BELGIC MUSEUM. Belgisch Museum voor de Nederduitsche Tael-en Letter-kunde, en de Geschiedenis des Vaterlands. (Belgic Museum, for Low German Philology and Literature, and the History of the Fatherland.) Edited by J. F. Willems. Ghent, 1837-9. So limited is the knowledge usually existing in this country of the literary movements of the continent, that we rather apprehend the notion of the British reading public to be, that Low-German is, in all its forms, a mere jargon, or dialect, altogether destitute of anything in the nature of a literature. Now the fact is that, in olden times, that is to say as far back as the cultivation of most, or, perhaps, any of our modern languages can be traced, those provinces of the Netherlands, the population of which appertains to the Teutonic stock, are found to have diligently cultivated their peculiar form of low German, and boasted their especial authors, historians, otherwise chroniclers, poets, &c. Nay, so earnestly zealous were they in the cause, that the country almost swarmed with Rhetoryk Kumers, (Chambers of Rhetoric,) a sort of academical institution designed to promote the cultivation of literature-of which more presently. The German passion of the last century for every thing French ob tained likewise, it is true, as was to be expected, in the interjacent Netherlands; and here, as there, French fashions, including the French language and literature, superseded all that was indigenous. In Germany, the French revolution, with its consequences, French conquest and oppression, early in the present century, overthrew this unnational caprice: in the Netherlands, owing to difference of circumstances, the same event confirmed it. And although, at a later period, the United Provinces, suffering under the anti-commercial system of Napoleon, learned to sympathize with Germany; in Belgium that confirmation seemed destined to be permanent-and was, perhaps, one not uninfluential cause of Belgian distaste to the re-union of the northern and southern Netherland states in the kingdom of the Netherlands. But we have the satisfaction to inform our readers, that there also, jealousy of Holland having died away, and been succeeded by apprehension of French ambition, a sense of German nationality, stimulated and fostered by a German sovereign, has lately revived. One of the fruits of this new spirit of Belgian Teutonicism, and of royal patronage, we are now about to bring before our readers, in the new national periodical before us, which is especially calculated to introduce to them the Flemish or Dutch language. The Belgic Museum, a quarterly magazine, was established between two and three years ago by J. F. Willems, one of the first literary men of his country, who strove to awaken a love for the vernacular tongue and its productions, even during his country's incorporation with France; but then, we hardly need say, unsuccessfully. He is now encouraged, and his Museum is expressly patronized by King Leopold; and he numbers some of the most eminent writers of his country among his contributors. The ablest papers are, nevertheless, M. Willems' own; and some of the most curious are old poems, charters, and the like, herein brought to light. We know not that we can better make our readers acquainted with either the nature and character of the publication, or the really patriotic sentiments in which it originates, than by translating the commencement of the opening paper, on the origin, genius, and natural formation of the Low German Language, by the erudite editor himself. The reader will, probably, be somewhat startled at the eulogies lavished upon a language which he has been accustomed to hold cheap. National philology is with us in its infancy. While foreign literati emulously place the excellencies of their respective language in the clearest light, many Flemings and Brabanters disdain or neglect the idiom of their forefathers. Yet, notwithstanding this, we have now not a little reasoning about nationality, about the necessity of a more unanimous popular spirit among us, It is asked, What is a Belgian? An independent national existence is desired; an especial name among the nations of Europe is claimed; and with all this blends no thought of the reverently tenacious retention of the traditional remains of earlier Belgians, of a more idiosyncratic mode of life, of a vernacular literature, a vernacular language! Yet the race of genuine Flemings and Brabanters, once so dreaded by our French neighbours, is not extinct, neither is the national character altogether effaced. The fatherland still has true-boru sons, worthy of their descent, who cannot submit to pass through life as half or quarter Frenchmen, or to be held, with so many others, in the leading-strings of alien interests. So long as these and the majority of their fellow-citizens continue to speak Low German, will our nationality survive. A domination of three centuries has failed to transform our Flemish-speaking brethren in the districts of Bergen, St. Winox, Cassel, and Broukburg, into Frenchmen; still will they for ages remain Flemings in manners and customs. Now that the storm of the last revolution is assuaged, a desire for a literature of their own appears to have revived in many Belgians, and the government shows