SURELY there is nobody who does not love fairy tales, whether they will admit the weakness or not. Any personage so unfortunate would seem to us to have very dubious claims to humanity. He may be made of iron, glass, silver, gold-a composition of them all-anything but flesh and blood. To one so afflicted it may be a mystery impenetrable, that human beings can make such fools of themselves as to go writing stories about things no reasonable mortal ever saw or heard. It cannot possibly occur to him, that in all the wonders of enchanted forests and talking streams, of elves, mannikins, and kelpies, there is a truth as real as--for lack of a comparison-the hopeless sterility of his own nature. If one part of the matter seem more ridiculous to him than another, it is the rhodomontade about "voices in nature," and "spirits in streams," &c.-" Trash; who ever heard anything of the sort? I know I should not like to hear such talkings wherever I may go." The gentleman need scarcely be anxious on this score. When he strolls into the country, seldom enough, all he sees is, distant harvest of golden guineas, ling of which is the only sound whi way affects him, save, perhaps, th from a successful railway the other hill, in which he is a share-holder. sion to anything poetical or abstra bounded, and most respectable. W to any such iron or golden reader by some strange chance have acco us thus far, we would give cons warning,-to the end of this paper, solemn purpose to hold commerce w of the most unheard-of German e kobolds; and, moreover, to defend t against all human assailants. Furt we have no intention of talking anyt nonsense throughout, and if a glimr common sense should appear occa we beg that it may be attributed the printer. Thus the knights of heart, knowing what they have to may please themselves about shutti in disgust, and taking a beneficial na companying us with invincible gra superb contempt. familiar to English readers; there still re- life. The writings of the Romantic School of Germany exerted an influence on the literature of that country, which is felt down to the present time, although the reactionary enthusiasm by which it was called forth and sustained has long since died away. The boasted infidelity and fierce republicanism of the French revolution occasioned a strong reaction in Germany, and was one of the many causes to which the shcool owed its rise. When, however, the political element became unduly prominent, the writers lost ground and popularity. Romanticism fell into disrepute, as a synonym for all that was ultra in religion, politics, poetry-everything in fact. Then came a second Anglo-mania; Byron and Walter Scott were in all hands, as Ossian, Sterne, and Smollet, had been a generation before. To the influence of the Romantic and English Schools combined, we owe the writings of Alexis, Schefer, Lewald, and Wilhelm Hauff. vain amongst German, French, and English writers, to discover one who seemed to have any definite idea attached to the word, and have never been able to get at anything nearer than this,-viz. that Classic Art is Pagan Art, and Romantic Art is Christian Art." Such a definition we would not lay down as infallible. For our present purpose, suffice it to say that Amadis, the first Romani so called, took its name, in the sixteenth century, from the romance-language in which it was written. The word then came into use in reference to all wild tales of the same sort, especially those of the middle age, and from thence to designate anything unnatural, visionary, and fantastic. In the present day, we are accustomed to employ it in senses remote enough from its first meaning. The revival, therefore, of the poetry of the middle age very naturally caused the authors of it to be stigmatized with the epithet romantic; and party spirit afterwards gave it a wider signification, as a term of reproach against every variety of pietism, hypocrisy, priesteraft, and political despotism. It will be no matter of wonder that this revival should partake of even more than the usual amount of enthusiasm and extravagance characterizing such reactions, when we remember the total stagnation of poetic life at that time. We hear on all sides of our own age as being one of unmitigated common-place that the voice of the muse is lost in the whirl of the steam-engine, that nobody reads poetry, and few write any worthy the labor of perusal. It is true we now travel in railway carriages, with portmanteaus and bandboxes, instead of riding on "steeds gayly caparisoned," with solitary state, through forests undesecrated by the axe of civilization; ladies are to be seen on foot with umbrellas, or riding in cabs, instead of being invariably upon "white palfreys," accompanied by pages, and in constant danger of being eaten by dragons. Nevertheless, we would not give up all hope. Take courage, oh ye croakers! respect the age in which you live, and learn the lessons of Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Mrs. Browning. Be thankful, indeed, that you are not given up to the tender mercies of such as Haller and Brocke, with The word romantic, like many