12, January, 1831, 743-44) and was
reprinted
in
Essays, (II, 160-64), seems to have been connected with the
unrealized plan for the History.
Essays, (II, 160-64), seems to have been connected with the
unrealized plan for the History.
Thomas Carlyle
So as soon as possible he recalled the manuscript of
Volume I from William Fraser in London (Froude, II, 94). If
the project as a whole should henceforth fail to interest any re-
sponsible publisher enough to warrant its continuation, Carlyle
hoped that parts already written might be converted into review
articles for immediate disposal to cover current living expenses
(Letters of Carlyle, pp. 165-66; Froude, II, 95-96). Before the
month of August was ended, still another ingenious though complex
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? INTRODUCTION
xx ix
plan suggested itself to him. That is, he might collect the peri-
odical essays he had already printed on various aspects and fig-
ures of German literature, might write a few more such essays
--for example, on Luther, Lessing, Herder--for incorporation
with them, might use the present manuscript volume and a half
of medieval materials as an introduction to that main body of
modern German materials, might write a circumspective con-
clusion to round out the whole, and might eventually publish the
composite result as a Zur Geschichte (if not a genuine Geschichte)
of German literature (Froude, II, 96-97; Goethe Correspondence,
pp. 209-10). Such a plan of eventually articulating his manu-
script materials with his already published essays would in no
way hinder his quarrying now from the mass of manuscript ma-
terials in hand a number of review articles for immediate pub-
lication. So, after Francis Jeffrey had failed to interest the pub-
lisher Longman in the original project, Carlyle set about arrange-
ments to convert parts of the manuscript into articles for cash
(Letters of Carlyle, p. 171; Froude, II, 101). And early in 1831
he produced two substantial review articles and some parts of a
third. As later reprinted in Essays, II, the three articles are
now known by the following titles: "The Nibelungen Lied, " "Early
German Literature, '* and "Taylor's Historic Survey of German
Poetry" (see Letters of Carlyle, pp. 178, 180, 189, 191, 194;
Two Note Books, pp. 181-83; Napier Correspondence, p. 101;
Froude, II, 114, 122).
The fragmentary work, even after parts of it were utilized in
those review articles, did not drop at once out of Carlyle's mind.
Late in 1831 and early in 1832 he still hoped and planned to sup-
plement it and eventually to publish it as a Zur Geschichte (Two
Note Books, pp. 196, 231, 254-55; Napier Correspondence, pp.
113-14; Letters of Carlyle, pp. 278, 286). But as those pros-
pects failed one by one and as his interest in German literature
was gradually superseded by other interests after the death of
Goethe, his critical estimate of the History? which estimate had
never been extravagant--dropped lower. Only a little more need
be said concerning Carlyle's efforts to utilize the work. One point
is especially interesting. That is --if a rather uncertain note that
Carlyle wrote in 1866 across the last page of the manuscript can
be trusted--he may have read over some of the materials while
he was rapidly preparing for his unpublished first series of lec-
tures (Six Lectures on German Literature) in 1837, and he may
have taken some part of the manuscript with him to the platform
to serve as notes (presumably not needed) for the first lecture
(see Note 231). And finally, two years later (in 1839), in order
to suggest that the fragmentary History (along with certain other
manuscripts) would not be suitable for Emerson to publish in
America, Carlyle made what we may here consider his own ter-
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? INTRODUCTION
minal critical comment upon the work:
[It is] a long rigamorole dissertation (in a grabbed sardonic
vein) about the early history of the Teutonic Kindred, wrig-
gling itself along not in the best style through Proverb lore,
and I know not what, till it end (if my memory serve) in a
kind of Essay on the Minnesingers. It was written almost
ten years ago, and never contented me well. . . . [it is] a
thing not fit for you, nor indeed at bottom for anybody, though
I have never burnt it yet. My other Manuscripts are scratch-
ings and scrawlings. (Emerson Correspondence, I, 227-28)
As Carlyle commented thus casually upon the manuscript that had
cost him dear in many ways, perhaps neither he nor his American
correspondent was aware of what may now be clear to any Car-
lyle student who considers the case with care. Though the evi-
dence cannot be elaborated here, Carlyle's work at that project
in 1830 had had some important effects upon his development in-
to a historian. And his disappointment at its failure had co-oper-
ated with various other -- at the time seemingly unrelated--develop-
ments to alienate him from his long-loved German literature.
Ill: The Actual Manuscript of the History: Description
and Provenience
The Yale Manuscript Volume I of this History is all that
is known to exist in manuscript form. It consists of ninety
long sheets, closely written in black ink on one side only. Its
six chapters, one of them fragmentary, are paginated from 1 to
68 and from 89 to 110. (The missing twenty pages were removed
by Carlyle in 1831 from Chapter V for use in a review article. )
Many of the ninety pages show alterations. Most frequently, per-
haps, the changes were made for what may be termed stylistic
reasons. 9 The fact that there is only occasional evidence of ba-
sic reorganization of materials suggests that most of this manu-
script was written from some cruder form or from notes. That
is, presumably this particular copy was meant for the printer.
Though the presence of numerous crossed-out expressions and
many interlinings would not be hard to account for in printer's
copy from such a careful revisionist as Carlyle was, the omission
of all but one of the chapter headings in the manuscript is a some-
what more puzzling problem. Nevertheless, all--or all except a
very few words--of this long manuscript can be read and under-
stood. Four of the chapters (I, II, III, and VI) have never before
been printed.
9 Much information about Carlyle's practice of revision can
be found in Miss Calder's recent study of the two extant manu-
scripts of Past and Present.
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? INTRODUCTION
xxxi
The manuscript has had only one owner outside the Carlyle
family. About 1875, its author gave it, along with many other
papers, to his niece and faithful amanuensis Mary Carlyle Ait-
ken (Wilson, II, 195). And during more than half a century
thereafter, it remained her property and, after her death, the
property of her cousin Alexander Carlyle, whom she had mar-
ried in 1879. In 1901, this Alexander Carlyle, a nephew of the
author, sent a typescript copy of the four unpublished chapters
to Charles Eliot Norton, the American editor of many of Car-
lyle's papers. Possibly Norton considered publishing it, ^ust as
Froude was considering publication at the time of Max Muller's
advice to him (see pp. xxxii-xxxiii); but its lack of direct bearing
upon the bitter controversy then in the ascendant may have had
some effect in the decision. The typescript, with Alexander
Carlyle's annotations, has long been in the Harvard University
Library. Meanwhile, the manuscript itself remained, as before,
in the Carlyle family. It was sold by Sotheby's in 1932, after
the death of Alexander Carlyle. The purchaser, apparently the
late Gabriel Wells of New York, must have been acting merely
as a friendly agent of Yale University, for neither he nor his
firm retained record of any part in this particular transaction.
