might'st thou bring it with thee to thy
Burgundian
land!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v18 - Mom to Old
"
'Twas of silk of Nineveh the girdle that she brought,
With precious stones well garnished; a better ne'er was wrought:
When Brunhild but beheld it, her tears she could not hold.
The tale must needs to Gunther and all his men be told.
## p. 10646 (#522) ##########################################
10646
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
HOW SIEGFRIED PARTED FROM KRIEMHILD
GUNTHER and Hagan, the warriors fierce and bold,
To execute their treason, resolved to scour the wold,
The bear, the boar, the wild bull, by hill or dale or fen,
To hunt with keen-edged javelins: what fitter sport for valiant
men?
In lordly pomp rode with them Siegfried the champion strong.
Good store of costly viands they brought with them along.
Anon by a cool runnel he lost his guiltless life.
'Twas so devised by Brunhild, King Gunther's moody wife.
But first he sought the chamber where he his lady found.
He and his friend already had on the sumpters bound
Their gorgeous hunting raiment; they o'er the Rhine would go.
Never before was Kriemhild sunk so deep in woe.
On her mouth of roses he kissed his lady dear:
"God grant me, dame, returning in health to see thee here;
So may those eyes see me too: meanwhile be blithe and gay
Among the gentle kinsmen; I must hence away. "
Then thought she on the secret (the truth she durst not tell)
How she had told it Hagan; then the poor lady fell
To wailing and lamenting that ever she was born.
Then wept she without measure, sobbing and sorrow-worn.
She thus bespake her husband: "Give up that chase of thine.
I dreamt last night of evil,- how two fierce forest swine
Over the heath pursued thee; the flowers turned bloody red.
I cannot help thus weeping: I'm chilled with mortal dread.
་་
"I fear some secret treason, and cannot lose thee hence,
Lest malice should be borne thee for misconceived offense.
Stay, my beloved Siegfried, take not my words amiss,-
'Tis the true love I bear thee that bids me counsel this. ".
"Back shall I be shortly, my own beloved mate;
Not a soul in Rhineland know I who bears me hate:
I'm well with all thy kinsmen; they're all my firm allies:
Nor have I from any e'er deservèd otherwise. "—
"Nay! do not, dearest Siegfried! 'tis e'en thy death I dread.
Last night I dreamt two mountains fell thundering on thy head,
And I no more beheld thee: if thou from me wilt go,
My heart will sure be breaking with bitterness of woe. "
## p. 10647 (#523) ##########################################
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
10647
Round her peerless body his clasping arms he threw;
Lovingly he kissed her, that faithful wife and true;
Then took his leave, and parted: in a moment all was o'er;-
Living, alas poor lady! she saw him nevermore.
HOW SIEGFRIED WAS SLAIN
THE noble knight Sir Siegfried with thirst was sore opprest;
So earlier rose from table, and could no longer rest,
But straight would to the mountain the running brook to find,-
And so advanced the treason his faithless foes designed.
Meanwhile were slowly lifted on many a groaning wain
The beasts in that wild forest by Siegfried's manhood slain.
Each witness gave him honor, and loud his praises spoke.
Alas, that with him Hagan his faith so foully broke!
Now when to the broad linden they all would take their way,
Thus spake the fraudful Hagan, "Full oft have I heard say,
That none a match in swiftness for Kriemhild's lord can be,
Whene'er to race he pleases: would he grant us this to see? »
Then spake the Netherlander, Siegfried, with open heart:—
"Well then! let's make the trial! Together we will start
From hence to yonder runnel; let us at once begin:
And he shall pass for winner who shall be seen to win. "
"Agreed! " said treacherous Hagan, "let us each other try. "
Thereto rejoined stout Siegfried, "And if you pass me by,
Down at your feet I'll lay me humbled on the grass. ”
When these words heard Gunther, what joy could his surpass?
Then said the fearless champion, "And this I tell you more:
I'll carry all the equipment that in the chase I wore,—
My spear, my shield, my vesture,-leave will I nothing out. "
His sword then and his quiver he girt him quick about.
-
Whate'er he did, the warrior high o'er his fellows soared.
Now laid he down his quiver, and quick ungirt his sword:
Against the spreading linden he leaned his mighty spear:
So by the brook stood waiting the chief without a peer.
King Gunther and Sir Hagan to strip were nothing slow;
Both for the race stood ready in shirts as white as snow.
Long bounds, like two wild panthers, o'er the grass they took,
But seen was noble Siegfried before them at the brook.
## p. 10648 (#524) ##########################################
10648
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
In every lofty virtue none with Sir Siegfried vied:
Down he laid his buckler by the water's side;
For all the thirst that parched him, one drop he never drank
Till the king had finished: he had full evil thank.
Cool was the little runnel, and sparkled clear as glass;
O'er the rill King Gunther knelt down upon the grass;
When he his draught had taken he rose and stepped aside.
Full fain alike would Siegfried his thirst have satisfied.
Dear paid he for his courtesy: his bow, his matchless blade,
His weapons all, Sir Hagan far from their lord conveyed,
Then back sprung to the linden to seize his ashen spear,
And to find out the token surveyed his vesture near;
Then, as to drink Sir Siegfried down kneeling there he found,
He pierced him through the croslet, that sudden from the wound
Forth the life-blood spouted e'en o'er his murderer's weed.
Never more will warrior dare so foul a deed.
Between his shoulders sticking he left the deadly spear.
Never before Sir Hagan so fled for ghastly fear,
As from the matchless champion whom he had butchered there.
Soon as was Sir Siegfried of the mortal wound aware,
Up he from the runnel started as he were wood;
Out from betwixt his shoulders his own huge boar-spear stood!
He thought to find his quiver or his broadsword true;
The traitor for his treason had then received his due:
But ah! the deadly wounded nor sword nor quiver found:
His shield alone beside him lay there upon the ground;
This from the bank he lifted, and straight at Hagan ran:
Him could not then by fleetness escape King Gunther's man.
E'en to the death though wounded, he hurled it with such power,
That the whirling buckler scattered wide a shower
Of the most precious jewels, then straight in shivers broke:
Full gladly had the warrior ta'en vengeance with that stroke.
E'en as it was, his manhood fierce Hagan leveled low;
Loud all around the meadow rang with the wondrous blow:
Had he in hand good Balmung, the murderer he had slain.
His wound was sore upon him; he writhed in mortal pain.
His lively color faded; a cloud came o'er his sight:
He could stand no longer; melted all his might.
## p. 10649 (#525) ##########################################
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
10649
In his paling visage the mark of death he bore.
Soon many a lovely lady sorrowed for him sore.
So the lord of Kriemhild among the flowerets fell;
From the wound fresh gushing his heart's blood fast did well.
Then thus amidst his tortures, e'en with his failing breath,
The false friends he upbraided who had contrived his death.
Thus spake the deadly wounded: "Ay! cowards false as hell!
To you I still was faithful; I served you long and well:
But what boots all? for guerdon, treason and death I've won;
By your friends, vile traitors! foully have you done.
Whoever shall hereafter from your loins be born
Shall take from such vile fathers a heritage of scorn.
On me you have wreaked malice where gratitude was due; —
With shame shall you be banished by all good knights and true. "
Thither ran all the warriors where in his blood he lay;
To many of that party sure 'twas a joyless day;
Whoe'er were true and faithful, they sorrowed for his fall,—
So much the peerless champion had merited of all.
With them the false king Gunther bewept his timeless end.
Then spake the deadly wounded, "Little it boots your friend
Yourself to plot his murder, and then the deed deplore:
Such is a shameful sorrow; better at once 'twere o'er. "
Then spake the low'ring Hagan, "I know not why you moan.
Our cares all and suspicions are now for ever flown.
Who now are left, against us who'll dare to make defense?
Well's me, for all this weeping, that I have rid him hence. "
"Small cause hast thou," said Siegfried, "to glory in my fate.
Had I weened thy friendship cloaked such murderous hate,
From such as thou full lightly could I have kept my life.
Now grieve I but for Kriemhild, my dear, my widowed wife.
"Now may God take pity, that e'er I had a son,
Who this reproach must suffer from deed so foully done,
That by his murderous kinsmen his father thus was slain.
Had I but time to finish, of this I well might plain.
«< Surely so base a murder the world did never see,"
Said he, and turned to Gunther, "as you have done on me.
I saved your life and honor from shame and danger fell,
And thus am I requited by you I served so well. "
## p. 10650 (#526) ##########################################
10650
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
Then further spake the dying, and speaking sighed full deep:-
"O king! if thou a promise with any one wilt keep,
Let me in this last moment thy grace and favor find
For my dear love and lady, the wife I leave behind.
"Remember, she's thy sister: yield her a sister's right;
Guard her with faith and honor, as thou'rt a king and knight.
My father and my followers for me they long must wait,
Comrade ne'er found from comrade so sorrowful a fate. "
In his mortal anguish he writhed him to and fro,
And then said, deadly groaning, "This foul and murderous blow
Deep will ye rue hereafter; this for sure truth retain,
That in slaying Siegfried you yourselves have slain. "
With blood were all bedabbled the flowerets of the field.
Some time with death he struggled, as though he scorned to
yield
E'en to the foe whose weapon strikes down the loftiest head.
At last prone in the meadow lay mighty Siegfried dead.
HOW THE MARGRAVE RUDEGER BEWAILED HIS DIVIDED DUTY
"WOE'S me the heaven-abandoned, that I have lived to this!
Farewell to all my honors! woe for my first amiss!
My truth my God-given innocence-must they be both forgot?
Woe's me, O God in heaven! that death relieves me not!
"Which part soe'er I foster, and whichsoe'er I shun,
In either case forsaken is good, and evil done;
But should I side with neither, all would the waverer blame.
Ah! would He deign to guide me, from whom my being came! "
Still went they on imploring, the king and eke his wife;
Whence many a valiant warrior soon came to lose his life
By the strong hand of Rudeger, and he too lastly fell.
So all his tale of sorrow you now shall hear me tell.
He nothing thence expected but loss and mortal teen;
Fain had he given denial alike to king and queen.
