Kotzebue, who had at one time been very popular in England; but he speaks of Kotzebue only in the most general way. Of the other dramatists he mentions none but Schiller and Goethe. With the later literature, with Heine, with Uhland, etc., he seems to have had no acquaintance. The Schlegels, especially Friedrich, De Quincey had read more carefully. He was indebted to them for many of his opinions; but his respect for them, both as scholars and as men was small. They had "no acquaintance with the severer sciences"; Friedrich Schlegel was mere "cloudspinner"; his pretensions as a philosopher, De Quincey describes as being demolished by a single footnote of Schelling's. The scholarship of the Schlegels was often nothing but vanity and pretension; they tried to give themselves the appearance of being masters of universal knowledge, to show their fancied subtlety. Bouterwek and Friedrich Schlegel sought to exhibit themselves "as a couple of figurantes on the stage of Europe". The former and his opposition to Kant De Quincey describes in his happiest spirit of ridicule. "At a time, when Kant possessed the national mind of Germany, he thought it would be a good speculation not to fall into the train of the philosopher, but to open a sort of chapel of dissent". Having failed in this line, he "quitted all connexion with metaphysics; and begged to inform the public that he had opened an entirely new concern for criticism in all its branches". In like manner De Quincey writes of Schlegel's attempts to criticise all literatures; "Woe-begone must this man of words appear when he is alone in his study; with a frozen heart and a famished intellect; and every now and then, perhaps exclaiming with Alcibiades, 'O ye Athenians! What a world 2 of hardship I endure to obtain your applause'!" He accuses Schlegel of the purest hypocrisy. When he speaks of Spinoza, Kant or Leibnitz, says De Quincey, "his sentences are always most artificially and jesuitically constructed to give him the air of being quite at his ease on the one hand, and yet, on the other to avoid committing himself by too much descent into particulars".1 Neither of them could have read Milton at all, says De Quincey, for Bouterwek quotes a piece of prose as Bodmer's which was in reality a translation from Paradise Lost. Schlegel had remarked that the action of Paradise Lost is essentially imperfect. Aside from the fact, says De Quincey, that the action is completed in the Paradise Regained, the fulfilment is made known to Adam by the Archangel even in Paradise Lost. That in itself completes the action. Schlegel's criticism may be unsatisfactory, but to assert on this ground that he had never read the poem is a stringent method of criticism that would make short work with many of De Quincey's papers. The readiness of De Quincey to ascribe false and petty motives, a tendency most marked in his treatment of Goethe and Kant, finds also expression here; "The Schlegels showed the haughty malignity of their ungenerous natures, in depreciating Wieland when old age had laid a freezing hand upon his energy". In the great period of German philosophy De Quincey had read much. He knew Kant well and had some 1 Works X, 44, note. cf. Fr. Schlegel's Werke, Wien 1822, II, 234 ff.; 303 ff. His remarks, although very general, do not justify De Quincey's criticisms. 2 cf. Schlegel's Werke II, 141. Schlegel himself says that the Paradise Regained was intended to complete the action, but that its plan is too limited to produce a balanced and harmonious effect. acquaintance with Fichte and Hegel; but he makes no criticism. of Fichte, and only calls Hegel "the great master of the impenetrable". With the philosophy of Schelling he had a closer acquaintance; Schelling himself he calls one. of the three men who have combined great analytic power with artistic sensibility. Plato and Coleridge were the other two. We have sought to collect all the expressions of De Quincey concerning German literature that have the slightest significance. It will be seen how fragmentary they are; how little claim they can make to final criticism, to a right understanding of the movement as a whole, or even to a true and serious spirit. Before taking up De Quincey's contributions to the study of the more important German writers, it might be well to speak of De Quincey as a translator. IV. DE QUINCEY AS TRANSLATOR. De Quincey had a familiar and accurate knowledge of modern German although he had not studied it historically. He had read very extensively and translated much. His own papers are scattered with such words as einseitig, Schwärmerey, Kleinstädtigkeit, zermalmend, Brodstudium, etc. He regarded the German as the richest of modern languages, but in no sense one for rhetoric or poetry. The German hexameter is a "wooden and castiron imitation". "Schiller and Goethe had a notion that the language was capable of being hammered into euphony, that is was by possibility malleable in that respect, but then only by great labour of selection and as a trick of rope-dancing ingenuity". It is one of the most "antiGrecian" of languages. He had noticed the foreign element in the German of the preceding century. He had observed the similar derivation of a few English and German words. We are not to judge De Quincey's translations as finished and scholarly attempt; they were written for the maga 1 Post. Works II, 33. 3 Ib. XI, 64, note. zines and make little pretence to completeness or accuracy. Let us take as an example Lessing's Laocoon. De Quincey's first aim is to make the article readable. The language is therefore of the freest and most idiomatic kind and aims only to give the idea. He alters at will, omits words, phrases, whole sentences and paragraphs as he thinks fit, until sometimes it is difficult to recognize the original. He recasts and enlarges the idea, inserts notes in the body of the text, heightens the style, sometimes with Latin or Greek quotations or a phrase from Milton, and often enlarges and elucidates Lessing's idea.1 But although at times he changes the form completely, he does not distort the author's meaning. He seeks merely to condense the expression, or produce a better rhetorical effect. A few examples from the Laocoon: Lessing (IX, 11): "Das allgemeine vorzügliche Kennzeichen der griechischen Meisterstücke in der Malerey und Bildhauerkunst, setzet Herr Winkelmann in eine edle Einfalt und stille Grösse, sowohl in der Stellung als im Ausdrucke." De Quincey (XI, 164 ff.): "What is the most prominent characteristic of the Grecian masterpieces in painting and sculpture? It will be found, according to Winkelmann, in majestic composure of attitude and expression". Here by De Quincey's omission of the word "Einfalt" we lose something very essential. But this is to be traced not to his lack of knowledge, but to his impatience, haste and love of rhetoric. As an example of his enlargement of the idea, let 1 cf. e. g. Works XI, 185 ff. the paragraph beginning "Dreadful, however" und Lessing's Laocoon, p. 55 ff., in Lessing's Sämmtliche Schriften; Berlin 1792, Band IX. |