No More Learning

so many in that assembly was to become a second home, a home
perhaps all the more cherished that it was won by the might of
their own right hands.
――――
To this select Council the duke made his first appeal. He
told them, what some of them at least knew well already, of the
wrongs which he had suffered from Harold of England. It was
his purpose to cross the sea, in order to assert his rights and to


## p. 5997 (#587) ###########################################

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5997
chastise the wrong-doer. With the help of God and with the
loyal service of his faithful Normans, he doubted not his power
to do what he purposed. He had gathered them together to
know their minds upon the matter. Did they approve of his
purpose? Did they deem the enterprise within his power? Were
they ready themselves to help him to the uttermost to recover
his right? The answer of the Norman leaders, the personal
kinsmen and friends of their sovereign, was wise and constitu-
tional. They approved his purpose; they deemed that the enter-
prise was not beyond the power of Normandy to accomplish.
The valor of the Norman knighthood, the wealth of the Norman
Church, was fully enough to put their duke in possession of all
that he claimed. Their own personal service they pledged at
once; they would follow him to the war; they would pledge, they
would sell, their lands to cover the costs of the expedition. But
they would not answer for others. Where all were to share in
the work, all ought to share in the counsel. Those whom the
duke had gathered together were not the whole baronage of
Normandy. There were other wise and brave men in the duchy,
whose arms were as strong, and whose counsel would be as sage,
as those of the chosen party to whom he spoke. Let the duke
call a larger meeting of all the barons of his duchy, and lay his
designs before them.
The duke hearkened to this advice, and he at once sent forth
a summons for the gathering of a larger Assembly. This is the
only time when we come across any details of the proceedings of
a Norman Parliament. And we at once see how widely the
political condition of Normandy differed from that of England.
We see how much further England had advanced, or more truly,
how much further Normandy had gone back, in the path of
political freedom. The Norman Assembly which assembled to
discuss the war against England was a widely different body
from the Great Gemót which had voted for the restoration of
Godwine. Godwine had made his speech before the King and
all the people of the land. That people had met under the
canopy of heaven, beneath the walls of the greatest city of the
realm. But in William's Assembly we hear of none but barons.
The old Teutonic constitution had wholly died away from the
memories of the descendants of the men who followed Rolf and
Harold Blaatand, The immemorial democracy had passed away,
and the later constitution of the medieval States had not yet


## p. 5998 (#588) ###########################################

5998
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
arisen.
There was no Third Estate, because the personal right
of every freeman to attend had altogether vanished, while the
idea of the representation of particular privileged towns had not
yet been heard of. And if the Third Order was wanting, the
First Order was at least less prominent than it was in other
lands. The wealth of the Church had been already pointed out
as an important element in the duke's ways and means, and both
the wealth and the personal prowess of the Norman clergy were,
when the day came, freely placed at William's disposal. The
peculiar tradition of Norman Assemblies, which shut out the
clergy from all share in the national deliberations, seems now to
have been relaxed. It is implied rather than asserted that the
bishops of Normandy were present in the Assembly which now
met; but it is clear that the main stress of the debates fell on
the lay barons, and that the spirit of the Assembly was a spirit
which was especially theirs.
Narrow as was the constitution of the Assembly, it showed,
when it met, no lack either of political foresight or of parliament-
ary boldness. In a society so aristocratically constituted as that
of Normandy was, the nobles are in truth, in a political sense, the
people, and we must expect to find in any gathering of nobles
both the virtues and the vices of a real Popular Assembly. Will-
iam had already consulted his Senate; he had now to bring his
resolution, fortified by their approval, before the body which came
as near as any body in Normandy could come to the character of
an Assembly of the Norman people. The valiant gentlemen of
Normandy, as wary as they were valiant, proved good guardians
of the public purse, trusty keepers of what one knows not whether
to call the rights of the nation or the privileges of their order.
The duke laid his case before them. He told once more the tale
of his own rights and of the wrong which Harold had done him.
He said that his own mind was to assert his rights by force of
arms. He would fain enter England in the course of the year
on which they had entered. But without their help he could do
nothing. Of his own he had neither ships enough nor men enough
for such an enterprise. He would not ask whether they would
help nim in such a cause. He took their zeal and loyalty for
granted; he asked only how many ships, how many men, each
of his hearers would bring as a free-will offering.
A Norman Assembly was not a body to be surprised into a
hasty assent, even when the craft and the eloquence of William