Soon after the sale, the document passed into the permanent
possession of Yale University.
IV: Evaluation of the History
Although Carlyle's History would have been the best English
account of medieval German literature available in 1830, it is
of course not likely to be used by many present-day seekers of
information concerning medieval German literary history. Much
of the work is avowedly compilation to improve the then state of
knowledge about German literature. It was produced by a man
who (by present standards of scholarship) would seem inadequate-
ly grounded in this particular part of his field; and it would seem
(by present standards for such a work) weak in source materials.
The amount of time that Carlyle devoted to this part of the under-
taking would today seem inadequate for such a task. Moreover,
during that time, he was groping his way under untoward cir-
cumstances. Furthermore, the work is fragmentary. And it is
a fragment from which some of the best literary criticism was
early selected by Carlyle himself for publication in periodical
form.
Nevertheless, when all deductions are allowed, the work does
have real significance. In the first place, though only two chap-
ters (IV and V) of Volume I influenced his contemporaries, the
volume is a record of the status of German medieval studies in
Britain just as the first generation of romantics was ending. The
most obvious significance in that connection is, however, that it
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? xxxii
INTRODUCTION
supplements--as it alone can do--our knowledge of Carlyle's
own interest in medieval German culture, as he arrived at the
middle of his fourth decade. Reference to this work will show
him more sympathetic in his interpretation of that early era of
culture and more cognizant of some important points of view
concerning it than heretofore he has been considered, and will
facilitate a fuller and fairer estimate than has before been pos-
sible of his place in medieval studies at a critical time in their
development and in his. Parts of the work show too, better
than they can be found elsewhere in so small a compass, his
interest in various aspects (sometimes comparative) of folklore
and etymology, and an early interest in Scandinavian and Norse
materials. The work elaborates his faith in the future, as well
as in the past, of the Teutonic race. It shows his concept of the
social and political, as well as the cultural, bearings of world
literature. It documents in an important way the development
of his philosophy of history. Many phases in the work show too
his organizing mind, able to give shape to stubborn matter and
to endow hidden purpose with a name. Furthermore, it shows
passages of his mature critical insight. It reveals aspects of
the ethical and moral and esthetic profundity that had character-
ized and distinguished Carlyle to the venerable Goethe's mind in
1828. And, especially notable to students of the later Carlyle,
that earnest depth was then harmoniously coupled with the broad
tolerance that in 1831 was to strike even the young John Stuart
Mill as the widefet he had known. Worthy too of at least men-
tion in this connection, the work shows in a few places some of
the images and figures and stylistic turns that hint the Sartor
Resartus soon to come. Of these significances--and of various
other significances that will be found by careful reading of the
present work--the common denominator is obvious. Here is a
record of Carlyle's mind at work during some of the finest and
most imaginative months of his mature life--the months immedi-
ately preceding Sartor Resartus.
Directly in line with what has just been said about the impor-
tance of this History of German Literature, a comment by Max
Mtiller is worth careful consideration. When in 1880, Froude
submitted the manuscript to Mtiller and asked his advice about
whether or not to publish it, Mtiller replied thus:
I have only to-day finished Carlyle's MS. It is very pleasant
reading--here and there I feel sure there are pages which I
had read elsewhere--in his Miscellanies, I think. What a pity
he did not finish it and publish at the time. Now you could only
publish it as a curious fragment showing the state of knowledge
of German Literature at the time:--but it was a time before
Grimm and Lachmaxgg and others, and therefore much of it has
a historical interest only. It is all strong and sound--much
better than thousands of books that are printed every day--yet
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? INTRODUCTION
xxxiii
I doubt whether you could publish it as coming from Carlyle.
However you know best. I should like to have it in print,
but I should not print it myself--except for private circulation.
(Wilson, II, 195)
Of course part of Muller's caution sprang from the fact that Car-
lyle, known then very widely as an authoritative writer on German
literature and history, was still alive in 1880. To publish the
work then as coming from the biographer of Schiller, the trans-
lator and interpreter of Goethe, and the historian of Frederick
the Great might thus have been an imposition upon, and to some
degree an impediment to, general readers seeking the most help-
ful guidance then available on medieval German literature. From
that viewpoint, at the end of half a century of great progress in
medieval studies, Muller properly judged the then fifty-year-old
work as a treatise that was out of date. Nevertheless, Muller
pointedly suggested the other value of the work. And today, sev-
enty years after Miiller's wise judgment, Carlyle scholarship
will consider the work no longer just a treatise on German liter-
ature but primarily a Carlyle document from the year 1830.
V: Notice concerning Editorial Method
In the manuscript, as already mentioned, Carlyle usually
omitted analytical chapter headings; presumably he intended to
insert them later, in the proofs. Since such aids are legitim-
ately desired by all readers, I have inserted in the proper places
in the text my own approximations, worked out from the chapters
themselves and conforming as much as is practical to the patterns
Carlyle used in Chapter I and in his letter of May 23, 1830, to
Goethe. These interpolations and all other interpolations--they
are few in number--are enclosed in brackets. And whenever ex-
planations are needed, they are given in notes.
The editorial notes are placed after the text. This arrange-
ment is not an arbitrary one: two sets of circumstances dictated
it. In the first place, Carlyle himself used footnotes to his text
-- some of them long footnotes, extending more than one page.
And occasionally those Carlyle footnotes require some editorial
annotation. The confusion that would ensue between two systems
of footnoting, the author's and the editor's, would be indefensible.
In the second place, it seems desirable to include in this hereto-
fore inaccessible record of Carlyle's thought, certain explanations,
some comparisons in textual matters, and frequent accounts of
what his literary allusions meant to him in 1830. A few of these
editorial additions, especially the accounts dealing with Carlyle's
early readings and establishing the contexts of his 1830 allusions,
are too long for inclusion as footnotes. To condense them to smal-
ler compass would render them less useful. And to omit them en-
tirely would defeat one of the purposes of this edition--that of il-
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? xxx iv
INTRODUCTION
luminating as far as possible Carlyle's intellectual development
up to his thirty-fifth year. For those reasons, the notes are
placed after the text.
The notes are numbered consecutively throughout. Usually
Carlyle's first allusion to any particular author, work, or idea
is the one annotated. As already indicated, some of these notes
are extensive enough to suggest Carlyle's earlier relations with
an author or idea, and to suggest important tendencies that may
have emerged during those relations. Cross reference is not
elaborate, for the index is frequently a sufficient guide.
An index to the volume enables a reader to trace the authors
and some of the ideas alluded to in the text and in the introduction
and notes. The page numbers in arabic type ranging from 1
through 87 refer to Carlyle's text and his footnotes. All other
numbers, roman and arabic, refer to pages in the editorial in-
troduction and notes.
