Klingemann
seems to have been introduced to British periodi-
cal readers through Gillies' articles in Blackwood's in 1823, and
four years later the same critic wrote again upon Klingemann--
this time with historical perspective--for the Foriegn Quarterly
Review.
cal readers through Gillies' articles in Blackwood's in 1823, and
four years later the same critic wrote again upon Klingemann--
this time with historical perspective--for the Foriegn Quarterly
Review.
Thomas Carlyle
INTRODUCTION
xiii
To an unsympathetic view, the Germanists seemed strugglers
in a losing or lost cause. But they were not so. Partly because
of their early work, the cause would be able later to take its sec-
ond impulse. Within certain limits, skillful translators, capable
and energetic reviewers, discriminating judges, and brilliant in-
terpreters had not been wanting at any time. One example from
each of those orders of early Germanists will illustrate. T. O.
Churchill is known now to a few readers for his admirable early
translation (1800) of Herder's greatest work, Ideen. Churchill
incorporated the virtues of a prose translator: he was at once
understanding, faithful, careful, graceful, and clear. William
Taylor of Norwich, who has already been mentioned and who was
a scholar in several fields, was especially at home in much of the
literature that had been published in Germany during the last half
of the eighteenth century. Of the reviewers during the first phase
of German literature in England, he was the steadiest and most
copious. Acording to Professor Morgan, Taylor--though in some
respects mediocre as a critic--probably did more than any other
man before Carlyle to spread knowledge of German literature
among his countrymen (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 51). The London
Templar named Henry Crabb Robinson, though not a philologist
like Taylor, was perhaps equal to either Churchill or Taylor in
mastery of the German language as a means of communication.
And he was superior to either in control of significant develop-
ments of modern German thought and writing, and in exercise
of critical judgment upon those developments. Though his pub-
lished writings were not numerous, they were discriminating.
And furthermore this diarist-friend of poets of two nations ac-
complished much through his long personal contact in literary
circles. He thus helped in several ways to consolidate in Bri-
tain some of the influences from German thought and literature
and to keep them bright for the better years to come.
Different in almost every phase of outlook and ability from
the three kinds of Germanists already mentioned was the poet,
philosopher, and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He wander-
ed lonely through life, from Ottery St. Mary at the beginning to
Highgate at the end, doing for two generations of England's young
intellectuals what he could not do for himself. The wills of
others he freed; he himself remained bound, archangel in ruins,
during what should have been the prime of his life. Some leap
of his British brain had early touched immortal German things --
in Schiller's poetry, Lessing's criticism, Kant's philosophy--
and left its permanent traces in two English-speaking countries.
Perhaps Coleridge alone, of all Britain's first generation of work-
ers in German literature and thought, remains alive in a general
reader's mind today, indelibly associated with transcendental
German thought and the new romantic criticism.
All four of those men, worthy in their respective ways, be-
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? xiv
INTRODUCTION
longed to the generation that was formed before the Napoleonic
period. By them, during the years of limited currency of Ger-
many's greatest works, mature writings of such giants as Herd-
er and Lessing and Goethe and Richter and Schiller and Kant had
been pointed out as worthy of admiration and cultivation in Bri-
tain. But however industrious and judicious and gifted in various
degrees the advocates of German literature and thought had been,
one want is patent. No general interpreter of the meaning of the
new German culture as a whole had yet arisen to catch the ima-
gination of reading Britain.
And no such general interpretation did come forth until the
end of 1813. Then Madame de Stall's now famous De l'Allemagne
was published by Murray in Albemarle Street. 2 Madame Anne
Louise Germaine de Stael-Holstein was by heredity, association,
and her own achievements a distinguished woman. When this
daughter of Jacques Necker and Susanne Curchod was forbidden
residence in Paris soon after the rise of Napoleon to power, she
visited other lands. She was in Germany for some time in 1803-
1804 and again in 1807-1808. And there she conceived the work
that may justly be considered the first to open the eyes of the
West to an intellectual and artistic culture that had been seen by
many only fleetingly and in unorganized fragments. During so-
journs in Germany, as well as later while elaborating her mater-
ials at Coppet in 1808-1810, she picked the brains of other people
to advance her project. The result was more than merely another
travel book: in many respects it was a splendid work interpreting
--unequally, it is true--a great and unequal contemporary culture.
This epoch-marking book was divided into four large sections:
the country, its people, and their manners and customs and in-
stitutions; its literature and arts; its philosophy and ethics; its
religion and enthusiasms. Of course this one work (in three vol-
umes) could not examine all details or go profoundly into any one
aspect. It was intentionally broad; nevertheless it was frequent-
ly penetrating. Instead of being entirely laudative in attitude, it
preserved something of a critical outlook even in most of its en-
thusiasms. It presented an interpretation of the culture that had
developed in Germany within the memory of then living men and
which had yet to be sorted and assimilated by the rest of the world.
Most important were her dealings with the literature. Her brief
accounts involved some biographical data and character analysis
as well as indicated the larger intellectual milieu in which the de-
velopments in various genres arose. And the interrelated accounts
of literary figures were sometimes illustrated by selections and
2 It was edited by William Lamb. The English translation,
Germany, was made by Francis Hodgson. Madame de Stall's
preface appears to have been corrected by Sir James Mackin-
tosh. If Smiles' dates are accurate, the book was published
after November 30, 1813 (Smiles, I, 313-15).
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? INTRODUCTION
xv
running comments. The whole was informal, readable, and in-
teresting. It enabled a reader to understand that the culture
there considered was an organic and living one, with promise
for the present and the future.
There can be no doubt that Madame de Stael's book produced
excitement. The mere fact that Napoleon had attempted to des-
troy the work in 1810 helped predispose English readers and re-
viewers in its favor. Though early nineteenth-century periodicals
frequently appeared several months late--and thus cannot be fig-
ured strictly under the dates they bear--issues dated 1813 and
1814 are known to have contained more than a dozen review ar-
ticles comprising nearly 250 pages on the new book. In addition
to the number of these review articles, certain other features,
which can be merely suggested here, are important: the quality
of the articles, the length of the articles, the prestige of the peri-
odicals in which they appeared, and the social and political and
literary connections of the men who wrote the articles. For ex-
ample, in the earliest months after publication of the book, the
Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review carried long articles
on it by Sir James Mackintosh (about 40 pages) and Reginald
Heber (more than 50 pages) respectively. The fact that those
two powerful periodicals -- shapers as well as reflectors of pub-
lic opinion--had at last by early 1814 come around to an attitude
of interested advocacy of this new work was in itself a sign that
interest in German literature had entered its second phase in
Britain.
The second phase of British interest in German writings,
which was first notable in the reviews of Madame de Stael's book,
can be traced on through the next fifteen years, as it deepened,
broadened, and became increasingly thorough. The new political
and military alliance between England and Germany against Na-
poleon, which in 1815 was crowned with victory at Waterloo, con-
tributed to the increasing cultural interest, and brought England
and Germany closer at many points; and the conclusion of peace
ushered in, soon afterward, a new era of international affairs.
In fairly close succession, two important works of romantic
literary criticism by the Schlegel brothers appeared in English:
August Wilhelm Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Art and Litera-
ture was translated by John Black inTBl5; and Friedrich Schlegel's
Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern, was
translated by John Gibson Lockhart in 1818. The elder Schlegel
had aided Madame de Stael; and she had praised both brothers
in her finished De l'Allemagne. Now their translated lectures
were, in effect, to continue, supplement, and to some extent su-
persede her book in the minds of English readers. These lectures
were widely and well reviewed. William Hazlitt wrote a forty-
page article on the elder Schlegel's Dramatic Literature in the
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? xvi
INTRODUCTION
Edinburgh Review (1816). Because of the breadth rather than
profundity of this review, Professor Morgan regards it as a
landmark in the progress of England's interest in German let-
ters. And he characterizes it as one of the first thorough dis-
cussions of German literature to appear in England (Morgan-
Hohlfeld, pp. 57, 106).
