A strange couple indeed! It was in society, however, that they presented the most curious spectacle. I sometimes caught sight of them at the theater. No one would have recognized the timid and shy young woman, who formerly accompanied the maestro, lost in the gigantic shadow he cast around him. Now, seated upright in the front of the box, she displayed herself, attracting all eyes by the pride of her own glance. It might be said that her head was surrounded by her first husband's halo of glory, his name reechoing around her like a homage or a reproach. The other one, seated a little behind her, with the subservient physiognomy of one ready for every abnegation in life, watched each of her movements, ready to attend to her slightest wish.

At home the peculiarity of their attitude was still more noticeable. I remember a certain evening party they gave a year after their marriage. The husband moved about among the crowd of guests, proud but rather embarrassed at gathering together so many in his own house. The wife, disdainful, melancholy, and very superior, was on that evening more than ever the widow of a great man! She had a peculiar way of glancing at her husband from over her shoulder, of calling him "my poor dear friend," of casting on him all the wearisome drudgery of the reception, with an air of saying: "You are only fit for that." Around her gathered a circle of former friends, those who had been spectators of the brilliant debuts of the great man, of his struggles, and his success. She simpered to them; played the young girl! They had known her when so young! Nearly all of them called her by her Christian name, "Anais." They formed a kind of coenaculum, which the poor husband respectfully approached, to hear his predecessor spoken of. They recalled the glorious first nights, those evenings on which nearly every battle was won, and the great man's manias, his way of working; how, in order to summon up inspiration, he insisted on his wife being by his side, decked out in full ball dress. "Do you remember, Anais?" And Anais sighed and blushed.

It was at that time that he had written his most tender pieces, above all "Savonarole," the most passionate of his creations, with a grand duet, interwoven with rays of moonshine, the perfume of roses and the warbling of nightingales. An enthusiast sat down and played it on the piano, amid a silence of attentive emotion. At the last note of the magnificent piece, the lady burst into tears. "I can not help it," she said, "I have never been able to hear it without weeping." The great man's old friends surrounded his unhappy widow with sympathetic expressions, coming up to her one by one, as at a funereal ceremony, to give a thrilling clasp to her hand.

"Come, come, Anais, be courageous." And the drollest thing was to see the second husband, standing by the side of his wife, deeply touched and affected, shaking hands all round, and accepting, he too, his share of sympathy. "What genius! what genius!" he repeated as he mopped his eyes. It was at the same time ridiculous and affecting.



II

MY FIRST DRESS COAT[11]

How did I come by it, that first dress coat? What primitive tailor, what confiding tradesman was it, trustful as Don Juan's famous Monsieur Dimanche, who upon the faith of my fantastic promises, decided one fine morning on bringing it to me, brand new, and artistically pinned up in a square of shiny green calico? It would be difficult for me to tell. Of the honest tailor, I can indeed recall nothing—so many tailors have since then crossed my path—save perhaps a vision, as in a luminous mist, of a thoughtful brow and a large mustache. The coat indeed is there, before my eyes. Its image after twenty years still remains indelibly graven on my memory, as on imperishable brass. What a collar, my young friends! What lapels! And, above all, what skirts, shaped as the slimmest tail of the swallow! My brother, a man of experience, had said: "One must have a dress coat if one wishes to make one's way in the world." And the dear fellow counted much upon this piece of frippery for the advancement of my fame and fortune....

[Footnote 11: From "Thirty Years of Paris." Translated by Laura Ensor.]

One day some one proposed to get me an invitation to Augustine Brohan's soirees. Who? some one. Some one, egad! You know him already: that eternal some one, who is like every one else, that amiable institution of Providence, who, of no personal value in himself and a mere acquaintance in the house he frequents, yet goes everywhere, introduces you everywhere, is the friend of a day, of an hour, of whose name even you are ignorant, that essentially Parisian type.

You may imagine with what enthusiasm I accepted the proposal. To be invited to Augustine's house! Augustine, the famous actress, Augustine, the laughing representative of Moliere's comic muse, softened somewhat by the more modern poetic smile of Musset's genius—for while she acted the waiting maids at the Theatre Francais, Musset had written his comedy "Louison" at her house; Augustine Brohan, in short, in whom all Paris delighted, vaunting her wit, quoting her repartees; and who might already be said to have adorned herself with that swallow's plume, unsullied yet by ink, but already well sharpened, with which she was hereafter to sign those charming "Lettres de Suzanne!"

"Lucky dog!" said my brother, helping me on with the coat; "your fortune is made."

Nine o'clock was striking as I sallied forth.

At that time Augustine Brohan was living in the Rue Lord Byron, at the top of the Champs Elysees, in one of those pretty coquettish little houses which seem to ignorant provincials the realization of the poetical dreams which they weave for themselves from the pages of the novelist. A railing, a tiny garden, four steps covered by an awning, an entrance hall filled with flowers, and then, opening immediately from it, the drawing-room, a brilliantly lighted room in green, which I can see now vividly before me.

How I managed to get up those steps, how I made my entry, and how I presented myself, I can not now remember. A footman announced my name, but this name, which he mumbled, produced no effect on the brilliant assembly. I can only recollect hearing a woman's voice say: "So much the better, here is another dancer." It appears they were short of dancers; but what an entry for a poet!

Startled and humiliated, I tried to lose myself among the crowd. How can I describe my dismay, when, a moment later, another mistake arose? My long hair, my dark and somber looks excited general curiosity. I heard them whispering near me: "Who is it? Do look," and they laughed. At last some one said:

"It is the Wallachian Prince!"

"The Wallachian Prince? Oh yes, very likely."

I suppose that a Wallachian prince had been expected that evening. My rank being thus settled for me, I was left in peace. But for all that, you can not imagine how heavily my usurped crown weighed upon me all that evening. First a dancing man! then a Wallachian prince! Could not these good people see my lyre?

Fortunately for me, a startling piece of news flying from mouth to mouth, spread rapidly through the ballroom, casting into oblivion both the dancer and the Wallachian prince. Marriage was at that time much the fashion among the feminine portion of the Comedie company, and it was generally at Augustine Brohan's Wednesday receptions, where all the choicest talents of journalism, together with bankers and high government officials gathered round the lovely members or associates of the Francais, that the foundations were laid of most of these romantic unions....

At last comparative calm was restored and the quadrilles began. I danced. I was obliged to do so. I danced moreover somewhat badly for a Wallachian prince. The quadrille once ended, I became stationary; foolishly held back by my short sight—too shy to sport an eyeglass, too much of a poet to wear spectacles, and dreading lest, at the slightest movement, I should bruise my knee against the corner of some piece of furniture, or plunge my nose into the trimming of a bodice. Soon hunger and thirst interfered in the matter; but for a kingdom I should never have dared to approach the buffet with all the rest of the world. I anxiously watched for the moment when it should be deserted; and while waiting, I joined the groups of political talkers, assuming a serious air, and feigning to scorn the charms of the smaller salon, whence came to me, with the pleasant sound of laughter and the tinkling of teaspoons against the porcelain, a delicate aroma of scented tea, of Spanish wines and cakes. At last they came back to dance, and I gathered up my courage. I entered, I was alone.

What a dazzling sight was that buffet. A crystal pyramid under the blaze of the candles, brilliant with glasses and decanters, white and glittering as snow in the sunshine. I took up a glass as fragile as a flower, careful not to hold it too tightly lest I should break the stem. What should I pour into it? Come now, courage, I say to myself, since no one can see me. I stretched out my hand, and took at haphazard a decanter. It must be kirsch, I thought, from its diamond clearness. Well, I'll try a glass of kirsch; I like its perfume, its bitter and wild perfume that reminds me of the forest. And so, like an epicure, I slowly poured out, drop by drop, the beautiful clear liquid. I raised the glass to my lips. Oh, horror, it was only water. What a grimace I made. Suddenly a duet of laughter resounded from a black coat and a pink dress that I had not perceived flirting in the corner, and who were amused at my mistake.

I endeavored to replace my glass, but I was nervous, my hand shook, and my sleeve caught I know not what. One glass, two glasses, three glasses fell. I turned round, my wretched coat tails swept a wild circle, and the white pyramid crashed to the ground, with all the sparkling, splintering, flashing uproar of an iceberg breaking to pieces.

At the noise of the catastrophe the mistress of the house rushed up. Luckily, she is as short-sighted as the Wallachian prince, and he is able to escape from the buffet without being recognized. All the same, my evening is spoiled. The massacre of small glasses and decanters weighs on my mind like a crime. My one idea is to get away. But the Dubois mama, dazzled by my principality, catches hold of me and will not allow me to leave till I have danced with her daughter, or indeed with both her daughters. I excuse myself as best as I can; when a tall old man with a shrewd smile, stopt my egress. It is Doctor Ricord, with whom I had exchanged a few words previously and who, like the others, takes me for the Wallachian. "But, Prince, as you are inhabiting the Hotel du Senat, and as we are near neighbors, pray wait for me, I can offer you a seat in my carriage." How willingly would I accept, but I have no overcoat. What would Ricord think of a Wallachian prince without furs, and shivering in his dress coat? Let me escape quickly, and hurry home on foot, through the snow and fog, sooner than allow my poverty to be seen. Always half-blind and more confused than ever, I reach the door and slip out, not, however, without getting somehow entangled in the tapestries. "Won't monsieur take his coat?" a footman calls after me.

There I was, at two o'clock in the morning, far from my home, alone in the streets, hungry and frozen, with the devil's own self, a badly lined purse in my pocket. But hunger inspired me with a brilliant idea: "Suppose I go to the markets." I had often heard of the markets, and a certain Gaidras, whose establishment remained open all night, and where for the sum of three sous they provided a plateful of succulent cabbage soup. By Jove, yes, to the markets I would go. I would sit down at those tables like the veriest prowling vagabond. All my pride had vanished. The wind is icy cold; hunger makes me desperate. "My kingdom for a horse," said another prince, and I say to myself as I trot along: "My principality, my Wallachian principality, for a basin of good soup in a warm corner."