itself disposed to adopt some measures for the support of all endeavours directed towards this object. A royal decree has called upon all persons versed in these matters to present a plan for improving and producing uniformity in the manner of writing our mother tongue, and it is apparent that not a few candidates will contend for the promised prize. Meanwhile it cannot be denied that Belgium is much in arrear with the study of her own language. Very small is the number of our countrymen who diligently investigate or concern themselves about the true character and origin of Flemish. Few are acquainted with the writings of the learned men by whose labours philology has latterly been carried to a height which it has never before attained.. The French education and French mode of life of the polished classes in Belgium have led to the adoption of strong prejudices against our mother tongue. Flemish is very generally believed to be little better than a patois (dialect), adapted, at the utmost, to express the ideas of a peasant or a kitchen • We apprehend that this refers not to the orthography alone, but also to the grammar, both of which seem to be, at this moment of revival, partially indeterminate. maid; and, except in two or three provinces, no where current, nay, utterly unintelligible and useless. Children are, from their earliest youth, taught French: French servants, French teachers, are selected; nothing but French is read, nothing but French written, and the necessity of signing a Flemish name seems to be almost felt as a disgrace. Thus has an especial caste been formed, exclusively attached to foreign modes of life and foreign notions, incapable of guiding the lower orders of the people towards their own good; and by this time scarcely being in any connexion with them. The clergy alone, it must be said to their praise, never shared in this degeneracy, but always remained true to the language of the people. It is said to be their desire, and it is greatly in their power, to lift our national literature once more out of the state of unmerited contempt into which it has been its lot to fall, and to give such a direction to public education as may tend to bring back the Belgians into the footsteps of their forefathers. The improvement of pulpit eloquence, within the last fifty years, has formed in Holland a number of poets and orators, who have purified and gloriously regenerated the language. Why should not this be equally the case in Belgium? Divine worship would be the gainer as well as nationality, and these two serve to support each other. In order to stimulate our countrymen to the cultivation of compatriot literature, we have established this Belgic Museum, in which their attention will be drawn to the innate excellence of their mother tongue, as also to memorable passages of their history, political and literary. I purpose, preliminarily, to offer a brief sketch of the origin, character, and natural formation of Low German, in confidence that this, though a mere rude outline, or the skeleton of a larger structure, will afford some light to those who shall undertake to answer the above-mentioned royal prize question. By Low German I understand that main branch of German, which includes Flemish and Dutch, or the language of the Netherlands, together with the Platduitsch of Lower Saxony, and the Rhenish provinces. The latter alone passes with the Germans for Low German; but I have elsewhere shown, [in an essay upon the Low German language and poetry of the southern provinces of the Netherlands,] and I think upon good grounds, that no necessity exists, or ever has existed, for abandoning the old name of Low German.... Ask a Brabanter or a Limburger what language he speaks, and he will answer, "I speak German.” In fact, the two branches, Netherlandish and Platduitsch, constitute but one language. . . . Let a Fleming travel from Ostend to Cologne, turn thence northward, through Hanover and Westphalia, and along the shores of the Baltic to Dantzic, speaking, upon his road, his own language, and, if he pronounces accurately, according to the orthography, just as the Jesuits of old were wont to preach here, he will be every where understood full as well as he would be, with his own dialect, in Brabant or Holland. . . . Kiliaen, in the preface to his Low German dictionary, says that he has laboured, not for the Netherlands only, but for a great part of Germany. Let it not then be said that our language is nowhere current! The territory over which Low German is spoken is, at least, as extensive as that where French or English is the mother-tongue. As it is now fully ascertained that our European languages come from the East, the old German tribes having issued thence long before the birth of Christ, to occupy primarily the north-eastern regions of our quarter of the globe, it may be conjectured that the first ancestors of the Saxons and Netherlanders, circumambulating the Hercynian forest, had gradually wandered hither, even before a second swarm of Asiatic emigrants brought the High German stock to the right bank of the Rhine, driving our forefathers thence. It consists not with my plan here to prove the oriental origin of our lan guage, by instances of its relationship to the Persian or the Sanscrit. Whoever