As time passed, new periodicals and new periodical writers
arose to join and sometimes excel the older ones. Early issues
of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, founded in 1817, showed a
friendly attitude toward German literature. And several other
significant new friendly periodicals arose in the next decade: the
London Magazine (1820), the Foreign Quarterly Review (1828), and
the Foreign Review (1828). Among the review writers and trans-
lators whose work appeared in more than one of those periodicals
was the translator of the younger Schlegel, J. G. Lockhart. Lock-
hart was for several years a writer and a moving spirit in Black-
wood's Magazine, and later (1826) he became editor of the Quarterly
Review in London. One important feature, produced partly by his
pen and largely because of his influence, was entitled "Horae Ger-
manicae. " This series of miscellaneous papers on German liter-
ature began in Blackwood's in 1819 and continued irregularly for
about a decade. Among Lockhart's fellow workers and continu-
ators on German subjects in Blackwood's were such writers as
Thomas De Quincey, R. P. Gillies, and Sarah Austin. 3 De Quin-
cey, the oldest of that group, had learned German early in the
first decade of the century. He was particularly interested in
the prose writers, and from the early 1820's he dealt with them
for the London Magazine and for Blackwood's, as well as for a
number of other less important periodicals. Though hostile to
Goethe, De Quincey helped revive the somewhat faded interest
in Herder. His stress on Lessing's prose aided the rising repu-
tation of that critic in the late 1820's. Though the creator of the
Opium Eater took much pride in philosophical attainments and
did not hesitate at German philosophy, he was not one of the few
British writers (such as Coleridge and H. C. Robinson) able to
discuss authoritatively the philosophy of Kant. But for British
understanding of the theretofore almost neglected Richter, De
Quincey provided a true basis in three London Magazine articles,
1821-1824. The third member of this group -- and perhaps the
main actual producer of Blackwood's "Horae Germanicae"--was
Robert Pearse Gillies. To Gillies, who learned German as late
as 1817, Miss Stockley (pp. 299-302) attributes the importation
of A. G. A. Milliner and the German Schicksalsdrama through
3ln designating the authors of particular articles in Blackwood's
and in most of the other periodicals, one ventures on uncertain
ground. In that field, though much has been done, much re-
mains to do.
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? INTRODUCTION
xvii
the pages of Blackwood's. After helping to found the Foreign
Quarterly Review in 1827, he contributed to this second peri-
odical too a number of articles on German drama. Until his
notices of Heinrich von Kleist and Heinrich Heine in 1828 in the
pages of the Foreign Quarterly, neither of those writers seems
to have been known to British review readers. A fourth of this
group of English periodical writers was Mrs. Sarah Austin.
Since she did much in the third decade of the century to famil-
iarize British readers with Lessing's critical writings and with
various German dramatists, she will be mentioned more specif-
ically on a later page, in connection with drama.
Thus, on the whole, periodical interpretation of German lit-
erature underwent important changes from about the time of
Waterloo. As the materials published by Professor Morgan
show, the average number of references in the periodicals in-
creased from fewer than 40 a year between 1801 and 1815, to
nearly 60 a year between 1816 and 1830. At the same time, and
of still more significance, the articles grew in length from about
three and a half pages each to more than five and a half (Morgan-
Hohlfeld, p. 52: with data on pp. 125-26 recalculated). And,
most significant, the articles developed in solidarity and worth.
Whereas in the early period they frequently were enumerations
of book titles and short announcements of publication, in the lat-
ter period they contained much more critical discussion and trans-
lation. Indeed, in the third decade, Morgan finds what he des-
cribes, with proper caution, as an occasional sincere desire to
understand the real German genius, as well as an occasional clear
realization of the important role which that genius had gradually
assumed (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 57).
A resume of a few stages in the reputation of such a many-
sided writer as Schiller will illuminate some of the changes that
have been mentioned (see especially Ewen, pp. xii, 35-61, 119,
124, 153, and 172 and note). As has been indicated, Schiller's
reputation in Britain until 1795 had been founded chiefly upon his
early drama The Robbers. His best-known prose fiction, The
Ghost-Seer, translated in 1795, quickly influenced such writers
as Mrs. Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis and even the young Cole-
ridge, and at a later date, Byron and Shelley. Though at the turn
of the century the basis for Schiller's later fame had been broad-
ened by the addition of some of his main dramas (for example,
Coleridge's translations from Wallenstein), his reputation, like
that of practically every other German, dropped during the first
decade of the new century. But in the second half of the second
decade, many of his shorter poems became known, and he soon
became the best-liked German lyricist in England. In the years
1821-1822, English readers found useful accounts of him in Tay-
lor of Norwich's Monthly Magazine articles. And, beginning in
the next year, 1823, Carlyle s biography in the London Magazine
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? xviii
INTRODUCTION
further increased England's knowledge. Even at the inception
of the biography, Carlyle was able to interpret adequately the
dramas and poems, and to vindicate the moral idealism and ex-
alt the genius of the German poet. But in certain speculative
respects--the esthetic and, especially, the philosophic--Car-
lyle's interpretation of Schiller left much to be desired. In the
same year that Carlyle's biography was published in book form
(1825) Thomas Lovell Beddoes translated considerable part of
Philosophische Briefe in the Oxford Quarterly Magazine. Along
with the speculative writings, Schiller's historical writings were
apparently one of the last phases of his work to gain full recog-
nition and currency in Britain. Not until 1828 did George Moir
finish an adequate translation of the historical works.
That glance at Britain's reception of Schiller's writings could
well be extended to other literary figures. But in order to lead
more directly toward the consideration of English histories of
German literature, this account will notice rather the currency
of three general literary types--lyrics, dramas, and prose fic-
tion-- during the decade and a half after Waterloo.
In those fifteen years, especially 1820-1830, lyrics gained
much recognition through translations, through specific reviews,
and through general articles on different poets. From 1818 on,
as just noticed, Schiller's lyrics were the best known of all. And
about 1820, Goethe's poems, especially the lyrics and ballads,
began to be translated with increasing frequency. Some of the
patriotic lyricist K. T. Korner's pieces appeared in Blackwood's,
the Literary Gazette, and the Monthly Magazine as early as 1818:
and the two-volume Life and Selections, translated by G. F.
Richardson, appeared in 1827"! Among several collections of
lyrics in the third decade, a general anthology called Specimens
of German Lyric Poetry was published in 1821 by Beresford and
and Mellish. And in 1825, as will be noted later, Edgar Taylor's
Lays of the Minnesingers, and several review articles on it,
heightened the still new interest in German medieval literature.
But a number of important contemporary poets obtained little or
no attention in British reviews. As already mentioned, Heinrich
Heine seems to have had his first notice--one page in a review--
in 1828.
The currency of German dramatic writings is traceabl-e through
theatrical performances as well as through the usual literary me-
dia. During the 1820's, adaptations of dramas by Schiller, Goethe,
and Kotzebue were acted on the London stage; but the total number
of them was not large. For a short while, plays by J. F. Kind
surpassed all others in stage presentation. His melodramatic
Der Freischutz in 1824 underwent five adaptations and was traves-
tied or burlesqued in still two other theaters. The reception given
to the drama as literature can be interpreted with somewhat great-
er confidence. As early as 1819, Lockhart seems to have written
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? INTRODUCTION
xix
the prose commentary (for Gillies' translation) in an important
article on German drama for Blackwood's Magazine (Macbeth,
pp. 153-54). In addition to giving an introduction to German
drama in general, it dealt especially with Mullner. Indeed, for
the years 1817-1820 Morgan counts in British periodicals some
twenty-five reviews of plays by some ten dramatists, including
Mullner, Kind, and Franz Grillparzer, as well as Schiller and
Goethe. But Mullner passed his sudden and great popularity
about 1820. And as the number of periodical articles on drama
increased after 1820, other dramatists came into notice. E. A.
F.