Much feared the gentle margrave, if in the stern debate
He slew but one Burgundian, the world would bear him hate.
With that, unto King Etzel thus spake the warrior bold:-
"Sir King! take back, I pray you, all that of you I hold,
My fiefs, both lands and castles; let none with me remain.
To distant realms, a wanderer, I'll foot it forth again.
## p. 10651 (#527) ##########################################
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
10651
"Thus stripped of all possessions I'll leave at once your land.
Rather my wife and daughter I'll take in either hand,
Than faithless and dishonored in hateful strife lie dead.
Ah! to my own destruction I've ta'en your gold so red. "
Thereto replied King Etzel, "Who then will succor me?
My land as well as liegemen, all will I give to thee,
If thou'lt revenge me, Rudeger, and smite my foemen down.
High shalt thou rule with Etzel, and share his kingly crown. "
Then spake the blameless margrave, "How shall I begin?
To my house I bade them, as guests I took them in,
Set meat and drink before them, they at my table fed,
And my best gifts I gave them; - how can I strike them dead?
"The folk ween in their folly that out of fear I shrink.
No! no! on former favors, on ancient bonds I think.
I served the noble princes, I served their followers too,
And knit with them the friendship I now so deeply rue.
"I to the youthful Giselher my daughter gave of late:
In all the world the maiden could find no fitter mate,-
True, faithful, brave, well-nurtured, rich, and of high degree;
Young prince yet saw I never so virtue-fraught as he. "
Then thus bespake him Kriemhild: "Right noble Rudeger,
Take pity on our anguish! thou see'st us kneeling here,
The king and me, before thee: both clasp thy honored knees.
Sure never host yet feasted such fatal guests as these. "
With that, the noble margrave thus to the queen 'gan say:-
"Sure must the life of Rudeger for all the kindness pay,
That you to me, my lady, and my lord the king have done,—
For this I'm doomed to perish, and that ere set of sun.
"Full well I know, this morning my castles and my land
Both will to you fall vacant by stroke of foeman's hand;
And so my wife and daughter I to your grace commend,
And all at Bechelaren, each trusty homeless friend. "
"Now God," replied King Etzel, "reward thee, Rudeger! "
He and his queen together resumed their lively cheer.
"From us shall all thy people receive whate'er they need;
Thou too, I trust, this morning thyself wilt fairly speed. "
So body and soul to hazard put the blameless man.
Meanwhile the wife of Etzel sorely to weep began.
-
## p. 10652 (#528) ##########################################
10652
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
Said he, "My word I gave you, I'll keep it well to-day.
Woe for my friends, whom Rudeger in his own despite must
slay. "
With that, straight from King Etzel he went with many a sigh.
Soon his band of heroes found he mustered nigh.
Said he, "Up now, my warriors! don all your armor bright;
I 'gainst the bold Burgundians must to my sorrow fight. "
·
To those within he shouted, "Look not for succor hence;
Ye valiant Nibelungers! now stand on your defense.
I'd fain have been your comrade: your foe I now must be.
We once were friends together: now from that bond I'm free. "
•
The hard-beset Burgundians to hear his words were woe;
Was not a man among them but sorrowed, high and low,
That thus a friend and comrade would 'gainst them mingle blows,
When they so much already had suffered from their foes.
"Now God forbid," said Gunther, "that such a knight as you
To the faith wherein we trusted should ever prove untrue,
And turn upon his comrades in such an hour as this;—
Ne'er can I think that Rudeger can do so much amiss. ”
"I can't go back," said Rudeger; "the deadly die is cast:
I must with you do battle; to that my word is past.
So each of you defend him as he loves his life.
I must perform my promise,- so wills King Etzel's wife. ”
Said Gunther, "This renouncement comes all too late to-day;
May God, right noble Rudeger, you for the favors pay
Which you so oft have done us, if e'en unto the end
To those who ever loved you you show yourself a friend.
"Ever shall we be your servants for all you've deigned to give —
Both I and my good kinsmen if by your aid we live.
Your precious gifts, fair tokens of love and friendship dear,
Given when you brought us hither, -now think of them, good
Rudeger! »
"How fain that would I grant you! " the noble knight replied;
"Would that my gifts for ever might in your hands abide!
I'd fain in all assist you that life concerns or fame,
But that I fear, so doing, to get reproach and shame. "
"Think not of that, good Rudeger," said Gernot, "in such need.
Sure host ne'er guests entreated so well in word or deed,
## p. 10653 (#529) ##########################################
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
10653
As you did us, your comrades, when late with you we stayed.
If hence alive you bring us, 'twill be in full repaid. "
"Now would to God, Sir Gernot," said Rudeger, ill bestead,
"That you were safe in Rhineland, and I with honor dead!
Now must I fight against you to serve your sister's ends:
Sure never yet were strangers entreated worse by friends. "
"Sir Rudeger," answered Gernot, "God's blessing wait on you
For all your gorgeous presents! Your death I sore should rue,
Should that pure virtue perish, which ill the world can spare.
Your sword, which late you gave me, here by my side I wear.
"It never once has failed me in all this bloody fray;
Lifeless beneath its edges many a good champion lay.
Most perfect is its temper; 'tis sharp and strong as bright:
Knight sure a gift so goodly will give no more to knight.
"Yet, should you not go backward, but turn our foe to-day,
If of the friends around me in hostile mood you slay,
With your own sword, good Rudeger, I needs must take your life,
Though you (Heaven knows! ) I pity, and your good and noble
wife. "
"Ah, would to heaven, Sir Gernot, that it might e'en be so!
That e'en as you would wish it this matter all might go,
And your good friends 'scape harmless from this abhorred strife!
Then sure should trust in Gernot my daughter and my wife. "
With that the bold Burgundian, fair Uta's youngest, cried,
"Why do you thus, Sir Rudeger? My friends here by my side.
All love you, e'en as I do: why kindle strife so wild?
'Tis ill so soon to widow your late-betrothed child.
"Should you now and your followers wage war upon me here,
How cruel and unfriendly 'twill to the world appear!
For more than on all others on you I still relied,
And took, through such affiance, your daughter for my bride. "
"Fair king! thy troth remember," the blameless knight 'gan say,
«< Should God be pleased in safety to send thee hence away:
Let not the maiden suffer for aught that I do ill;
By your own princely virtue vouchsafe her favor still. "
"That will I do and gladly," the youthful knight replied:
"But should my high-born kinsmen who here within abide,
## p. 10654 (#530) ##########################################
10654
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
Once die by thee, no longer could I thy friend be styled;
My constant love 'twould sever from thee and from thy child. "
"Then God have mercy on us! " the valiant margrave said.
At once their shields they lifted, and forward fiercely sped
In the hall of Kriemhild to force the stranger crowd.
Thereat down from the stair-head Sir Hagan shouted loud:-
:-
"Tarry yet a little, right noble Rudeger!
I and my lords a moment would yet with you confer;
Thereto hard need compels us, and danger gathering nigh:
What boot were it for Etzel though here forlorn we die?
"I'm now," pursued Sir Hagan, "beset with grievous care:
The shield that lady Gotelind gave me late to bear
Is hewn and all-to broken by many a Hunnish brand.
I brought it fair and friendly hither to Etzel's land.
"Ah! that to me this favor Heaven would be pleased to yield,
That I might to defend me bear so well-proved a shield,
As that, right noble Rudeger, before thee now displayed!
No more should I in battle need then the hauberk's aid. ".
"Fain with the same I'd serve thee to th' height of thy desire,
But that I fear such proffer might waken Kriemhild's ire.
Still, take it to thee, Hagan, and wield it well in hand.
Ah!
might'st thou bring it with thee to thy Burgundian land! "
While thus with words so courteous so fair a gift he sped,
The eyes of many a champion with scalding tears were red.
'Twas the last gift, that buckler, e'er given to comrade dear
By the lord of Bechelaren, the blameless Rudeger:
However stern was Hagan, and of unyielding mood,
Still at the gift he melted, which one so great and good
Gave in his last few moments, e'en on the eve of fight;
And with the stubborn warrior mourned many a noble knight.
"Now God in heaven, good Rudeger, thy recompenser be!
Your like on earth, I'm certain, we never more shall see,
Who gifts so good and gorgeous to homeless wanderers give.
May God protect your virtue, that it may ever live!
"Alas! this bloody business! " Sir Hagan then went on,
"We have had to bear much sorrow, and more shall have anon.
Must friend with friend do battle, nor Heaven the conflict part? »
The noble margrave answered, "That wounds my inmost heart. "
## p. 10655 (#531) ##########################################
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
10655
"Now for thy gift I'll quit thee, right noble Rudeger!
Whate'er may chance between thee and my bold comrades here,
My hand shall touch thee never amidst the heady fight,
Not e'en if thou shouldst slaughter every Burgundian knight. "
For that to him bowed courteous the blameless Rudeger.
Then all around were weeping for grief and doleful drear,
Since none th' approaching mischief had hope to turn aside.
The father of all virtue in that good margrave died.
HOW KRIEMHILD SLEW HAGAN AND WAS HERSELF SLAIN
TO THE cell of Hagan eagerly she went;
Thus the knight bespake she, ah! with what fell intent!
"Wilt thou but return me what thou from me hast ta'en,
Back thou mayst go living to Burgundy again. ”
Then spake grim-visaged Hagan, "You throw away your prayer,
High-descended lady: I took an oath whilere,
That while my lords were living, or of them only one,
I'd ne'er point out the treasure: thus 'twill be given to none. "
Well knew the subtle Hagan she ne'er would let him 'scape.
Ah! when did ever falsehood assume so foul a shape?
He feared that soon as ever the queen his life had ta'en,
She then would send her brother to Rhineland back again.
"I'll make an end, and quickly," Kriemhild fiercely spake.
Her brother's life straight bade she in his dungeon take.
Off his head was smitten; she bore it by the hair
To the lord of Trony: such sight he well could spare.
Awhile in gloomy sorrow he viewed his master's head;
Then to remorseless Kriemhild thus the warrior said:
"E'en to thy wish this business thou to an end hast brought,-
To such an end, moreover, as Hagan ever thought.