## p. 5999 (#589) ###########################################

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
5999
was brought to bear upon it. The barons asked for time to
consider of their answer. They would debate among themselves,
and they would let him know the conclusion to which they came.
William was obliged to consent to this delay, and the Assembly
broke up into knots, greater or smaller, each eagerly discussing
the great question. Parties of fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty, sixty,
a hundred, gathered round this or that energetic speaker. Some
professed their readiness to follow the duke; others were in debt,
and were too poor to venture on such hazards. Other speakers
set forth the dangers and difficulties of the enterprise. Normandy
could not conquer England; their fair and flourishing land would
be ruined by the attempt. The conquest of England was an
undertaking beyond the power of a Roman emperor. Harold and
his land were rich; they had wealth to take foreign kings and
dukes into their service; their own forces were in mere numbers
such as Normandy could not hope to strive against. They had
abundance of tried soldiers, and above all, they had a mighty
fleet, with crews skilled beyond other men in all that pertained
to the warfare of the sea. How could a fleet be raised, how
could the sailors be gathered together, how could they be taught,
within a year's space, to cope with such an enemy? The feeling
of the Assembly was distinctly against so desperate an enterprise
as the invasion of England. It seemed as if the hopes and
schemes of William were about to be shattered in their begin-
ning through the opposition of his own subjects.
A daring though cunning attempt was now made by William
Fitz-Osbern, the duke's nearest personal friend, to cajole the
Assembly into an assent to his master's will. He appealed to
their sense of feudal honor; they owed the duke service for their
fiefs: let them come forward and do with a good heart all, and
more than all, that their tenure of their fiefs bound them to.
Let not their sovereign be driven to implore the services of his
subjects. Let them rather forestall his will; let them win his
favor by ready offerings even beyond their power to fulfill. He
enlarged on the character of the lord with whom they had to
deal. William's jealous temper would not brook disappointment
at their hands. It would be the worse for them in the end, if
the duke should ever have to say that he had failed in his enter-
prise because they had failed in readiness to support him.
The language of William Fitz-Osbern seems to have startled
and perplexed even the stout hearts with whom he had to deal.


## p. 6000 (#590) ###########################################

6000
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
The barons prayed him to be their spokesman with the duke.
He knew their minds and could speak for them all, and they
would be bound by what he said. But they gave him no direct
commission to bind them to any consent to the duke's demand.
Their words indeed tended ominously the other way; they feared
the sea,-
so changed was the race which had once manned the
ships of Rolf and Harold Blaatand, and they were not bound
to serve beyond it.
-
-
A point seemed to have been gained, by the seeming license
given by the Assembly to the duke's most intimate friend to
speak as he would in the name of the whole baronage. William
Fitz-Osbern now spoke to the duke. He began with an exordium
of almost cringing loyalty, setting forth how great was the zeal
and affection of the Normans for their prince, and how there
was no danger which they would not willingly undergo in his
service. But the orator soon overshot his mark. He promised,
in the name of the whole Assembly, that every man would not
only cross the sea with the duke, but would bring with him
double the contingent to which his holding bound him. The
lord of twenty knights' fees would serve with forty knights, and
the lord of a hundred with two hundred. He himself, of his love
and zeal, would furnish sixty ships, well equipped, and filled with
fighting men.
The barons now felt themselves taken in a snare. They were
in nearly the same case as the king against whom they were
called on to march. They had indeed promised; they had com-
missioned William Fitz-Osbern to speak in their names. But
their commission had been stretched beyond all reasonable con-
struction; their spokesman had pledged them to engagements
which had never entered into their minds. Loud shouts of dis-
sent rose through the hall. The mention of serving with double
the regular contingent awakened special indignation. With a
true parliamentary instinct, the Norman barons feared lest a con-
sent to this demand should be drawn into a precedent, and lest
their fiefs should be forever burthened with this double service.
The shouts grew louder; the whole hall was in confusion; no
speaker could be heard; no man would hearken to reason or
render a reason for himself.
The rash speech of William Fitz-Osbern had thus destroyed
all hope of a regular parliamentary consent on the part of the
Assembly. But it is possible that the duke gained in the end


## p. 6001 (#591) ###########################################

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
6001
by the hazardous experiment of his seneschal. It is even possi-
ble that the manœuvre may have been concerted beforehand
between him and his master. It was not likely that any per-
suasion could have brought the Assembly as a body to agree
to the lavish offer of volunteer service which was put into its
mouth by William Fitz-Osbern. There was no hope of carrying
any such vote on a formal division. But the confusion which
followed the speech of the seneschal hindered any formal divis-
ion from being taken. The Assembly, in short, as an assembly,
was broken up. The fagot was unloosed, and the sticks could
now be broken one by one. The baronage of Normandy had
lost all the strength of union; they were brought, one by one,
within the reach of the personal fascinations of their sovereign.
William conferred with each man apart; he employed all his arts
on minds which, when no longer strengthened by the sympathy
of a crowd, could not refuse anything that he asked.
He pledged
himself that the doubling of their services should not become a
precedent; no man's fief should be burthened with any charge
beyond what it had borne from time immemorial. Men thus
personally appealed to, brought in this way within the magic
sphere of princely influence, were no longer slack to promise;
and having once promised, they were not slack to fulfill. William
had more than gained his point. If he had not gained the for-
mal sanction of the Norman baronage to his expedition, he had
won over each individual Norman baron to serve him as a vol-
unteer. And wary as ever, William took heed that no man who
had promised should draw back from his promise. His scribes
and clerks were at hand, and the number of ships and soldiers
promised by each baron was at once set down in a book. A
Domesday of the conquerors was in short drawn up in the ducal
hall at Lillebonne, a forerunner of the greater Domesday of the
conquered, which twenty years later was brought to King William
of England in his royal palace at Winchester.
X--376