Gaidras' establishment looks a mere filthy hovel, all slimy and badly lighted, thrust back beneath the colonnades of the old market-place. Often and often since then, when noctambulism was the fashion, have we, future great men, spent whole nights there, elbows on table, amidst tobacco smoke and literary talk. But at the first I must own, notwithstanding my hunger, I almost drew back at the sight of those blackened dingy walls, that dense smoke, those late sitters, snoring with their backs against the wall or lapping their soup like dogs; the amazing caps of the Don Juans of the gutter, the enormous drab felt hats of the market porters, and the healthy rough blouse of the market gardener side by side with the greasy tatters of the prowler of the night. Nevertheless I entered, and I may at once add that my black coat found its fellows. Black coats that own no great coat are not rare in Paris after midnight in the winter, and they are hungry enough to eat three sous' worth of cabbage soup. The cabbage soup was, however, exquisite; full of perfume as a garden, and smoking like a crater. I had two helpings, altho a custom peculiar to the establishment—inspired by wholesome distrust—of fastening the forks and spoons with a chain to the table, hindered me a little. I paid, and fortified by my substantial mess, resumed my way to the Quartier Latin.

What a picture my return home! The return of the poet, trotting up the Rue de Tournon, with his coat collar turned up, while dancing before his sleepy eyes are the elegant shadows of a fashionable evening party mingling with the famished specters of the market-place. He stands knocking his boots against the curbstone of the Hotel du Senat, to shake off the snow, while opposite the bright lamps of a brougham light up the front of an old mansion, and Doctor Ricord's coachman cries out: "Gate, if you please." Life in Paris is made up of these contrasts.

"A wasted evening," said my brother the next morning. "You have been taken for a Wallachian prince, and have not succeeded in launching your book. But all is not yet lost; you must make up for it when you make your 'digestion call,' as we say in Paris."

The digestion of a glass of water, what irony. It was quite two months before I made up my mind to pay that call. However, one day I summoned up courage. Besides her official receptions on Wednesdays, Augustine Brohan received more unceremoniously on Sunday afternoon. I resolutely started off....

Even now I can recall the smallest details of that interview. But see how all depends upon our point of view. I had told Sarcey the comical story of my first appearance in society, and one day Sarcey repeated it to Augustine Brohan. Well, the ungrateful Augustine—whom, it is true, I have not seen for thirty years—swore most sincerely that she knew nothing of me but my books. She had forgotten everything! Everything—all that had played such an important part in my life—the broken glasses, the Wallachian prince, the rehearsal of "Lait d'Anesse," and the boots of the heavy dragoons.



GUY DE MAUPASSANT

Born in 1850, died in 1893; educated at Rouen; trained in literary matters by Flaubert; wrote an unsuccessful play in 1879 and then a short story, "Boule de Suif," which attracted marked attention, and was followed by a great number of short and long stories, including "Mademoiselle Fifi" in 1882, "Pierre et Jean" in 1888, and "Notre Coeur" in 1890.



MADAME JEANNE'S LAST DAYS[12]

Jeanne did not go out any more. She hardly bestirred herself. She got up every morning at the same time; looked out of the window at the weather, and then went down-stairs, and sat before the fire in the hall. Here she would think of the happy years of Paul's childhood, when he had worked in the salad-bed, kneeling side by side in the soft ground with Aunt Lison, the two women rivals in their effort to amuse the child, and seeing who could root up the young plants most skilfully.

[Footnote 12: From the last chapter of "A Life." Translated for this collection by Eric Arthur Bell.]

So musing, her lips would murmur, "Poulet, Poulet! my little Poulet"—as if she were speaking to him; and, her reverie broken as she spoke, she would try during whole hours to write in the air the letters which formed the boy's name. She would trace them slowly before the fire, imagining that she really saw them; then believing that her eyes had deceived her, she would rewrite the capital P again, her arm trembling with fatigue, forcing herself to trace the name to the end; then when she had finished it she would begin over again. At last she could not write it any more. She would muddle everything—form other words, and exhaust herself almost to idiocy.

Ever since her childhood just one habit had clung to her—that of jumping up out of bed the moment she had drunk her morning coffee. She was inordinately fond of that way of breakfasting, and the privation would have been felt more than anything else. Each morning she would await Rosalie's arrival with extraordinary impatience; and as soon as the cup was put upon the table at her side, she would sit up and empty it almost greedily, and then, throwing off her robe, she would begin to dress herself at once.

She thought she was directly pursued by obstinate misfortune against which she became as fatalistic as an Oriental: the habit of seeing her dreams fade away and destroy her hopes made her afraid to undertake anything; and she waited whole days to accomplish the most simple affair, convinced that she would always take the wrong way to do it, and that it would turn out badly. She repeated continually, "I have never had any luck in my life." Then Rosalie would cry, "Supposing you had had to work for your bread—and were obliged to get up every morning at six o'clock and prepare for your day's doings? There are lots of people who are obliged to do that; and when such people become too old, they die of poverty."

She had checked certain memorable days in her life, and now and then she was able to remember episodes of an entire month, bringing them up one by one, grouping them together, and connecting together all those little matters which had preceded or followed some important event. She succeeded by sheer force of attention, by force of memory and of concentrated will power in bringing back to mind almost completely her two first years at Peuples. Distant memories of her life came back to her with a singular facility, bringing a kind of relief; but the later years seemed to lose themselves in a mist—to become mixt one with another: and sometimes she would stay for an indefinite time, her head bowed on one of the calendars, her mind full of the past, and yet not being able to remember whether it was in this or that calendar that such or such a remembrance ought to be tabulated. She placed them around the room like the pictures of the Way of the Cross—those tableaux of days that were no more. Then she would abruptly set down her chair before one of them; and there she would sit until night came, staring at it, immobile, buried in her dreams of remembrance.

One morning Rosalie came earlier than usual into her room, and said, setting down upon the table the bowl of coffee: "Come now, drink this up quickly. Denis is down-stairs waiting for us at the door. We are going over to Peuples to-day: I've got some business over there."

Jeanne thought that she was going to faint, so deep was her emotion. She drest herself, frightened and tremulous at the mere idea of seeing again that dear house.

A radiant sky spread out above over all the world, and the horse, in fits and starts of liveliness, sometimes broke into a gallop. When they entered into the commune of Etouvent, Jeanne's heart beat so fast that she could hardly breathe, and when she saw from a distance the brick pillars of the boundary-line of her old home, she exclaimed in a low voice two or three times, "Oh!—oh!—oh!—" as if something had happened to change her whole heart.

They left the wagon with the Couillards: then, while Rosalie and her son went off to attend to their business, the caretakers offered to take Jeanne over the chateau, the present owners of it being away; so they gave her the keys.

She set out alone, and when she was fairly before the old manor-house by the seaside, she stopt to look at it once again. It had changed in nothing outside. The large, grayish building that day showed upon its old walls the smile of the brilliant sunshine. All the shutters were closed.

A bit of a dead branch fell on her dress. She raised her eyes. It came from the plane-tree. She drew near the big tree with its smooth, pale bark; she stroked it with her hand as if it had been an animal. Her foot struck something in the grass—a fragment of rotten wood; it was the last fragment of the very bench on which she had sat so often with those of her own family about her; the very bench which had been seen set in place on the very day that Julien had made his first visit.

She reached the double doors of the vestibule of the house, and she had great trouble to open them; for the heavy, rusty key refused to turn in the lock. At length the lock yielded with a heavy grinding of its springs; and the door, a little obstinate itself, burst open with a cloud of dust.

At once, and almost running, she went upstairs to her own room. She could recognize it, hung as it was with a light new paper: but throwing open a window, she looked out and stood motionless, stirred even to the depth of her being at the sight of all that landscape, so much beloved; the shrubs, the elm-trees, the flat reaches, and the sea dotted with brown sails, motionless in the distance.

Then she began prowling about the great empty dwelling. She even stopt to look at the discolorations on the walls; spots familiar to her eyes. Once she stood before a little hole crusht in the plaster by the baron; who had often amused himself, when he was young, with making passages at arms, cane in hand, against the partition wall, when he happened to be passing this spot.

She went down-stairs to the drawing-room. It was somber behind the closed shutters: for some time she could not distinguish anything; then her eyes became accustomed to the darkness. Little by little she recognized the wide tapestries with their patterns of birds flitting about. Two settees were set before the chimney as if people had just quitted them; and the very odor of the room, an odor which it had always kept—that old, vague, sweet odor belonging to some old houses—entered Jeanne's very being, enwrapt her in souvenirs, intoxicated her memory. She remained gasping, breathing in that breath of the past, her eyes fixt upon those two chairs; for suddenly she saw—as she had so often seen them—her father and her mother, sitting there warming their feet by the fire. She started back terrified, struck her back against the edge of the door, caught at it to keep herself from falling, but kept her eyes still fixt upon the chairs.

The vision disappeared. For some moments she remained forgetful of everything; then slowly she recovered her self-possession, and would have fled from the room, fearful of losing her self-control. Her glance fell by chance on the door-post on which she was leaning; and there before her eyes were the marks that had been made to keep track of Poulet's height as he was growing up!

The little marks climbed the painted wood at irregular intervals; figures traced with the penknife noted down the different ages with the month of the boy's life. Sometimes the jottings were in the handwriting of the baron, a large hand; sometimes they were in her own smaller hand; sometimes in that of Aunt Lison, a little shaky. It seemed to her that the child of other days was actually there, before her, with his blond hair, pressing his little forehead against the wall so that his height could be measured. The baron was crying, "Jeanne! he has grown a whole centimeter in the last six weeks!" She began to kiss the piece of wood in a frenzy of love.