The bibliography is alphabetically arranged under key abbre-
viations. Such abbreviations are employed in the introduction
and notes in order to save space. Experienced readers will have
little difficulty with this system of abbreviated documentation,
which is expanded in the bibliography.
VI: Hypothetical Reconstruction of the Original Volume
and a Half That Carlyle Is Known to Have Written
To reconstruct what Carlyle worked out in the stone farm-
house at Craigenputtock during the spring and summer of 1830,
one may piece together six sections of material, all of which
are now available. They will assume the following order: (1)
the essay "On History" (Essays, II, 83-95), which was origin-
ally written to introduce the History; (2) the History itself, as
printed in the present volume, from the beginning of the text
down to the break in Chapter V (pp . 1-67); (3) most of the
last half of the essay "The Nibelungen Lied" (Essays, II, from
the bottom of p. 242 through p. 273, omitting only pp. 265-70);
(4) the remainder of the History, as printed in the present vol-
ume (Chapter VI, pp. 68-87); (5) the essay "Early German
Literature" (Essays, II, 274-332), which is presumably most
of what was written in the only half-finished and now lost Vol-
ume II of the manuscript; and (6) parts of the essay "Historic
Survey of German Poetry" (Essays, II, 333-73), which essay
contains here and there elements pertaining to the time before
Luther. This reconstruction will no longer be difficult, for it
involves the use of only one volume of Carlyle's Essays (Vol.
II) to supplement the present volume. 10
lOSince some of the materials mentioned above are not parts
of the extant manuscript History and therefore are not printed
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? INTRODUCTION
XXXV
VII: Acknowledgments
The final place in this introduction is reserved for acknow-
ledgments of various kinds of indebtedness not specifically noted
elsewhere. The debt to Yale University and its officials is a
basic one, for allowing me a decade ago to study the manuscript,
for granting permission to edit it, and for providing a microfilm
copy of it. Harvard University Library has furnished a micro-
film copy of the Norton Typescript of the manuscript. MacMur-
ray College Library, University of Illinois Library, and Univer-
sity of Kentucky Library have provided, sometimes by inter-library
loans, the reference materials needed for the editorial work.
LawrenceS. Thompson -- German scholar, linguist, and biblio-
grapher, as well as director of Libraries at the University of
Kentucky -- has been kind enough to examine critically the whole
of the present volume; and many of his suggestions for improve-
ment have been utilized. Helen Chadwick Shine at all stages of
or annotated in the present volume, certain facts about them
are worth notice here. "On History, " of which no manuscript
is known, was first printed as "Thoughts on History" in Fra-
ser's Magazine (II, No. 10, November, 1830, 413-18). The
reprinted version (Essays, II, 83-95) shows many changes in
mechanics but none in meaning. "Early German Literature, "
which belonged to the unknown manuscript of the only half-
finished Vol. II of the History, was first printed as "German
Literature of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries" in the
Foreign Quarterly Review (VIII, No. 16, October, 1831, 347-
91). Carlyle himself in 1839 specifically said that this essay,
which he called Reinecke Fox, was part of his unfinished His-
tory (Emerson Correspondence, I, 227-28). The reprinted
version (Essays, II, 274-332) shows relatively few changes in
punctuation, one in paragraphing, four corrections of spellings
that might have been misleading, and the omission of part of a
footnote; but there is no basic change in meaning. "Historic
Survey of German Poetry, " which deals extensively with the
modern period and therefore owes perhaps relatively little to
any part of the manuscript, was first printed as "Taylor's
Historic Survey of German Poetry" in the Edinburgh Review
(LIII, No. 105, March, 1831, 151-80). The reprinted ver-
sion (Essays, II, 333-73) contains many changes in mechanics
but none in meaning. Finally, an heretofore unmentioned bit,
"Luther's Psalm, " which was first printed in Fraser's Maga-
zine (II, No.
12, January, 1831, 743-44) and was reprinted in
Essays, (II, 160-64), seems to have been connected with the
unrealized plan for the History. Though on August 6, 1830,
Carlyle quoted in German a stanza of this hymn (Froude II,
94), he perhaps did not make the English translation until about
October 10 (Letters of Carlyle, p. 173). And his brief intro-
duction to it may date from even later.
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? xxxvi
INTRODUCTION
the task has patiently transcribed and advised and encouraged.
The Research Fund Committee of the University of Kentucky
has subsidized the publication. And the officials and staff of
the University of Kentucky Press have given careful and respon-
sible attention to the production. To them -- institutions and
individuals -- I wish to indicate in these few words my grateful
sense of obligation.
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? Chapter I
Introduction. Of Literature, and its Influences. --Literary
Histories: Design of the present jonej. 1
AS, IN THE material things, the seven or ten old Corporate
Trades nowise, in these days, occupy the whole field of indus-
try, but some of our most essential conveniences are now fur-
nished by miscellaneous craftsmen of no guild-privileges what-
ever; so likewise is it in things spiritual: the ancient guildhall
no longer, in either case, represents the collective handicrafts,
but often only a small and half-obsolete part of them. There is a
Church of long standing in most countries; but no Tithes are
anywhere levied, or Convocations held, for behoof of the News-
paper Press; the artists who make Laws for us are an old,
wealthy, well-known Corporation, while again our Songmakers
are poor and without charter, who nevertheless, as we have
heard on good authority, are the more important class of the
two. 2 ,
Literature, the strange, composite set of Agencies which
men designate by that word, has in late times, as we see, ob-
tained a specific name; so that we can now say an Author, as we
say a Carpenter or Smith, and talk of the Literary world, as we
do of the Clerical, Medical, Legal: but this is nearly all the
length we have got. Not for the Writer of Books, whatever it
might do for the Binder of Books, has Government, or Custom,
hitherto passed any enactment, appointed any guidance or fur-
therance, better or worse; not so much as bound him to serve
an apprenticeship. While Theology has its Schools and Cathe-
drals; Law its Inns of Court; Physic its Royal Colleges, and Sa-
lernian Diplomas;3 Mathematics, Chemistry, Mechanics, nay
Farriery itself, their Institutes, their Professors and accredited
Graduates, --Literature has been left to fight or fail for itself;
to spring up spontaneously, in such shape as the transient re-
quisitions of Mode, or the accidental characters of individuals
might direct. The Author takes up his craft, exercises it, finds
payment for it, does incalculable good or incalculable mischief
with it, wheref,] whenf,] and how seems him fit. To the Govern-
ment, one would think, whether he preached forth everlasting
wisdom, and became the benefactor of whole generations, or
spouted the sheerest delirium, it were all one. Only if he chance
to run foul of the Government itself, is an effort made with gags
and curb-bits: for let the Holy of Holies in Man's Mind be faith-
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? 2
HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE
fully ministered to, or made a den of thieves, the sacred Con-
stable-staff shall not be sniffed at. Nay sometimes, by way of
preventive, the more paternal sort of Governments have insti-
tuted a Censorship for Literature; which however proving rather
to be a thorn in the nose of our Leviathan, 4 than a soft leading-
string and support for him, he has scornfully shaken away. But
let it not be said that Governments are like spring-guns and thief-
takers, motionless so long as mere Good is doing or to do, alert
only when Mischief is astir: have they not, to encourage the true
Literary man, sold him, on cheap terms, a certain right of prop-
erty in his own Thoughts, which he has only created, not manu-
factured; so that for the space of fourteen years long he may even
sell them at what they will bring, and live on the proceeds? 5
The truth is, Literature cannot well be legislated for: except
in some Utopian community, where the Philosophers have become
Kings, 6 or the Kings Philosophers, and the Game Laws are set-
tled on a satisfactory basis, Parliaments have no time for such
deliberations. Still more is, and was always, the insight want-
ing. Literature, like other as momentous results of man's ex-
ertion, took its rise in humble beginnings, scarcely, among the
more stirring concerns of society, arresting the eye even of a
minute observer; but flowing silently, as it were in separate rills,
each indeed with its verdant margin, inviting to the peaceful wan-
derer; yet scanty in water; far apart from one another; and only
in after times, to be united into that mighty river of Thought, of
published Opinion, on which all human interests are now embark-
ed and steered. Nay, even in these days, far from looking for-
ward with prospective contrivance into Literature, how many are
there that can rightly discern so much of it as is before their
eyes? The course and meaning of external things is complex
enough; infinitely more so that of spiritual and invisible things.