"Now the brave king Gunther of Burgundy is dead;
Young Giselher and eke Gernot alike with him are sped:
So now, where lies the treasure, none knows save God and me,
And told shall it be never, be sure, she-fiend! to thee. "
Said she, "Ill hast thou quitted a debt so deadly scored:
At least in my possession I'll keep my Siegfried's sword;
My lord and lover bore it, when last I saw him go.
For him woe wrung my bosom, that passed all other woe. "
## p. 10656 (#532) ##########################################
10656
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
Forth from the sheath she drew it, that could not he prevent;
At once to slay the champion was Kriemhild's stern intent.
High with both hands she heaved it, and off his head did smite.
That was seen of King Etzel; he shuddered at the sight.
――
"Ah! " cried the prince impassioned, "harrow and welaway!
That the hand of a woman the noblest knight should slay
That e'er struck stroke in battle, or ever buckler bore!
Albeit I was his foeman, needs must I sorrow sore. "
Then said the aged Hildebrand, "Let not her boast of gain,
In that by her contrivance this noble chief was slain;
Though to sore strait he brought me, let ruin on me light,
But I will take full vengeance for Trony's murdered knight. "
Hildebrand the aged fierce on Kriemhild sprung;
To the death he smote her as his sword he swung.
Sudden and remorseless he his wrath did wreak:
What could then avail her her fearful thrilling shriek?
There now the dreary corpses stretched all around were seen;
There lay, hewn in pieces, the fair and noble queen.
Sir Dietrich and King Etzel, their tears began to start;
For kinsmen and for vassals each sorrowed in his heart.
The mighty and the noble there lay together dead;
For this had all the people dole and drearihead.
The feast of royal Etzel was thus shut up in woe.
Pain in the steps of Pleasure treads ever here below.
'Tis more than I can tell you what afterwards befell,
Save that there was weeping for friends beloved so well;
Knights and squires, dames and damsels, were seen lamenting
all.
So here I end my story. This is THE NIBELUNGERS' FALL.
## p. 10656 (#533) ##########################################
## p. 10656 (#534) ##########################################
NIEBUHR.
## p. 10656 (#535) ##########################################
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## p. 10657 (#537) ##########################################
10657
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
(1776-1831)
HE history of belles-lettres could very well be written with-
out the inclusion of Niebuhr's name. He has not left any
important masterpiece of artistic form, nor appreciably en-
riched the imagination of mankind. Indeed, we might rather consider
ourselves to have been impoverished, on that happier side of life, by
the investigator who forbade us to regard Eneas, Romulus, and
Numa, or even the Tarquins and the Horatii, as in any sense real-
ities. Yet certainly the development of a wiser historical method,
the study of human institutions, the higher education generally, will
always owe him a mighty debt. He was, in the truest sense of a
word commoner in its Teutonic than in its Anglo-Saxon form, "epoche-
machend"—epoch-making. Until his time, students had merely read
Livy and Dionysius, accepting all save the super-human elements of
early Roman story, or merely doubting and caviling over this and
that detail. Niebuhr was the first who relegated the whole mass of
traditional tales in Livy's first five books to the realm of the imagi-
nation, and showed how the historic institutions of later Rome must
be studied for the light they, and they alone, could throw upon their
own origin in the age previous to authentic record. Even for the
ablest application of this critical method we no longer turn to Nie-
buhr's fragmentary publications, but rather to the more picturesque
and vivid pages of his successor, Mommsen. Yet it may well be
questioned whether he who uses the tool deserves higher credit than
he who forges it; the man in whom the school culminates rather
than its founder. Certainly no one could recognize more loyally than
Mommsen himself the man whose lectures on Roman history were
the most brilliant work done in the newly founded University of
Berlin in 1810 and the next following years.
The story of Niebuhr's life is delightfully told, chiefly by himself,
in his Life and Letters,' edited by the Chevalier Bunsen. It is full
of singular contradictions. Though the son of a famous traveler, he
complains that he was brought up in seclusion, fed on words instead
of knowing things. But indeed a certain querulousness is a constant
weakness of this noble nature. He was certainly a prodigy of learn-
ing. When he was barely of age his father reckons up twenty lan-
guages which the youth had mastered. His memory seems to have
XVIII-667
## p. 10658 (#538) ##########################################
10658
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
been both accurate and unlimited in its scope. Along with it went
a power of combination and brilliant deduction still more unusual.
Though Niebuhr was a Dane, his education was apparently more
than half German. His last student-year, 1798–9, was passed at Edin-
burgh. To his English and Scotch experience he felt that he owed
his insight into business affairs. Perhaps in that epoch of upheaval
an ambitious young scholar could hardly keep out of political life.
Certainly Niebuhr made his first career as a man of affairs. More
difficult still to understand is his acceptance of a call from Denmark
to Prussia. He arrived just in time to share the disasters of the
Napoleonic invasion in 1806. He was perhaps Stein's most trusted
assistant in preparing for the revival of Prussia.
Niebuhr was unable to settle down as a university scholar. His
hold on political affairs was indeed never wholly relaxed, and six
years after the university was opened he bade farewell to Berlin,
being sent as Prussian ambassador to the Pope. Returning to Ger-
many in 1823, Niebuhr passed the last years of his life quietly as a
professor, student, and author, at Bonn.
His death was felt to be premature. His varied and crowded life
up to his fiftieth year had seemed like a long education, and a gath-
ering of materials for the great constructive work which he might
have accomplished. No modern scholar, perhaps, has had so firm a
grasp on the records and isolated facts of ancient life. None, surely,
ever had firmer confidence in his own ability to redraw the great
picture of that life in truthful outlines. Yet his name lives chiefly
as the creator of a method, and his disciples' books are more indis-
pensable to us than his own. Perhaps this is after all a cheerful
epitaph on a great teacher; and all later students of history, of insti-
tutions, of antiquity, are in varying degree his pupils. Lanciani, who
would revive our faith even in Romulus, owes to Niebuhr little less
than Mommsen, who hardly mentions Livy or Livy's heroes in his
chapters on early Rome.
Besides the excellent
Life and Letters' by Bunsen (Harpers,
1852), Niebuhr's works on ancient history are accessible in English,
partly in authentic form, partly in very fragmentary shape pieced out
from note-books. The most adequate impression will be gained from
his History of Rome,' Vols. i. , ii. , iii. , as translated by Hare and
Thirlwall, London, 1851.
## p. 10659 (#539) ##########################################
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
10659
PLAN FOR A COMPLETE HISTORY OF ROME
From the Introduction to the History of Rome. Translation of Hare and
Thirlwall
I
HAVE undertaken to relate the history of Rome. I shall begin
in the night of remote antiquity, where the most laborious
researches can scarcely discern a few of the chief members of
ancient Italy, by the dim light of late and dubious traditions;
and I wish to come down to those times when, all that we have
seen spring up and grow old in the long course of centuries
being buried in ruins or in the grave, a second night envelops
it in almost equal obscurity.
This history in its chief outlines is universally known; and by
very many, at least in part, immediately from the classical works
of Roman authors, so far as their remains supply us with a
representation of several of the most brilliant and memorable
periods of republican and imperial Rome. If the whole of these
works were extant,-if we possessed a continuous narrative in the
histories of Livy and Tacitus, extending, with the exception of
the last years of Augustus, from the origin of the city down to
Nerva,—it would be presumptuous and idle to engage in relating
the same events with those historians: presumptuous, because
the beauty of their style must ever lie beyond our reach; and
idle, because, over and above the historical instruction conveyed,
it would be impossible to have a companion through life better
fitted to fashion the mind in youth, and to preserve it in after
age from the manifold barbarizing influences of our circumstances
and relations, than such a copious history of eight hundred and
fifty years written by the Romans for themselves. We should
only want to correct the misrepresentations during the earlier
ages, and to sever the poetical ingredients from what is his-
torically sure and well grounded; and without presumptuously
appearing to vie with the old masters, we might draw a sim-
ple sketch of the constitution, and of the changes it underwent
at particular times, where Livy leaves us without information, or
misleads us. But as those works are only preserved in frag-
ments; as they are silent concerning periods perhaps still more
prominent in the importance of their events than those which
we see living in their pages; as the histories of those periods
by moderns are unsatisfactory, and often full of error,- I have
deemed it expedient to promote the knowledge of Roman history
## p. 10660 (#540) ##########################################
10660
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
by devoting a course of lectures to it. A doubt might be enter-
tained whether it were better to give a connected narrative, or
merely to treat of the portions where we are left without the
two historians. I have determined in favor of the former
plan, trusting that I shall not lead any of my hearers to fancy he
may dispense with studying the classical historians of Rome when
he has gained a notion of the events which they portray, and
hoping that I may render the study easier and more instructive.
Much of what the Roman historians have set down in the
annals of their nation must be left out by a modern from that
mass of events wherein their history far surpasses that of every
other people. Under this necessity of passing over many things,
and of laying down a rule for my curtailments, I shall make no
mention of such persons and events as have left their names a
dead letter behind them, without any intrinsic greatness or im-
portant external results; although a complete knowledge of every
particular is indispensable to a scholar, and though many a dry
waste locks up sources which sooner or later he may succeed in
drawing forth. On the other hand, I shall endeavor to examine
the history, especially during the first five centuries, not under
the guidance of dim feelings, but of searching criticism. Nor
shall I merely deliver the results, which could only give birth to
blind opinions, but the researches themselves at full length.
I
shall strive to lay open the groundworks of the ancient Roman
nation and State, which have been built over and masked, and
about which the old writers preserved to us are often utterly mis-
taken; to execute justice in awarding praise and blame, love and
hatred, where party spirit has given birth to misrepresentations,
and thereby to false judgments, after upward of two thousand
years; to represent the spreading of the empire, the growth of
the constitution, the state of the administration, of manners, and
of civility, according as from time to time we are able to survey
them.
I shall exhibit the characters of the men who were
mighty in their generation for good or for evil, or who at least
rose above their fellows. I shall relate the history of the wars
with accuracy, wherever they do not offer a mere recurring uni-
formity; and so far as our information will allow, shall draw a
faithful and distinct portrait of the nations that gradually came
within the widening sphere of the Roman power. Moreover, I
shall consider the state of literature at its principal epochs, tak-
ing notice of the lost as well as the extant writers.