Klingemann seems to have been introduced to British periodi-
cal readers through Gillies' articles in Blackwood's in 1823, and
four years later the same critic wrote again upon Klingemann--
this time with historical perspective--for the Foriegn Quarterly
Review. As already mentioned, the same critic introduced "KTeist
in the latter periodical in 1828 (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 211 corrects
error on p. 61). And he was perhaps the author who repeatedly
devoted space in Blackwood's to Grillparzer. An article in Black-
wood's in 1825, signed S. A. (Sarah Austin? ), was of special
significance with respect to Lessing and drama. That is, it
praised Lessing's part in breaking French influence upon Ger-
man drama, assigned to Lessing the introduction of German do-
mestic tragedy, considered Kotzebue the corrupter of German
drama, found in Schiller compensation for Kotzebue, praised
Goethe, and analyzed Mullner. In periodical criticism after 1825,
Schiller's dramas maintained first place, with chief stress upon
his Wallenstein. And Goethe's Faust (Part I, of course) also rose
in importance as serious critics focused attention on Germany's
most significant dramatic readings of life. Indeed, in 1822,
Goethe's Faust was the subject of Carlyle's first critique on Ger-
man literature, in the short-lived New Edinburgh Review. Mean-
while, translation of whole works or of fragments from the poetic
dramas of both Goethe and Schiller proceeded at various levels,
ranging from F. E. Leveson-Gower and George Soane to George
Moir and Carlyle.
Of all German literary types, prose fiction had the longest
and widest popularity in England (see especially Stockley, Chap-
ter VIII). In the late eighteenth century, translators and review-
ers had ranged over a wide field for their selections. And even
during the generally low ebb of German importations, from 1800
to 1815, as has been noted, Lafontaine's novels of family life
attained considerable popularity. But in the 1820's came the true
high point of English translations from German writers of prose
fiction. They included such authors as Korner, Tieck, E. T. A.
Hoffmann, Musaus, Richter, Schiller, and Goethe. A single year,
1826, brought forth five different collections: by Richard Holcraft,
George Soane, Thomas Roscoe, Gillies, and Edgar Taylor. The
three last named of those collectors provided more or less critical
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? XX
INTRODUCTION
materials to aid the reader. And critical reviews of the vari-
ous collections made still further additions. For example, the
Blackwood's Magazine article on Gillies' collection entered in-
to what Morgan calls a thorough discussion of German narrative
literature (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 63). Along with those develop-
ments, the publication of Carlyle's elaborately introduced Speci-
mens of German Romance in 1827 gave English readers before
the close of the third decade considerable selection from, and
knowledge of, German prose fiction. Indeed by the end of the
decade, as Miss Stockley says (p. 13), the various main types
of German literature--if not widely popular or fully appreciated--
were at least firmly established in English interest.
Notwithstanding the established interest in various aspects
of this foreign influence, the third decade had almost ended be-
fore an English history of German literature appeared. But cer-
tain attempts at historical approach--including attempts to inter-
pret the Middle Ages historically--had been made. Some of them
should be brought into focus as we close this summary account.
Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, 1814, contained much early
material. In addition to analyses of and translations from the
Heldenbuch and the more important Nibelungen Lied, this large
volume by Weber, Jamieson, and Walter Scott gave especial at-
tention to the historical background of those medieval poems and
furnished a variety of antiquarian notes. Although considerable
attention was paid to the Nibelungen Lied a decade later, by Bed-
does in 1824 (Ewen, p. 171) and by Edgar Taylor in 1825, the sur-
veys of periodical criticism suggest that the old poem was not
widely known in England even during the 1820's. The types of
folk tales collected by the Grimm brothers were better known.
When Francis Cohen (renamed Palgrave) reviewed six works,
including the Grimms* Deutsche Sagen and Dobeneck's Heroen-
sagen, in 1820 in the Quarterly Review his allusions to both Ger-
man and Danish stories of Barbarossa indicate a superficial no-
tion of comparative method. When Edgar Taylor in 1824-1826
translated over fifty of the Grimms' Hausmahrchen and furnished
some critical materials, review articles were immediate and
numerous. And Roscoe's collection of fiction in the same year
gave critical accounts of his sources for the popular tales: the
Grimms, J. G. G. Busching, and the pseudonymous Otmar with
his "Peter Klaus" original of Rip Van Winkle. Some interest
in still another sort of medieval German literature had developed
in the 1820's, an interest in the productions of the courtly Minne-
singers. In 1825, at least two collections that included them ap-
peared--one by Edgar Taylor, aided perhaps by his cousin Sarah
Austin. Thus various phases of German literature and literary
history--even considerable materials for the relatively little ex-
ploited medieval period--had been treated in a number of books
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? INTRODUCTION
xxi
as well as articles. But general historical approaches were as
yet far from common in the 1820's. According to Professor
Morgan, the first general idea of German literature in historic
perspective was given in a series of articles in the Monthly
Magazine from 1818 through 1824, under the general title The
German Student (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 58). The writer of those
articles sketched German literature from the earliest times
through what he called the Swabian period and the age of the
Reformation, and then treated a succession of figures from Hans
Sachs to Klopstock. At least part of that series of thirty-odd ar-
ticles was written by William Taylor of Norwich. Unfortunately,
the articles dealing with the Middle Ages were short. The first
one, treating the period before 1000, was only two pages in length:
and neither of the next two, dealing with the Swabian period, con-
sisted of more than three pages.
The cause of medieval German literature in Britain remained
under serious handicap even after the publication of William Tay-
lor of Norwich's Historic Survey of German Poetry, in three vol-
umes, 1828-1830. A total of 156 pages--one ninth of the whole
work--was devoted to the Middle Ages. Certainly that part, even
if somewhat limited in space, contained valuable materials and
information. For instance, Taylor used the Anglo-Saxon Beo-
wulf, Ulphilas' Gothic Bible, and "Old Hildebrand. " And though
he only mentioned "Horny Siegfried, " Heldenbuch, Nibelungen
Lied, and the mystery plays, he translated a lovely aubade, gave
some stress to the cycles of romances, and showed considerable
learning about chivalry. But in certain leading respects Taylor,
notwithstanding his antiquarian scholarship, was ill at ease in
the medieval period. Regardless of personal creed, a sympa-
thetic interpreter of medieval German literature, writing at the
close of the third decade of the nineteenth century, could ill af-
ford the prejudices implied in such chapter headings as "Intru-
sion of Christianity" and "Midnight of the dark ages. " Almost
on the eve of the Oxford Movement, Taylor restated his and the
eighteenth century's belief that a "dark millenium. . . succeeded
to the accession of Constantine" (I, 91). From the fourth cen-
tury on (said this fellow countryman of Chaucer) a pernicious
uniformity prevailed until it was disturbed by the revival of clas-
sical literature and the controversies provoked by Protestantism.
Indeed this interpreter of German literature to Britain in the age
of Coleridge and Carlyle was by culture and by temperament a
child of the Enlightment. And for much that moved the prophets
of the new generation, he was out of tune; it moved him not.
Nevertheless, Taylor was still the only British historian of
German literature in the year 1830, when Carlyle -- from a very
different point of approach -- came to the task of writing his His-
tory of German Literature. 4
^According to Leopold's "Carlyle's Handbooks, " p. 238 (and
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? xxii
INTRODUCTION
II: Carlyle's Interest in German Literature
His Studies before 1830
Carlyle's interpretations of German literature, though all
of them had been published anonymously, had by 1830 distin-
guished him among his contemporaries. And his high distinc-
tion has continued to be recognized. In discussing the various
intermediaries, the discriminating scholar B. Q. Morgan makes
the following appraisal: "Carlyle . . . was without question the
greatest single interpreter of German literature, and his activ-
ity, culminating about 1830, may justly be considered the crest
of the highest wave of German influence that ever passed over
England" (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 52). When Professor Morgan
wrote that opinion, he had not seen Carlyle's manuscript vol-
ume of 1830. Though by 1830 Carlyle was the finest interpreter
of things German and may have been the best-qualified man in
Britain to write a comprehensive account of German literature,
his preparation was of course not uniformly strong at all points.
Undoubtedly his strongest point--as well as the strongest interest
of his contemporaries--lay in the modern field.
For a decade, from 1820 to 1830, Carlyle had read widely
and deeply in German writers, chiefly modern. 5 And during that
decade he had come to know much about the developments that
have just been sketched of Britain's interest in German writings.