But some one was calling her from outside. It was Rosalie's voice: "Madame Jeanne, Madame Jeanne, we are waiting for you, to have luncheon." She went out in a trance. She hardly understood anything that the other said to her. She ate the things that they put on her plate; she listened without knowing what she heard, talking mechanically with the farming-women, who inquired about her health; she let them embrace her, and herself kissed the cheeks offered to her; and then got into the wagon again.

When she caught her last glimpse of the high roof of the chateau across the trees, she felt a terrible sinking in her heart. It seemed to her in her innermost being that she had said farewell forever to her old home!



GERMANY

1483-1859



MARTIN LUTHER

Born in 1483, died in 1546; his father a slate-cutter: studied at Magdeburg and Erfurt; against the wishes of his family, became a monk; went to Rome in 1510; published on the church door at Wittenburg in 1517 his thesis against the sale of indulgences; summoned to Rome, he refused to go and published further attacks upon the Church; excommunicated in 1520 and his writings publicly burned, whereupon he publicly burned the papal bull of excommunication; made his speech before the Diet of Worms in 1521; taken prisoner and confined in the Wartburg, he there translated the New Testament; later translated the Old Testament, and published a hymn-book; in 1525 married a nun; published numerous polemical pamphlets against the Church; had great influence in the formation of the present literary language of Germany.



SOME OF HIS TABLE TALK AND SAYINGS[13]

"Before I translated the New Testament out of the Greek all longed after it; when it was done, their longing lasted scarce four weeks. Then they desired the books of Moses; when I had translated these, they had enough thereof in a short time. After that, they would have the Psalms; of these they were soon weary, and desired other books. So will it be with the Book of Ecclesiasticus, which they now long for, and about which I have taken great pains. All is acceptable until our giddy brains be satisfied; afterward we let things lie, and seek after new."

[Footnote 13: Luther's "Table Talk" found English translators soon after it appeared in German. A notable later version was made by William Hazlitt.]

Dr. Luther discust at length concerning witchcraft and charms. He said that his mother had had to undergo infinite annoyance from one of her neighbors, who was a witch and whom she was fain to conciliate with all sorts of attention, for this witch could throw a charm upon children which made them cry themselves to death. A pastor having punished her for some knavery, she cast a spell upon him by means of some earth upon which he had walked, and which she bewitched. The poor man hereupon fell sick of a malady which no remedy could remove, and shortly after died.

Dr. Luther said he had heard from the Elector of Saxony, John Frederic, that a powerful family in Germany was descended from the devil—the founder having been born of a succubus. He added this story: "A gentleman had a young and beautiful wife, who, dying, was buried. Shortly afterward, this gentleman and one of his servants sleeping in the same chamber, the wife who was dead came at night, bent over the bed of the gentleman as tho she were conversing with him, and after a while went away again. The servant, having twice observed this circumstance, asked his master whether he knew that every night a woman clothed in white stood by his bedside. The master replied that he had slept soundly, and had observed nothing of the sort. The next night he took care to remain awake. The woman came, and he asked her who she was and what she wanted. She answered that she was his wife. He returned, 'My wife is dead and buried.' She answered, she had died by reason of his sins; but that if he would receive her again, she would return to him in life. He said if it were possible, he should be well content. She told him he must undertake not to swear, as he was wont to do; for that if he ever did so, she should once more die, and permanently quit him. He promised this; and the dead woman, returning to seeming life, dwelt with him, ate, drank, and slept with him, and had children by him. One day that he had guests, his wife went to fetch some cakes from an adjoining apartment, and remained a long time absent. The gentleman grew impatient, and broke out into his old oaths. The wife not returning, the gentleman with his friends went to seek her, but she had disappeared; only the clothes she had worn lay on the floor. She was never again seen."

"Between husband and wife there should be no question as to meum and tuum. All things should be in common between them, without any distinction or means of distinguishing."

"St. Augustine said finely: 'A marriage without children is the world without the sun.'"

Dr. Luther said one day to his wife: "You make me do what you will; you have full sovereignty here, and I award you with all my heart the command in all household matters, reserving my rights in other points. Never any good came out of female domination. God created Adam master and lord of living creatures; but Eve spoilt all, when she persuaded him to set himself above God's will. 'Tis you women, with your tricks and artifices, that lead men into error."

"'Tis a grand thing for a married pair to live in perfect union, but the devil rarely permits this. When they are apart, they can not endure the separation; and when they are together, they can not endure the always seeing one another. 'Tis as the poet says: 'Nec tecum vivere possum, nec sine te.' Married people must assiduously pray against these assaults of the devil. I have seen marriage where, at first, husband and wife seemed as tho they would eat one another up; in six months they have separated in mutual disgust. 'Tis the devil inspires this evanescent ardor, in order to divert the parties from prayer."

Dr. Luther said, in reference to those who write satirical attacks upon women, that such will not go unpunished. "If the author be one of high rank, rest assured he is not really of noble origin, but a surreptitious intruder into the family. What defects women have, we must check them for in private, gently by word of mouth; for woman is a frail vessel." The doctor then turned round and said, "Let us talk of something else."

There was at Frankfort-on-the-Oder a schoolmaster, a pious and learned man, whose heart was fervently inclined to theology, and who had preached several times with great applause. He was called to the dignity of deacon; but his wife, a violent, fierce woman, would not consent to his accepting the charge, saying she would not be the wife of a minister.

It became a question, what was the poor man to do? which was he to renounce, his preacher-ship or his wife? Luther at first said jocosely, "Oh, if he has married, as you tell me, a widow, he must needs obey her." But after a while he resumed severely: "The wife is bound to follow her husband, not the husband his wife. This must be an ill woman, nay, the devil incarnate, to be ashamed of a charge with which our Lord and his apostles were invested. If she were my wife, I should shortly say to her, 'Wilt thou follow me, aye or no? Reply forthwith'; and if she replied, 'No,' I would leave her, and take another wife."

I have no pleasure in any man who despises music. It is no invention of ours: it is the gift of God. I place it next to theology. Satan hates music: he knows how it drives the evil spirit out of us.

The strength and glory of a town does not depend on its wealth, its walls, its great mansions, its powerful armaments; but on the number of its learned, serious, kind, and well-educated citizens.

Greek and Latin are the scabbard which holds the sword of the Spirit, the cases which enclose the precious jewels, the vessels which contain the old wine, the baskets which carry the loaves and fishes for the feeding of the multitude.

Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom—only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths, and depths of truth—have I been able to gather.

My own writings are like a wild forest, compared with the gentle, limpid fluency of his [Brenz's] language. If small things dare be compared with great, my words are like the Spirit of Elijah—a great and strong wind, rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks; and his is the still small voice. But yet God uses also coarse wedges for splitting coarse blocks; and besides the fructifying grain, he employs also the rending thunder and lightning to purify the atmosphere.

I must root out the stumps and trunks, and I am a rough woodsman who must break the road and prepare it: but Magister Philip [Melanchthon] goes on quietly and gently, plows and plants, sows and waters joyfully.

Be temperate with your children; punish them if they lie or steal, but be just in what you do. It is a lighter sin to take pears and apples than to take money. I shudder when I think what I went through myself. My mother beat me about some nuts once till the blood came. I had a terrible time of it; but she meant well.

Never be hard with children. Many a fine character has been ruined by the stupid brutality of pedagogs. The parts of speech are a boy's pillory. I was myself flogged fifteen times in one forenoon, over the conjugation of a verb. Punish if you must; but be kind too, and let the sugar-plum go with the rod.

My being such a small creature was a misfortune for the Pope. He despised me too much. What, he thought, could a slave like me do to him—to him who was the greatest man in the world? Had he accepted my proposal he would have extinguished me.

The better a man is, the more clearly he sees how little he is good for, and the greater mockery it is to him to hold the notion that he has deserved reward. Miserable creatures that we are, we earn our bread in sin. Till we are seven years old, we do nothing but eat and drink and sleep and play; from seven to twenty-one we study four hours a day, the rest of it we run about and amuse ourselves; then we work till fifty, and then we grow again to be children. We sleep half our lives; we give God a tenth of our time; and yet we think that with our good works we can merit heaven. What have I been doing to-day? I have talked for two hours, I have been at meals three hours, I have been idle four hours; ah, enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord!

The principle of marriage runs through all creation, and flowers as well as animals are male and female.

If a man could make a single rose, we should give him an empire; yet roses, and flowers no less beautiful, are scattered in profusion over the world, and no one regards them.



GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM

LESSING

Born in 1729, died in 1781; studied theology at Leipsic, but turned his thoughts to writing for the stage, his first comedy being produced in 1748; settled in Berlin in 1748; lived in Leipsic a second time, engaged in writing plays, poems and books; removed from Berlin to Breslau in 1765, where he wrote his masterpiece, "Laocoon," published in 1766; in 1769 made librarian of the ducal library in Wolfenbuttel, which place he held until his death.



I

POETRY AND PAINTING COMPARED[14]

The first person who compared painting and poetry with one another was a man of refined feeling, who became aware of a similar effect produced upon himself by both arts. He felt both represent what is absent as if it were present, and appearance as if it were reality; that both deceived, and that the deception of both is pleasing.

[Footnote 14: From the preface to the "Laocoon." Translated by E. C. Beasley and Helen Zimmern. An earlier translation of the "Laocoon" was made by William Ross in 1836.]

A second observer sought to penetrate below the surface of this pleasure, and discovered that in both it flowed from the same source. Beauty, the idea of which we first deduce from bodily objects, possesses universal laws, applicable to more things than one; to actions and to thoughts as well as to forms.