## p. 6002 (#592) ###########################################

6002
FERDINAND FREILIGRATH
(1810-1876)
N TIMES of political degradation the poets of Germany, turning
from their own surroundings, have sought poetical material
either in the glories of a dim past or in the exotic splendors
of remote lands. Goethe, disquieted by the French Revolution, took
up Chinese and Persian studies; the romantic poets revivified the pict-
uresqueness of the Middle Ages; and during the second quarter of
this century the Orient began to exercise a potent charm. Platen
wrote his beautiful Gaselen,' Rückert sang in Persian measure and
translated the Indian Sakuntala,' and Bo-
denstedt fashioned the dainty songs of
"Mirza-Schaffy. " Freiligrath too, a child of
his time, entered upon his literary career
with poems which took their themes from
distant climes. Among his earliest verses
after 'Moosthee' (Iceland-Moss Tea), written
at the age of sixteen, were 'Africa,' 'Der
Scheik am Sinai' (The Sheik on Sinai), and
'Der Löwenritt' (The Lion's Ride). Even
in these early poems, we find all that brill-
iancy of Oriental imagery to which he tells
us he had been inspired by much poring
over an illustrated Bible in his childhood.
But Freiligrath, like Uhland and Her-
wegh, was a man of action and a patriot. The revolution of 1848 had
brought fresh breezes into the stagnation of political life; and though
they soon were stilled again, the men who had breathed that air
ceased to be the dreamers of dreams that the romantic poets had
been. They were conscious of a mission, and became the robust
heralds of a larger and a freer time.
Freiligrath was a schoolmaster's son; he was born at Detmold on
June 17th, 1810, and much against his private inclinations, he was
sent in his sixteenth year to an uncle in Soest to prepare himself for
a mercantile career. The death of his father threw him upon his own
resources, and he took a position in an Amsterdam bank. Here the
inspiration of the sea widened the range of his poetic fancy. To
Chamisso is due the credit of introducing the poet to the general

FERDINAND FREILIGRATH


## p. 6003 (#593) ###########################################

FERDINAND FREILIGRATH
6003
public through the pages of the Musenalmanach. This was in 1835.
In 1838 appeared the first volume of his poems, and it won instant
and unusual favor; Gutzkow called him the German Hugo. With this
encouragement Freiligrath definitely abandoned mercantile life. In
1841 he married. At the suggestion of Alexander von Humboldt, the
King of Prussia granted him a royal pension; and as no conditions
were attached, it was accepted. This was a bitter disappointment to
the ardent revolutionary poets, who had counted Freiligrath as one of
themselves; but the turbulent times which preceded the revolution
soon forced him into an open declaration of principles, and although
he had said in one of his poems that the poet was above all party,
in 1844, influenced by Hoffmann von Fallersleben, he resigned his
pension, announced his position, and in May published a volume of
revolutionary poems entitled 'Mein Glaubensbekenntniss' (My Con-
fession of Faith). This book created the wildest enthusiasm, and
placed its author at once in the front rank of the people's partisans.
He fled to Brussels, and in 1846 published under the title of 'Ça Ira'
six new songs, which were a trumpet-call to revolution. The poet
deemed it prudent to retire to London, and he was about to accept
an invitation from Longfellow to cross the ocean when the revolu-
tion broke out, and he returned to Düsseldorf to put himself at the
head of the democratic party on the Rhine. But he was a poet and
not a leader, and he indiscreetly exposed himself to arrest by an
inflammatory poem, 'Die Todten an die Lebenden' (The Dead to the
Living). The jury however acquitted him, and he at once assumed
the management of the New Rhenish Gazette at Cologne.
It is a curious fact that during this agitated time Freiligrath
wrote some of his tenderest poetry. In the collection which appeared
in 1849 with the title 'Zwischen den Garben' (Between the Sheaves),
was included that exquisite hymn to love: 'Oh, Love So Long as Love
Thou Canst,' perhaps the most perfect of all his lyrical productions,
and certainly evidence that the poet could touch the strings to deep
emotions. In the following year both volumes of his 'New Political
and Social Poems' were ready. Once more he prudently retired to
London; his fears were confirmed by the immediate confiscation of
these new volumes, and by the publication of a letter of apprehen-
sion. By way of reprisal he wrote his poem 'The Revolution,' which
was published in London.
In 1867 the Swiss bank with which Freiligrath was connected
closed its London branch, and the poet again faced an uncertain
future. His friends on the Rhine, hearing of his difficulties, raised a
generous subscription, and taking advantage of a general amnesty, he
returned to the fatherland and became associated with the Stuttgart
Illustrated Magazine. In 1870 appeared a complete collection of his