But until he neared the age of twenty-five, neither the writings
themselves nor the development of British interest in them meant
much to him. Himself a child of the Scottish eighteenth century--
at least in the first period of his thought--he had had first to pass
Religiose Wurzel, p. 5), even in Germany itself only one ade-
quate history of German literature had been published by that
time: Koberstein's, in 1827. Though Carlyle was better in-
formed than one would be likely to suppose, he seems not to
have known that German work.
5 Elaboration of the point is unnecessary here, since much
space in the Notes is devoted to the examination of Carlyle's
German readings and since the Notes are easily accessible
through the Index. Carlyle's early reading is one of the most
useful keys to his intellectual development. If further bio-
graphical material than here given is desired, various studies
are available: for example, the one-volume account by Pro-
fessor Neff and the detailed account by D. A. Wilson. Best
of all the biographies--and always indispensable to Carlyle
scholarship--is the work by Froude. Harrold's Carlyle and
German Thought, which marks an epoch in Carlyle scholar-
ship, is basic in any full consideration of Carlyle's relation
to Germany.
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? INTRODUCTION
xxiii
through various phases of intellectual, religious, and esthetic
development before he could arrive at a hard-won understand-
ing of certain important aspects of the new German culture.
After acquiring through private study in 1819 the rudiments
of the German language, partly for scientific uses, Carlyle in
the next year was able to read into some of the meanings of
Schiller and Goethe. That was only the beginning. Naturally
Schiller's poetry was for a while intellectually more accessible
to him than Goethe's. But in 1820-1821 he found a new heaven
and new earth--first through emotional sympathy and then through
intellectual understanding--in the works of Goethe. As early as
1822, he began his published interpretations of German litera-
ture with a critique on Goethe's Faust I, in the upstart New Edin-
burgh Review. Already he had read Meisters Lehrjahre,with"
memorable results. His understanding of the ethical significance
of Entsagung, which he attributed largely to Meisters Lehrjahre,
was to have a deep and lasting effect upon the rest of his life and
thought. 6 And from about 1825 henceforth for Carlyle--as for
the later Tolstoy's Pierre and Levin--life had mystical meaning:
and its most meaning was clearest in the least self-conscious
moments. Meanwhile Schiller's writings too had their further
effects. From Schiller, Carlyle gained growing insight into
(and phrasing for) the progressive notion that Truth is process
rather than accomplishment (immer wird, nie ist). That writer's
esthetic essays, in addition to deepening and broadening Carlyle's
critical and historical viewpoint, led him gradually toward trans-
cendental philosophy. And his Life of Schiller, first published
by installments in the London Magazine for 1823-1824 (and, after
revisions, in book form in 1825), was the first full-length Eng-
lish biography of a German man of letters in the nineteenth cen-
tury. That work and his concurrently translated Wilhelm Meis-
ter's Apprenticeship (published 1824) were followed in 1825-1826
by the grateful labor of translating four volumes of Specimens
of German Romance. Those volumes, published in 1827, con-
tained distinguished biographical and critical introductions. Miss
Stockley (p. 258) thinks the sketch of Goethe in Volume IV was the
first approach to an adequate English account of that great writer.
As already suggested, Carlyle's study of Schiller's esthetics
based upon Kantian thought had for some time beckoned the young
Scot toward German transcendental philosophy. Though he never
proceeded in his philosophic interests far enough to satisfy a sys-
tematic student of that subject, he did read some of Kant, and
much of Kant's interpreters. When, through an unsystematic dis-
tinction between Vernunft and Verstand, he arrived at a viewpoint
that enabled him to do away once for all with his earlier material-
6 On the validity of this statement, see Lectures of 1838, pp.
186-88, along with Meister, II, 129 (that is, Meisters Lehr-
jahre, Bk. VIII, Ch. V).
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? xxiv
INTRODUCTION
ism and scepticism, he had penetrated as far as he felt the need
to go in what he called metaphysics. And he turned attention
gradually to other and, as he thought, more pressing interests.
Partly through a reading of Herder's great Ideen at the end of
1826, he gained additional clarity upon a philosophy of progress
that was to help him understand his own changing time, and the
vast changing and continuing traditions that come out of the past,
run through the present, and extend into the boundless future.
Thus by 1827 when he began publishing his periodical essays on
German literature and thought in the well-established Edinburgh
Review, he had found--largely through the Germans--much of
the ethical, esthetic, philosophic, religious, and historiographical
insight that was to make him an important figure in his generation.
The German writings, he firmly believed, had led him out of his
early darkness and had literally saved his life. And missionary
that Carlyle essentially was, he proceeded in his attempt to show
the light to others.
In that effort, during the three years from 1827 to 1830, he
published in the Edinburgh Review and (more numerously) in the
Foreign Review nine long essays on German writings. Those
essays ranged from a survey of the then state of German litera-
ture and an attack upon certain playwrights whom he regarded
as poetasters, to an account of the classical scholar C. G. Heyne,
and to biographical and critical interpretations of such varied
figures as Richter (two essays), Zacharius Werner, Goethe (two
essays), and the mystical Novalis. It is important to observe
that all these essays dealt with modern German literature and
literary figures. Not until he approached the History of German
Literature had he occupied himself with comparable seriousness
in the other great period of German literature, the Middle Ages.
And it was not until 1831, after the original plans for the History
had collapsed, that he salvaged certain medieval parts of it and
published them in the Westminster Review, the Foreign Quarterly
Review, and the Edinburgh Review. His systematic study of
medieval German literature had thus been brief.
Though a year and a half still remained to him before his peri-
od of literary criticism chiefly devoted to German literature was
ended, Carlyle assayed no new figures from the German scene
past or present. He turned first of all to the writing of Sartor
Resartus. And later, in 1832, when he wrote his last great ar-
ticle on German literature, it concerned the Goethe whom he had
known and loved so long, and who had just died. Already, with
his History of German Literature in 1830, he was on his path away
from German literature as his main interest, and on his way to-
ward the writing of history. But as yet, in 1830, he was unaware
of such a change.
Carlyle's way toward the writing of history, running as it did
through the History of German Literature, was a hard way, for
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? INTRODUCTION
XXV
a variety of reasons. In his writings up to 1830 on modern
German literature, Carlyle had distinguished himself for his
moral and ethical basis, his biographical approach, his esthetic
critical insight, and his ability to show in historical milieu the
subjects under discussion. His methods--when applied to mod-
ern giants or when applied even to lesser men who possessed
sharply delineated characteristics in well-comprehended cir-
cumstances--had enabled him to do more than any other Briton
to focus attention of the rising generation upon certain impor-
tant aspects of German literature. When, however, in 1830 he
attempted to extend his province to include the early literature
of Germany, he found himself embarrassed at various turns.
Mention of a few of the most striking difficulties will suffice
here. In the first place, with many of the early materials he
was not thoroughly familiar. Indeed, perhaps no one in Britain
was; for as already suggested, medieval studies had progressed
more slowly among British scholars than among the Germans.
Though Carlyle had neither the knowledge nor the wish to make
his first volume a pedantic exercise in antiquarianism, his iso-
lated position--isolated geographically, intellectually, socially,
and financially at Craigenputtock--made certain materials inac-
cessible to him. In the second place, his philosophy of history
and historiography, by no means fully developed as yet, had to
be articulated with this difficult and scanty material. As his
philosophy of history did develop, with what, a few years later,
was to become a decided list toward post-Reformation religion
and morals, the medieval religion and morals implicit in much
of the early material tended to complicate his difficulty. And,
finally, his already well-developed biographical approach in his
modern studies could find relatively little traction or purchase
in the medieval period. In what was then to considerable extent
"dark backward and abysm of time, " where literary anonymity
and communality and convention and inadequately motivated ac-
tion were so frequently the rule, his biographical-critical ap-
proach could be applied to only a few exceptional characters in
a few of the pieces, and to only a few makers, whose outlooks
on life he seldom dared do more than shadow forth hypothetically
from fleeting bits of internal evidence. In the face of such dif-
ficulties we may wonder that he succeeded as well as he did in
the first volume of his History.
