Of the Middle-High German literature De Quincey seems to have known nothing. The earliest writer he mentions is Melanchthon, but he had read no one carefully before Leibnitz.' He makes no criticism of Leibnitz; his remarks are of the most general kind. One expression of opinion, however, may throw some light upon De Quincey's own studies. He praises the austerity of Leibnitz' mind and his devotion to the severer muses, as the one requisite for the student who would be a broad scholar as Leibnitz was. Literature, he says, has such "an uncertain and even a morbid effect upon the spirits", that its pursuit "should be combined with some analytic exercise of inevitable healthy action".

2

Before Schiller De Quincey finds no characteristic expression of the German genius in any high degree. Leibnitz was in no sense typical any more than Luther or Kepler; his whole culture and influence was European. His follower, Christian Wolf, had only a systematic method; he was, moreover, too purely a scholar to create a popular literary revival. In the field of pure literature De Quincey speaks first of Opitz. He was a vigorous mind, but in no way worthy of the claims of his countrymen that he was the equal of Dryden. Under any circumstances he could not be considered a worthy expression of the German mind. With the time of Gottsched and the French influence De Quincey's closer knowledge of the literature begins. Its condition at that time he describes with his own peculiar exaggeration. It was in a state of total anarchy and "academic dulness"; it was "a base travesty of Parisian levity . . . alloyed in its transfusion with the

1 See Appendix II for references to Leibnitz and all authors mentioned in this chapter.

2 Works X, 19.

quintessence of German coarseness". Its leader, Gottsched was a "mere dolt", capable at best of composing a school arithmetic. De Quincey traces this stupor, as he calls it, of the German intellect, to the academic and pedantic interests of the German universities, the artificiality and sterility of the courts, and the servility of German taste in its imitation of foreign models. To the influence of English literature and the English press in the revival of German thought, De Quincey attributes perhaps an undue importance. "England's condition of moral sentiment, her high-toned civic elevation, her atmosphere of political feeling and popular boldness much of these she could and did transmit, by the radiation of the press, to the very extremities of the German empire." 3

From English poetry, too, came the first impulse in the new literary development. To Bodmer, who had gained some glimpses of better things from Milton and Shakespeare, De Quincey ascribes the beginning of a true taste in Germany. The man had no original power; but his sympathies were noble and his influence upon Klopstock assisted in the production of Germany's first original poetry. Of Klopstock himself De Quincey has no very high opinion. "A very German Milton", he loves to call him originally a remark of Coleridge's when someone had given Klopstock that title. "If ever

1 Works XI, 157.

2 Ib. IV, 314, 423 ff.

3 Works IV, 425; X, 337. De Quincey refers in this connection to the Luise of Voss and other German stories in which the popular interest in English affairs is shown.

4 Works II, 171; IV, 380. Coleridge's Works, New-York 1884, 7 vols. III, 551 ff. "A very German Milton, I could not help muttering to myself, when the good pastor this morning told me that Klopstock was the German Milton; a very German Milton, indeed".

there was a good exemplification of the spurious and counterfeit in literature, seek it in The Messiah. Klopstock is verily and indeed the Birmingham Milton." As a thinker, De Quincey finds Klopstock loose and slovenly, excitable and effeminate, full of sensibility and sensuous enthusiasm, but with no force of intellect, and no sense of taste, proportion or harmony. It is with special reference to him that De Quincey speaks (see p. 22) of the voluptuousness in the very intellectual sensibilities of the German.1 His service to German literature consists in his choice of subjects and his purity of language. With part of De Quincey's criticism it is easy to agree. Klopstock is certainly no master of form; it is true that a modern reader finds often a surfeit of mere enthusiasm and vague rapture; he is in the Messias no great thinker; he has none of Milton's reserve, none of Milton's skill, none of Milton's sheer picturing power. But De Quincey evidently did not appreciate the influence of Klopstock's sincerity and enthusiasm upon Germany and the impulse which he gave to those who followed him.

To Wieland De Quincey grants versatility and wit. Schlosser had compared Wieland with Swift; but apart from "a touch of the comico-cynical in his nature" De Quincey finds no resemblance; he has none of the malice of Swift, he is far more genial and playful. De Quincey knew Wieland's Idris and his prose; but he is thinking particularly of the Oberon, when he speaks of the "Grecian, voluptuous and beautiful nature of Wieland". So far we can have no quarrel with De Quincey's criticism,

1 De Quincey compares Milton's treatment of a delicate episode with Klopstock's. cf. Paradise Lost, Book VIII, 11. 615-620; Messias, end of the 15th canto. (?)

as applied perhaps to much of Wieland's work (though
he had tried all styles, and belonged to all schools). But
De Quincey slips too easily into superlatives; the mere
manner in which he makes a statement carries with it
oftentimes far too much emphasis and destroys any value
that a more tempered criticism might have. Thus he
writes: "Wieland was the Voltaire of Germany, and
very much more than the Voltaire; for his romantic and
legendary poems are above the level of Voltaire. But, on
the other hand, he was a Voltaire in sensual impurity.
To work, to carry on a plot, to affect his readers by
voluptuous impressions, these were the unworthy aims
of Wieland. . .
. . . An old man corrupting his readers,
attempting to corrupt them, or relying for his effect upon
corruptions already effected in the purity of their affec-
tions, is a hideous object." Whatever touch of truth
there is in this judgment of Wieland, is completely elim-
inated for us by De Quincey's over-statement.

How little De Quincey understood the German mind, or the essential character of the literary revolution in Germany, is clear from his criticism of Bürger and Lichtenberg. Bürger he calls "a man of undoubted genius"; but he wrote too little to develop a national taste. Lichtenberg had much sagacity and extraordinary talent, — but he too was not a power. "On the other hand, Lessing was merely a man of talent, but of talent in the highest degree adapted to popularity." De Quincey ascribes to Lessing "the largest share in the awakening of the frozen activities of the German mind". His very defects and the shallowness of his philosophy promoted his popularity.*

1 Works IV, 428.

2 Works XI, 157.

живо

Apart from Bürger's productiveness, his genius, it seems to us, was in no sense of the kind to found a great national movement and the implied comparison between Lichtenberg and Lessing it is unnecessary to answer. It seems perfectly clear from these criticisms that De Quincey's point of view was, in some degree at least, that of the conventional literary man; he sees the development of taste, of style; he is interested in the movement almost entirely from its literary side. He does not seem to realize that it was a new effort to comprehend the world; that it was absolutely rooted in reality.

De Quincey considers that the contempt of Frederick the Great for everything German stung the German pride; at all events a more independent movement began in Germany. The writings of Euler, Lambert, Kant and Haller established the preeminence of Germany over France in the pursuit of science. There were Klopstock, Lessing, Herder, Jean Paul in pure literature; but no one fitted to impress either the popular mind of Germany or foreign peoples had arisen before Schiller. Of Schiller himself, of Goethe, Lessing and the other great men of the time, De Quincey has written at length. Here, however, we are concerned only with his study of the literature as a whole. He was acquainted with Tieck, the Schlegels and Novalis; he knew something of Arndt; he mentions Stolberg, Matthison and Friederika Brun, but in such a way that with the exception of the last 1, it is uncertain whether he had read them. He knew Fouqué's Undine. It is possible that he knew Jacobi. He must have read

1 De Quincey compares Friederika Brun's Chamounix beym Sonnenaufgange with Coleridge's Hymn before Sunrise in the vale of Chamounix, much to the advantage of the latter.