## p. 6004 (#594) ###########################################

6004
FERDINAND FREILIGRATH
poems; in 1876, 'New Poems'; and in the latter year, on March 18th,
he died at Cannstatt in Würtemburg.
The question which Freiligrath asks the emigrants in his early
poem of that name, 'O say, why seek ye other lands? — was des-
tined to find frequent and bitter answer in his own checkered career;
but he never swerved from the liberal principles which he had pub-
licly announced. His political poems were among the most powerful
influences of his time, and they have a permanent value as the
expression of the spirit of freedom. His translations are marvels of
fidelity and beauty. His Hiawatha' and 'The Ancient Mariner,'
together with his versions of Victor Hugo, are perhaps the best ex-
amples of his surpassing skill. His own works have been for the
most part excellently translated into English. His daughter published
during her father's lifetime a volume of his poems, in which were
collected all the best English translations then available. The exotic
subjects of his early poems make them seem the most original, as
for example 'Der Mohrenfürst' (The Moorish Prince) and 'Der
Blumen Rache' (The Revenge of the Flowers); the unusual rhymes
hold the attention, and the sonorous melody of the verse delights the
ear: but it is in a few of his superb love lyrics that he touches the
highest point of his genius, although his fame continues to rest upon
his impassioned songs of freedom and his name to be associated with
the rich imagery of the Orient.
THE EMIGRANTS
CANNOT take my eyes away
I
From you, ye busy, bustling band,
Your little all to see you lay
Each in the waiting boatman's hand.
Ye men, that from your necks set down
Your heavy baskets on the earth,
Of bread, from German corn baked brown
By German wives on German hearth,-
And you, with braided tresses neat,
Black-Forest maidens, slim and brown,
How careful on the sloop's green seat
You set your pails and pitchers down!
Ah! oft have home's cool shady tanks
Those pails and pitchers filled for you;


## p. 6005 (#595) ###########################################

FERDINAND FREILIGRATH
6005
By far Missouri's silent banks
Shall these the scenes of home renew,-
-
The stone-rimmed fount in village street
Where oft ye stooped to chat and draw,-
The hearth, and each familiar seat,-
The pictured tiles your childhood saw.
Soon, in the far and wooded West
Shall log-house walls therewith be graced;
Soon many a tired tawny guest
Shall sweet refreshment from them taste.
From them shall drink the Cherokee,
Faint with the hot and dusty chase;
No more from German vintage, ye
Shall bear them home, in leaf-crowned grace.
O say, why seek ye other lands?
The Neckar's vale hath wine and corn;
Full of dark firs the Schwarzwald stands;
In Spessart rings the Alp-herd's horn.
Ah, in strange forests you will yearn
For the green mountains of your home,-
To Deutschland's yellow wheat-fields turn,—
In spirit o'er her vine-hills roam.
How will the form of days grown pale
In golden dreams float softly by,
Like some old legendary tale,
Before fond memory's moistened eye!
The boatman calls,-go hence in peace!
God bless you,- wife, and child, and sire!
Bless all your fields with rich increase,
And crown each faithful heart's desire!
Translation of C. T. Brooks.


## p. 6006 (#596) ###########################################

6006
FERDINAND FREILIGRATH
WHA
THE LION'S RIDE
WHAT! wilt thou bind him fast with a chain?
Wilt bind the king of the cloudy sands?
Idiot fool! he has burst from thy hands and bands,
And speeds like Storm through his far domain.
See! he crouches down in the sedge,
By the water's edge,
Making the startled sycamore boughs to quiver!
Gazelle and giraffe, I think, will shun that river.
Not so! The curtain of evening falls,
And the Caffre, mooring his light canoe
To the shore, glides down through the hushed karroo,
And the watch-fires burn in the Hottentot kraals,
And the antelope seeks a bed in the bush
Till dawn shall blush,
And the zebra stretches his limbs by the tinkling fountain,
And the changeful signals fade from the Table Mountain.
Now look through the dusk! What seest thou now?
Seest such a tall giraffe! She stalks,
All majesty, through the desert walks,-
In search of water to cool her tongue and brow.
From tract to tract of the limitless waste
Behold her haste!
Till, bowing her long neck down, she buries her face in
The reeds, and kneeling, drinks from the river's basin.
But look again! look! see once more
Those globe-eyes glare! The gigantic reeds
Lie cloven and trampled like puniest weeds,—
The lion leaps on the drinker's neck with a roar!
Oh, what a racer' Can any behold,
'Mid the housings of gold
In the stables of kings, dyes half so splendid
As those on the brindled hide of yon wild animal
blended?
Greedily fleshes the lion his teeth
In the breast of his writhing prey; around
Her neck his loose brown mane is wound.