News of the famous victory over the French is conveyed by tele-
graph, in a few hours, to all ends of the world; but news of the
much more famous victory over the Powers of Darkness spreads
far slower; perhaps in some half-century, beginning to be faintly
whispered. The Luther, 7 the Hume8 is often overtopped by pig-
mies on high pedestals, his voice is but one sound amid the uni-
versal din; and not till both pigmy and pedestal have melted into
nothingness, does it appear that those others were giants and im-
mortal. Truly we may say, no Parliament, till there be a more
than Radical Reform in it, can legislate for such things. Wa[i]ting
for which happy consummation, literature must even grope its
own way, and perish or prevail in the general chaos, as so much
else has to do.
Nevertheless, in all times, and long before the era of Books,
Literature, what may be called Literature, has had the deepest
influence on the business of the world. For in all times, as in
the present, Conviction is the parent of Action; whether the Law
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? OF LITERATURE
3
be promulgated in thunders from Sinai; or written, as with a
pen of air, silently yet ineffaceably, by man, in the hearts of
men. Thus new Truths may be called the most important of
events; or rather, they are the only important ones. Nay as
separated from the more strictly logical and scientific provinces
of Thought, wherein Philosophy, Polity, Economy, and all man-
ner of didactic and immediately practical speculations hold their
rule, Literature has still a wide empire in man's mind; and if
not the widest, yet the deepest and surest; for its sphere is in
our inmost nature, and embraces the primary fountains whence
Thought and Action take rise. Defined never so narrowly, Liter-
ature includes the whole Kingdom of Poetry, which is indeed the
soul and essence of what in common speech, we specially mean
by that vague term. So that Literature, if it be not Thought, is
the Music of Thought; which indeed does not plead to us by logical
demonstration and computation, yet awakens mysterious and far
more potent impulses than these: the deep tones of Imagination,
the gay melodies of Fancy, which sound or slumber in every bos-
om; and once awakened, lead not to this action or to that, but to
all Action; thenceforward moulding our whole life and mind. We
err much when we suppose that Understanding, the part of our
nature which can be moved by syllogisms, is stronger than Ima-
gination; which last, we may rather say, is as the boundless In-
visible to the small Visible, as the infinite Universe to the little
horizon we command with our eye. 9 It is but a small portion of
any life that is determined by perception of things seen: the dull-
est worlding worships not his golden or clay idols, of guineas or
acres, but a divinity which lies hidden in these; he knows well, his
sleep is not softer, or his fare more savoury, than the poor man's;
only he would have an unseen empire in the hearts of his brethren;
he too is an Idealist, sacrifices Ease to Ambition, the palpable and
calculable to the invisible good. Our very senses, whether for
pleasure or pain, are little more than implements of Imagination.
What are Fear and Hope, mounting to rapture, or sinking to de-
spair, but Pictures which it draws? Nay even for the dullest of
us is not our earthly Life a little Isle of Dreams girdled round by
the infinite Unknown? Is not all vision based on Mystery, all Mat-
ter Spirit^ or something stranger, and our week day business
shadowed over by thoughts that wander thro' Eternity? ^ Fearful,
majestic, unfathomable, in these hearts of ours, is the Witness
and Interpretess of that Unknown! Her minister, the Poet, were
he true to himself and to his art, is still an Orpheus; can bend the
knotted oaks with his lyre! Our whole Life has been shaped and
moulded by him; our thought, our will still hangs on his words:
his domain is all the Infinite in man. 'Who but the Poet, ' cries
one, himself the noblest of living Seers and Singers, 12 'who but
the Poet was it that first formed gods for us; that exalted us to
them, and brought them down to us! '
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? 4
HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE
Apart from these deeper considerations, it is curious to
observe how universally the Poet still vindicates his sway over
us, how the Pleasures of Imagination are part of the inheritance
of all men. In every man, there lies a mystic universe, which
when the words, 'Let there be light, '13 are spoken, starts into
visibility; and the astonished soul beholds itself in that wide
Wonderland, which thence forward with all its splendour and its
gloom, is to be our own. Who can forget his Fairy Tales, his
Giantkiller, and Fortunatus, and Doctor Faustus, whether learned
from the lips of a garrulous nurse; or purchased, in sackcloth-
and-ashes paper, with the penny saved from sweetmeats ? 14 It
was then for the first time that Mind was found to be higher than
Matter; the Palate compared with the Imagination a barren thing.