## p. 10661 (#541) ##########################################
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
10661
EARLY EDUCATION: WORDS AND THINGS
From a Letter to Jacobi, November 21st, 1811, in the Life and Letters by
Chevalier Bunsen
-
I
Had
WAS born with an inward discord, the existence of which I can
trace back to my earliest childhood; though it was afterward
much aggravated by an education ill adapted to my nature,
or rather by a mixture of such an education with no education
at all. I did not conceal this from you in former days.
I to choose my own endowments for another life on earth, I
would not wish to possess greater facility in taking up impressions
from the external world, in retaining and combining them into
new forms within an inward world of imagination, full of the
most various and animated movement, nor a memory more accu-
rate or more at command (a faculty inseparable from the former),
than nature has granted me. Much advantage might have been
derived from these gifts in childhood; perhaps in some pursuits
they might have insured me every success; nay, this result
would have arisen spontaneously, had I not been subjected to a
kind of education which could only have been useful to a mind
of precisely the opposite description.
Our great seclusion from the world, in a quiet little provincial
town, the prohibition from our earliest years to pass beyond the
house and garden, accustomed me to gather the materials for the
insatiable requirements of my childish fancy, not from life and
nature, but from books, engravings, and conversation. Thus, my
imagination laid no hold on the realities around me, but absorbed
into her dominions all that I read,- and I read without limit and
without aim,-while the actual world was impenetrable to my
gaze; so that I became almost incapable of apprehending any-
thing which had not already been apprehended by another-
of forming a mental picture of anything which had not before
been shaped into a distinct conception by another. It is true
that in this second-hand world I was very learned, and could
even, at a very early age, pronounce opinions like a grown-up
person; but the truth in me and around me was veiled from
my eyes the genuine truth of objective reason. Even when I
grew older, and studied antiquity with intense interest, the chief
use I made of my knowledge for a long time was to give fresh
variety and brilliancy to my world of dreams. From the deli-
cacy of my health, and my mother's anxiety about it, I was so
## p. 10662 (#542) ##########################################
10662
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
much confined to the house that I was like a caged bird, and
lost all natural spirit and liveliness, and the true life of child-
hood, the observations and ideas of which must form the basis of
those peculiar to a more developed age, just as the early use of
the body is the basis of its after training. No one ever thought
of asking what I was doing, and how I did it; and it was not
until my thirteenth year that I received any regular instruction.
My friends were satisfied with seeing that I was diligently em-
ployed, and that though I had at first no teaching, I was equal
to boys of my age in things for which they had had regular
masters, and soon surpassed them when I had the same advan-
tages; while moreover I was as well acquainted with a thousand
matters to be learned from books as a grown-up man. Yet after
a time I began to grow uneasy. I became aware that notwith-
standing my empire in the air, my life in the actual world was
poor and powerless; that the perception of realities alone pos-
sesses truth and worth; that on it are founded all imaginative
productions which have any value at all; and that there is noth-
ing truly worthy of respect but that depth of mind which makes
a man master of truth in its first principle. As soon as I had
to enter on the sciences, properly so called, I found myself in a
difficulty; and unfortunately I took once more the easiest path,
and left on one side whatever cost me some trouble to acquire.
I was often on the verge of a mental revolution, but it never
actually took place; now and then, indeed, I planted my foot on
the firm ground, and when that happened I made some progress.
When I first became acquainted with you, I was happy, and I
was perhaps on the way to do what is more difficult than to
gain knowledge without help from others,- to restore what was
distorted in me to its right place. But at a later period, when I
left my quiet and healthful position for a superficial world, which
held me with a strong grasp and confused and deadened my
mind, where I was dragged along a path which I had no wish
to tread, and which led me further and further from that for
which I hopelessly longed; where I was forced to endure applause
and praise, at a time when my want of knowledge on essential
points, and the superfluous matter with which I had loaded my
memory on others, my unsettled, disconnected ideas without true
basis, my undisciplined powers without adequately firm habits of
work, particularly of self-improvement, rendered me a horror to
myself, I was as unhappy as you saw me to be.
C
## p. 10663 (#543) ##########################################
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
10663
However, my eyes were opened to much that had hitherto
escaped me, and I was to some degree forced into the actual
external world, by my travels beyond the sea and my residence
among a nation distinguished by sober thought and resolute
activity; where I was obliged to occupy myself with the objects
of practical life, and saw this life ennobled by the perfection
to which it was carried, and the invariable adaptation of the
means to the end. I then starved out the imaginative side of
my nature, and placed myself, as it were, under a course of
mental diet, according to which I lived for a long time in abso-
lute dependence on the actual world around me. But this did not
bring me into the right path of my true inward activity and
development. I felt that I was now, on the other hand, poorer
than ever as regarded what had always possessed the strongest
attraction for me, though I seemed to be excluded from it by
an insurmountable barrier. For years I was immersed, as far
as my occupations were concerned, in the most prosaic workaday
life, with the pain and torment of feeling that I grew more
used to it every day; of feeling that I was shut out of Paradise,
but that the bread I gained by tilling the earth in the sweat of
my brow was not at all distasteful to me,—nay, that perhaps if
Paradise were reopened to me, I should feel some longing for the
spade.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE IMAGINATION
From an Undated Letter in the Life and Letters' by Chevalier Bunsen
ENVY you the recollections of your Italian journey.
It is a
I
hard thought to me, that I shall never see the land that was
the theatre of deeds with which I may perhaps claim a closer
acquaintance than any of my contemporaries. I have studied the
Roman history with all the effort of which my mind has been
capable in its happiest moments, and believe that I may assume
that acquaintance without vanity. This history will also, if I
write, form the subject of most of my works.
The sight of the works of art, particularly the paintings,
would have delighted me as it did you. Statues have little effect
upon me; my sight is too weak, and cannot be strengthened by
glasses for a surface of one color, as it can for pictures. Then
too a picture, when I have once seen it, becomes my property;
·
## p. 10664 (#544) ##########################################
10664
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
I never lose it out of my imagination. Music is in general posi-
tively disagreeable to me, because I cannot unite it in one point,
and everything fragmentary oppresses my mind. Hence also I
am no mathematician, but a historian; for from the single feat-
ures preserved I can form a complete picture, and know where
groups are wanting, and how to supply them. I think this is the
case with you also; and I wish you would, like me, apply your
reflections on past events to fix the images on the canvas, and
then employ your imagination, working only with true historical
tints, to give them coloring. Take ancient history as your sub-
ject: it is an inexhaustible one, and no one would believe how
much that appears to be lost, might be restored with the clearest
evidence. Modern history ne vaut pas le diable [is utterly worth-
less]. Above all, read Livy again and again. I prefer him infi-
nitely to Tacitus, and am glad to find that Voss is of the same
opinion. There is no other author who exercises such a gentle
despotism over the eyes and ears of his readers, as Livy among
the Romans and Thucydides among the Greeks. Quinctilian calls
Livy's fullness "sweet as milk," and his eloquence "indescrib-
able"; in my judgment, too, it equals and often even surpasses
that of Cicero. The latter
intellect, wit;
but he attempted a richness of style for
which he lacked that heavenly repose of the intellect, which Livy
like Homer must have possessed, and among the moderns, Féne-
lon and Garve in no common degree. Very different was Demos-
thenes, who was always concise like Thucydides. And to rise to
conciseness and vigor of style is the highest that we moderns
can well attain; for we cannot write from our whole soul: and
hence we cannot expect another perfect epic poem. The quicker
beats the life-pulse of the world, the more each one is compelled
to move in epicycles, the less can calm, mighty repose of the
spirit be ours. I am writing to you as if I were actually living
in this better world; and nothing is further from the truth.
possessed infinite acuteness,
·
.
·
·
·
NOTE. For fuller treatment of these topics we refer the reader to
Niebuhr's letters, and especially to the epistle to a young philologist,
'Life and Letters,' pages 423-430.
## p. 10665 (#545) ##########################################
10665
NIZĀMĪ
(1141-1203)
BY A. V. WILLIAMS JACKSON
IZĀMĪ's name as a Persian poet is one that is not so well known
in the Occident as the name of Firdausī, Hafiz, or Sa'di;
but Nizāmī is one of the foremost classic writers of Persian
literature, and there is authority for regarding his genius as second.
only to Firdausī in the romantic epic style. He was a native of west-
ern Persia, and was born in the year 1141. He is generally spoken
of as Nizāmī of Ganjah, and that seems to have been his home dur-
ing most of his life, and he died there in his sixty-third year (A. D.
1203). Nizāmi was brought up in an atmosphere of religious asceti-
cism, but his life was brightened by the illumination which came with
the divine poetic gift; his talents won him court favor, but his choice
was retirement and quiet meditation, and there was a certain halo of
sanctity about his person.
It is interesting to the literary student to think of this epic
romanticist as writing in Persia at a time when the strain of the
romantic epopee was just beginning to be heard among the minstrels
of Provence and Normandy, and the music of its notes was awakening
English ears. And yet Nizāmī's first poetic production, the 'Makhzan-
al-asrar,' or 'Storehouse of Mysteries,' was rather a work of religious
didacticism than of romance, and its title shows the Sufi tinge of
mystic speculation. Nizami's heart and true poetic bent, however,
became evident shortly afterwards in the charming story in verse of
the romantic love of Khusrau and Shirin,' which is one of the most
imaginative tales in literature, and it established Nizāmī's claim to
renown at the age of forty. The subject is the old Sassanian tradi-
tion of King Khusrau's love for the fair Armenian princess Shirin,
who is alike beloved by the gifted young sculptor Farhad; the latter
accomplishes an almost superhuman feat of chiseling through mount-
ains at the royal bidding, in hopes of winning the fair one's hand,
but meets his death in fulfilling the task imposed by his kingly rival.
In Nizami's second romantic poem, 'Laila and Majnun,' we grieve
at the sorrows of two lovers whose devotion stands in the Orient
for the love of Eloisa and Abelard, Petrarch and Laura, Isabella and
Lorenzo; while likenesses to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso' have been
## p. 10666 (#546) ##########################################
10666
NIZĀMI
suggested.