others in their unspeakable dryness and verbosity; to all modern languages, has outlived its origi- the sugar-and-water poetry of Hofmanns walnal signification, and made to itself a new dau, Christian Weise, and Lohenstein; or to one, from the associations that have gathered that war of criticism between Gottsched and round it in process of time. But as to what But as to what Bodmer, like the dispute of polar bears for its present meaning is, we are as fairly in the the sovereignty of an iceberg, but which, dark as an accomplished writer of our day, from the slippery nature of the ground, rewho says respecting it :-"I have tried insults only in a general sharpening of the within their own minds. In all their works the main points are purely subjective. Just here and there they condescend to make use of the life beyond them, as an accessory-a mere filling up of the picture. They found a life worthy the name only in the poetic region of their own imaginations. And, truly, most wondrous storehouses are these. Nature can lose but little in such descriptions as we have given us by Tieck, Fouque, Jean Paul, and Novalis. There is the early freshness of the summer morning over every picture; a life which seems visible and audible to us as we follow them through the forests, over the mountains, and down into the mines. Everything they touch seems to have a sort of magical radiance, which dazzles as one reads. And then we all know so well those mountain spirits, singing gently among the feathery larches, and laughing along with the merry stream down below. We read on, and seem to hear the voices of old companions, bringing back happy days; our hearts are full of images long forgotten, of yearnings after a something distant and unknown; the present fades away, the past becomes dim, and we only seem to feel claws. It is not reasonable to suppose Poetry could survive such an accumulation of horrors. She fled in dismay, and only again made her appearance at the birth of Goethe. The great aim of Goethe was to raise the mind of that period from the dead level of prose and bad taste, into which such leaders had been the means of bringing it; to restore Poetry, after her long exile, to her ancient place in the hearts of the people. This also was the sole object of the Romanticists, and was, we think, more immediately attained by them than by Goethe. The popular tales and old national traditions revived by the Romantic School, awakened more general interest than those classic subjects to which Goethe was so anxious to raise the public tase. Comparatively few of the uneducated would appreciate the beauties of his Torquato Tasso and Iphigenie, while no amount of the unintelligible in Faust would suffice to scare away the sympathy of a German reader. A national subject is a fine centre, round which may be drawn, by a skillful hand, all the highest and kindliest sympathies of a people. Goethe, however, too soon turned away to the classic idealism of the ancients, and left an open field, from which the Romanticists, good husbandmen in the main, toiled long and earnestly to produce even a scanty harvest. Goethe and Schiller sought, by the revival of the antique, to fill up the widening gulf between the ideal and the actual; to bring poetry back into its proper home-into every-day life; while the Romanticists endeavored to accomplish the same end by means of the poetry of the middle ages. This tendency toward the antique, though in direct opposition to that of the Romantic School, was nevertheless not without its influence on many of their writers, as we see in Holderlin and the Schlegels. They failed, however, to learn from it any lessons as to the clothing of their ideas in more definite and artistic forms. That was a matter which troubled them but little. Their "fantastic phantasy" led them frequently beyond the bounds of all æsthetics. To them, imagination was all and everything. So far, indeed, from uniting the ideal and This region of beauty is, however, often the real, they trampled on the visible, the disturbed by an element of restlessness and actual, with scorn and disgust, while offering discontent, an undisguised irritability at the devout homage to everything abstract and follies of human nature, especially as manisubjective. There was a prosiness and tan- fested in those days at Esthetical tea parties, gibility about every-day society as it then and other similar entertainments. Another existed, with which they felt genius could jarring element, also, is the infusion of the have no sympathy. To them it was lifeless, terrible in their writings: it destroys all harvapid, unproductive. They drew their les-mony and repose, and ends almost invariably sons and their ideas less from it than from in fatalism or mysticism: fatalism, such as "How sweet it were, hearing the downward Falling asleep in a half dream! * * ** * To muse and brood, and live again in memory brass." We close the book, and behold, it was a dream! It is for the critic in green spectacles to look through this magic veil and show us the many incongruities, the inartistic forms which it conccals. As a principle, the