A third reflected upon the value and distribution of these universal laws, and noticed that some are more predominant in painting, others in poetry; that thus, in the latter case, poetry will help to explain and illustrate painting; in the former, painting will do the same for poetry.

The first was the amateur, the second the philosopher, the third the critic.

The first two could not easily make a wrong use of either their feelings or conclusions. On the other hand, the value of the critic's observations mainly depends upon the correctness of their application to the individual case, and since for one clear-sighted critic there have always been fifty ingenious ones, it would have been a wonder if this application had always been applied with all that caution which is required to hold the balance equally between the two arts.

If Apelles and Protogenes, in their lost writings on painting, affirmed and illustrated its laws by the previously established rules of poetry, we may feel sure that they did it with that moderation and accuracy with which we now see, in the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Horace, and Quintilian, the principles and experience of painting applied to eloquence and poetry. It is the privilege of the ancients never in any matter to do too much or too little.

But in many points we moderns have imagined that we have advanced far beyond them, because we have changed their narrow lanes into highways, even tho the shorter and safer highways contract into footpaths as they lead through deserts.

The dazzling antithesis of the Greek Voltaire, "Painting is dumb poetry, and poetry is speaking painting," can never have been found in any didactic work; it was an idea, amongst others, of Simonides, and the truth it contains is so evident that we feel compelled to overlook the indistinctness and error which accompany it.

And yet the ancients did not overlook them. They confined the expression of Simonides to the effect of either art, but at the same time forgot not to inculcate that, notwithstanding the complete similarity of this effect, the two were different, both in the objects which they imitated, and in their mode of imitation.

But, just as tho no such difference existed, many recent critics have drawn from this harmony of poetry and painting the most ill-digested conclusions. At one time they compress poetry into the narrower limits of painting; at another they allow painting to occupy the whole wide sphere of poetry. Everything, say they, that the one is entitled to should be conceded to the other; everything that pleases or displeases in the one is necessarily pleasing or displeasing in the other. Full of this idea, they give utterance in the most confident tone to the most shallow decisions; when, criticizing the works of a poet and painter upon the same subject, they set down as faults any divergences they may observe, laying the blame upon the one or the other accordingly as they may have more taste for poetry or for painting.

Indeed, this false criticism has misled in some degree the professors of art. It has produced the love of description in poetry, and of allegory in painting: while the critics strove to reduce poetry to a speaking painting, without properly knowing what it could and ought to paint; and painting to a dumb poem, without having considered in what degree it could express general ideas without alienating itself from its destiny, and degenerating into an arbitrary method of writing.



II

OF SUFFERING HELD IN RESTRAINT[15]

Herr Winckelmann has pronounced a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur, displayed in the posture no less than in the expression, to be the characteristic features common to all the Greek masterpieces of painting and sculpture. "As," says he, "the depths of the sea always remain calm, however much the surface may be raging, so the expression in the figures of the Greeks, under every form of passion, shows a great and self-collected soul.

[Footnote 15: From Chapter I of the "Laocoon." Translated by E. C. Beasley and Helen Zimmern.]

"This spirit is portrayed in the countenance of Laocoon, and not in the countenance alone, under the most violent suffering; the pain discovers itself in every muscle and sinew of his body, and the beholder, while looking at the agonized contraction of the abdomen, without viewing the face and the other parts, believes that he almost feels the pain himself. This pain expresses itself, however, without any violence, both in the features and in the whole posture. He raises no terrible shriek, such as Virgil makes his Laocoon utter, for the opening of the mouth does not admit it; it is rather an anxious and supprest sigh, as described by Sadoleto. The pain of body and grandeur of soul are, as it were, weighed out, and distributed with equal strength through the whole frame of the figure. Laocoon suffers, but he suffers as the Philoctetes of Sophocles; his misery pierces us to the very soul, but inspires us with a wish that we could endure misery like that great man.

"The expressing of so great a soul is far higher than the painting of beautiful nature. The artist must have felt within himself that strength of spirit which he imprinted upon his marble. Greece had philosophers and artists in one person, and more than one Metrodorus. Philosophy gave her hand to art, and breathed into its figures more than ordinary souls."

The observation on which the foregoing remarks are founded, "that the pain in the face of Laocoon does not show itself with that force which its intensity would have led us to expect," is perfectly correct. Moreover, it is indisputable that it is in this very point where the half-connoisseur would have decided that the artist had fallen short of nature, and had not reached the true pathos of pain, that his wisdom is particularly conspicuous.

But I confess I differ from Winckelmann as to what is in his opinion the basis of this wisdom, and as to the universality of the rule which he deduces from it.

I acknowledge that I was startled, first by the glance of disapproval which he casts upon Virgil, and secondly by the comparison with Philoctetes. From this point then I shall set out, and write down my thoughts as they were developed in me.

"Laocoon suffers as Sophocles' Philoctetes." But how does the latter suffer? It is curious that his sufferings should leave such a different impression behind them. The cries, the shrieking, the wild imprecations, with which he filled the camp, and interrupted all the sacrifices and holy rites, resound no less horribly through his desert island, and were the cause of his being banished to it. The same sounds of despondency, sorrow, and despair fill the theater in the poet's imitation. It has been observed that the third act of this piece is shorter than the others; from this it may be gathered, say the critics, that the ancients took little pains to preserve a uniformity of length in the different acts. I quite agree with them, but I should rather ground my opinion upon another example than this. The sorrowful exclamations and the moanings, of which this act consists, must have been pronounced with tensions and breakings off altogether different from those required in a continuous speech, and doubtless made this act last quite as long in the representation as the others. It appears much shorter to the reader, when seen on paper, than it must have done to the audience in a theater.

A cry is the natural expression of bodily pain. Homer's wounded heroes frequently fall with cries to the ground. He makes Venus, when merely scratched, shriek aloud; not that he may thereby paint the effeminacy of the goddess of pleasure, but rather that he may give suffering Nature her due; for even the iron Mars, when he feels the lance of Diomedes, shrieks so horribly that his cries are like those of ten thousand furious warriors, and fill both armies with horror, Tho Homer, in other respects, raises his heroes above human nature, they always remain faithful to it in matters connected with the feeling of pain and insult, or its expression through cries, tears, or reproaches. In their actions they are beings of a higher order, in their feelings true men.

I know that we, more refined Europeans, of a wiser and later age, know how to keep our mouths and eyes under closer restraint. We are forbidden by courtesy and propriety to cry and weep; and with us the active bravery of the first rough age of the world has been changed into a passive. Yet even our own ancestors, tho barbarians, were greater in the latter than in the former. To suppress all pain, to meet the stroke of death with unflinching eye, to die laughing under the bites of adders, to lament neither their sins nor the loss of their dearest friends—these were the characteristics of the old heroic courage of the north. Palnatoki forbade his Jomsburgers either to fear or so much as to mention the name of fear.

Not so the Greek. He felt and feared. He gave utterance to his pain and sorrow. He was ashamed of no human weaknesses, only none of them must hold him back from the path of honor, or impede him in the fulfilment of his duty. What in the barbarian sprang from habit and ferocity arose from principle in the Greek. With him heroism was as the spark concealed in flint, which, so long as no external force awakens it, sleeps in quiet, nor robs the stone either of its clearness or its coldness. With the barbarian it was a bright consuming flame, which was ever roaring, and devoured, or at least blackened, every other good quality. Thus, when Homer makes the Trojans march to the combat with wild cries, the Greeks, on the contrary, in resolute silence, the critics justly observe that the poet intended to depict the one as barbarians, the other as a civilized people. I wonder that they have not remarked a similar contrast of character in another passage. The hostile armies have made a truce; they are busied with burning their dead; and these rites are accompanied on both sides with the warm flow of tears. But Priam forbids the Trojans to weep. He forbade them to weep, says Dacier, because he feared the effect would be too softening, and that on the morrow they would go with less courage to the battle. True! But why, I ask, should Priam only fear this result? Why does not Agamemnon also lay the same prohibition on the Greeks? The poet has a deeper meaning; he wishes to teach us that the civilized Greek could be brave at the same time that he wept, while in the uncivilized Trojan all human feelings were to be previously stifled.

It is worth observing that among the few tragedies which have come down to us from antiquity two are found in which bodily pain constitutes not the lightest part of the misfortune which befalls the suffering heroes—the Philoctetes and the dying Hercules. Sophocles paints the last also as moaning and shrieking, weeping and crying. Thanks to our polite neighbors, those masters of propriety, no such ridiculous and intolerable characters as a moaning Philoctetes or a shrieking Hercules will ever again appear upon the stage. One of their latest poets has indeed ventured upon a Philoctetes, but would he have dared to exhibit the true one?

Even a Laocoon is found among the lost plays of Sophocles. Would that fate had spared it to us! The slight mention which some old grammarians have made of it affords us no ground for concluding how the poet had handled his subject; but of this I feel certain, that Laocoon would not have been drawn more stoically than Philoctetes and Hercules. All stoicism is undramatical; and our sympathy is always proportioned to the suffering exprest by the object which interests us. It is true if we see him bear his misery with a great soul, this grandeur of soul excites our admiration; but admiration is only a cold emotion, and its inactive astonishment excludes every warmer passion as well as every distinct idea.

I now come to my inference; if it be true that a cry at the sensation of bodily pain, particularly according to the old Greek way of thinking, is quite compatible with greatness of soul, it can not have been for the sake of expressing such greatness that the artist avoided imitating this shriek in marble. Another reason therefore must be found for his here deviating from his rival, the poet, who expresses it with the highest purpose.



JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Born in Frankfurt in 1749, died in Weimar in 1832; the greatest name in German literature; his father an imperial councilor; studied jurisprudence at Leipsic; settled in Weimar in 1775, where he became privy councilor, and in 1782 was ennobled and made President of the Ducal Chamber; traveled in Italy in 1786-88; served in the war against France in 1792-93; began his friendship with Schiller in 1794; published "The Sorrows of Werther" in 1774, "Hermann and Dorothea" in 1797, "Faust" first part, in 1808, his "Italian Journey" in 1817, "Wilhelm Meister," the several parts in 1778, 1796, 1821, and 1829; the second part of "Faust" in 1831.



I

ON FIRST READING SHAKESPEARE[16]

"Have you never," said Jarno, taking him aside, "read one of Shakespeare's plays?"

[Footnote 16: From "Wilhelm Meister." Translated by Thomas Carlyle. This translation by Carlyle was published in Edinburgh in 1824 and was contemporary with Carlyle's translation of "Legendre" and his "Life of Schiller."]

"No," replied Wilhelm: "since the time when they became more known in Germany, I have myself grown unacquainted with the theater; and I know not whether I should now rejoice that an old taste and occupation of my youth has been by chance renewed. In the meantime, all that I have heard of these plays has excited little wish to become acquainted with such extraordinary monsters, which appear to set probability and dignity alike at defiance."

"I would advise you," said the other, "to make a trial, notwithstanding: it can do one no harm to look at what is extraordinary with one's own eyes. I will lend you a volume or two; and you can not better spend your time than by casting everything aside, and retiring to the solitude of your old habitation, to look into the magic lantern of that unknown world. It is sinful of you to waste your hours in dressing out these apes to look more human, and teaching dogs to dance. One thing only I require—you must not cavil at the form; the rest I can leave to your own good sense and feeling."

The horses were standing at the door; and Jarno mounted with some other cavaliers to go and hunt. Wilhelm looked after him with sadness. He would fain have spoken much with this man who tho in a harsh, unfriendly way, gave him new ideas—ideas that he had need of.

Oftentimes a man, when approaching some development of his powers, capacities, and conceptions, gets into a perplexity from which a prudent friend might easily deliver him. He resembles a traveler, who, at but a short distance from the inn he is to rest at, falls into the water: were any one to catch him then and pull him to the bank, with one good wetting it were over; whereas, tho he struggles out himself, it is often at the side where he tumbled in, and he has to make a wide and weary circuit before reaching his appointed object.

Wilhelm now began to have an inkling that things went forward in the world differently from what he had supposed. He now viewed close at hand the solemn and imposing life of the great and distinguished, and wondered at the easy dignity which they contrived to give it. An army on its march, a princely hero at the head of it, such a multitude of cooperating warriors, such a multitude of crowding worshipers, exalted his imagination. In this mood he received the promised books; and ere long, as may be easily supposed, the stream of that mighty genius laid hold of him and led him down to a shoreless ocean, where he soon completely forgot and lost himself....

Wilhelm had scarcely read one or two of Shakespeare's plays till their effect on him became so strong that he could go no further. His whole soul was in commotion. He sought an opportunity to speak with Jarno; to whom, on meeting with him, he exprest his boundless gratitude for such delicious entertainment.

"I clearly enough foresaw," said Jarno, "that you would not remain insensible to the charms of the most extraordinary and most admirable of all writers."

"Yes!" exclaimed our friend: "I can not recollect that any book, any man, any incident of my life, has produced such important effects on me as the precious works to which by your kindness I have been directed. They seem as if they were performances of some celestial genius descending among men, to make them by the mildest instructions acquainted with themselves. They are no fictions! You would think, while reading them, you stood before the enclosed awful Books of Fate, while the whirlwind of most impassioned life was howling through the leaves, and tossing them fiercely to and fro. The strength and tenderness, the power and peacefulness of this man have so astonished and transported me that I long vehemently for the time when I shall have it in my power to read further."

"Bravo!" said Jarno, holding out his hand, and squeezing our friend's. "This is as it should be! And the consequences which I hope for will likewise surely follow."

"I wish," said Wilhelm, "I could but disclose to you all that is going on within me even now. All the anticipations I have ever had regarding man and his destiny, which have accompanied me from youth upward often unobserved by myself, I find developed and fulfilled in Shakespeare's writings. It seems as if he cleared up every one of our enigmas to us, tho we can not say, Here or there is the word of solution. His men appear like natural men, and yet they are not. These, the most mysterious and complex productions of creation, here act before us as if they were watches, whose dial-plates and cases were of crystal, which pointed out according to their use their course of the hours and minutes; while at the same time you could discern the combination of wheels and springs that turn them. The few glances I have cast over Shakespeare's world incite me, more than anything beside, to quicken my footsteps forward into the actual world, to mingle in the flood of destinies that is suspended over it; and at length, if I shall prosper, to draw a few cups from the great ocean of true nature, and to distribute them from off the stage among the thirsting people of my native land."



II

THE CORONATION OF JOSEPH II[17]

The coronation-day dawned at last, on the 3d of April, 1764; the weather was favorable, and everybody was in motion. I, with several of my relations and friends, had been provided with a good place in one of the upper stories of the Romer itself, where we might completely survey the whole. We betook ourselves to the spot very early in the morning, and from above, as in a bird's-eye view, contemplated the arrangements which we had inspected more closely the day before. There was the newly-erected fountain, with two large tubs on the left and right, into which the double-eagle on the post was to pour from its two beaks white wine on this side and red wine on that. There, gathered into a heap, lay the oats; here stood the large wooden hut, in which we had several days since seen the whole fat ox roasted and basted on a huge spit before a charcoal fire. All the avenues leading out from the Romer, and from other streets back to the Romer, were secured on both sides by barriers and guards. The great square was gradually filled, and the waving and pressure grew every moment stronger and more in motion, as the multitude always, if possible, endeavored to reach the spot where some new scene arose, and something particular was announced.

[Footnote 17: From the Twelfth Book of the "Autobiography: Truth and Poetry from My Own Life." Translated by John Oxenford. A year before the date of Oxenford's translation (1848) Parke Godwin of New York had published a translation. Joseph II was the son of Francis I and Maria Theresa and was crowned King of the Romans (that is, of the Holy Roman Empire) in 1764 and succeeded to the German Empire in 1765.]

All this time there reigned a tolerable stillness, and when the alarm-bells were sounded, all the people seemed struck with terror and amazement. What first attracted the attention of all who could overlook the square from above was the train in which the lords of Aix and Nuremberg brought the crown-jewels to the cathedral. These, as palladia, had been assigned the first place in the carriage, and the deputies sat before them on the back seat with becoming reverence. Now the three electors betake themselves to the cathedral. After the presentation of the insignia to the Elector of Mentz, the crown and sword are immediately carried to the imperial quarters. The further arrangements and manifold ceremonies occupied, in the interim, the chief persons, as well as the spectators, in the church, as we other well-informed persons could well imagine.

In the meanwhile before our eyes the ambassadors ascended to the Romer, from which the canopy is carried by the under-officers into the imperial quarters. The Hereditary Marshal, Count von Pappenheim, instantly mounts his horse; he was a very handsome slender gentleman, whom the Spanish costume, the rich doublet, the gold mantle, the high feathered hat, and the loose flying hair, became very well. He puts himself in motion, and amid the sound of all the bells, the ambassadors follow him on horseback to the quarters of the Emperor in still greater magnificence than on the day of election. One would have liked to be there too, as indeed on this day it would have been altogether desirable to multiply one's self. However, we told each other what was going on there. Now the Emperor is putting on his domestic robes, we said a new dress, and after the old Carolingian pattern. The hereditary officers receive the insignia, and with them get on horseback. The Emperor in his robes, the Roman King in the Spanish habit, immediately mount their steeds; and while this is done, the endless procession which precedes them has already announced them.

The eye was already wearied by the multitude of richly-drest attendants and magistrates, and by the nobility who, in stately fashion, were moving along; but when the electoral envoys, the hereditary officers, and at last, under the richly-embroidered canopy, borne by twelve Schoffen and senators, the Emperor, in romantic costume, and to the left, a little behind him, in the Spanish dress, his son, slowly floated along on magnificently adorned horses, the eye was no more sufficient for the sight. One would have liked to detain the scene, but for a moment, by a magic charm; but the glory passed on without stopping, and the space that was scarcely quitted was immediately filled again by the crowd, which poured in like billows.

But now a new pressure took place; for another approach from the market to the Romer gate had to be opened, and a road of planks to be bridged over it, on which the train returning from the cathedral was to walk.

What passed within the cathedral, the endless ceremonies which precede and accompany the anointing, the crowning, the dubbing of knighthood—all this we were glad to hear told afterward by those who had sacrificed much else to be present in the church.

The rest of us, in the interim, partook of a frugal repast; for in this festal day we had to be contented with cold meat. But, on the other hand, the best and oldest wine had been brought out of all the family-cellars, so that in this respect at least we celebrated the ancient festival in ancient style.

In the square the sight most worth seeing was now the bridge, which had been finished and covered with orange and white cloth; and we who had stared at the Emperor, first in his carriage and then on horseback, were now to admire him walking on foot. Singularly enough, the last pleased us the most; for we thought that in this way he exhibited himself both in the most natural and in the most dignified manner.

Older persons, who were present at the coronation of Francis the First, related that Maria Theresa, beautiful beyond measure, had looked on this solemnity from a balcony window of the Frauenstein house, close to the Romer. As her consort returned from the cathedral in his strange costume, and seemed to her, so to speak, like a ghost of Charlemagne, he had, as if in jest, raised both his hands, and shown her the imperial globe, the scepter, and the curious gloves, at which she had broken out into immoderate laughter, which served for the great delight and edification of the crowd, which was thus honored with a sight of the good and natural matrimonial understanding between the most exalted couple of Christendom. But when the Empress, to greet her consort, waved her handkerchief, and even shouted a loud vivat to him, the enthusiasm and exultation of the people was raised to the highest, so that there was no end to the cheers of joy....