'Twas of silk of Nineveh the girdle that she brought,
With precious stones well garnished; a better ne'er was wrought:
When Brunhild but beheld it, her tears she could not hold.
The tale must needs to Gunther and all his men be told.
## p. 10646 (#522) ##########################################
10646
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
HOW SIEGFRIED PARTED FROM KRIEMHILD
GUNTHER and Hagan, the warriors fierce and bold,
To execute their treason, resolved to scour the wold,
The bear, the boar, the wild bull, by hill or dale or fen,
To hunt with keen-edged javelins: what fitter sport for valiant
men?
In lordly pomp rode with them Siegfried the champion strong.
Good store of costly viands they brought with them along.
Anon by a cool runnel he lost his guiltless life.
'Twas so devised by Brunhild, King Gunther's moody wife.
But first he sought the chamber where he his lady found.
He and his friend already had on the sumpters bound
Their gorgeous hunting raiment; they o'er the Rhine would go.
Never before was Kriemhild sunk so deep in woe.
On her mouth of roses he kissed his lady dear:
"God grant me, dame, returning in health to see thee here;
So may those eyes see me too: meanwhile be blithe and gay
Among the gentle kinsmen; I must hence away. "
Then thought she on the secret (the truth she durst not tell)
How she had told it Hagan; then the poor lady fell
To wailing and lamenting that ever she was born.
Then wept she without measure, sobbing and sorrow-worn.
She thus bespake her husband: "Give up that chase of thine.
I dreamt last night of evil,- how two fierce forest swine
Over the heath pursued thee; the flowers turned bloody red.
I cannot help thus weeping: I'm chilled with mortal dread.
་་
"I fear some secret treason, and cannot lose thee hence,
Lest malice should be borne thee for misconceived offense.
Stay, my beloved Siegfried, take not my words amiss,-
'Tis the true love I bear thee that bids me counsel this. ".
"Back shall I be shortly, my own beloved mate;
Not a soul in Rhineland know I who bears me hate:
I'm well with all thy kinsmen; they're all my firm allies:
Nor have I from any e'er deservèd otherwise. "—
"Nay! do not, dearest Siegfried! 'tis e'en thy death I dread.
Last night I dreamt two mountains fell thundering on thy head,
And I no more beheld thee: if thou from me wilt go,
My heart will sure be breaking with bitterness of woe. "
## p. 10647 (#523) ##########################################
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
10647
Round her peerless body his clasping arms he threw;
Lovingly he kissed her, that faithful wife and true;
Then took his leave, and parted: in a moment all was o'er;-
Living, alas poor lady! she saw him nevermore.
HOW SIEGFRIED WAS SLAIN
THE noble knight Sir Siegfried with thirst was sore opprest;
So earlier rose from table, and could no longer rest,
But straight would to the mountain the running brook to find,-
And so advanced the treason his faithless foes designed.
Meanwhile were slowly lifted on many a groaning wain
The beasts in that wild forest by Siegfried's manhood slain.
Each witness gave him honor, and loud his praises spoke.
Alas, that with him Hagan his faith so foully broke!
Now when to the broad linden they all would take their way,
Thus spake the fraudful Hagan, "Full oft have I heard say,
That none a match in swiftness for Kriemhild's lord can be,
Whene'er to race he pleases: would he grant us this to see? »
Then spake the Netherlander, Siegfried, with open heart:—
"Well then! let's make the trial! Together we will start
From hence to yonder runnel; let us at once begin:
And he shall pass for winner who shall be seen to win. "
"Agreed! " said treacherous Hagan, "let us each other try. "
Thereto rejoined stout Siegfried, "And if you pass me by,
Down at your feet I'll lay me humbled on the grass. ”
When these words heard Gunther, what joy could his surpass?
Then said the fearless champion, "And this I tell you more:
I'll carry all the equipment that in the chase I wore,—
My spear, my shield, my vesture,-leave will I nothing out. "
His sword then and his quiver he girt him quick about.
-
Whate'er he did, the warrior high o'er his fellows soared.
Now laid he down his quiver, and quick ungirt his sword:
Against the spreading linden he leaned his mighty spear:
So by the brook stood waiting the chief without a peer.
King Gunther and Sir Hagan to strip were nothing slow;
Both for the race stood ready in shirts as white as snow.
Long bounds, like two wild panthers, o'er the grass they took,
But seen was noble Siegfried before them at the brook.
## p. 10648 (#524) ##########################################
10648
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
In every lofty virtue none with Sir Siegfried vied:
Down he laid his buckler by the water's side;
For all the thirst that parched him, one drop he never drank
Till the king had finished: he had full evil thank.
Cool was the little runnel, and sparkled clear as glass;
O'er the rill King Gunther knelt down upon the grass;
When he his draught had taken he rose and stepped aside.
Full fain alike would Siegfried his thirst have satisfied.
Dear paid he for his courtesy: his bow, his matchless blade,
His weapons all, Sir Hagan far from their lord conveyed,
Then back sprung to the linden to seize his ashen spear,
And to find out the token surveyed his vesture near;
Then, as to drink Sir Siegfried down kneeling there he found,
He pierced him through the croslet, that sudden from the wound
Forth the life-blood spouted e'en o'er his murderer's weed.
Never more will warrior dare so foul a deed.
Between his shoulders sticking he left the deadly spear.
Never before Sir Hagan so fled for ghastly fear,
As from the matchless champion whom he had butchered there.
Soon as was Sir Siegfried of the mortal wound aware,
Up he from the runnel started as he were wood;
Out from betwixt his shoulders his own huge boar-spear stood!
He thought to find his quiver or his broadsword true;
The traitor for his treason had then received his due:
But ah! the deadly wounded nor sword nor quiver found:
His shield alone beside him lay there upon the ground;
This from the bank he lifted, and straight at Hagan ran:
Him could not then by fleetness escape King Gunther's man.
E'en to the death though wounded, he hurled it with such power,
That the whirling buckler scattered wide a shower
Of the most precious jewels, then straight in shivers broke:
Full gladly had the warrior ta'en vengeance with that stroke.
E'en as it was, his manhood fierce Hagan leveled low;
Loud all around the meadow rang with the wondrous blow:
Had he in hand good Balmung, the murderer he had slain.
His wound was sore upon him; he writhed in mortal pain.
His lively color faded; a cloud came o'er his sight:
He could stand no longer; melted all his might.
## p. 10649 (#525) ##########################################
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
10649
In his paling visage the mark of death he bore.
Soon many a lovely lady sorrowed for him sore.
So the lord of Kriemhild among the flowerets fell;
From the wound fresh gushing his heart's blood fast did well.
Then thus amidst his tortures, e'en with his failing breath,
The false friends he upbraided who had contrived his death.
Thus spake the deadly wounded: "Ay! cowards false as hell!
To you I still was faithful; I served you long and well:
But what boots all? for guerdon, treason and death I've won;
By your friends, vile traitors! foully have you done.
Whoever shall hereafter from your loins be born
Shall take from such vile fathers a heritage of scorn.
On me you have wreaked malice where gratitude was due; —
With shame shall you be banished by all good knights and true. "
Thither ran all the warriors where in his blood he lay;
To many of that party sure 'twas a joyless day;
Whoe'er were true and faithful, they sorrowed for his fall,—
So much the peerless champion had merited of all.
With them the false king Gunther bewept his timeless end.
Then spake the deadly wounded, "Little it boots your friend
Yourself to plot his murder, and then the deed deplore:
Such is a shameful sorrow; better at once 'twere o'er. "
Then spake the low'ring Hagan, "I know not why you moan.
Our cares all and suspicions are now for ever flown.
Who now are left, against us who'll dare to make defense?
Well's me, for all this weeping, that I have rid him hence. "
"Small cause hast thou," said Siegfried, "to glory in my fate.
Had I weened thy friendship cloaked such murderous hate,
From such as thou full lightly could I have kept my life.
Now grieve I but for Kriemhild, my dear, my widowed wife.
"Now may God take pity, that e'er I had a son,
Who this reproach must suffer from deed so foully done,
That by his murderous kinsmen his father thus was slain.
Had I but time to finish, of this I well might plain.
«< Surely so base a murder the world did never see,"
Said he, and turned to Gunther, "as you have done on me.
I saved your life and honor from shame and danger fell,
And thus am I requited by you I served so well. "
## p. 10650 (#526) ##########################################
10650
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
Then further spake the dying, and speaking sighed full deep:-
"O king! if thou a promise with any one wilt keep,
Let me in this last moment thy grace and favor find
For my dear love and lady, the wife I leave behind.
"Remember, she's thy sister: yield her a sister's right;
Guard her with faith and honor, as thou'rt a king and knight.
My father and my followers for me they long must wait,
Comrade ne'er found from comrade so sorrowful a fate. "
In his mortal anguish he writhed him to and fro,
And then said, deadly groaning, "This foul and murderous blow
Deep will ye rue hereafter; this for sure truth retain,
That in slaying Siegfried you yourselves have slain. "
With blood were all bedabbled the flowerets of the field.
Some time with death he struggled, as though he scorned to
yield
E'en to the foe whose weapon strikes down the loftiest head.
At last prone in the meadow lay mighty Siegfried dead.
HOW THE MARGRAVE RUDEGER BEWAILED HIS DIVIDED DUTY
"WOE'S me the heaven-abandoned, that I have lived to this!
Farewell to all my honors! woe for my first amiss!
My truth my God-given innocence-must they be both forgot?
Woe's me, O God in heaven! that death relieves me not!
"Which part soe'er I foster, and whichsoe'er I shun,
In either case forsaken is good, and evil done;
But should I side with neither, all would the waverer blame.
Ah! would He deign to guide me, from whom my being came! "
Still went they on imploring, the king and eke his wife;
Whence many a valiant warrior soon came to lose his life
By the strong hand of Rudeger, and he too lastly fell.
So all his tale of sorrow you now shall hear me tell.
He nothing thence expected but loss and mortal teen;
Fain had he given denial alike to king and queen.