His Progress in the Attempt to Produce a History
of German Literature
From the outset of Carlyle's work upon the History, there
were vaguenesses and difficulties.
xiii
To an unsympathetic view, the Germanists seemed strugglers
in a losing or lost cause. But they were not so. Partly because
of their early work, the cause would be able later to take its sec-
ond impulse. Within certain limits, skillful translators, capable
and energetic reviewers, discriminating judges, and brilliant in-
terpreters had not been wanting at any time. One example from
each of those orders of early Germanists will illustrate. T. O.
Churchill is known now to a few readers for his admirable early
translation (1800) of Herder's greatest work, Ideen. Churchill
incorporated the virtues of a prose translator: he was at once
understanding, faithful, careful, graceful, and clear. William
Taylor of Norwich, who has already been mentioned and who was
a scholar in several fields, was especially at home in much of the
literature that had been published in Germany during the last half
of the eighteenth century. Of the reviewers during the first phase
of German literature in England, he was the steadiest and most
copious. Acording to Professor Morgan, Taylor--though in some
respects mediocre as a critic--probably did more than any other
man before Carlyle to spread knowledge of German literature
among his countrymen (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 51). The London
Templar named Henry Crabb Robinson, though not a philologist
like Taylor, was perhaps equal to either Churchill or Taylor in
mastery of the German language as a means of communication.
And he was superior to either in control of significant develop-
ments of modern German thought and writing, and in exercise
of critical judgment upon those developments. Though his pub-
lished writings were not numerous, they were discriminating.
And furthermore this diarist-friend of poets of two nations ac-
complished much through his long personal contact in literary
circles. He thus helped in several ways to consolidate in Bri-
tain some of the influences from German thought and literature
and to keep them bright for the better years to come.
Different in almost every phase of outlook and ability from
the three kinds of Germanists already mentioned was the poet,
philosopher, and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He wander-
ed lonely through life, from Ottery St. Mary at the beginning to
Highgate at the end, doing for two generations of England's young
intellectuals what he could not do for himself. The wills of
others he freed; he himself remained bound, archangel in ruins,
during what should have been the prime of his life. Some leap
of his British brain had early touched immortal German things --
in Schiller's poetry, Lessing's criticism, Kant's philosophy--
and left its permanent traces in two English-speaking countries.
Perhaps Coleridge alone, of all Britain's first generation of work-
ers in German literature and thought, remains alive in a general
reader's mind today, indelibly associated with transcendental
German thought and the new romantic criticism.
All four of those men, worthy in their respective ways, be-
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? xiv
INTRODUCTION
longed to the generation that was formed before the Napoleonic
period. By them, during the years of limited currency of Ger-
many's greatest works, mature writings of such giants as Herd-
er and Lessing and Goethe and Richter and Schiller and Kant had
been pointed out as worthy of admiration and cultivation in Bri-
tain. But however industrious and judicious and gifted in various
degrees the advocates of German literature and thought had been,
one want is patent. No general interpreter of the meaning of the
new German culture as a whole had yet arisen to catch the ima-
gination of reading Britain.
And no such general interpretation did come forth until the
end of 1813. Then Madame de Stall's now famous De l'Allemagne
was published by Murray in Albemarle Street. 2 Madame Anne
Louise Germaine de Stael-Holstein was by heredity, association,
and her own achievements a distinguished woman. When this
daughter of Jacques Necker and Susanne Curchod was forbidden
residence in Paris soon after the rise of Napoleon to power, she
visited other lands. She was in Germany for some time in 1803-
1804 and again in 1807-1808. And there she conceived the work
that may justly be considered the first to open the eyes of the
West to an intellectual and artistic culture that had been seen by
many only fleetingly and in unorganized fragments. During so-
journs in Germany, as well as later while elaborating her mater-
ials at Coppet in 1808-1810, she picked the brains of other people
to advance her project. The result was more than merely another
travel book: in many respects it was a splendid work interpreting
--unequally, it is true--a great and unequal contemporary culture.
This epoch-marking book was divided into four large sections:
the country, its people, and their manners and customs and in-
stitutions; its literature and arts; its philosophy and ethics; its
religion and enthusiasms. Of course this one work (in three vol-
umes) could not examine all details or go profoundly into any one
aspect. It was intentionally broad; nevertheless it was frequent-
ly penetrating. Instead of being entirely laudative in attitude, it
preserved something of a critical outlook even in most of its en-
thusiasms. It presented an interpretation of the culture that had
developed in Germany within the memory of then living men and
which had yet to be sorted and assimilated by the rest of the world.
Most important were her dealings with the literature. Her brief
accounts involved some biographical data and character analysis
as well as indicated the larger intellectual milieu in which the de-
velopments in various genres arose. And the interrelated accounts
of literary figures were sometimes illustrated by selections and
2 It was edited by William Lamb. The English translation,
Germany, was made by Francis Hodgson. Madame de Stall's
preface appears to have been corrected by Sir James Mackin-
tosh. If Smiles' dates are accurate, the book was published
after November 30, 1813 (Smiles, I, 313-15).
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? INTRODUCTION
xv
running comments. The whole was informal, readable, and in-
teresting. It enabled a reader to understand that the culture
there considered was an organic and living one, with promise
for the present and the future.
There can be no doubt that Madame de Stael's book produced
excitement. The mere fact that Napoleon had attempted to des-
troy the work in 1810 helped predispose English readers and re-
viewers in its favor. Though early nineteenth-century periodicals
frequently appeared several months late--and thus cannot be fig-
ured strictly under the dates they bear--issues dated 1813 and
1814 are known to have contained more than a dozen review ar-
ticles comprising nearly 250 pages on the new book. In addition
to the number of these review articles, certain other features,
which can be merely suggested here, are important: the quality
of the articles, the length of the articles, the prestige of the peri-
odicals in which they appeared, and the social and political and
literary connections of the men who wrote the articles. For ex-
ample, in the earliest months after publication of the book, the
Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review carried long articles
on it by Sir James Mackintosh (about 40 pages) and Reginald
Heber (more than 50 pages) respectively. The fact that those
two powerful periodicals -- shapers as well as reflectors of pub-
lic opinion--had at last by early 1814 come around to an attitude
of interested advocacy of this new work was in itself a sign that
interest in German literature had entered its second phase in
Britain.
The second phase of British interest in German writings,
which was first notable in the reviews of Madame de Stael's book,
can be traced on through the next fifteen years, as it deepened,
broadened, and became increasingly thorough. The new political
and military alliance between England and Germany against Na-
poleon, which in 1815 was crowned with victory at Waterloo, con-
tributed to the increasing cultural interest, and brought England
and Germany closer at many points; and the conclusion of peace
ushered in, soon afterward, a new era of international affairs.
In fairly close succession, two important works of romantic
literary criticism by the Schlegel brothers appeared in English:
August Wilhelm Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Art and Litera-
ture was translated by John Black inTBl5; and Friedrich Schlegel's
Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern, was
translated by John Gibson Lockhart in 1818. The elder Schlegel
had aided Madame de Stael; and she had praised both brothers
in her finished De l'Allemagne. Now their translated lectures
were, in effect, to continue, supplement, and to some extent su-
persede her book in the minds of English readers. These lectures
were widely and well reviewed. William Hazlitt wrote a forty-
page article on the elder Schlegel's Dramatic Literature in the
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? xvi
INTRODUCTION
Edinburgh Review (1816). Because of the breadth rather than
profundity of this review, Professor Morgan regards it as a
landmark in the progress of England's interest in German let-
ters. And he characterizes it as one of the first thorough dis-
cussions of German literature to appear in England (Morgan-
Hohlfeld, pp. 57, 106).