## p. 6007 (#597) ###########################################

FERDINAND FREILIGRATH
6007
Hark, that hollow cry! She springs up from beneath
And in agony flies over plains and heights.
See, how she unites,
Even under such monstrous and torturing trammel,
With the grace of the leopard, the speed of the camel!
She reaches the central moon-lighted plain,
That spreadeth around all bare and wide;
Meanwhile, adown her spotted side
The dusky blood-gouts rush like rain-
And her woeful eyeballs, how they stare
On the void of air!
Yet on she flies-on, on; for her there is no retreating;
And the desert can hear the heart of the doomed one beat-
ing!
And lo! A stupendous column of sand,
A sand-spout out of that sandy ocean, upcurls
Behind the pair in eddies and whirls;
Most like some colossal brand,
Or wandering spirit of wrath
On his blasted path,
Or the dreadful pillar that lighted the warriors and women
Of Israel's land through the wilderness of Yemen.
And the vulture, scenting a coming carouse,
Sails, hoarsely screaming, down the sky;
The bloody hyena, be sure, is nigh,—
Fierce pillager, he, of the charnel-house!
The panther, too, who strangles the Cape-Town sheep
As they lie asleep,
Athirst for his share in the slaughter, follows;
While the gore of their victim spreads like a pool in the
sandy hollows!
She reels, but the king of the brutes bestrides
His tottering throne to the last: with might
He plunges his terrible claws in the bright
And delicate cushions of her sides.
Yet hold! -fair play! - she rallies again!
In vain, in vain!
Her struggles but help to drain her life-blood faster;
She staggers, gasps, and sinks at the feet of her slayer
and master!


## p. 6008 (#598) ###########################################

6008
FERDINAND FREILIGRATH
She staggers, she falls; she shall struggle no more!
The death-rattle slightly convulses her throat;
Mayest look thy last on that mangled coat,
Besprent with sand, and foam, and gore!
Adieu! The orient glimmers afar,
And the morning-star
Anon will rise over Madagascar brightly. —
So rides the lion in Afric's deserts nightly.
REST IN THE BELOVED
(RUHE IN DER GELIEBTEN)
From Lyrics and Ballads of Heine and Other German Poets. Copyright
1892, by Frances Hellman. Reprinted by permission of G. P. Putnam's
Sons, publishers, New York.
H, HERE forever let me stay, love!
Here let my resting-place e'er be;
And both thy tender palms then lay, love,
OH.
Upon my hot brow soothingly.
Here at thy feet, before thee kneeling,
In heavenly rapture let me rest,
And close my eyes, bliss o'er me stealing,
Within thine arms, upon thy breast.
I'll open them but to the glances
That from thine own in radiance fall;
The look that my whole soul entrances,
O thou who art my life, my all!
I'll open them but at the flowing
Of burning tears that upward swell,
And joyously, without my knowing,
From under drooping lashes well.
Thus am I meek, and kind, and lowly,
And good and gentle evermore;
I have thee-now I'm blessed wholly;
I have thee-now my yearning's o'er.
By thy sweet love intoxicated,
Within thine arms I'm lulled to rest,
And every breath of thine is freighted
With slumber songs that soothe my breast.


## p. 6009 (#599) ###########################################

FERDINAND FREILIGRATH
6009
A life renewed each seems bestowing;
Oh, thus to lie day after day,
And hearken with a blissful glowing
To what each other's heart-beats say!
Lost in our love, entranced, enraptured,
We disappear from time and space;
We rest and dream; our souls lie captured
Within oblivion's sweet embrace.
Ο
OH, LOVE SO LONG AS LOVE THOU CANST
H, LOVE So long as love thou canst!
Oh, love so long thy soul have need!
The hour will come, the hour will come,
When by the grave thy heart shall bleed!
And let thy heart forever glow
And throb with love, and hold love's heat,
So long on earth another heart
Shall echo to its yearning beat.
And who to thee his heart shall show,
Oh raise it up and make it glad!
Oh make his every moment blithe,
And not a moment make him sad!
Guard well thy tongue; a bitter word
Soon from the mouth of anger leaps.
O God! it was not meant to wound,-
But ah! the other goes and weeps.
Oh, love so long as love thou canst!
Oh, love so long thy soul have need!
The hour will come, the hour will come,
When by the grave thy heart shall bleed!
Thou kneelest down upon the grave,
And sink'st in agony thine eyes,-
They never more the dead shall see,—
The silent church-yard hears thy sighs.
―
Thou mourn'st: "Oh, look upon this heart,
That here doth weep upon this mound!
Forgive me if I caused thee pain,-
O God, it was not meant to wound! "
-


## p. 6010 (#600) ###########################################

6010
FERDINAND FREILIGRATH
But he, he sees and hears thee not;
He comes not, he can never know:
The mouth that kissed thee once says not,
"Friend, I forgave thee long ago! "
He did forgive thee long ago,
Though many a hot tear bitter fell
For thee and for thy angry word;
But still he slumbers soft and well!
Oh, love so long as love thou canst!
Oh, love so long thy soul have need!
The hour will come, the hour will come,
When by the grave thy heart shall bleed!
Translation of Dr. Edward Breck.