Romanticists will sacrifice everything to the poetry of feeling and of nature; it is their life. They are full of what has been called inarticulate poetry." we afterwards find so repulsive in the dramas | ballads-anything. But the Märchen is the of Werner, Grillparzer, and others, or the great favorite with them, and by far the best inconceivable mysticism in which Novalis suited to their marvelous flights of fancy. loses his Heinrich von Ofterdingen-a chariot That nothing is too wild, too mad for a Märof fire, in which author and hero ascend, or chen, we have abundant proof. at least disappear beyond all mortal ken. The Germans are well known to excel us in the weakness of story writing. But in those more elaborate fictions which require a skillful plot, and vigorous well-sustained characters, we must plead guilty to the preeminence. Though we have not the exuberance of childlike fancy, half dream and half grave truth, which so delight us in Tieck, Hoffmann, Andersen, and Hauff, we are able to develop the different characters, and harmonize the varied events of a long history, cementing them into a continuous and attractive whole, with a power and elegance to which Germans never attain. Their stronghold in the province of fiction is in the Märchen or Novelle, shorter tales, which go in only a small space, detached events of a history, which require a more vivid imagination to give them coloring, and become attractive by rapid changes, and by the skillful introduction of the main point of the story. The success, indeed, of a Novelle, may be said to be in proportion to the manner in which the turn of the story is introduced, and whether it be in due accordance with the previous events and with the characters concerned in them. Their novels, from Goethe downwards, are, with very rare exceptions, the same mass of feelings, incidents, and descriptions, often forced into unnatural companionship, and often scarcely held together by any ostensible links save the bookbinder's twine. Jean Paul sins beyond any other in this respect. His exhaustless imagination supplies him with ideal characters, which he endeavors to bring into some sort of harmony by a marvelous and rather wearisome apparatus of ventriloquists, wax figures, extraordinary resemblances, and other awkward and inartistic contrivances. Over the whole are scattered broad-cast his fine descriptions, with their unrivaled imagery his deep truths of the heart, and the sudden flashes of satire, unsparing, but soon forgiven. His keen shafts are directed by a loving eye, and not the darkest pictures of humanity can lessen his warm feeling of brotherhood for the whole race. He fails, however, most signally, in his attempts to blend the ideal with the real, or to place his fictions among works of art. The writings of the romanticists are to be found in every conceivable form-poems, romances, dramas, Wihelm Hauff's first work was a MärchenAlmanach for 1826. And he appears to have been especially in his element among the wonders of these tales, as he came back to them every year, bestowing on them the exuberance of wit and fancy which had not found a place elsewhere. Of this first series the principal story is "The Caravan," during the progress of which, many others are introduced: "The Severed Hand" is, we believe, the only one of these which has been translated. The second series, called the "Sheik of Alexandria," is written on the same plan, and contains the incomparable fairy tale of "Nose the Dwarf." This is certainly one of the most charming and luxurious pieces of nonsense ever written-perfectly refreshing after a day's toil among stern realities. One half the world, doubtless, might not agree with us in the opinion, but nevertheless, we think the translator of it conferred, a benefit on society among us. "The Inn of the Spessart" occupies the third and fourth series, and in no way lessened the reputation which the author had already gained by his easy and humorous style of narration. In fact, his tales are rather told than written; there is a fireside ease about them which is very delightful. You feel instinctively that Jean Paul's advice to writers who have nothing to say was lost on him; he never could have been reduced to the expedient of sitting a few hours under a hot sun. The influence of the romantic school upon Hauff appears to have been rather negative than positive. It preserved him from many of the faults into which those writers had fallen, but did not lead him to select any of their works as models for imitation. He had the same exuberance of imagination, the same eye for the failings of humanity, and the same earnest desire to raise it to an appreciation of the noble and the beautiful. Beyond this there is little similarity. The first contrast which occurs to us, though very obvious, should nevertheless be spoken with due veneration-namely, that he certainly has more sound common sense than we are disposed to attribute generally to that school, and his turn of mind is as practical as one can reasonably expect from a poet. His emotion is deep and sincere, but rarely verges on the sentimental. Nei