As time passed, new periodicals and new periodical writers
arose to join and sometimes excel the older ones. Early issues
of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, founded in 1817, showed a
friendly attitude toward German literature. And several other
significant new friendly periodicals arose in the next decade: the
London Magazine (1820), the Foreign Quarterly Review (1828), and
the Foreign Review (1828). Among the review writers and trans-
lators whose work appeared in more than one of those periodicals
was the translator of the younger Schlegel, J. G. Lockhart. Lock-
hart was for several years a writer and a moving spirit in Black-
wood's Magazine, and later (1826) he became editor of the Quarterly
Review in London. One important feature, produced partly by his
pen and largely because of his influence, was entitled "Horae Ger-
manicae. " This series of miscellaneous papers on German liter-
ature began in Blackwood's in 1819 and continued irregularly for
about a decade. Among Lockhart's fellow workers and continu-
ators on German subjects in Blackwood's were such writers as
Thomas De Quincey, R. P. Gillies, and Sarah Austin. 3 De Quin-
cey, the oldest of that group, had learned German early in the
first decade of the century. He was particularly interested in
the prose writers, and from the early 1820's he dealt with them
for the London Magazine and for Blackwood's, as well as for a
number of other less important periodicals. Though hostile to
Goethe, De Quincey helped revive the somewhat faded interest
in Herder. His stress on Lessing's prose aided the rising repu-
tation of that critic in the late 1820's. Though the creator of the
Opium Eater took much pride in philosophical attainments and
did not hesitate at German philosophy, he was not one of the few
British writers (such as Coleridge and H. C. Robinson) able to
discuss authoritatively the philosophy of Kant. But for British
understanding of the theretofore almost neglected Richter, De
Quincey provided a true basis in three London Magazine articles,
1821-1824. The third member of this group -- and perhaps the
main actual producer of Blackwood's "Horae Germanicae"--was
Robert Pearse Gillies. To Gillies, who learned German as late
as 1817, Miss Stockley (pp. 299-302) attributes the importation
of A. G. A. Milliner and the German Schicksalsdrama through
3ln designating the authors of particular articles in Blackwood's
and in most of the other periodicals, one ventures on uncertain
ground. In that field, though much has been done, much re-
mains to do.
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? INTRODUCTION
xvii
the pages of Blackwood's. After helping to found the Foreign
Quarterly Review in 1827, he contributed to this second peri-
odical too a number of articles on German drama. Until his
notices of Heinrich von Kleist and Heinrich Heine in 1828 in the
pages of the Foreign Quarterly, neither of those writers seems
to have been known to British review readers. A fourth of this
group of English periodical writers was Mrs. Sarah Austin.
Since she did much in the third decade of the century to famil-
iarize British readers with Lessing's critical writings and with
various German dramatists, she will be mentioned more specif-
ically on a later page, in connection with drama.
Thus, on the whole, periodical interpretation of German lit-
erature underwent important changes from about the time of
Waterloo. As the materials published by Professor Morgan
show, the average number of references in the periodicals in-
creased from fewer than 40 a year between 1801 and 1815, to
nearly 60 a year between 1816 and 1830. At the same time, and
of still more significance, the articles grew in length from about
three and a half pages each to more than five and a half (Morgan-
Hohlfeld, p. 52: with data on pp. 125-26 recalculated). And,
most significant, the articles developed in solidarity and worth.
Whereas in the early period they frequently were enumerations
of book titles and short announcements of publication, in the lat-
ter period they contained much more critical discussion and trans-
lation. Indeed, in the third decade, Morgan finds what he des-
cribes, with proper caution, as an occasional sincere desire to
understand the real German genius, as well as an occasional clear
realization of the important role which that genius had gradually
assumed (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 57).
A resume of a few stages in the reputation of such a many-
sided writer as Schiller will illuminate some of the changes that
have been mentioned (see especially Ewen, pp. xii, 35-61, 119,
124, 153, and 172 and note). As has been indicated, Schiller's
reputation in Britain until 1795 had been founded chiefly upon his
early drama The Robbers. His best-known prose fiction, The
Ghost-Seer, translated in 1795, quickly influenced such writers
as Mrs. Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis and even the young Cole-
ridge, and at a later date, Byron and Shelley. Though at the turn
of the century the basis for Schiller's later fame had been broad-
ened by the addition of some of his main dramas (for example,
Coleridge's translations from Wallenstein), his reputation, like
that of practically every other German, dropped during the first
decade of the new century. But in the second half of the second
decade, many of his shorter poems became known, and he soon
became the best-liked German lyricist in England. In the years
1821-1822, English readers found useful accounts of him in Tay-
lor of Norwich's Monthly Magazine articles. And, beginning in
the next year, 1823, Carlyle s biography in the London Magazine
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? xviii
INTRODUCTION
further increased England's knowledge. Even at the inception
of the biography, Carlyle was able to interpret adequately the
dramas and poems, and to vindicate the moral idealism and ex-
alt the genius of the German poet. But in certain speculative
respects--the esthetic and, especially, the philosophic--Car-
lyle's interpretation of Schiller left much to be desired. In the
same year that Carlyle's biography was published in book form
(1825) Thomas Lovell Beddoes translated considerable part of
Philosophische Briefe in the Oxford Quarterly Magazine. Along
with the speculative writings, Schiller's historical writings were
apparently one of the last phases of his work to gain full recog-
nition and currency in Britain. Not until 1828 did George Moir
finish an adequate translation of the historical works.
That glance at Britain's reception of Schiller's writings could
well be extended to other literary figures. But in order to lead
more directly toward the consideration of English histories of
German literature, this account will notice rather the currency
of three general literary types--lyrics, dramas, and prose fic-
tion-- during the decade and a half after Waterloo.
In those fifteen years, especially 1820-1830, lyrics gained
much recognition through translations, through specific reviews,
and through general articles on different poets. From 1818 on,
as just noticed, Schiller's lyrics were the best known of all. And
about 1820, Goethe's poems, especially the lyrics and ballads,
began to be translated with increasing frequency. Some of the
patriotic lyricist K. T. Korner's pieces appeared in Blackwood's,
the Literary Gazette, and the Monthly Magazine as early as 1818:
and the two-volume Life and Selections, translated by G. F.
Richardson, appeared in 1827"! Among several collections of
lyrics in the third decade, a general anthology called Specimens
of German Lyric Poetry was published in 1821 by Beresford and
and Mellish. And in 1825, as will be noted later, Edgar Taylor's
Lays of the Minnesingers, and several review articles on it,
heightened the still new interest in German medieval literature.
But a number of important contemporary poets obtained little or
no attention in British reviews. As already mentioned, Heinrich
Heine seems to have had his first notice--one page in a review--
in 1828.
The currency of German dramatic writings is traceabl-e through
theatrical performances as well as through the usual literary me-
dia. During the 1820's, adaptations of dramas by Schiller, Goethe,
and Kotzebue were acted on the London stage; but the total number
of them was not large. For a short while, plays by J. F. Kind
surpassed all others in stage presentation. His melodramatic
Der Freischutz in 1824 underwent five adaptations and was traves-
tied or burlesqued in still two other theaters. The reception given
to the drama as literature can be interpreted with somewhat great-
er confidence. As early as 1819, Lockhart seems to have written
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? INTRODUCTION
xix
the prose commentary (for Gillies' translation) in an important
article on German drama for Blackwood's Magazine (Macbeth,
pp. 153-54). In addition to giving an introduction to German
drama in general, it dealt especially with Mullner. Indeed, for
the years 1817-1820 Morgan counts in British periodicals some
twenty-five reviews of plays by some ten dramatists, including
Mullner, Kind, and Franz Grillparzer, as well as Schiller and
Goethe. But Mullner passed his sudden and great popularity
about 1820. And as the number of periodical articles on drama
increased after 1820, other dramatists came into notice. E. A.
F.