Much feared the gentle margrave, if in the stern debate
He slew but one Burgundian, the world would bear him hate.
With that, unto King Etzel thus spake the warrior bold:-
"Sir King! take back, I pray you, all that of you I hold,
My fiefs, both lands and castles; let none with me remain.
To distant realms, a wanderer, I'll foot it forth again.
## p. 10651 (#527) ##########################################
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
10651
"Thus stripped of all possessions I'll leave at once your land.
Rather my wife and daughter I'll take in either hand,
Than faithless and dishonored in hateful strife lie dead.
Ah! to my own destruction I've ta'en your gold so red. "
Thereto replied King Etzel, "Who then will succor me?
My land as well as liegemen, all will I give to thee,
If thou'lt revenge me, Rudeger, and smite my foemen down.
High shalt thou rule with Etzel, and share his kingly crown. "
Then spake the blameless margrave, "How shall I begin?
To my house I bade them, as guests I took them in,
Set meat and drink before them, they at my table fed,
And my best gifts I gave them; - how can I strike them dead?
"The folk ween in their folly that out of fear I shrink.
No! no! on former favors, on ancient bonds I think.
I served the noble princes, I served their followers too,
And knit with them the friendship I now so deeply rue.
"I to the youthful Giselher my daughter gave of late:
In all the world the maiden could find no fitter mate,-
True, faithful, brave, well-nurtured, rich, and of high degree;
Young prince yet saw I never so virtue-fraught as he. "
Then thus bespake him Kriemhild: "Right noble Rudeger,
Take pity on our anguish! thou see'st us kneeling here,
The king and me, before thee: both clasp thy honored knees.
Sure never host yet feasted such fatal guests as these. "
With that, the noble margrave thus to the queen 'gan say:-
"Sure must the life of Rudeger for all the kindness pay,
That you to me, my lady, and my lord the king have done,—
For this I'm doomed to perish, and that ere set of sun.
"Full well I know, this morning my castles and my land
Both will to you fall vacant by stroke of foeman's hand;
And so my wife and daughter I to your grace commend,
And all at Bechelaren, each trusty homeless friend. "
"Now God," replied King Etzel, "reward thee, Rudeger! "
He and his queen together resumed their lively cheer.
"From us shall all thy people receive whate'er they need;
Thou too, I trust, this morning thyself wilt fairly speed. "
So body and soul to hazard put the blameless man.
Meanwhile the wife of Etzel sorely to weep began.
-
## p. 10652 (#528) ##########################################
10652
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
Said he, "My word I gave you, I'll keep it well to-day.
Woe for my friends, whom Rudeger in his own despite must
slay. "
With that, straight from King Etzel he went with many a sigh.
Soon his band of heroes found he mustered nigh.
Said he, "Up now, my warriors! don all your armor bright;
I 'gainst the bold Burgundians must to my sorrow fight. "
·
To those within he shouted, "Look not for succor hence;
Ye valiant Nibelungers! now stand on your defense.
I'd fain have been your comrade: your foe I now must be.
We once were friends together: now from that bond I'm free. "
•
The hard-beset Burgundians to hear his words were woe;
Was not a man among them but sorrowed, high and low,
That thus a friend and comrade would 'gainst them mingle blows,
When they so much already had suffered from their foes.
"Now God forbid," said Gunther, "that such a knight as you
To the faith wherein we trusted should ever prove untrue,
And turn upon his comrades in such an hour as this;—
Ne'er can I think that Rudeger can do so much amiss. ”
"I can't go back," said Rudeger; "the deadly die is cast:
I must with you do battle; to that my word is past.
So each of you defend him as he loves his life.
I must perform my promise,- so wills King Etzel's wife. ”
Said Gunther, "This renouncement comes all too late to-day;
May God, right noble Rudeger, you for the favors pay
Which you so oft have done us, if e'en unto the end
To those who ever loved you you show yourself a friend.
"Ever shall we be your servants for all you've deigned to give —
Both I and my good kinsmen if by your aid we live.
Your precious gifts, fair tokens of love and friendship dear,
Given when you brought us hither, -now think of them, good
Rudeger! »
"How fain that would I grant you! " the noble knight replied;
"Would that my gifts for ever might in your hands abide!
I'd fain in all assist you that life concerns or fame,
But that I fear, so doing, to get reproach and shame. "
"Think not of that, good Rudeger," said Gernot, "in such need.
Sure host ne'er guests entreated so well in word or deed,
## p. 10653 (#529) ##########################################
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
10653
As you did us, your comrades, when late with you we stayed.
If hence alive you bring us, 'twill be in full repaid. "
"Now would to God, Sir Gernot," said Rudeger, ill bestead,
"That you were safe in Rhineland, and I with honor dead!
Now must I fight against you to serve your sister's ends:
Sure never yet were strangers entreated worse by friends. "
"Sir Rudeger," answered Gernot, "God's blessing wait on you
For all your gorgeous presents! Your death I sore should rue,
Should that pure virtue perish, which ill the world can spare.
Your sword, which late you gave me, here by my side I wear.
"It never once has failed me in all this bloody fray;
Lifeless beneath its edges many a good champion lay.
Most perfect is its temper; 'tis sharp and strong as bright:
Knight sure a gift so goodly will give no more to knight.
"Yet, should you not go backward, but turn our foe to-day,
If of the friends around me in hostile mood you slay,
With your own sword, good Rudeger, I needs must take your life,
Though you (Heaven knows! ) I pity, and your good and noble
wife. "
"Ah, would to heaven, Sir Gernot, that it might e'en be so!
That e'en as you would wish it this matter all might go,
And your good friends 'scape harmless from this abhorred strife!
Then sure should trust in Gernot my daughter and my wife. "
With that the bold Burgundian, fair Uta's youngest, cried,
"Why do you thus, Sir Rudeger? My friends here by my side.
All love you, e'en as I do: why kindle strife so wild?
'Tis ill so soon to widow your late-betrothed child.
"Should you now and your followers wage war upon me here,
How cruel and unfriendly 'twill to the world appear!
For more than on all others on you I still relied,
And took, through such affiance, your daughter for my bride. "
"Fair king! thy troth remember," the blameless knight 'gan say,
«< Should God be pleased in safety to send thee hence away:
Let not the maiden suffer for aught that I do ill;
By your own princely virtue vouchsafe her favor still. "
"That will I do and gladly," the youthful knight replied:
"But should my high-born kinsmen who here within abide,
## p. 10654 (#530) ##########################################
10654
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
Once die by thee, no longer could I thy friend be styled;
My constant love 'twould sever from thee and from thy child. "
"Then God have mercy on us! " the valiant margrave said.
At once their shields they lifted, and forward fiercely sped
In the hall of Kriemhild to force the stranger crowd.
Thereat down from the stair-head Sir Hagan shouted loud:-
:-
"Tarry yet a little, right noble Rudeger!
I and my lords a moment would yet with you confer;
Thereto hard need compels us, and danger gathering nigh:
What boot were it for Etzel though here forlorn we die?
"I'm now," pursued Sir Hagan, "beset with grievous care:
The shield that lady Gotelind gave me late to bear
Is hewn and all-to broken by many a Hunnish brand.
I brought it fair and friendly hither to Etzel's land.
"Ah! that to me this favor Heaven would be pleased to yield,
That I might to defend me bear so well-proved a shield,
As that, right noble Rudeger, before thee now displayed!
No more should I in battle need then the hauberk's aid. ".
"Fain with the same I'd serve thee to th' height of thy desire,
But that I fear such proffer might waken Kriemhild's ire.
Still, take it to thee, Hagan, and wield it well in hand.
Ah!
might'st thou bring it with thee to thy Burgundian land! "
While thus with words so courteous so fair a gift he sped,
The eyes of many a champion with scalding tears were red.
'Twas the last gift, that buckler, e'er given to comrade dear
By the lord of Bechelaren, the blameless Rudeger:
However stern was Hagan, and of unyielding mood,
Still at the gift he melted, which one so great and good
Gave in his last few moments, e'en on the eve of fight;
And with the stubborn warrior mourned many a noble knight.
"Now God in heaven, good Rudeger, thy recompenser be!
Your like on earth, I'm certain, we never more shall see,
Who gifts so good and gorgeous to homeless wanderers give.
May God protect your virtue, that it may ever live!
"Alas! this bloody business! " Sir Hagan then went on,
"We have had to bear much sorrow, and more shall have anon.
Must friend with friend do battle, nor Heaven the conflict part? »
The noble margrave answered, "That wounds my inmost heart. "
## p. 10655 (#531) ##########################################
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
10655
"Now for thy gift I'll quit thee, right noble Rudeger!
Whate'er may chance between thee and my bold comrades here,
My hand shall touch thee never amidst the heady fight,
Not e'en if thou shouldst slaughter every Burgundian knight. "
For that to him bowed courteous the blameless Rudeger.
Then all around were weeping for grief and doleful drear,
Since none th' approaching mischief had hope to turn aside.
The father of all virtue in that good margrave died.
HOW KRIEMHILD SLEW HAGAN AND WAS HERSELF SLAIN
TO THE cell of Hagan eagerly she went;
Thus the knight bespake she, ah! with what fell intent!
"Wilt thou but return me what thou from me hast ta'en,
Back thou mayst go living to Burgundy again. ”
Then spake grim-visaged Hagan, "You throw away your prayer,
High-descended lady: I took an oath whilere,
That while my lords were living, or of them only one,
I'd ne'er point out the treasure: thus 'twill be given to none. "
Well knew the subtle Hagan she ne'er would let him 'scape.
Ah! when did ever falsehood assume so foul a shape?
He feared that soon as ever the queen his life had ta'en,
She then would send her brother to Rhineland back again.
"I'll make an end, and quickly," Kriemhild fiercely spake.
Her brother's life straight bade she in his dungeon take.
Off his head was smitten; she bore it by the hair
To the lord of Trony: such sight he well could spare.
Awhile in gloomy sorrow he viewed his master's head;
Then to remorseless Kriemhild thus the warrior said:
"E'en to thy wish this business thou to an end hast brought,-
To such an end, moreover, as Hagan ever thought.