ment which it were vain to conceal, to the effect that he deliberately undertook to edit the Autobiography of the existence whose qualities are supposed to find their fitting emblem in darkness. The work consists of a series of papers scarcely connected, and branching off at the close of the second volume into a wild Italian tale, in which we entirely lose sight of his hero. We have many most amusing pictures of society, though certainly somewhat overdrawn. Hauff's views of life were far more healthy and rational than those held by the Romanticists. The faults and follies of humanity, though he saw them plainly enough, could not embitter his kindly disposition and make him turn away, after the manner of that school, with contempt and aversion, to a hermit life in a world of his own creation. With unparalleled boldness he hung up startling pictures of real life, and sent his satire, shaft after shaft, unerringly into the weakest points, while none escaped. This was a daring thing for a student at two-and-twenty, but his talent could not be denied, and the critics behaved very well on the whole. The Autobiography commences thus:— ther are we annoyed by that besetting weakness among the Germans, of driving feeling into bathos. We find this even in Jean Paul, who frequently makes the reader laugh when he ought to cry, or else leaves him in doubt as to which demonstration of feeling may be most reasonably expected of him. Though natural and agreeable in his style, he has not the grace and elasticity of Von Arnim, yet he is decidedly superior to him in the arrangement of his plots. With Hauff, these are generally well laid, and naturally developed. He does not trust for his dénouements to some extravagant agency which may chance to occur to him at the moment, and be forthwith appended in defiance of all æsthetic canons. The faults of his compositions in an artistic point of view we are disposed to attribute rather to his extreme youth than to any incapacity for a clear and harmonious arrangement of his ideas. He has none of the terrible conceptions of Hoffmann, who would write at midnight till his blood grew cold and his head dizzy with the fearful phantoms of his own imagination; but on the contrary, his natural amiability and cheerfulness seemed to have a magic power in preserving him from that morbid restlessness which tormented the whole school, driving Hoffmann to madness, and hurrying Novalis and Holderlin to an early death. A moderate exercise of control saved Hauff from the vagaries of an imagination run wild, after the manner of Brentano. In descriptions of character and active scenes he displays great graphic power and considerable humor, but from descriptions of nature he wisely abstains. There are few landscape painters like the Romanticists. Hauff has no power to lead us, like Fouque, through soft golden evenings and fearful spirit-haunted tempests, or, like Tieck, to force us to believe in the spirits of the flower and the rock, still less to impress us with the grandeur and mysteries of nature, as Novalis alone can do. Before Novalis even the profound and strik-shipwrite Memoirs for their people, telling them ing allusions of Jean Paul must yield; they will ever fail to affect our hearts so lastingly as do the grave, fervent teachings of this great worshiper of nature. Hauff's reputation was first permanently established by his "Memoirs of Satan." Though the existence of that remarkable person is doubted, and even denied, by so large a portion of the Teutonic race, we nevertheless find him figuring very largely in their literature. And our author will, perhaps, suffer considerably in the estimation of some of our readers, when we make a state "All the world, now-a-days, reads or writes Memoirs; in the drawing-rooms of small and great cities, in the restaurants and casinos of taverns of the little ones, every one speaks only middle-class towns, in the smoking-rooms and of Memoirs, judges only according to Memoirs, and, in fact, talks like Memoirs. Yes, it really seems as though for the last twelve years nothing remarkable had been achieved except Memoirs. Men and women seize the pen in order to record period-that they also once moved near a sun, to mankind that they also lived at a remarkable which lends a halo of consequence to their other wise probably unimportant persons. Crowned heads, not content to have risen above their former grandeur, when, as in the picture-bibles, they went to bed with their crowns on their headsnot content with flying from one end of Europe to the other, for the assurance of mutual friend their history and their journeys. The present world has become the past; it has received a new standard by which all things are judged-the standard of Memoirs." Any one at all acquainted with university life, will perhaps not be surprised that the subject of these memoirs commenced his career by studying at the renowned university of Rejoicing in abundant means, a handsome wardrobe, and the name of Von Barbe, it was no wonder that on the first evening he should be politely received, in the morning become a confidential friend, |