Klingemann seems to have been introduced to British periodi-
cal readers through Gillies' articles in Blackwood's in 1823, and
four years later the same critic wrote again upon Klingemann--
this time with historical perspective--for the Foriegn Quarterly
Review. As already mentioned, the same critic introduced "KTeist
in the latter periodical in 1828 (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 211 corrects
error on p. 61). And he was perhaps the author who repeatedly
devoted space in Blackwood's to Grillparzer. An article in Black-
wood's in 1825, signed S. A. (Sarah Austin? ), was of special
significance with respect to Lessing and drama. That is, it
praised Lessing's part in breaking French influence upon Ger-
man drama, assigned to Lessing the introduction of German do-
mestic tragedy, considered Kotzebue the corrupter of German
drama, found in Schiller compensation for Kotzebue, praised
Goethe, and analyzed Mullner. In periodical criticism after 1825,
Schiller's dramas maintained first place, with chief stress upon
his Wallenstein. And Goethe's Faust (Part I, of course) also rose
in importance as serious critics focused attention on Germany's
most significant dramatic readings of life. Indeed, in 1822,
Goethe's Faust was the subject of Carlyle's first critique on Ger-
man literature, in the short-lived New Edinburgh Review. Mean-
while, translation of whole works or of fragments from the poetic
dramas of both Goethe and Schiller proceeded at various levels,
ranging from F. E. Leveson-Gower and George Soane to George
Moir and Carlyle.
Of all German literary types, prose fiction had the longest
and widest popularity in England (see especially Stockley, Chap-
ter VIII). In the late eighteenth century, translators and review-
ers had ranged over a wide field for their selections. And even
during the generally low ebb of German importations, from 1800
to 1815, as has been noted, Lafontaine's novels of family life
attained considerable popularity. But in the 1820's came the true
high point of English translations from German writers of prose
fiction. They included such authors as Korner, Tieck, E. T. A.
Hoffmann, Musaus, Richter, Schiller, and Goethe. A single year,
1826, brought forth five different collections: by Richard Holcraft,
George Soane, Thomas Roscoe, Gillies, and Edgar Taylor. The
three last named of those collectors provided more or less critical
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? XX
INTRODUCTION
materials to aid the reader. And critical reviews of the vari-
ous collections made still further additions. For example, the
Blackwood's Magazine article on Gillies' collection entered in-
to what Morgan calls a thorough discussion of German narrative
literature (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 63). Along with those develop-
ments, the publication of Carlyle's elaborately introduced Speci-
mens of German Romance in 1827 gave English readers before
the close of the third decade considerable selection from, and
knowledge of, German prose fiction. Indeed by the end of the
decade, as Miss Stockley says (p. 13), the various main types
of German literature--if not widely popular or fully appreciated--
were at least firmly established in English interest.
Notwithstanding the established interest in various aspects
of this foreign influence, the third decade had almost ended be-
fore an English history of German literature appeared. But cer-
tain attempts at historical approach--including attempts to inter-
pret the Middle Ages historically--had been made. Some of them
should be brought into focus as we close this summary account.
Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, 1814, contained much early
material. In addition to analyses of and translations from the
Heldenbuch and the more important Nibelungen Lied, this large
volume by Weber, Jamieson, and Walter Scott gave especial at-
tention to the historical background of those medieval poems and
furnished a variety of antiquarian notes. Although considerable
attention was paid to the Nibelungen Lied a decade later, by Bed-
does in 1824 (Ewen, p. 171) and by Edgar Taylor in 1825, the sur-
veys of periodical criticism suggest that the old poem was not
widely known in England even during the 1820's. The types of
folk tales collected by the Grimm brothers were better known.
When Francis Cohen (renamed Palgrave) reviewed six works,
including the Grimms* Deutsche Sagen and Dobeneck's Heroen-
sagen, in 1820 in the Quarterly Review his allusions to both Ger-
man and Danish stories of Barbarossa indicate a superficial no-
tion of comparative method. When Edgar Taylor in 1824-1826
translated over fifty of the Grimms' Hausmahrchen and furnished
some critical materials, review articles were immediate and
numerous. And Roscoe's collection of fiction in the same year
gave critical accounts of his sources for the popular tales: the
Grimms, J. G. G. Busching, and the pseudonymous Otmar with
his "Peter Klaus" original of Rip Van Winkle. Some interest
in still another sort of medieval German literature had developed
in the 1820's, an interest in the productions of the courtly Minne-
singers. In 1825, at least two collections that included them ap-
peared--one by Edgar Taylor, aided perhaps by his cousin Sarah
Austin. Thus various phases of German literature and literary
history--even considerable materials for the relatively little ex-
ploited medieval period--had been treated in a number of books
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? INTRODUCTION
xxi
as well as articles. But general historical approaches were as
yet far from common in the 1820's. According to Professor
Morgan, the first general idea of German literature in historic
perspective was given in a series of articles in the Monthly
Magazine from 1818 through 1824, under the general title The
German Student (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 58). The writer of those
articles sketched German literature from the earliest times
through what he called the Swabian period and the age of the
Reformation, and then treated a succession of figures from Hans
Sachs to Klopstock. At least part of that series of thirty-odd ar-
ticles was written by William Taylor of Norwich. Unfortunately,
the articles dealing with the Middle Ages were short. The first
one, treating the period before 1000, was only two pages in length:
and neither of the next two, dealing with the Swabian period, con-
sisted of more than three pages.
The cause of medieval German literature in Britain remained
under serious handicap even after the publication of William Tay-
lor of Norwich's Historic Survey of German Poetry, in three vol-
umes, 1828-1830. A total of 156 pages--one ninth of the whole
work--was devoted to the Middle Ages. Certainly that part, even
if somewhat limited in space, contained valuable materials and
information. For instance, Taylor used the Anglo-Saxon Beo-
wulf, Ulphilas' Gothic Bible, and "Old Hildebrand. " And though
he only mentioned "Horny Siegfried, " Heldenbuch, Nibelungen
Lied, and the mystery plays, he translated a lovely aubade, gave
some stress to the cycles of romances, and showed considerable
learning about chivalry. But in certain leading respects Taylor,
notwithstanding his antiquarian scholarship, was ill at ease in
the medieval period. Regardless of personal creed, a sympa-
thetic interpreter of medieval German literature, writing at the
close of the third decade of the nineteenth century, could ill af-
ford the prejudices implied in such chapter headings as "Intru-
sion of Christianity" and "Midnight of the dark ages. " Almost
on the eve of the Oxford Movement, Taylor restated his and the
eighteenth century's belief that a "dark millenium. . . succeeded
to the accession of Constantine" (I, 91). From the fourth cen-
tury on (said this fellow countryman of Chaucer) a pernicious
uniformity prevailed until it was disturbed by the revival of clas-
sical literature and the controversies provoked by Protestantism.
Indeed this interpreter of German literature to Britain in the age
of Coleridge and Carlyle was by culture and by temperament a
child of the Enlightment. And for much that moved the prophets
of the new generation, he was out of tune; it moved him not.
Nevertheless, Taylor was still the only British historian of
German literature in the year 1830, when Carlyle -- from a very
different point of approach -- came to the task of writing his His-
tory of German Literature. 4
^According to Leopold's "Carlyle's Handbooks, " p. 238 (and
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? xxii
INTRODUCTION
II: Carlyle's Interest in German Literature
His Studies before 1830
Carlyle's interpretations of German literature, though all
of them had been published anonymously, had by 1830 distin-
guished him among his contemporaries. And his high distinc-
tion has continued to be recognized. In discussing the various
intermediaries, the discriminating scholar B. Q. Morgan makes
the following appraisal: "Carlyle . . . was without question the
greatest single interpreter of German literature, and his activ-
ity, culminating about 1830, may justly be considered the crest
of the highest wave of German influence that ever passed over
England" (Morgan-Hohlfeld, p. 52). When Professor Morgan
wrote that opinion, he had not seen Carlyle's manuscript vol-
ume of 1830. Though by 1830 Carlyle was the finest interpreter
of things German and may have been the best-qualified man in
Britain to write a comprehensive account of German literature,
his preparation was of course not uniformly strong at all points.
Undoubtedly his strongest point--as well as the strongest interest
of his contemporaries--lay in the modern field.
For a decade, from 1820 to 1830, Carlyle had read widely
and deeply in German writers, chiefly modern. 5 And during that
decade he had come to know much about the developments that
have just been sketched of Britain's interest in German writings.