"Now the brave king Gunther of Burgundy is dead;
Young Giselher and eke Gernot alike with him are sped:
So now, where lies the treasure, none knows save God and me,
And told shall it be never, be sure, she-fiend! to thee. "
Said she, "Ill hast thou quitted a debt so deadly scored:
At least in my possession I'll keep my Siegfried's sword;
My lord and lover bore it, when last I saw him go.
For him woe wrung my bosom, that passed all other woe. "
## p. 10656 (#532) ##########################################
10656
THE NIBELUNGENLIED
Forth from the sheath she drew it, that could not he prevent;
At once to slay the champion was Kriemhild's stern intent.
High with both hands she heaved it, and off his head did smite.
That was seen of King Etzel; he shuddered at the sight.
――
"Ah! " cried the prince impassioned, "harrow and welaway!
That the hand of a woman the noblest knight should slay
That e'er struck stroke in battle, or ever buckler bore!
Albeit I was his foeman, needs must I sorrow sore. "
Then said the aged Hildebrand, "Let not her boast of gain,
In that by her contrivance this noble chief was slain;
Though to sore strait he brought me, let ruin on me light,
But I will take full vengeance for Trony's murdered knight. "
Hildebrand the aged fierce on Kriemhild sprung;
To the death he smote her as his sword he swung.
Sudden and remorseless he his wrath did wreak:
What could then avail her her fearful thrilling shriek?
There now the dreary corpses stretched all around were seen;
There lay, hewn in pieces, the fair and noble queen.
Sir Dietrich and King Etzel, their tears began to start;
For kinsmen and for vassals each sorrowed in his heart.
The mighty and the noble there lay together dead;
For this had all the people dole and drearihead.
The feast of royal Etzel was thus shut up in woe.
Pain in the steps of Pleasure treads ever here below.
'Tis more than I can tell you what afterwards befell,
Save that there was weeping for friends beloved so well;
Knights and squires, dames and damsels, were seen lamenting
all.
So here I end my story. This is THE NIBELUNGERS' FALL.
## p. 10656 (#533) ##########################################
## p. 10656 (#534) ##########################################
NIEBUHR.
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## p. 10657 (#537) ##########################################
10657
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
(1776-1831)
HE history of belles-lettres could very well be written with-
out the inclusion of Niebuhr's name. He has not left any
important masterpiece of artistic form, nor appreciably en-
riched the imagination of mankind. Indeed, we might rather consider
ourselves to have been impoverished, on that happier side of life, by
the investigator who forbade us to regard Eneas, Romulus, and
Numa, or even the Tarquins and the Horatii, as in any sense real-
ities. Yet certainly the development of a wiser historical method,
the study of human institutions, the higher education generally, will
always owe him a mighty debt. He was, in the truest sense of a
word commoner in its Teutonic than in its Anglo-Saxon form, "epoche-
machend"—epoch-making. Until his time, students had merely read
Livy and Dionysius, accepting all save the super-human elements of
early Roman story, or merely doubting and caviling over this and
that detail. Niebuhr was the first who relegated the whole mass of
traditional tales in Livy's first five books to the realm of the imagi-
nation, and showed how the historic institutions of later Rome must
be studied for the light they, and they alone, could throw upon their
own origin in the age previous to authentic record. Even for the
ablest application of this critical method we no longer turn to Nie-
buhr's fragmentary publications, but rather to the more picturesque
and vivid pages of his successor, Mommsen. Yet it may well be
questioned whether he who uses the tool deserves higher credit than
he who forges it; the man in whom the school culminates rather
than its founder. Certainly no one could recognize more loyally than
Mommsen himself the man whose lectures on Roman history were
the most brilliant work done in the newly founded University of
Berlin in 1810 and the next following years.
The story of Niebuhr's life is delightfully told, chiefly by himself,
in his Life and Letters,' edited by the Chevalier Bunsen. It is full
of singular contradictions. Though the son of a famous traveler, he
complains that he was brought up in seclusion, fed on words instead
of knowing things. But indeed a certain querulousness is a constant
weakness of this noble nature. He was certainly a prodigy of learn-
ing. When he was barely of age his father reckons up twenty lan-
guages which the youth had mastered. His memory seems to have
XVIII-667
## p. 10658 (#538) ##########################################
10658
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
been both accurate and unlimited in its scope. Along with it went
a power of combination and brilliant deduction still more unusual.
Though Niebuhr was a Dane, his education was apparently more
than half German. His last student-year, 1798–9, was passed at Edin-
burgh. To his English and Scotch experience he felt that he owed
his insight into business affairs. Perhaps in that epoch of upheaval
an ambitious young scholar could hardly keep out of political life.
Certainly Niebuhr made his first career as a man of affairs. More
difficult still to understand is his acceptance of a call from Denmark
to Prussia. He arrived just in time to share the disasters of the
Napoleonic invasion in 1806. He was perhaps Stein's most trusted
assistant in preparing for the revival of Prussia.
Niebuhr was unable to settle down as a university scholar. His
hold on political affairs was indeed never wholly relaxed, and six
years after the university was opened he bade farewell to Berlin,
being sent as Prussian ambassador to the Pope. Returning to Ger-
many in 1823, Niebuhr passed the last years of his life quietly as a
professor, student, and author, at Bonn.
His death was felt to be premature. His varied and crowded life
up to his fiftieth year had seemed like a long education, and a gath-
ering of materials for the great constructive work which he might
have accomplished. No modern scholar, perhaps, has had so firm a
grasp on the records and isolated facts of ancient life. None, surely,
ever had firmer confidence in his own ability to redraw the great
picture of that life in truthful outlines. Yet his name lives chiefly
as the creator of a method, and his disciples' books are more indis-
pensable to us than his own. Perhaps this is after all a cheerful
epitaph on a great teacher; and all later students of history, of insti-
tutions, of antiquity, are in varying degree his pupils. Lanciani, who
would revive our faith even in Romulus, owes to Niebuhr little less
than Mommsen, who hardly mentions Livy or Livy's heroes in his
chapters on early Rome.
Besides the excellent
Life and Letters' by Bunsen (Harpers,
1852), Niebuhr's works on ancient history are accessible in English,
partly in authentic form, partly in very fragmentary shape pieced out
from note-books. The most adequate impression will be gained from
his History of Rome,' Vols. i. , ii. , iii. , as translated by Hare and
Thirlwall, London, 1851.
## p. 10659 (#539) ##########################################
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
10659
PLAN FOR A COMPLETE HISTORY OF ROME
From the Introduction to the History of Rome. Translation of Hare and
Thirlwall
I
HAVE undertaken to relate the history of Rome. I shall begin
in the night of remote antiquity, where the most laborious
researches can scarcely discern a few of the chief members of
ancient Italy, by the dim light of late and dubious traditions;
and I wish to come down to those times when, all that we have
seen spring up and grow old in the long course of centuries
being buried in ruins or in the grave, a second night envelops
it in almost equal obscurity.
This history in its chief outlines is universally known; and by
very many, at least in part, immediately from the classical works
of Roman authors, so far as their remains supply us with a
representation of several of the most brilliant and memorable
periods of republican and imperial Rome. If the whole of these
works were extant,-if we possessed a continuous narrative in the
histories of Livy and Tacitus, extending, with the exception of
the last years of Augustus, from the origin of the city down to
Nerva,—it would be presumptuous and idle to engage in relating
the same events with those historians: presumptuous, because
the beauty of their style must ever lie beyond our reach; and
idle, because, over and above the historical instruction conveyed,
it would be impossible to have a companion through life better
fitted to fashion the mind in youth, and to preserve it in after
age from the manifold barbarizing influences of our circumstances
and relations, than such a copious history of eight hundred and
fifty years written by the Romans for themselves. We should
only want to correct the misrepresentations during the earlier
ages, and to sever the poetical ingredients from what is his-
torically sure and well grounded; and without presumptuously
appearing to vie with the old masters, we might draw a sim-
ple sketch of the constitution, and of the changes it underwent
at particular times, where Livy leaves us without information, or
misleads us. But as those works are only preserved in frag-
ments; as they are silent concerning periods perhaps still more
prominent in the importance of their events than those which
we see living in their pages; as the histories of those periods
by moderns are unsatisfactory, and often full of error,- I have
deemed it expedient to promote the knowledge of Roman history
## p. 10660 (#540) ##########################################
10660
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
by devoting a course of lectures to it. A doubt might be enter-
tained whether it were better to give a connected narrative, or
merely to treat of the portions where we are left without the
two historians. I have determined in favor of the former
plan, trusting that I shall not lead any of my hearers to fancy he
may dispense with studying the classical historians of Rome when
he has gained a notion of the events which they portray, and
hoping that I may render the study easier and more instructive.
Much of what the Roman historians have set down in the
annals of their nation must be left out by a modern from that
mass of events wherein their history far surpasses that of every
other people. Under this necessity of passing over many things,
and of laying down a rule for my curtailments, I shall make no
mention of such persons and events as have left their names a
dead letter behind them, without any intrinsic greatness or im-
portant external results; although a complete knowledge of every
particular is indispensable to a scholar, and though many a dry
waste locks up sources which sooner or later he may succeed in
drawing forth. On the other hand, I shall endeavor to examine
the history, especially during the first five centuries, not under
the guidance of dim feelings, but of searching criticism. Nor
shall I merely deliver the results, which could only give birth to
blind opinions, but the researches themselves at full length.
I
shall strive to lay open the groundworks of the ancient Roman
nation and State, which have been built over and masked, and
about which the old writers preserved to us are often utterly mis-
taken; to execute justice in awarding praise and blame, love and
hatred, where party spirit has given birth to misrepresentations,
and thereby to false judgments, after upward of two thousand
years; to represent the spreading of the empire, the growth of
the constitution, the state of the administration, of manners, and
of civility, according as from time to time we are able to survey
them.
I shall exhibit the characters of the men who were
mighty in their generation for good or for evil, or who at least
rose above their fellows. I shall relate the history of the wars
with accuracy, wherever they do not offer a mere recurring uni-
formity; and so far as our information will allow, shall draw a
faithful and distinct portrait of the nations that gradually came
within the widening sphere of the Roman power. Moreover, I
shall consider the state of literature at its principal epochs, tak-
ing notice of the lost as well as the extant writers.