The rejoicings, which resounded from the market-place, now spread likewise over the great square, and a boisterous vivat burst forth from thousands upon thousands of throats, and doubtless from as many hearts. For this grand festival was to be the pledge of a lasting peace, which indeed for many a long year actually blest Germany.

Several days before it had been made known by public proclamation that neither the bridge nor the eagle over the fountain were to be exposed to the people, and were therefore not, as at other times, to be touched. This was done to prevent the mischief inevitable with such a rush of persons. But in order to sacrifice in some degree to the genius of the mob persons expressly appointed went behind the procession, loosened the cloth from the bridge, wound it up like a flag, and threw it into the air. This gave rise to no disaster, but to a laughable mishap; for the cloth unrolled itself in the air, and, as it fell, covered a larger or smaller number of persons. Those now who took hold of the ends and drew them toward themselves, pulled all those in the middle to the ground, enveloped them and teased them till they tore or cut themselves through, and everybody, in his own way, had borne off a corner of the stuff made sacred by the footsteps of majesty....

It was precisely at the right time that I again took possession of my window; for the most remarkable part of all that was to be seen in public was just about to take place. All the people had turned toward the Romer, and a reiterated shout of vivat gave us to understand that the Emperor and King in their vestments were showing themselves to the populace from the balcony of the great hall. But they were not alone to serve as a spectacle, since another strange spectacle occurred before their eyes. First of all, the handsome slender Hereditary Marshal flung himself upon his steed; he had laid aside his sword; in his right hand he held a silver-handled vessel, and a tin spatula in his left. He rode within the barriers to the great heap of oats, sprang in, filled the vessel to overflow, smoothed it off, and carried it back again with great dignity. The imperial stable was now provided for. The Hereditary Chamberlain then rode likewise to the spot, and brought back a basin with ewer and towel. But more entertaining for the spectators was the Hereditary Carver, who came to fetch a piece of the roasted ox. He also rode, with a silver dish, through the barriers, to the large wooden kitchen, and came forth again with his portion covered, that he might go back to the Romer. Now it was the turn of the Hereditary Cupbearer, who rode to the fountain and fetched wine. Thus now was the imperial table furnished, and every eye waited upon the Hereditary Treasurer, who was to throw about the money....

Everybody knew now that the Emperor and King would return from the cabinet whither they had retired from the balcony, and feast in the great hall of the Romer. We had been able to admire the arrangements made for it the day before; and my most anxious wish was, if possible, to look in to-day. I repaired, therefore, by the usual path, to the great staircase, which stands directly opposite the door of the hall. Here I gazed at the distinguished personages who this day acted as the servants of the head of the empire. Forty-four counts, all splendidly drest, passed me, carrying the dishes from the kitchen, so that the contrast between their dignity and their occupation might well be bewildering to a boy. The crowd was not great, but considering the little space, sufficiently perceptible. The hall-door was guarded, while those who were authorized went frequently in and out. I saw one of the Palatine domestic officials, whom I asked whether he could not take me in with him. He did not deliberate long, but gave me one of the silver vessels he just then bore—which he could do so much the more as I was neatly clad; and thus I reached the sanctuary. The Palatine buffet stood to the left, directly by the door, and with some steps I placed myself on the elevation of it, behind the barriers.

At the other end of the hall, immediately by the windows, raised on the steps of the throne, and under canopies, sat the Emperor and King in their robes; but the crown and scepter lay some distance behind them on gold cushions. The three spiritual electors, their buffets behind them, had taken their places on single elevations; the Elector of Mentz opposite their majesties, the Elector of Treves at the right, and the Elector of Cologne at the left. This upper part of the hall was imposing and cheerful to behold, and excited the remark that the spiritual power likes to keep as long as possible with the ruler. On the contrary, the buffets and tables of all the temporal electors, which were, indeed, magnificently ornamented, but without occupants, made one think of the misunderstanding which had gradually arisen for centuries between them and the head of the empire. Their ambassadors had already withdrawn to eat in a side-chamber; and if the greater part of the hall assumed a sort of spectral appearance, by so many invisible guests being so magnificently attended, a large unfurnished table in the middle was still more sad to look upon; for there also many covers stood empty, because all those who had certainly a right to sit there had, for appearance sake, kept away, that on the greatest day of honor they might not renounce any of their honor, if indeed they were then to be found in the city.



FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER

Born in 1759, died in 1808; his father a lieutenant in the Seven Years' War; published "The Robbers" in 1781, printing it at his own expense; incurred the displeasure of the Duke of Wurtenberg and removed to Bauerback near Meiningen, where he lived until 1783 under the name of Dr. Schmidt; published "Love and Intrigue" in 1784; removed to Leipsic in 1785, and thence to Dresden; published "Don Carlos" in 1787; removed to Weimar in 1787; published "Revolt of the Netherlands" in 1788; professor of history at Jena in 1789; published "History of the Thirty Years' War" in 1790-93; began his friendship with Goethe in 1794; published "Wallenstein's Camp" in 1799; followed by "Piccolomini," "Wallenstein's Death," "Marie Stuart" (1801), "The Maid of Orleans" (1802); ennobled by the Emperor in 1802; published "William Tell" in 1804.



I

THE BATTLE OF LUTZEN[18]

(1632)

At last the fateful morning dawned; but an impenetrable fog which spread over the plain delayed the attack till noon. Kneeling in front of his lines, the King offered up his devotions; and the whole army, at the same moment dropping on their knees, burst into a moving hymn, accompanied by the military music. The King then mounted his horse, and, clad only in a leather doublet and surtout (for a wound he had formerly received prevented his wearing armor), rode along the ranks, to animate the courage of his troops with a joyful confidence, which, however, the foreboding presentiment of his own bosom contradicted. "God with us!" was the war-cry of the Swedes; "Jesus Maria!" that of the Imperialists. About eleven the fog began to disperse, and the enemy became visible. At the same moment Lutzen was seen in flames, having been set on fire by command of the duke, to prevent his being outflanked on that side. The charge was now sounded; the cavalry rushed upon the enemy, and the infantry advanced against the trenches.

[Footnote 18: From the "History of the Thirty Years' War." Translated by A. J. W. Morrison. Schiller's work had already been translated by Captain Blaqurelle in 1799 and by J. M. Duncan in 1828. Another version is by G. Moir. The battle of Lutzen was fought between Swedes, numbering 18,000, led by Gustavus Adolphus, and Imperialists, numbering about 30,000, under Wallenstein. Gustavus Adolphus was killed in this battle. On the same field in 1813, Napoleon defeated the combined armies of Russia and Prussia.]

Received by a tremendous fire of musketry and heavy artillery, these intrepid battalions maintained the attack with undaunted courage, till the enemy's musketeers abandoned their posts, the trenches were passed, the battery carried and turned against the enemy. They prest forward with irresistible impetuosity; the first of the five Imperial brigades was immediately routed, the second soon after, and the third put to flight. But here the genius of Wallenstein opposed itself to their progress. With the rapidity of lightning he was on the spot to rally his discomfited troops; and his powerful word was sufficient to stop the flight of the fugitives. Supported by three regiments of cavalry, the vanquished brigades, forming anew, faced the enemy, and prest vigorously into the broken ranks of the Swedes. A murderous conflict ensued. The nearness of the enemy left no room for firearms, the fury of the attack no time for loading; man was matched to man, the useless musket exchanged for the sword and pike, and science gave way to desperation. Overpowered by numbers, the wearied Swedes at last retire beyond the trenches, and the captured battery is again lost by the retreat. A thousand mangled bodies already strewed the plain, and as yet not a single step of ground had been won.

In the mean time the King's right wing, led by himself, had fallen upon the enemy's left. The first impetuous shock of the heavy Finland cuirassiers dispersed the lightly-mounted Poles and Croats who were posted here, and their disorderly flight spread terror and confusion among the rest of the cavalry. At this moment notice was brought the King that his infantry were retreating over the trenches, and also that his left wing, exposed to a severe fire from the enemy's cannon posted at the windmills, was beginning to give way. With rapid decision he committed to General Horn the pursuit of the enemy's left, while he flew, at the head of the regiment of Steinbock, to repair the disorder of his right wing. His noble charger bore him with the velocity of lightning across the trenches, but the squadrons that followed could not come on with the same speed, and only a few horsemen, among whom was Francis Albert, Duke of Saxe-Lauenburg, were able to keep up with the King. He rode directly to the place where his infantry were most closely prest, and while he was reconnoitering the enemy's line for an exposed point of attack, the shortness of his sight unfortunately led him too close to their ranks.

An imperial Gefreiter remarking that every one respectfully made way for him as he rode along, immediately ordered a musketeer to take aim at him. "Fire at him yonder," said he: "that must be a man of consequence." The soldier fired, and the King's left arm was shattered. At that moment his squadron came hurrying up, and a confused cry of "The King bleeds! the King is shot!" spread terror and consternation through all the ranks. "It is nothing! follow me," cried the King, collecting his whole strength; but, overcome by pain, and nearly fainting, he requested the Duke of Lauenburg, in French to lead him unobserved out of the tumult. While the duke proceeded toward the right wing with the King, making a long circuit to keep this discouraging sight from the disordered infantry, his Majesty received a second shot through the back which deprived him of his remaining strength. "Brother," said he, with a dying voice, "I have enough! look only to your own life." At the same moment he fell from his horse, pierced by several more shots; and, abandoned by all his attendants, he breathed his last amidst the plundering bands of the Croats. His charger, flying without its rider, and covered with blood, soon made known to the Swedish cavalry the fall of their King. They rushed madly forward to rescue his sacred remains from the hands of the enemy. A murderous conflict ensued over the body, till his mangled remains were buried beneath a heap of slain.