desires to study their marvellous congruity, may abundantly satisfy his thirst of knowledge in the philological works of Rask, Bopp, Vater, Becker, Schmitthenner, or the academic lectures of Professor Hamaker, of Leyden. Bilderdyk, in a memoir submitted to the French government, has already observed that it unfolds its origin out of itself, that is to say, naturally, and thus possesses the inappreciable advantage of forming a complete system, in which the whole is philosophically explicable, without reference to any other language, either for etymology or logical syntax. . . ... I think it not unbefitting here to communicate to the reader, the views of Adelung [in his Mithridates], concerning the difference between the two main German languages. "The nature of High German," says he, "consists in a fulness, altogether peculiar to itself, of the mouth, which seems, at every word, to be pregnant with a hundred words; in a propensity to deep, hollowsounding vowels, and to broad diphthongs in preference to simple vowels.... All the organs of speech of the High German have a hardness not to be mistaken, whence he always prefers the hardest and most energetic consonants . . Always inclined to aspirate, puff, and hiss, he specially employs the disagreeable ch, [a guttural], and there is hardly another people who so readily and frequently place the s before a consonant." Low German is the very opposite of High German. If to the latter be objected hoarseness of the organs of speech, over-fulness of the mouth, and an eternal guttural aspiration, puffing, and hissing, the former overflows with softness, glibness, and smooth brevity. In the second part of this sketch upon the formation of the language, M. Willems informs us that, by the very nature of Flemish, the writer is at liberty to modify words at his pleasure; to lengthen, soften, or give them intensity, by the arbitrary insertion or addition of the half-mute French e, occasionally associated with the reduplication of a consonant. He thus proceeds : What convenience does not this liberty offer to the poet and the orator for the improvement of euphony, or for strengthening the impression he desires to make upon his hearers! After investigating the nature, grammatical character, modifications, and self-multiplying powers of the Flemish language, interesting only to persons conversant therewith, or to profound philologists, M. Willems thus concludes his paper in the words of the Dutch poet Loors : My mother tongue! Triumphant raise Thy feats, ev'n like thy worth, claim praise. Thy splendour which can emulate? Strangers, make keen your powers of mind, Lavish what in your brain you find ; But risk not, though for battle strong, Ye mongrel Belgians!-fathers base, Your own, for its own beauty's crown. We turn now to the other subject of which we have already made mention, announcing our purpose of bestowing upon it more of our attention, and in so doing we bring forward a different writer, the Rev. P. Visschers. We speak of the ancient, and somewhat whimsical institution of the Rhetoryk Kamers; and our author tells us in a paper entitled-"A word upon the old Rhetoric Chambers in general, and those of Antwerp in particular :" One of the most effective means of promoting the cultivation of our national literature undoubtedly is the establishment of Rhetoryk Kamers, or literary societies, in which lovers of poetry and their native language assemble for mutual improvement by agreeable and useful literary exercises, and to instigate each other to the study of Low German. From the earliest ages have such literary associations existed in Belgium, and, as M. Robaeys well observes, have always had great influence over the polish and construction of our mother tongue. . . The usual occupation of the Rhetoric Chambers was the representation of plays, as also practice in poetical composition, and the principal object of these sports seems to have been the amelioration of morals, teaching every one his duty, now in a facetious, now in a serious strain. These performances were public, and other chambers and societies were invited to them by cards sent to the different towns and villages. These cards announced the subject of the representation, or of the allegory or poem to be composed, as also the prize or recompense destined for the person who should best succeed. The invited chambers assembled at the appointed time with much pomp and splendour. These meetings were called Intreden (entries), which, in past times, were distinguished as Landjuweelen (country gems), and haegsdelen (hedge sports), of which the first were celebrated only in towns, especially upon occasion of a contest for a prize of honour. The second, likewise termed village sports, commonly took place in villages and liberties. The Rhetoric Chambers had their laws, enacted by themselves, and mostly confirmed by higher authority. They had various privileges, and were often so protected by government, that, according to some accounts, (says M. Let it not be thought that I have introduced the word Belgian into the verses of Loors. Thus he himself wrote in 1810, addressing the Hollanders, who then called themselves Belgians. [They were then, be it remembered, virtually subject to France, or rather to Napoleon.] |