And afterwards, when an enlightened skepticism had demolished
those glittering air-castles, and now only Truth and pictures of
Truth were to be our joy, was Imagination, as we fancied, broken
down into a patient house-drudge menial; or still, tho' under more
cunning guise, lord paramount of the inward Kingdom? We again
followed the Ideal, our best wealth was not of this world. Not as
seen with the dim bodily eye, but as mirrored in the magic of
Imagination, had Man and Nature their true meaning for us. Our
first Novel, our Crusoe, our Roderick Random, in which Fiction
wearing a new semblance of Reality, still shadows forth a scene
which is ideal, was again one of the most memorable epochs in
our life. 15 What happens to one has, in this form or the other,
happened to all. There is no nation, raised one grade above the
wild animals, that has not what we may call its Literature: its
Traditions, its Mythologies, its Singers and Narrators. The
Arabs gather round their fire in the desart, and think not of sleep,
while the inward eye is kept so wakeful: in the tale of venturous
love, with its moving accidents by flood and field, all bodily things
are forgotten, and every spirit hangs entranced on the spirit of
the speaker, as if his rudely modulated utterance were music of
the spheres. Nay the Lazzaroni on the quays of Naples, have their
Romancers; and even pay them copyright: often, on bright days,
among these ragged children of nature, appears some ragged ora
tor, or reader, with his time-worn and thumb-worn Tasso, 1? or
his clear, unworn memory and invention; the circle closes round
him; shaggy faces, dark eyes kindle with his story; by word and
gesture they applaud, condemn, pity or triumph; and alas, at
the utmost nodus, that spiritual Magnetiser stops short, and the
copper coins must all be lodged in his hat, before the spell will
proceed. So sweet is the music of Poesy even to the simplest;
so far into the outskirts of existence has Imagination asserted her
sway.
Thus Literature may be called the earliest and the noblest pro-
duct of man's spiritual nature; and at all epochs of his history, is
to be seen spreading out, in flowers and fruits, over the whole field
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? OF LITERATURE
5
of his existence. From the time of the Sibylline Verses to that
of the London Gazettes, the spoken or written Word, under a
thousand different aspects prophetic, poetic, didactic, has ever
been the grand index and agent of our progress; the element in
which Mind lived and moved. Literature unites the Past with
the Present; and the scattered Present into one whole: itself
silent and bodyless, only in the long run a picture of the brain,
it utters and embodies the voices and doings of all generations,
and of separate Men makes Nations and a Mankind.
Still more impressive and universally palpable have been its
influences in later, chiefly in very late times, when being not
only the festive song or worship of the people, but their business
speech also, it has gone forth professedly as the exponent of
their Opinion, and thereby as ultimate regulator of all their in-
terests. Literature is now seen to be not only a moving power
among men, but the most important of all moving powers. In
truth, it is both a new name, and a new form, new mode of oper-
ation, for much that has always been most essential in society.
Literature, that is to say, the empire of the Press, has spread
itself over many ancient provinces whence reverent oracles were
wont to issue for our guidance; and is yet spreading daily, so
that in time all must become tributary to it, or be absorbed in it.
Our sole accredited Teachers, in these days, are Books: it is by
their light, as it reaches us immediately through types, or medi-
ately thro' oral exposition, that in all things we act and walk;
Books are more than Kings to us, they are also prophets and
priests. 17 Independently of Journals and other Political writ-
ings, which in every country where there is a free Press, must
ultimately render Government, be its technical form what it may,
a Democracy, and perhaps the only genuine and possible Demo-
cracy, 18 reducing the duty of the Sovereign to that of a mere Po-
liceman, better or worse paid, more or less kindly dealt with, --
there is no department of our public or private interests over
which Literature does not rule, acknowledged or not, with abso-
lute authority. The ideas of the wisest are now spoken in the
hearing of all; and these, one day, when the ideas of the foolish
are evaporated, must and will become the universal law. Clergy
may preach, and Senators enact: but the true preachers and law-
givers of the community lie in the shelves of Libraries. 19 With
few does religious belief extend much farther than the threshold
of the Church: him who on Sunday listened as an orthodox tithe-
paying Christian to the godlike lesson of Humility, 20 yOU shall
find on Monday with percussion pistols at Chalk Farm. 21 Does
he not believe in the Thirty-Nine Articles ? Faithfully, it may
be; but these are only the patent ladder for mounting into Heaven;
the 'way of the world' points in quite another direction. The
world learns its ways, not from Church Articles and Visitation
Sermons, but in complex action and reaction, on the three thousand
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? 6
HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE
four hundred gentlemen that write with ease. 22 Let any one try
to compute the influence of the very Minerva Novels! 23 These
washy husks are thrown on the virgin mould of our young and as
yet empty mind, where even the half-dead grain of mustard-seed
will be forced into life, and grow to be a wide-spreading tree.
It is they that teach us our magnanimities, and punctilios, and
senses of honour, and the other meteors and shooting-stars we
steer by: the common Compass-card of Profit and Loss, with
the needle, agitated but constant, ever pointing homeward, com-
pletes, in combination with these, our instruction for the voyage.
How many real flesh-and-blood biographies have those same
pasteboard Cliffords and Adelaides" shaped out and modelled,
whose Moral Philosophy, brought home by example to every bos-
om, lectures to the unfurnished head from all Circulating Libra-
ries, and at second hand wherever two or three are gathered to-
gether! Books are now to us as the lamp of our whole path; and
the most miserable rushlights and falsest will-o'-wisps find some
to lead and mislead.
Of an element so important in man's life as Literature, nay
which is fast becoming all-important, some inspection and des-
criptive survey, could not but seem useful. Accordingly the
smallest insight into so vast a matter, any vestige of order point-
ed out in what, by nature, seems so fortuitous, and miscellane-
ous, and infinitely completted, is and has long been universally
welcome. Witness so many Critics, with their 'Courses of Litera-
ture'; and more lately, the Elegant Extractors, Specimenists, and
the whole mixed multitude of Reviewers, reprospective and cir-
cumspective, innumerable as the sea-sands; so that it might al-
most seem as if the Madrid Glass-manufactory were our pattern,
wherein for eleven workmen there were nineteen clerks. Never-
theless the parallel does not hold; for these clerks, if worth any-
thing, are themselves glass-makers, nay lustre-makers, and
throw out prismatic light on the whole shop. Of the many that
work in green glass, and throw out nothing but a pallid darkness-
visible, let no mention be made here. --
Above all, any History of a National Literature, could it be
accomplished according to the ideal of such a work, might prove
the most instructive of all the Histories. History is written that
we may understand how men, in time past, have lived and had
their being; what they have done, and, which is still more im-
portant, what they have been. Now a national Literature, so far
as it can deserve that name, is not only the noblest achievement
of the nation, but also the most characteristic; the truest emblem
of the national spirit and manner of existence; out of which, in-
deed, it directly springs, as a purified essence, and disembodied
celestial, [sicjlikeness, and into which again, in strong influences,
it continually descends. 25 Nowhere does the mind and life of a
nation, in all its specialties, and deep-laid yet light and almost
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? OF LITERATURE
7
evanescencent fsicl individualities, so faithfully shadow itself,
as in the mirror of its Art and Literature; in which two, or in
rather which last, for it virtually includes the former, lies the
only complete record both of What it has felt and thought, and
of How it has felt and thought. These charmed words of the
Poet are as windows into his own inmost soul, and into those
others that loved and encouraged him in his art. Whereas the
movements of the Statesman or Captain, tho' whole kingdoms
hung thereon, are at best out-of-doors transactions; between us
and their real origin and meaning, stand always dark walls, im-
penetrable except to our surmises. The Historian who should
picture for us, in any measure, the true significance of a national
Literature, would bring the essential life of the nation far nearer
us than he who treated merely of its material operations whether
in War or Industry, nay even of its Laws and Polity. Or rather,
let us say, each of these aspects, well illustrated, would add
clearness to the other; and so, comparing Word with Act, a much
truer insight into the whole living phenomenon might be obtained.