## p. 6010 (#601) ###########################################

Co


## p. 6010 (#602) ###########################################


MCRICKE
GUSTAV FREYTAG.
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## p. 6010 (#603) ###########################################

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6011
GUSTAV FREYTAG
(1816-1895)
USTAV FREYTAG, one of the foremost of German novelists, was
born July 13th, 1816, in Kreuzburg, Silesia, where his father
was a physician. He studied alternately at Breslau and Ber-
lin, at which latter university he was given the degree of a doctor
of philosophy in 1838. In 1839 he settled as a privatdocent at the
University of Breslau, where he lectured on the German language
and literature until 1844, when he resigned his position to devote
himself to literature. He removed to Leipzig in 1846, and the fol-
lowing year to Dresden, where he married. In 1848 he returned to
Leipzig to edit with Julian Schmidt the weekly journal Die Grenz-
boten, which he conducted until 1861, and again from 1869 to 1870.
In 1867 he became Liberal member for Erfurt in the North German
Reichstag. In 1870, on the breaking out of the Franco-Prussian war,
he was attached to the staff of the Crown Prince, later the German
Emperor Frederick III. , and remained in service until after the bat-
tle of Sedan. Subsequently to 1870 his journalistic work was chiefly
for the newly established weekly periodical Im Neuen Reich. In
1879 he retired from public life and afterward lived in Wiesbaden,
except for the summer months, which he spent on his estate Sieble-
ben near Gotha. He died at Wiesbaden, April 30th, 1895.
All of Freytag's earliest work, with the single exception of a vol-
ume of poems published in 1845 under the title 'In Breslau,' is dra-
matic. His first production was a comedy, 'Die Brautfahrt' (The
Wedding Journey), published in 1844, which although it was awarded
a prize offered by the Royal Theatre in Berlin, found but indifferent
popular favor, as did its successor, the one-act tragedy Die Ge-
lehrte (The Scholar). With his next play, 'Die Valentine' (1846),
Freytag however was signally successful. This was followed the
year after by Graf Waldemar. ' He attained his highest dramatic
success with the comedy Die Journalisten' (The Journalists), which
appeared in 1853, and since its first production in 1854 has main-
tained its place as one of the most popular plays on the German
stage. But one other play followed, the tragedy 'Die Fabier' (The
Fabii), which appeared in 1859.
He had begun in the mean time his career as a novelist with his
most famous novel, 'Soll und Haben' (Debit and Credit), which was


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6012
GUSTAV FREYTAG
published in 1855 and met with an immediate and unbounded suc-
cess. The appearance of this first novel, furthermore, was most
significant, for it marked at the same time an era both in German
literature and in its author's own career, in that it introduced into
the one in its most recent phase one of the profoundest problems of
modern life in Germany, and unmistakably pointed out, in the other,
the direction which he was subsequently to follow. This latter state-
ment has a twofold bearing. It is not only that as a writer of novels
Freytag did his most important and lasting work, but that the whole
of this work was in a manner the development of a similar tendency.
Although as different as need be in environment, all of his subsequent
novels embody inherently the characteristics of 'Debit and Credit,'
for like it, they are all well-defined attempts to depict the typical
social conditions of the period in which they move, and their char-
acters are the carefully considered types of their time. Freytag,
with a philosophic seriousness of purpose perhaps characteristically
German, is writing not only novels but the history of civilization, in
his early work. Later on, the didactic purpose to a certain extent
overshadows the rest; and although he never loses his power of tell-
ing a story, it is the history in the end that is paramount.
'Debit and Credit' is a novel of the century, and it takes up the
great problem of the century, the position of modern industrialism in
the social life of the day. Its principal centre of action is the busi-
ness house of the wholesale grocer T. O. Schröter, who is an admira-
ble embodiment of the careful, industrious, and successful merchant.
In sharp contradistinction to him is the Baron von Rothsattel, the
representative of earlier conditions in the organization of the State,
which made the nobleman pre-eminently a social force. Freytag's
polemic is not only the dignity of labor under present conditions.
but the absolute effeteness of the old order of things that despised
it.
The real hero of the story is Anten Wohlfahrt, who begins his
commercial career as a youth in the house of T. O. Schröter, and
ends, after some vicissitudes, as a member of the firm. Mercantile
life has nowhere been better described in its monotony, its interests,
and its aspirations, as the story is developed; and although at first
sight no field could be more barren in literary interest, there is in
reality no lack of incident and action, whose inevitable sequence makes
the plot. Anton's career in the house of Schröter is interrupted by
his connection with the Baron von Rothsattel, who has, through his
want of a business training and his lack of a knowledge of men,
fallen into the hands of a Jew money-lender; by whom he is per-
suaded to mortgage his land in order to embark in a business under-
taking which it is presumed will increase his fortune. His mill fails,
however, and he is involved in difficulties from which he is unable