## p. 10661 (#541) ##########################################
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
10661
EARLY EDUCATION: WORDS AND THINGS
From a Letter to Jacobi, November 21st, 1811, in the Life and Letters by
Chevalier Bunsen
-
I
Had
WAS born with an inward discord, the existence of which I can
trace back to my earliest childhood; though it was afterward
much aggravated by an education ill adapted to my nature,
or rather by a mixture of such an education with no education
at all. I did not conceal this from you in former days.
I to choose my own endowments for another life on earth, I
would not wish to possess greater facility in taking up impressions
from the external world, in retaining and combining them into
new forms within an inward world of imagination, full of the
most various and animated movement, nor a memory more accu-
rate or more at command (a faculty inseparable from the former),
than nature has granted me. Much advantage might have been
derived from these gifts in childhood; perhaps in some pursuits
they might have insured me every success; nay, this result
would have arisen spontaneously, had I not been subjected to a
kind of education which could only have been useful to a mind
of precisely the opposite description.
Our great seclusion from the world, in a quiet little provincial
town, the prohibition from our earliest years to pass beyond the
house and garden, accustomed me to gather the materials for the
insatiable requirements of my childish fancy, not from life and
nature, but from books, engravings, and conversation. Thus, my
imagination laid no hold on the realities around me, but absorbed
into her dominions all that I read,- and I read without limit and
without aim,-while the actual world was impenetrable to my
gaze; so that I became almost incapable of apprehending any-
thing which had not already been apprehended by another-
of forming a mental picture of anything which had not before
been shaped into a distinct conception by another. It is true
that in this second-hand world I was very learned, and could
even, at a very early age, pronounce opinions like a grown-up
person; but the truth in me and around me was veiled from
my eyes the genuine truth of objective reason. Even when I
grew older, and studied antiquity with intense interest, the chief
use I made of my knowledge for a long time was to give fresh
variety and brilliancy to my world of dreams. From the deli-
cacy of my health, and my mother's anxiety about it, I was so
## p. 10662 (#542) ##########################################
10662
BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
much confined to the house that I was like a caged bird, and
lost all natural spirit and liveliness, and the true life of child-
hood, the observations and ideas of which must form the basis of
those peculiar to a more developed age, just as the early use of
the body is the basis of its after training. No one ever thought
of asking what I was doing, and how I did it; and it was not
until my thirteenth year that I received any regular instruction.
My friends were satisfied with seeing that I was diligently em-
ployed, and that though I had at first no teaching, I was equal
to boys of my age in things for which they had had regular
masters, and soon surpassed them when I had the same advan-
tages; while moreover I was as well acquainted with a thousand
matters to be learned from books as a grown-up man. Yet after
a time I began to grow uneasy. I became aware that notwith-
standing my empire in the air, my life in the actual world was
poor and powerless; that the perception of realities alone pos-
sesses truth and worth; that on it are founded all imaginative
productions which have any value at all; and that there is noth-
ing truly worthy of respect but that depth of mind which makes
a man master of truth in its first principle. As soon as I had
to enter on the sciences, properly so called, I found myself in a
difficulty; and unfortunately I took once more the easiest path,
and left on one side whatever cost me some trouble to acquire.
I was often on the verge of a mental revolution, but it never
actually took place; now and then, indeed, I planted my foot on
the firm ground, and when that happened I made some progress.
When I first became acquainted with you, I was happy, and I
was perhaps on the way to do what is more difficult than to
gain knowledge without help from others,- to restore what was
distorted in me to its right place. But at a later period, when I
left my quiet and healthful position for a superficial world, which
held me with a strong grasp and confused and deadened my
mind, where I was dragged along a path which I had no wish
to tread, and which led me further and further from that for
which I hopelessly longed; where I was forced to endure applause
and praise, at a time when my want of knowledge on essential
points, and the superfluous matter with which I had loaded my
memory on others, my unsettled, disconnected ideas without true
basis, my undisciplined powers without adequately firm habits of
work, particularly of self-improvement, rendered me a horror to
myself, I was as unhappy as you saw me to be.
C
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BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
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However, my eyes were opened to much that had hitherto
escaped me, and I was to some degree forced into the actual
external world, by my travels beyond the sea and my residence
among a nation distinguished by sober thought and resolute
activity; where I was obliged to occupy myself with the objects
of practical life, and saw this life ennobled by the perfection
to which it was carried, and the invariable adaptation of the
means to the end. I then starved out the imaginative side of
my nature, and placed myself, as it were, under a course of
mental diet, according to which I lived for a long time in abso-
lute dependence on the actual world around me. But this did not
bring me into the right path of my true inward activity and
development. I felt that I was now, on the other hand, poorer
than ever as regarded what had always possessed the strongest
attraction for me, though I seemed to be excluded from it by
an insurmountable barrier. For years I was immersed, as far
as my occupations were concerned, in the most prosaic workaday
life, with the pain and torment of feeling that I grew more
used to it every day; of feeling that I was shut out of Paradise,
but that the bread I gained by tilling the earth in the sweat of
my brow was not at all distasteful to me,—nay, that perhaps if
Paradise were reopened to me, I should feel some longing for the
spade.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE IMAGINATION
From an Undated Letter in the Life and Letters' by Chevalier Bunsen
ENVY you the recollections of your Italian journey.
It is a
I
hard thought to me, that I shall never see the land that was
the theatre of deeds with which I may perhaps claim a closer
acquaintance than any of my contemporaries. I have studied the
Roman history with all the effort of which my mind has been
capable in its happiest moments, and believe that I may assume
that acquaintance without vanity. This history will also, if I
write, form the subject of most of my works.
The sight of the works of art, particularly the paintings,
would have delighted me as it did you. Statues have little effect
upon me; my sight is too weak, and cannot be strengthened by
glasses for a surface of one color, as it can for pictures. Then
too a picture, when I have once seen it, becomes my property;
·
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BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR
I never lose it out of my imagination. Music is in general posi-
tively disagreeable to me, because I cannot unite it in one point,
and everything fragmentary oppresses my mind. Hence also I
am no mathematician, but a historian; for from the single feat-
ures preserved I can form a complete picture, and know where
groups are wanting, and how to supply them. I think this is the
case with you also; and I wish you would, like me, apply your
reflections on past events to fix the images on the canvas, and
then employ your imagination, working only with true historical
tints, to give them coloring. Take ancient history as your sub-
ject: it is an inexhaustible one, and no one would believe how
much that appears to be lost, might be restored with the clearest
evidence. Modern history ne vaut pas le diable [is utterly worth-
less]. Above all, read Livy again and again. I prefer him infi-
nitely to Tacitus, and am glad to find that Voss is of the same
opinion. There is no other author who exercises such a gentle
despotism over the eyes and ears of his readers, as Livy among
the Romans and Thucydides among the Greeks. Quinctilian calls
Livy's fullness "sweet as milk," and his eloquence "indescrib-
able"; in my judgment, too, it equals and often even surpasses
that of Cicero. The latter
intellect, wit;
but he attempted a richness of style for
which he lacked that heavenly repose of the intellect, which Livy
like Homer must have possessed, and among the moderns, Féne-
lon and Garve in no common degree. Very different was Demos-
thenes, who was always concise like Thucydides. And to rise to
conciseness and vigor of style is the highest that we moderns
can well attain; for we cannot write from our whole soul: and
hence we cannot expect another perfect epic poem. The quicker
beats the life-pulse of the world, the more each one is compelled
to move in epicycles, the less can calm, mighty repose of the
spirit be ours. I am writing to you as if I were actually living
in this better world; and nothing is further from the truth.
possessed infinite acuteness,
·
.
·
·
·
NOTE. For fuller treatment of these topics we refer the reader to
Niebuhr's letters, and especially to the epistle to a young philologist,
'Life and Letters,' pages 423-430.
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10665
NIZĀMĪ
(1141-1203)
BY A. V. WILLIAMS JACKSON
IZĀMĪ's name as a Persian poet is one that is not so well known
in the Occident as the name of Firdausī, Hafiz, or Sa'di;
but Nizāmī is one of the foremost classic writers of Persian
literature, and there is authority for regarding his genius as second.
only to Firdausī in the romantic epic style. He was a native of west-
ern Persia, and was born in the year 1141. He is generally spoken
of as Nizāmī of Ganjah, and that seems to have been his home dur-
ing most of his life, and he died there in his sixty-third year (A. D.
1203). Nizāmi was brought up in an atmosphere of religious asceti-
cism, but his life was brightened by the illumination which came with
the divine poetic gift; his talents won him court favor, but his choice
was retirement and quiet meditation, and there was a certain halo of
sanctity about his person.
It is interesting to the literary student to think of this epic
romanticist as writing in Persia at a time when the strain of the
romantic epopee was just beginning to be heard among the minstrels
of Provence and Normandy, and the music of its notes was awakening
English ears. And yet Nizāmī's first poetic production, the 'Makhzan-
al-asrar,' or 'Storehouse of Mysteries,' was rather a work of religious
didacticism than of romance, and its title shows the Sufi tinge of
mystic speculation. Nizami's heart and true poetic bent, however,
became evident shortly afterwards in the charming story in verse of
the romantic love of Khusrau and Shirin,' which is one of the most
imaginative tales in literature, and it established Nizāmī's claim to
renown at the age of forty. The subject is the old Sassanian tradi-
tion of King Khusrau's love for the fair Armenian princess Shirin,
who is alike beloved by the gifted young sculptor Farhad; the latter
accomplishes an almost superhuman feat of chiseling through mount-
ains at the royal bidding, in hopes of winning the fair one's hand,
but meets his death in fulfilling the task imposed by his kingly rival.
In Nizami's second romantic poem, 'Laila and Majnun,' we grieve
at the sorrows of two lovers whose devotion stands in the Orient
for the love of Eloisa and Abelard, Petrarch and Laura, Isabella and
Lorenzo; while likenesses to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso' have been
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NIZĀMI
suggested.