Still more profitable for such insight would a Series of Liter-
ary Histories be, wherein all nations were brought into view of
one another, and the united light of a Whole, more and more per-
fectly evolving itself in that survey, should be made to illustrate
each of the Parts. For the rest, the manifold uses of such na-
tional intercourse, and mutual understanding, are palpable enough.
This closer acquaintanceship among nations, this new curiosity
we are all manifesting towards our neighbours, especially the ef-
fort everywhere making to gain some knowledge of their Literature,
is justly reckoned among the most cheering signs of the times.
Directly in face of that poor calumny on human nature that those
we know least are often best esteemed, it may be asserted that
among nations, as among individuals, Knowledge, provided it be
genuine, is the sure parent of Affection; that to no man, not to the
meanest and worst, did we thoroughly penetrate his secret heart,
and survey from his point of view the strange chaotic quarry of
Difficulties and Possibilities, among which he lives, and where-
from he, even he, has built up or begun a little edifice of Freewill,
and Moral Good, should we refuse some pity, some approval and
Love. This freer intercourse, and reciprocal familiarity among
nations, whom Commerce indeed brings together, but only Litera-
ture can cause [to] speak together, and understand each other, is
already widening our horizon, and adding in many ways to our in-
tellectual gratification and resources: but its effects one day may
be much more momentous than these. What is it, for example,
but strangeness to each other, but ignorance of each other, that
influences national hatreds, aggravates all casual misunderstand-
ings into fierce discord, and makes the bloody delirium of War
almost perpetual in this Earth? Let nations begin to know each
other, and they will begin to love each other; for virtues are in
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? 8
HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE
each, otherwise it were not there;26 and man is drawn by invisible
links towards all worth in man. Surely the time will come when
nations instead of regarding themselves as natural enemies, will
find that they are natural friends; when it will be discovered that
we are all brothers and fellow-soldiers engaged, as our fathers
have been and as our sons will be, in one mighty ever-enduring
warfare against Necessity and Evil, and that all other war is but
madness and wicked mutiny. Or if this time can never arrive,
the nearer and nearer approximation of it may be longed for;
wherein if madness must visit certain of us, it may be known
for madness, and by interposition of the sane, be softened in
its paroxysms, and the sooner put an end to.
Such fruits, even in a political respect, are to be anticipated
from the general cultivation of foreign Literature, from the free
interchange of Thought between nation and nation; and this the
more surely and speedily, as the influence falls first and strong-
est on the learned classes, who by their writings are guides of
the unlearned. What still higher benefits, in a moral and spirit-
ual point of view, might follow, were the Literature of all coun-
tries harmonized, in thinking minds, into one World-Literature;27
wherein all that was accidental, transient, local should fall away;
and only the necessary, universal and perennial remaining, the
entire Truth, now so disjointed and discoloured, of man's past
Existence and Endeavour should unite itself into one magnificent
Whole, accessible to all, and thenceforward to be consciously
cooperated in by all: this is a cheering consideration in part open
to every one, yet stretching into long dim vistas, which the wisest
cannot discriminate into form, yet look upon with wonder and hope.
Literature is now not only our grand Arsenal and Storehouse,
wherein all that Time has done for us is to [be] preserved and turned
to use; but it is becoming also, what is infinitely more, our grand
Metropolitan Temple, where, if anywhere, all men are to meet
and worship. 28 To the perfection and purifying of Literature, of
Poetry, [of]Art, all eyes are turned; for in these times the deepest
interests of man seem to be involved in it; the ashes and fast-
burning fragments of the whole Past lie there, from which, amid
clouds and whirlwinds, The Phoenix Future^9 is struggling to un-
fold itself.
The Historian of a National Literature, could he ever hope to
embrace the whole meaning of his subject, would have two things
to do. First, to decipher and pourtray the spiritual form of the
nation at each successive period; how the Universe and man's Life
painted itself to their minds; and with what means, purposes, suc-
cess, they endeavoured, in gayety or earnestness, to copy and out-
wardly represent this picture. Secondly, we could wish him to
show us in what combination of external or internal circumstances,
this particular form of mind originated; not only that such and such
was the spiritual aspect of affairs, but how it came to be so. The
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? OF LITERATURE 9
whole secret of that Literature were thus laid open to us; and
many secrets besides; for we should now see clearly into the
hidden inward structure of that nation, and wherein its social
Life specially consisted; whatsoever nobleness and good it had
realized we might, in the highest conceivable degree, compre-
hend and appropriate.
Literary Historians have nowise lost sight of these severe
conditions they work under, nay rather that second and far hard-
er condition has stood too fixedly before them. Descanting, with
or without examination, with or without descriptive gift, on the
external characters of a Literature, they have seldom neglected
to look out, diligently enough, for the inward sequences and mov-
ing causes; being proud to make their History too, what general
History has long boasted of being, Philosophy teaching by Ex-
perience. 30 On the whole, that tendency we have to theorize on
all things, to 'account' for all things, is but our natural love of
order, put in action; and blameless, praiseworthy, so it over-
step not the limits. Nothing can be more natural than for a man
to build himself some small theoretical Observatory, whence he
may look around upon the world a little; only let him not try to
reach the Heavens with it, otherwise it proves a Tower of Babel,
and ends in confusion of tongues. The Stars are seen more clear-
ly from some stations than from others; but they are not to be
handled and dipt in pieces from any. Literature, Poetry, the
Sphere-music of man's soul, is one of those divine things, which,
it is to be feared, no Science, with its school-gamut, will ever
give us mastery over. Meanwhile we have theories enough where-
in the whole course and mechanism of Poetry is explained; how
it rises, prospers, declines, and even finally terminates, for
except perhaps Cookery, there seems to be no deathless art in
this world. Various are the genetical schemes of such philoso-
phers: sometimes, for instance, Poetry is found to depend on
National Wealth; as if the Greeks in the age of Homer had been
richer than in that of Alexander, the ancient Hebrew Prophets
than the modern Hebrew Goldschmids and Rothschilds. Then
again comes a Denina31 with his Political Freedom; all depends
on Freedom, on a popular constitution: forgetting the eras of
Pericles, Augustus, Leo, Philip Second; and the inconsiderable
Literature of Sparta and the Four Forest Cantons. Freedom
truly it is that makes Poets, that would make us all Poets, in
word or, still better, in deed; but Freedom of an infinitely more
surprising sort than that of the elective franchises; such Free-
dom as an Epictetus, 32 under slave fetters, may plentifully pos-
sess, and the boldest voter in Westminster, tho' the very rivers
ran ale, may altogether want. Which latter Freedom he were a
cunning man that could show us how to come at.