But until he neared the age of twenty-five, neither the writings
themselves nor the development of British interest in them meant
much to him. Himself a child of the Scottish eighteenth century--
at least in the first period of his thought--he had had first to pass
Religiose Wurzel, p. 5), even in Germany itself only one ade-
quate history of German literature had been published by that
time: Koberstein's, in 1827. Though Carlyle was better in-
formed than one would be likely to suppose, he seems not to
have known that German work.
5 Elaboration of the point is unnecessary here, since much
space in the Notes is devoted to the examination of Carlyle's
German readings and since the Notes are easily accessible
through the Index. Carlyle's early reading is one of the most
useful keys to his intellectual development. If further bio-
graphical material than here given is desired, various studies
are available: for example, the one-volume account by Pro-
fessor Neff and the detailed account by D. A. Wilson. Best
of all the biographies--and always indispensable to Carlyle
scholarship--is the work by Froude. Harrold's Carlyle and
German Thought, which marks an epoch in Carlyle scholar-
ship, is basic in any full consideration of Carlyle's relation
to Germany.
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? INTRODUCTION
xxiii
through various phases of intellectual, religious, and esthetic
development before he could arrive at a hard-won understand-
ing of certain important aspects of the new German culture.
After acquiring through private study in 1819 the rudiments
of the German language, partly for scientific uses, Carlyle in
the next year was able to read into some of the meanings of
Schiller and Goethe. That was only the beginning. Naturally
Schiller's poetry was for a while intellectually more accessible
to him than Goethe's. But in 1820-1821 he found a new heaven
and new earth--first through emotional sympathy and then through
intellectual understanding--in the works of Goethe. As early as
1822, he began his published interpretations of German litera-
ture with a critique on Goethe's Faust I, in the upstart New Edin-
burgh Review. Already he had read Meisters Lehrjahre,with"
memorable results. His understanding of the ethical significance
of Entsagung, which he attributed largely to Meisters Lehrjahre,
was to have a deep and lasting effect upon the rest of his life and
thought. 6 And from about 1825 henceforth for Carlyle--as for
the later Tolstoy's Pierre and Levin--life had mystical meaning:
and its most meaning was clearest in the least self-conscious
moments. Meanwhile Schiller's writings too had their further
effects. From Schiller, Carlyle gained growing insight into
(and phrasing for) the progressive notion that Truth is process
rather than accomplishment (immer wird, nie ist). That writer's
esthetic essays, in addition to deepening and broadening Carlyle's
critical and historical viewpoint, led him gradually toward trans-
cendental philosophy. And his Life of Schiller, first published
by installments in the London Magazine for 1823-1824 (and, after
revisions, in book form in 1825), was the first full-length Eng-
lish biography of a German man of letters in the nineteenth cen-
tury. That work and his concurrently translated Wilhelm Meis-
ter's Apprenticeship (published 1824) were followed in 1825-1826
by the grateful labor of translating four volumes of Specimens
of German Romance. Those volumes, published in 1827, con-
tained distinguished biographical and critical introductions. Miss
Stockley (p. 258) thinks the sketch of Goethe in Volume IV was the
first approach to an adequate English account of that great writer.
As already suggested, Carlyle's study of Schiller's esthetics
based upon Kantian thought had for some time beckoned the young
Scot toward German transcendental philosophy. Though he never
proceeded in his philosophic interests far enough to satisfy a sys-
tematic student of that subject, he did read some of Kant, and
much of Kant's interpreters. When, through an unsystematic dis-
tinction between Vernunft and Verstand, he arrived at a viewpoint
that enabled him to do away once for all with his earlier material-
6 On the validity of this statement, see Lectures of 1838, pp.
186-88, along with Meister, II, 129 (that is, Meisters Lehr-
jahre, Bk. VIII, Ch. V).
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? xxiv
INTRODUCTION
ism and scepticism, he had penetrated as far as he felt the need
to go in what he called metaphysics. And he turned attention
gradually to other and, as he thought, more pressing interests.
Partly through a reading of Herder's great Ideen at the end of
1826, he gained additional clarity upon a philosophy of progress
that was to help him understand his own changing time, and the
vast changing and continuing traditions that come out of the past,
run through the present, and extend into the boundless future.
Thus by 1827 when he began publishing his periodical essays on
German literature and thought in the well-established Edinburgh
Review, he had found--largely through the Germans--much of
the ethical, esthetic, philosophic, religious, and historiographical
insight that was to make him an important figure in his generation.
The German writings, he firmly believed, had led him out of his
early darkness and had literally saved his life. And missionary
that Carlyle essentially was, he proceeded in his attempt to show
the light to others.
In that effort, during the three years from 1827 to 1830, he
published in the Edinburgh Review and (more numerously) in the
Foreign Review nine long essays on German writings. Those
essays ranged from a survey of the then state of German litera-
ture and an attack upon certain playwrights whom he regarded
as poetasters, to an account of the classical scholar C. G. Heyne,
and to biographical and critical interpretations of such varied
figures as Richter (two essays), Zacharius Werner, Goethe (two
essays), and the mystical Novalis. It is important to observe
that all these essays dealt with modern German literature and
literary figures. Not until he approached the History of German
Literature had he occupied himself with comparable seriousness
in the other great period of German literature, the Middle Ages.
And it was not until 1831, after the original plans for the History
had collapsed, that he salvaged certain medieval parts of it and
published them in the Westminster Review, the Foreign Quarterly
Review, and the Edinburgh Review. His systematic study of
medieval German literature had thus been brief.
Though a year and a half still remained to him before his peri-
od of literary criticism chiefly devoted to German literature was
ended, Carlyle assayed no new figures from the German scene
past or present. He turned first of all to the writing of Sartor
Resartus. And later, in 1832, when he wrote his last great ar-
ticle on German literature, it concerned the Goethe whom he had
known and loved so long, and who had just died. Already, with
his History of German Literature in 1830, he was on his path away
from German literature as his main interest, and on his way to-
ward the writing of history. But as yet, in 1830, he was unaware
of such a change.
Carlyle's way toward the writing of history, running as it did
through the History of German Literature, was a hard way, for
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? INTRODUCTION
XXV
a variety of reasons. In his writings up to 1830 on modern
German literature, Carlyle had distinguished himself for his
moral and ethical basis, his biographical approach, his esthetic
critical insight, and his ability to show in historical milieu the
subjects under discussion. His methods--when applied to mod-
ern giants or when applied even to lesser men who possessed
sharply delineated characteristics in well-comprehended cir-
cumstances--had enabled him to do more than any other Briton
to focus attention of the rising generation upon certain impor-
tant aspects of German literature. When, however, in 1830 he
attempted to extend his province to include the early literature
of Germany, he found himself embarrassed at various turns.
Mention of a few of the most striking difficulties will suffice
here. In the first place, with many of the early materials he
was not thoroughly familiar. Indeed, perhaps no one in Britain
was; for as already suggested, medieval studies had progressed
more slowly among British scholars than among the Germans.
Though Carlyle had neither the knowledge nor the wish to make
his first volume a pedantic exercise in antiquarianism, his iso-
lated position--isolated geographically, intellectually, socially,
and financially at Craigenputtock--made certain materials inac-
cessible to him. In the second place, his philosophy of history
and historiography, by no means fully developed as yet, had to
be articulated with this difficult and scanty material. As his
philosophy of history did develop, with what, a few years later,
was to become a decided list toward post-Reformation religion
and morals, the medieval religion and morals implicit in much
of the early material tended to complicate his difficulty. And,
finally, his already well-developed biographical approach in his
modern studies could find relatively little traction or purchase
in the medieval period. In what was then to considerable extent
"dark backward and abysm of time, " where literary anonymity
and communality and convention and inadequately motivated ac-
tion were so frequently the rule, his biographical-critical ap-
proach could be applied to only a few exceptional characters in
a few of the pieces, and to only a few makers, whose outlooks
on life he seldom dared do more than shadow forth hypothetically
from fleeting bits of internal evidence. In the face of such dif-
ficulties we may wonder that he succeeded as well as he did in
the first volume of his History.
His Progress in the Attempt to Produce a History
of German Literature
From the outset of Carlyle's work upon the History, there
were vaguenesses and difficulties.