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GUSTAV FREYTAG
6013
to extricate himself. Anton, the intimate friend of the family, is
therefore persuaded by the Baroness to undertake the management
of matters, and after vainly endeavoring to induce his principal to
interest himself in the affair, sacrifices his position to accompany the
family to their dilapidated estate in a distant province. The Baron
will tolerate no interference, however, and Anton finally returns to
the house of Schröter and is reinstated in the business. Lenore, the
Baron's daughter, the first cause of Anton's interest, meantime becomes
engaged to the young nobleman Fink; who has been an associate of
Anton's in the office of T. O. Schröter, has but recently returned
from the United States, and who first advances funds for the improve-
ment of the estate and ultimately purchases it.
Fink acts his part in the author's philosophy as a contrast to the
Baron von Rothsattel. Although a nobleman, he has adapted himself
to the conditions of the century, and is free from any hallucinations
of his hereditary rank, even while he is perfectly awake to its tradi-
tions. He has entered upon a commercial career not from choice, but
from necessity; but he has accepted his fate and has made successful
use of his opportunities. Anton marries the sister of T. O. Schröter,
and becomes a partner in the business. Fink is however really the
one who gains the princess in this modern tale, and is plainly to
have the more important share as an actual social force in the future.
The old feudal nobility has played its part on the stage of the world;
and being so picturesque, and full of romantic opportunity, its loss
is doubtless to be regretted. The tamer realities of the modern in-
dustrial state have succeeded it. As Freytag solves the problem in
'Soll und Haben,' it is the man who works, the man of the indus-
trial classes alone, to whom the victory belongs in the modern social
struggle, be his antecedents bourgeois or aristocratic.
Freytag's second great novel, 'Die Verlorene Handschrift' (The
Lost Manuscript), which appeared in 1864, concerns itself with another
phase of the same problem. This time, however, instead of the mer-
chant and man of affairs, it is the scholar about whom the action
centres. Felix Werner, professor of philology, has come upon unmis-
takable traces of the lost books of Tacitus, whose recovery is the
object of his life. In his search for the manuscript in an old house
in the country he finds his future wife Ilse, one of the finest types in
all German literature of the true German woman, both while at home
a maid in her father's house and subsequently as the professor's wife
in the university town. Werner, in his scholarly absorption, unwit-
tingly neglects his wife, whose beauty has attracted the attention of
the prince; and there is a series of intrigues which threaten seriously
to involve the innocent Ilse, until the prince's evil intentions become
evident even to the unsuspecting Werner. The covers of the lost
manuscript are actually discovered at last, but the book itself has


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GUSTAV FREYTAG
vanished. In this second novel Freytag displays a most genial
humor, unsuspected in the author of 'Debit and Credit,' but apparent
enough in The Journalists. ' The professorial life is admirably
drawn with all its lights and shadows; and its motives and ambi-
tions, its peculiar struggles and strivings, have never been more
understandingly treated. The story, however, even more than 'Debit
and Credit,' displays the author's weaknesses of construction. The
plot is so confused by digressions that the main thread is sometimes
lost sight of, and the tendency to philosophical generalization, which
as a German is to some extent the author's birthright, reaches in
these pages an appalling exemplification. What had been an extraor-
dinary novel pruned of these defects, is still not an ordinary novel
with them; and as a picture of German university life from the point
of view of the professor, The Lost Manuscript' stands unrivaled in
literature. Again the thesis in this second novel is the dignity of
labor, and the nobleman fares no better at the author's hands than
in the mercantile environment of the first.
These two novels, which outside of Germany are Freytag's best
claim to attention, were followed by the four volumes of 'Bilder aus
der Deutschen Vergangenheit (Pictures from the German Past: 1859-
62), a series of studies of German life from different epochs of its
history, intended to illustrate the evolution of modern conditions
through their successive stages from the remote past. Freytag's early
work as a university docent had particularly fitted him for this sort of
writing, and some of his best is contained in these books.
More important still, however, was his next great work, the long
series of historical novels 'Die Ahnen' (The Ancestors: 1872-80), an
ambitious plan, born of the stirring events of the Franco-Prussian
War and the resultant awakening of the new spirit of nationality, to
trace the development of the German people from the earliest time
down to the present day. To carry out this purpose he accordingly
selects a typical German family, which he describes under the char-
acteristic conditions of each period, with the most conscientious at-
tention to manners and customs and social environment. The same
family thus appears from generation to generation under the changing
conditions of the different epochs of German history, and the whole
forms together the consecutive Culturgeschichte of the nation.
This whole long series of 'The Ancestors' stands as a monument
of careful research into the most minute factors of German life in
their time of action. Freytag's antiquarianism is not of the dilet-
tante kind that is content to masquerade modern motives in ancient
garb and setting. He was fully conscious of all the elements of his
problem, and he sought to reproduce the intellectual point of view
of his actors, and to account for their motives of action, as well
as to picture accurately their material environment. It is in his