Volume I from William Fraser in London (Froude, II, 94). If
the project as a whole should henceforth fail to interest any re-
sponsible publisher enough to warrant its continuation, Carlyle
hoped that parts already written might be converted into review
articles for immediate disposal to cover current living expenses
(Letters of Carlyle, pp. 165-66; Froude, II, 95-96). Before the
month of August was ended, still another ingenious though complex
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? INTRODUCTION
xx ix
plan suggested itself to him. That is, he might collect the peri-
odical essays he had already printed on various aspects and fig-
ures of German literature, might write a few more such essays
--for example, on Luther, Lessing, Herder--for incorporation
with them, might use the present manuscript volume and a half
of medieval materials as an introduction to that main body of
modern German materials, might write a circumspective con-
clusion to round out the whole, and might eventually publish the
composite result as a Zur Geschichte (if not a genuine Geschichte)
of German literature (Froude, II, 96-97; Goethe Correspondence,
pp. 209-10). Such a plan of eventually articulating his manu-
script materials with his already published essays would in no
way hinder his quarrying now from the mass of manuscript ma-
terials in hand a number of review articles for immediate pub-
lication. So, after Francis Jeffrey had failed to interest the pub-
lisher Longman in the original project, Carlyle set about arrange-
ments to convert parts of the manuscript into articles for cash
(Letters of Carlyle, p. 171; Froude, II, 101). And early in 1831
he produced two substantial review articles and some parts of a
third. As later reprinted in Essays, II, the three articles are
now known by the following titles: "The Nibelungen Lied, " "Early
German Literature, '* and "Taylor's Historic Survey of German
Poetry" (see Letters of Carlyle, pp. 178, 180, 189, 191, 194;
Two Note Books, pp. 181-83; Napier Correspondence, p. 101;
Froude, II, 114, 122).
The fragmentary work, even after parts of it were utilized in
those review articles, did not drop at once out of Carlyle's mind.
Late in 1831 and early in 1832 he still hoped and planned to sup-
plement it and eventually to publish it as a Zur Geschichte (Two
Note Books, pp. 196, 231, 254-55; Napier Correspondence, pp.
113-14; Letters of Carlyle, pp. 278, 286). But as those pros-
pects failed one by one and as his interest in German literature
was gradually superseded by other interests after the death of
Goethe, his critical estimate of the History? which estimate had
never been extravagant--dropped lower. Only a little more need
be said concerning Carlyle's efforts to utilize the work. One point
is especially interesting. That is --if a rather uncertain note that
Carlyle wrote in 1866 across the last page of the manuscript can
be trusted--he may have read over some of the materials while
he was rapidly preparing for his unpublished first series of lec-
tures (Six Lectures on German Literature) in 1837, and he may
have taken some part of the manuscript with him to the platform
to serve as notes (presumably not needed) for the first lecture
(see Note 231). And finally, two years later (in 1839), in order
to suggest that the fragmentary History (along with certain other
manuscripts) would not be suitable for Emerson to publish in
America, Carlyle made what we may here consider his own ter-
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? INTRODUCTION
minal critical comment upon the work:
[It is] a long rigamorole dissertation (in a grabbed sardonic
vein) about the early history of the Teutonic Kindred, wrig-
gling itself along not in the best style through Proverb lore,
and I know not what, till it end (if my memory serve) in a
kind of Essay on the Minnesingers. It was written almost
ten years ago, and never contented me well. . . . [it is] a
thing not fit for you, nor indeed at bottom for anybody, though
I have never burnt it yet. My other Manuscripts are scratch-
ings and scrawlings. (Emerson Correspondence, I, 227-28)
As Carlyle commented thus casually upon the manuscript that had
cost him dear in many ways, perhaps neither he nor his American
correspondent was aware of what may now be clear to any Car-
lyle student who considers the case with care. Though the evi-
dence cannot be elaborated here, Carlyle's work at that project
in 1830 had had some important effects upon his development in-
to a historian. And his disappointment at its failure had co-oper-
ated with various other -- at the time seemingly unrelated--develop-
ments to alienate him from his long-loved German literature.
Ill: The Actual Manuscript of the History: Description
and Provenience
The Yale Manuscript Volume I of this History is all that
is known to exist in manuscript form. It consists of ninety
long sheets, closely written in black ink on one side only. Its
six chapters, one of them fragmentary, are paginated from 1 to
68 and from 89 to 110. (The missing twenty pages were removed
by Carlyle in 1831 from Chapter V for use in a review article. )
Many of the ninety pages show alterations. Most frequently, per-
haps, the changes were made for what may be termed stylistic
reasons. 9 The fact that there is only occasional evidence of ba-
sic reorganization of materials suggests that most of this manu-
script was written from some cruder form or from notes. That
is, presumably this particular copy was meant for the printer.
Though the presence of numerous crossed-out expressions and
many interlinings would not be hard to account for in printer's
copy from such a careful revisionist as Carlyle was, the omission
of all but one of the chapter headings in the manuscript is a some-
what more puzzling problem. Nevertheless, all--or all except a
very few words--of this long manuscript can be read and under-
stood. Four of the chapters (I, II, III, and VI) have never before
been printed.
9 Much information about Carlyle's practice of revision can
be found in Miss Calder's recent study of the two extant manu-
scripts of Past and Present.
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? INTRODUCTION
xxxi
The manuscript has had only one owner outside the Carlyle
family. About 1875, its author gave it, along with many other
papers, to his niece and faithful amanuensis Mary Carlyle Ait-
ken (Wilson, II, 195). And during more than half a century
thereafter, it remained her property and, after her death, the
property of her cousin Alexander Carlyle, whom she had mar-
ried in 1879. In 1901, this Alexander Carlyle, a nephew of the
author, sent a typescript copy of the four unpublished chapters
to Charles Eliot Norton, the American editor of many of Car-
lyle's papers. Possibly Norton considered publishing it, ^ust as
Froude was considering publication at the time of Max Muller's
advice to him (see pp. xxxii-xxxiii); but its lack of direct bearing
upon the bitter controversy then in the ascendant may have had
some effect in the decision. The typescript, with Alexander
Carlyle's annotations, has long been in the Harvard University
Library. Meanwhile, the manuscript itself remained, as before,
in the Carlyle family. It was sold by Sotheby's in 1932, after
the death of Alexander Carlyle. The purchaser, apparently the
late Gabriel Wells of New York, must have been acting merely
as a friendly agent of Yale University, for neither he nor his
firm retained record of any part in this particular transaction.