The mournful tidings soon ran through the Swedish army; but, instead of destroying the courage of these brave troops, it but excited it into a new, a wild and consuming flame. Life had lessened in value, now that the most sacred life of all was gone; death had no terrors for the lowly since the anointed head was not spared. With the fury of lions the Upland, Smaland, Finland, East and West Gothland regiments rushed a second time upon the left wing of the enemy, which, already making but feeble resistance to General Horn, was now entirely beaten from the field. Bernard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, gave to the bereaved Swedes a noble leader in his own person; and the spirit of Gustavus led his victorious squadrons anew. The left wing quickly formed again and vigorously prest the right of the Imperialists. The artillery at the windmills, which had maintained so murderous a fire upon the Swedes, was captured and turned against the enemy. The center, also, of the Swedish infantry, commanded by the duke and Knyphausen, advanced a second time against the trenches, which they successfully passed, and retook the battery of seven cannons. The attack was now renewed with redoubled fury upon the heavy battalions of the enemy's center; their resistance became gradually less, and chance conspired with Swedish valor to complete the defeat. The imperial powder-wagons took fire, and, with a tremendous explosion, grenades and bombs filled the air. The enemy, now in confusion, thought they were attacked in the rear, while the Swedish brigades prest them in front. Their courage began to fail them. Their left wing was already beaten, their right wavering, and their artillery in the enemy's hands. The battle seemed to be almost decided; another moment would decide the fate of the day, when Pappenheim appeared on the field, with his cuirassiers and dragoons: all the advantages already gained were lost, and the battle was to be fought anew.

The order which recalled that general to Lutzen had reached him in Halle, while his troops were still plundering that town. It was impossible to collect the scattered infantry with that rapidity which the urgency of the order and Pappenheim's impatience required. Without waiting for it, therefore, he ordered eight regiments of cavalry to mount, and at their head he galloped at full speed for Lutzen, to share in the battle. He arrived in time to witness the flight of the Imperial right wing, which Gustavus Horn was driving from the field, and to be at first involved in their rout. But with rapid presence of mind he rallied the flying troops, and led them once more against the enemy. Carried away by his wild bravery, and impatient to encounter the King, who he supposed was at the head of this wing, he burst furiously upon the Swedish ranks, which, exhausted by victory and inferior in numbers were after a noble resistance, overpowered by this fresh body of enemies. Pappenheim's unexpected appearance revived the drooping courage of the Imperialists, and the Duke of Friedland quickly availed himself of the favorable moment to reform his line.

The closely-serried battalions of the Swedes were, after a tremendous conflict, again driven across the trenches, and the battery, which had been twice lost, again rescued from their hands. The whole yellow regiment, the finest oL all that distinguished themselves in this dreadful day, lay dead on the field, covering the ground almost in the same excellent order which, when alive, they maintained with such unyielding courage. The same fate befell another regiment of Blues, which Count Piccolomini attacked with the imperial cavalry and cut down after a desperate contest. Seven times did this intrepid general renew the attack; seven horses were shot under him, and he himself was pierced with six musket-balls; yet he would not leave the field until he was carried along in the general rout of the whole army. Wallenstein himself was seen riding through his ranks with cool intrepidity, amidst a shower of balls, assisting the distrest, encouraging the valiant with praise and the wavering by his fearful glance. Around and close by him his men were falling thick, and his own mantle was perforated by several shots. But avenging destiny this day protected that breast for which another weapon was reserved; on the same field where the noble Gustavus expired, Wallenstein was not allowed to terminate his guilty career.

Less fortunate was Pappenheim, the Telamon of the army, the bravest soldier of Austria and the Church. An ardent desire to encounter the King in person carried this daring leader into the thickest of the fight, where he thought his noble opponent was most surely to be met. Gustavus had also exprest a wish to meet his brave antagonist, but these hostile wishes remained ungratified; death first brought together these two great heroes. Two musket-balls pierced the breast of Pappenheim, and his men forcibly carried him from the field. While they were conveying him to the rear, a murmur reached him that he whom he had sought lay dead upon the plain. When the truth of the report was confirmed to him, his look became brighter, his dying eye sparkled with a last gleam of joy. "Tell the Duke of Friedland," said he, "that I lie without hope of life, but that I die happy, since I know that the implacable enemy of my religion has fallen on the same day."

With Pappenheim the good fortune of the Imperialists departed. The cavalry of the left wing, already beaten, and only rallied by his exertions, no sooner missed their victorious leader than they gave up everything for lost and abandoned the field of battle in spiritless despair. The right field fell into the same confusion, with the exception of a few regiments which the bravery of their colonels, Gotz, Terzky, Colloredo, and Piccolomini, compelled to keep their ground. The Swedish infantry, with prompt determination, profited by the enemy's confusion. To fill up the gaps which death had made in the front line, they formed both lines into one, and with it made the final and decisive charge. A third time they crossed the trenches, and a third time they captured the battery.

The sun was setting when the two lines closed. The strife grew hotter as it drew to an end; the last efforts of strength were mutually exerted, and skill and courage did their utmost to repair in those precious moments the fortune of the day. It was in vain; despair endows every one with superhuman strength; no one can conquer, no one will give way. The art of war seemed to exhaust its powers on one side, only to unfold some new and untried masterpiece of skill on the other. Night and darkness at last put an end to the fight, before the fury of the combatants was exhausted; and the contest only ceased when no one could any longer find an antagonist. Both armies separated, as if by tacit agreement; the trumpets sounded, and each party, claiming the victory, quitted the field....

The Duke of Friedland[19] had retreated thither, and was followed on the morrow by the scattered remains of his army, without artillery, without colors, and almost without arms. The Duke of Weimar, it appears, after the toils of this bloody day, allowed the Swedish army some repose, between Lutzen and Weissenfels, near enough to the field of battle to oppose any attempt the enemy might make to recover it. Of the two armies more than nine thousand men lay dead; a still greater number were wounded, and among the Imperialists scarcely a man escaped from the field uninjured. The entire plain from Lutzen to the Canal was strewed with the wounded, the dying, and the dead. History says nothing of prisoners; a further proof of the animosity of the combatants, who neither gave nor took quarter....

[Footnote 19: Wallenstein.]

Duke Bernard, by keeping possession of the field, and soon after by the capture of Leipsic, maintained indisputably his claim to the title of victor. But it was a dear conquest, a dearer triumph! It was not till the fury of the contest was over that the full weight of the loss sustained was felt, and the shout of triumph died away into a silent gloom of despair. He who had led them to the charge returned not with them: there he lay upon the field which he had won, mingled with the dead bodies of the common crowd. After a long and almost fruitless search, the corpse of the King was discovered not very far from the great stone which, for a hundred years before, had stood between Lutzen and the Canal, and which, from the memorable disaster of that day, still bears the name of the "Stone of the Swede." Covered with blood and wounds, so as scarcely to be recognized, trampled beneath the horses' hoofs, stript by the rude hands of plunderers of its ornaments and clothes, his body was drawn from beneath a heap of dead, conveyed to Weissenfels, and there delivered up to the lamentations of his soldiers and the last embraces of his Queen. The first tribute had been paid to revenge, and blood had atoned for the blood of the monarch; but now affection assumed its rights, and tears of grief must flow for the man. The universal sorrow absorbs all individual woes. The generals, still stupefied by the unexpected blow, stood speechless and motionless around his bier, and no one trusted himself enough to contemplate the full extent of their loss.



II

PHILIP II AND THE NETHERLANDS[20]

Of those important political events which make the sixteenth century to take rank among the brightest of the world's epochs, the foundation of the freedom of the Netherlands appears to me one of the most remarkable. If the glittering exploits of ambition and the pernicious lust of power claim our admiration, how much more so should an event in which opprest humanity struggled for its noblest right, where with the good cause unwonted powers were united, and the resources of resolute despair triumphed in unequal contest over the terrible arts of tyranny.

[Footnote 20: From the introduction to the "History of the Revolt of the Netherlands." Translated by A. J. W. Morrison. This work was translated by J. Horne in 1807, and again by E. B. Eastwick in 1844.]

Great and encouraging is the reflection that there is a resource left us against the arrogant usurpations of despotic power; that its best-contrived plans against the liberty of mankind may be frustrated; that resolute opposition can weaken even the outstretched arm of tyranny; and that heroic perseverance can eventually exhaust its fearful resources.

Never did this truth affect me so sensibly as in tracing the history of that memorable rebellion which forever severed the United Netherlands from the Spanish crown. Therefore I thought it not unworth the while to attempt to exhibit to the world this grand memorial of social union, in the hope that it may awaken in the breast of my reader a spirit-stirring consciousness of his own powers, and give a new and irrefragable example of what in a good cause men may both dare and venture, and what by union they may accomplish. It is not the extraordinary or heroic features of this event that induce me to describe it. The annals of the world record perhaps many similar enterprises, which may have been even bolder in the conception, and more brilliant in the execution. Some states have fallen after a nobler struggle, others have risen with more exalted strides. Nor are we here to look for eminent heroes, colossal talents, or those marvelous exploits which the history of past times presents in such rich abundance. Those times are gone, such men are no more. In the soft lap of refinement, we have suffered the energetic powers to become enervated which those ages called into action and rendered indispensable. With admiring awe, we wonder at these gigantic images of the past, as a feeble old man gazes on the athletic sports of youth.