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GUSTAV FREYTAG
6015
super-conscientiousness in these directions that the inherent weakness
of the novels of this series lies.
They are too palpably reconstructions
with a purpose.
Their didacticism is wrapped around them like a
garment; and much of the time, that is all that is visible upon the
surface. As the series advances this fault grows upon them. They
are in reality of very unequal interest. 'Ingo' and 'Ingraban are
the sprightliest in action, and have been as a consequence the
most widely read of these later works, many of which are, in part at
least, far too serious of purpose to play their part conspicuously well
as novels.
The novels of The Ancestors' are a culmination of Freytag's
literary evolution. As a playwright he will no doubt be forgotten ex-
cept for The Journalists'; in which he has, however, left an imper-
ishable play which German critics have not hesitated to call the best
comedy of the century. The two novels of modern life from his
middle period form together his greatest work, although here, and
particularly in The Lost Manuscript,' he has overweighted his ma-
terial with abstract discussion, in which his perspective has some-
times all but disappeared. Subsequently, both the 'Bilder' and 'Die
Ahnen' show his decided predilection for historical studies. The
struggle in his own case was between the scholar and the man of
letters, in which the scholar eventually won possession of the field.
Freytag's other work includes-'Die Technik des Dramas (The
Technique of the Drama: 1863), a consideration of the principles of
dramatic construction; the life of his friend Karl Malthy, 1870; and
'Der Kronprinz und die Deutsche Kaiserkrone' (The Crown Prince and
the German Imperial Crown: 1889), written after the death of Fred-
erick III. , with whom Freytag had had personal relations. To accom-
pany the collected edition of his works (1887-88), he wrote a short
autobiography, 'Erinnerungen aus Meinem Leben' (Recollections from
My Life).
PR
THE GERMAN PROFESSOR
From The Lost Manuscript>
ROFESSORS wives
also have trouble with their husbands.
Sometimes when Ilse was seated in company with her
intimate friends with Madame Raschke, Madame Struve-
lius, or little Madame Günther - at one of those confidential
coffee parties which they did not altogether despise, many things
would come to light.
The conversation with these intellectual women was certainly
very interesting. It is true the talk sometimes passed lightly
-
-


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6016
GUSTAV FREYTAG
over the heads of the servants, and sometimes housekeeping
troubles ventured out of the pond of pleasant talk like croaking
frogs. To Ilse's surprise, she found that even Flaminia Struvelius
could discourse seriously about preserving little gherkins, and
that she sought closely for the marks of youth in a plucked
goose. The merry Madame Günther aroused horror and laughter
in more experienced married women, when she asserted that she
could not endure the crying of little children, and that from the
very first she would force her child (which she had not yet got)
to proper silence by chastisement. Thus conversation sometimes
left greater subjects to stray into this domain. And when un-
important subjects were reviewed, it naturally came about that the
men were honored by a quiet discussion. At such times it was
evident that although the subject under consideration was men in
general, each of the wives was thinking of her own husband, and
that each silently carried about a secret bundle of cares, and
justified the conclusion of her hearers that that husband too
must be difficult to manage.
Madame Raschke's troubles could not be concealed; the whole
town knew them. It was notorious that one market day her hus-
band had gone to the university in his dressing-gown-in a
brilliant dressing-gown, blue and orange, with a Turkish pattern.
His students, who loved him dearly and were well aware of his
habits, could not succeed in suppressing a loud laugh; and
Raschke had calmly hung the dressing-gown over his pulpit,
held his lecture in his shirt-sleeves, and returned home in one of
the students' overcoats. Since that time Madame Raschke never
let her husband go out without herself inspecting him. It also
appeared that all these ten years he had not been able to learn
his way about the town, and she dared not change her residence,
because she was quite sure that her professor would never re-
member it, and always return to his old home. Struvelius also
occasioned much anxiety. Ilse knew about the last and greatest
cause; but it also came to light that he expected his wife to
read Latin proof-sheets, as she knew something of that language.
Besides, he was quite incapable of refusing commissions to amia-
ble wine merchants. At her marriage Madame Struvelius had
found a whole cellar full of large and small wine casks, none of
which had been drawn off, while he complained bitterly that no
wine was ever brought into his cellar. Even little Madame
Günther related that her husband could not give up night work;


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GUSTAV FREYTAG
6017
and that once, when he wandered with a lamp among his books,
he came too near the curtain, which caught fire. He tore it off,
and in so doing burnt his hands, and burst into the bedroom
with blackened fingers in great alarm, and resembling Othello
more than a mineralogist.
Raschke was wandering about in the ante-room. Here too
was confusion. Gabriel had not yet returned from his distant
errand; the cook had left the remains of the meal standing on a
side-table till his return; and Raschke had to find his greatcoat
by himself. He rummaged among the clothes, and seized hold
of a coat and a hat. As he was not so absent-minded as usual
to-day, a glance at the despised supper reminded him just in
time that he was to eat a fowl; so he seized hold of the news-
paper which Gabriel had laid ready for his master, hastily took
one of the chickens out of the dish, wrapped it in the journal,
and thrust it in his pocket, agreeably surprised at the depth and
capaciousness it revealed. Then he rushed past the astonished
cook, and out of the house. When he opened the door of the
étage he stumbled against something that was crouching on the
threshold. He heard a horrible growling behind him, and stormed
down the stairs and out of doors.
The words of the friend whom he had left now came into his
mind. Werner's whole bearing was very characteristic; and there
was something fine about it.