttel, and even preferred losing that appointment rather than subject himself to the censorship. He was the boldest, freest, finest spirit of the age.
Herder, although no less noble, was exactly his opposite. Of a soft and yielding temperament, unimaginative, and gifted with little penetration, but with a keen sense of the beautiful in others, he opened to his fellow countrymen with unremitting diligence the literary treasures of foreign nations, ancient classical poetry, that, hitherto unknown, of the East, and rescued from obscurity the old popular poetry of Germany. In his "Ideas of a Philosophical History of Mankind," he attempted to display in rich and manifold variety the moral character of every nation and of every age, and, while thus creating and improving the taste for poetry and history, ever, with childlike piety, sought for and revered God in all his works.
Goethe, with a far richer imagination, possessed the elegance but not the independence of Lessing, all the softness, pathos, and universality of Herder, without his faith. In the treatment and choice of his subjects he is indubitably the greatest poet of Germany, but he was never inspired with enthusiasm except for himself. His personal vanity was excessive. His works, like the lights in his apartment at Weimar, which were skilfully disposed so as to present him in the most favorable manner to his visitors, but artfully reflect upon self. The manner in which he palliated the weaknesses of the heart, the vain inclinations, shared by his contemporaries in common with himself, rendered him the most amiable and popular author of the day. French frivolity and license had long been practiced, but they had also been rebuked. Goethe was the first who gravely justified adultery, rendered the sentimental voluptuary an object of enthusiastic admiration, and deified the heroes of the stage, in whose imaginary fortunes the German forgot sad reality and the wretched fate of his country. His fade assumption of dignity, the art with which he threw the veil of mystery over his frivolous tendencies and made his commonplace ideas pass for something incredibly sublime, naturally met with astonishing success in his wonder-seeking times.
Rousseau's influence, the ideas of universal reform, the example of England, proud and free, but still more, the enthusiasm excited by the American war of independence, inflamed many heads in Germany and raised a poetical opposition, which began with the bold-spirited Schubart, whose liberal opinions threw him into a prison, but whose spirit still breathed in his songs and roused that of his great countryman, Schiller. The first cry of the oppressed people was, by Schiller, repeated with a prophet's voice. In him their woes found an eloquent advocate. Lessing had vainly appealed to the understanding, but Schiller spoke to the heart, and if the seed, sown by him, fell partially on corrupt and barren ground, it found a fostering soil in the warm, unadulterated hearts of the youth of both sexes. He recalled his fellow-men, in those frivolous times, to a sense of self-respect, he restored to innocence the power and dignity of which she had been deprived by ridicule, and became the champion of liberty, justice, and his country, things from which the love of pleasure and the aristocratic self-complacency, exemplified in Goethe, had gradually and completely Weaned succeeding poets. Klinger, at the same time, coarsely portrayed the vices of the church and state, and Meyern extravagated in his romance "Dya-Na-Sore" on Utopian happiness. The poems of Muller, the painter, are full of latent warmth. Burger, Pfeffel, the blind poet, and Claudius, gave utterance, in Schubart's coarse manner, to a few trite truisms. Musæus was greatly admired for his amusing popular stories. As for the rest, it seemed as though the spiritless writers of that day had found it more convenient to be violent and savage in their endless chivalric pieces and romances than, like Schiller, steadily and courageously to attack the vices and evils of their age. Their fire but ended in smoke. Babo and Ziegler alone, among the dramatists, have a liberal tendency. The spirit that had been called forth also degenerated into mere bacchanalian license, and, in order to return to nature, the limits set by decency and custom were, as by Heinse, for instance, who thus disgraced his genius, wantonly overthrown.
In contradistinction to these wild spirits, which, whether borne aloft by their genius or impelled by ambition, quitted the narrow limits of daily existence, a still greater number of poets employed their talents in singing the praise of common life, and brought domesticity and household sentimentality into vogue. The very prose of life, so unbearable to the former, was by them converted into poetry. Although the ancient idyls and the family scenes of English authors were at first imitated, this style of poetry retained an essentially German originality; the hero of the modern idyl, unlike his ancient model, was a fop tricked out with wig and cane, and the domestic hero of the tale, unlike his English counterpart, was a mere political nullity. It is perhaps well when domestic comforts replace the want of public life, but these poets hugged the chain they had decked with flowers, and forgot the reality. They forgot that it is a misfortune and a disgrace for a German to be without a country, without a great national interest, to be the most unworthy descendant of the greatest ancestors, the prey and the jest of the foreigner; to this they were indifferent, insensible; they laid down the maxim that a German has nothing more to do than "to provide for" himself and his family, no other enemy to repel than domestic trouble, no other duty than "to keep his German wife in order," to send his sons to the university, and to marry his daughters. These commonplace private interests were withal merely adorned with a little sentimentality. No noble motive is discoverable in Voss's celebrated "Louisa" and Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea." This style of poetry was so easy that hundreds of weak-headed men and women made it their occupation, and family scenes and plays speedily surpassed the romances of chivalry in number. The poet, nevertheless, exercised no less an influence, notwithstanding his voluntary renunciation of his privilege to elevate the sinking minds of his countrymen by the great memories of the past or by ideal images, and his degradation of poetry to a mere palliation of the weaknesses of humanity.
[Footnote 1: He was a friend of Grotius and is styled the father of
German poetry.—Trans.]
[Footnote 2: Of which an edition, much esteemed, was published by
Lessing and Ramler.]
[Footnote 3: Adam Elschlager or Olearius, an eminent traveller and mathematician, a native of Anhalt. He became secretary to an embassy sent to Russia and Persia by the duke of Holstein.—Trans.]
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