Not so, however, in the history before us. The people here presented to our notice were the most peaceful in our quarter of the globe, and less capable than their neighbors of that heroic spirit which stamps a lofty character even on the most insignificant actions. The pressure of circumstances with its peculiar influence surprized them and forced a transitory greatness upon them, which they never could have possest, and perhaps will never possess again. It is, indeed, exactly this want of heroic grandeur which renders this event peculiarly instructive; and while others aim at showing the superiority of genius over chance, I shall here paint a scene where necessity creates genius, and accident makes heroes.

If, in any case, it be allowable to recognize the intervention of Providence in human affairs, it is certainly so in the present history, its course appears so contradictory to reason and experience. Philip II, the most powerful sovereign of his time—whose dreaded supremacy menaced the independence of Europe—whose treasures surpassed the collective wealth of all the monarchs of Christendom besides—whose ambitious projects were backed by numerous and well-disciplined armies—whose troops, hardened by long and bloody wars, and confident in past victories and in the irresistible prowess of this nation, were eager for any enterprise that promised glory and spoil, and ready to second with prompt obedience the daring genius of their leaders—this dreaded potentate here appears before us obstinately pursuing one favorite project, devoting to it the untiring efforts of a long reign, and bringing all these terrible resources to bear upon it; but forced, in the evening of his days, to abandon it—here we see the mighty Philip II engaging in combat with a few weak and powerless adversaries, and retiring from it at last with disgrace.

And with what adversaries? Here, a peaceful tribe of fishermen and shepherds, in an almost forgotten corner of Europe, which with difficulty they had rescued from the ocean; the sea their profession, and at once their wealth and their plague; poverty with freedom their highest blessing, their glory, their virtue. There, a harmless, moral commercial people, reveling in the abundant fruits of thriving industry, and jealous of the maintenance of laws which had proved their benefactors. In the happy leisure of affluence, they forsake the narrow circle of immediate wants, and learn to thirst after higher and nobler gratifications. The new views of truth whose benignant dawn now broke over Europe cast a fertilizing beam on this favored clime, and the free burgher admitted with joy the light which opprest and miserable slaves shut out. A spirit of independence, which is the ordinary companion of prosperity and freedom, lured this people on to examine the authority of antiquated opinions and to break an ignominious chain. But the stern rod of despotism was held suspended over them; arbitrary power threatened to tear away the foundation of their happiness; the guardian of their laws became their tyrant. Simple in their statecraft no less than in their manners, they dared to appeal to ancient treaties, and to remind the lord of both Indies of the right of nature. A name decides the whole issue of things. In Madrid that was called rebellion which in Brussels was simply styled a lawful remonstrance. The complaints of Brabant required a prudent mediator, Philip II sent an executioner. The signal for war was given. An unparalleled tyranny assailed both property and life. The despairing citizens, to whom the choice of deaths was all that was left, chose the nobler one on the battle-field. A wealthy and luxurious nation loves peace, but becomes warlike as soon as it becomes poor. Then it ceases to tremble for a life which is deprived of everything that had made it desirable. In an instant, the contagion of rebellion seized at once the most distant provinces; trade and commerce are at a standstill, the ships disappear from the harbors, the artizan abandons his workshop, the rustic his uncultivated fields. Thousands fled to distant lands, a thousand victims fell on the bloody field, and fresh thousands prest on. Divine, indeed, must that doctrine be for which men could die so joyfully. All that was wanting was the last finishing hand, the enlightened, enterprising spirit, to seize on this great political crisis, and to mold the offspring of chance into the ripe creation of wisdom. William the Silent, like a second Brutus, devoted himself to the great cause of liberty. Superior to all selfishness, he resigned honorable offices which entailed on him objectionable duties, and magnanimously divesting himself of all his princely dignities, he descended to a state of voluntary poverty, and became but a citizen of the world. The cause of justice was staked upon the hazardous game of battle; but the newly raised levies of mercenaries and peaceful husbandmen were unable to withstand the terrible onset of an experienced force. Twice did the brave William lead his dispirited troops against the tyrant, twice was he abandoned by them, but not by his courage.

Philip II sent as many reenforcements as the dreadful importunity of his viceroy demanded. Fugitives, whom their country rejected, sought a new home on the ocean, and turned to the ships of their enemy to satisfy the cravings both of vengeance and of want. Naval heroes were now formed out of corsairs, and a marine collected out of piratical vessels: out of morasses arose a republic. Seven provinces threw off the yoke at the same time, to form a new, youthful state, powerful by its waters and its union and despair. A solemn decree of the whole nation deposed the tyrant, and the Spanish name was erased from all its laws.

For such acts no forgiveness remained; the republic became formidable, only because it was impossible for her to retrace her steps. But factions distracted her within; without, her terrible element, the sea itself, leaguing with her oppressors, threatened her very infancy with a premature grave. She felt herself succumb to the superior force of the enemy, and cast herself a suppliant before the most powerful thrones of Europe, begging them to accept a dominion which she herself could no longer protect. At last, but with difficulty—so despised at first was this state, that even the rapacity of foreign monarchs spurned her opening bloom—a stranger deigned to accept their importunate offer of a dangerous crown. New hopes began to revive her sinking courage; but in this new father of his country destiny gave her a traitor, and in the critical emergency, when the implacable foe was in full force before her very gates, Charles of Anjou invaded the liberties which he had been called to protect. In the midst of the tempest, too, the assassin's hand tore the steersman from the helm, and with William of Orange the career of the infant republic was seemingly at an end, and all her guardian angels fled. But the ship continued to scud along before the storm, and the swelling canvas carried her safe without the pilot's help.

Philip II missed the fruits of a deed which cost him his royal honor, and perhaps, also, his self-respect. Liberty struggled on still with despotism, in obstinate and dubious contest; sanguinary battles were fought; a brilliant array of heroes succeeded each other on the field of glory; and Flanders and Brabant were the schools which educated generals for the coming century. A long, devastating war laid waste the open country; victor and vanquished alike waded through blood; while the rising republic of the waters gave a welcome to fugitive industry, and out of the ruins of despotism erected the noble edifice of its own greatness. For forty years lasted the war whose happy termination was not to bless the dying eye of Philip; which destroyed one paradise in Europe, to form a new one out of its shattered fragments; which destroyed the choicest flower of military youth, and while it enriched more than a quarter of the globe, impoverished the possessor of the golden Peru. This monarch, who could expend nine hundred tons of gold without oppressing his subjects, and by tyrannical measure extorted far more, heaped moreover on his exhausted people a debt of one hundred and forty millions of ducats. An implacable hatred of liberty swallowed up all these treasures, and consumed on the fruitless task the labor of a royal life. But the Reformation throve amidst the devastations of the sword, and over the blood of her citizens the banner of the new republic floated victorious.



AUGUST WILHELM VON SCHLEGEL

Born in 1767, died in 1845; educated at Gottingen; a tutor for three years in Amsterdam; made professor of literature and esthetics at Jena in 1798; founded a critical journal to represent the Romantic school; lectured in Berlin in 1803-04; traveled with Madame de Stael, a tutor to her children afterward at Coppet; became secretary to the Crown Prince Bernadotte and ennobled; professor at Bonn in 1818; visited England in 1823; wrote romances, sonnets, odes and criticisms, and translated Shakespeare.



SHAKESPEARE'S MACBETH[21]

Of "Macbeth" I have already spoken once in passing; and who could exhaust the praises of this sublime work? Since the "Eumenides" of AEschylus nothing so grand and terrible has ever been written. The witches are not, it is true, divine Eumenides, and are not intended to be; they are ignoble and vulgar instruments of hell. A German poet, therefore, very ill understood their meaning when he transformed them into mongrel beings, a mixture of fates, furies, and enchantresses, and clothed them with tragic dignity. Let no man venture to lay hand on Shakespeare's works thinking to improve anything essential: he will be sure to punish himself. The bad is radically odious, and to endeavor in any manner to ennoble it, is to violate the laws of propriety. Hence, in my opinion, Dante, and even Tasso, have been much more successful in their portraiture of demons than Milton.

[Footnote 21: From the "Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature." Translated by John Black, the translation being revised by A. J. W. Morrison. Madame de Stael heard these lectures delivered in Vienna, and in her work on Germany says she was "astonished to hear a critic as eloquent as an orator."]

Whether the age of Shakespeare still believed in ghosts and witches is a matter of perfect indifference for the justification of the use which in "Hamlet" and "Macbeth" he has made of preexisting traditions. No superstition can be widely diffused without having a foundation in human nature: on this the poet builds; he calls up from their hidden abysses that dread of the unknown, and presage of a dark side of nature, and a world of spirits, which philosophy now imagines it has altogether exploded. In this manner he is in some degree both the portrayer and the philosopher of superstition; that is, not the philosopher who denies and turns it into ridicule, but, what is still more difficult, who distinctly exhibits its origin in apparently irrational and yet natural opinions. But when he ventures to make arbitrary changes in these popular traditions he altogether forfeits his right to them, and merely holds up his idle fancies to our ridicule. Shakespeare's picture of the witches is truly magical: in the short scenes where they enter he has created for them a peculiar language, which, altho composed of the usual elements, still seems to be a collection of formulae of incantation. The sound of the words, the accumulation of rimes, and the rhythm of the verse form, as it were, the hollow music of a dreary witch-dance. He has been abused for using the names of disgusting objects; but he who fancies the kettle of the witches can be made effective with agreeable aromatics is as wise as those who desire that hell should sincerely and honestly give good advice. These repulsive things, from which the imagination shrinks, are here emblems of the hostile powers which operate in nature; and the repugnance of our senses is outweighed by the mental horror. With one another the witches discourse like women of the very lowest class; for this was the class to which witches were ordinarily supposed to belong: when, however, they address Macbeth they assume a loftier tone: their predictions, which they either themselves pronounce, or allow their apparitions to deliver, have all the obscure brevity, the majestic solemnity, of oracles.