Soon after the sale, the document passed into the permanent
possession of Yale University.
IV: Evaluation of the History
Although Carlyle's History would have been the best English
account of medieval German literature available in 1830, it is
of course not likely to be used by many present-day seekers of
information concerning medieval German literary history. Much
of the work is avowedly compilation to improve the then state of
knowledge about German literature. It was produced by a man
who (by present standards of scholarship) would seem inadequate-
ly grounded in this particular part of his field; and it would seem
(by present standards for such a work) weak in source materials.
The amount of time that Carlyle devoted to this part of the under-
taking would today seem inadequate for such a task. Moreover,
during that time, he was groping his way under untoward cir-
cumstances. Furthermore, the work is fragmentary. And it is
a fragment from which some of the best literary criticism was
early selected by Carlyle himself for publication in periodical
form.
Nevertheless, when all deductions are allowed, the work does
have real significance. In the first place, though only two chap-
ters (IV and V) of Volume I influenced his contemporaries, the
volume is a record of the status of German medieval studies in
Britain just as the first generation of romantics was ending. The
most obvious significance in that connection is, however, that it
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? xxxii
INTRODUCTION
supplements--as it alone can do--our knowledge of Carlyle's
own interest in medieval German culture, as he arrived at the
middle of his fourth decade. Reference to this work will show
him more sympathetic in his interpretation of that early era of
culture and more cognizant of some important points of view
concerning it than heretofore he has been considered, and will
facilitate a fuller and fairer estimate than has before been pos-
sible of his place in medieval studies at a critical time in their
development and in his. Parts of the work show too, better
than they can be found elsewhere in so small a compass, his
interest in various aspects (sometimes comparative) of folklore
and etymology, and an early interest in Scandinavian and Norse
materials. The work elaborates his faith in the future, as well
as in the past, of the Teutonic race. It shows his concept of the
social and political, as well as the cultural, bearings of world
literature. It documents in an important way the development
of his philosophy of history. Many phases in the work show too
his organizing mind, able to give shape to stubborn matter and
to endow hidden purpose with a name. Furthermore, it shows
passages of his mature critical insight. It reveals aspects of
the ethical and moral and esthetic profundity that had character-
ized and distinguished Carlyle to the venerable Goethe's mind in
1828. And, especially notable to students of the later Carlyle,
that earnest depth was then harmoniously coupled with the broad
tolerance that in 1831 was to strike even the young John Stuart
Mill as the widefet he had known. Worthy too of at least men-
tion in this connection, the work shows in a few places some of
the images and figures and stylistic turns that hint the Sartor
Resartus soon to come. Of these significances--and of various
other significances that will be found by careful reading of the
present work--the common denominator is obvious. Here is a
record of Carlyle's mind at work during some of the finest and
most imaginative months of his mature life--the months immedi-
ately preceding Sartor Resartus.
Directly in line with what has just been said about the impor-
tance of this History of German Literature, a comment by Max
Mtiller is worth careful consideration. When in 1880, Froude
submitted the manuscript to Mtiller and asked his advice about
whether or not to publish it, Mtiller replied thus:
I have only to-day finished Carlyle's MS. It is very pleasant
reading--here and there I feel sure there are pages which I
had read elsewhere--in his Miscellanies, I think. What a pity
he did not finish it and publish at the time. Now you could only
publish it as a curious fragment showing the state of knowledge
of German Literature at the time:--but it was a time before
Grimm and Lachmaxgg and others, and therefore much of it has
a historical interest only. It is all strong and sound--much
better than thousands of books that are printed every day--yet
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? INTRODUCTION
xxxiii
I doubt whether you could publish it as coming from Carlyle.
However you know best. I should like to have it in print,
but I should not print it myself--except for private circulation.
(Wilson, II, 195)
Of course part of Muller's caution sprang from the fact that Car-
lyle, known then very widely as an authoritative writer on German
literature and history, was still alive in 1880. To publish the
work then as coming from the biographer of Schiller, the trans-
lator and interpreter of Goethe, and the historian of Frederick
the Great might thus have been an imposition upon, and to some
degree an impediment to, general readers seeking the most help-
ful guidance then available on medieval German literature. From
that viewpoint, at the end of half a century of great progress in
medieval studies, Muller properly judged the then fifty-year-old
work as a treatise that was out of date. Nevertheless, Muller
pointedly suggested the other value of the work. And today, sev-
enty years after Miiller's wise judgment, Carlyle scholarship
will consider the work no longer just a treatise on German liter-
ature but primarily a Carlyle document from the year 1830.
V: Notice concerning Editorial Method
In the manuscript, as already mentioned, Carlyle usually
omitted analytical chapter headings; presumably he intended to
insert them later, in the proofs. Since such aids are legitim-
ately desired by all readers, I have inserted in the proper places
in the text my own approximations, worked out from the chapters
themselves and conforming as much as is practical to the patterns
Carlyle used in Chapter I and in his letter of May 23, 1830, to
Goethe. These interpolations and all other interpolations--they
are few in number--are enclosed in brackets. And whenever ex-
planations are needed, they are given in notes.
The editorial notes are placed after the text. This arrange-
ment is not an arbitrary one: two sets of circumstances dictated
it. In the first place, Carlyle himself used footnotes to his text
-- some of them long footnotes, extending more than one page.
And occasionally those Carlyle footnotes require some editorial
annotation. The confusion that would ensue between two systems
of footnoting, the author's and the editor's, would be indefensible.
In the second place, it seems desirable to include in this hereto-
fore inaccessible record of Carlyle's thought, certain explanations,
some comparisons in textual matters, and frequent accounts of
what his literary allusions meant to him in 1830. A few of these
editorial additions, especially the accounts dealing with Carlyle's
early readings and establishing the contexts of his 1830 allusions,
are too long for inclusion as footnotes. To condense them to smal-
ler compass would render them less useful. And to omit them en-
tirely would defeat one of the purposes of this edition--that of il-
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? xxx iv
INTRODUCTION
luminating as far as possible Carlyle's intellectual development
up to his thirty-fifth year. For those reasons, the notes are
placed after the text.
The notes are numbered consecutively throughout. Usually
Carlyle's first allusion to any particular author, work, or idea
is the one annotated. As already indicated, some of these notes
are extensive enough to suggest Carlyle's earlier relations with
an author or idea, and to suggest important tendencies that may
have emerged during those relations. Cross reference is not
elaborate, for the index is frequently a sufficient guide.
An index to the volume enables a reader to trace the authors
and some of the ideas alluded to in the text and in the introduction
and notes. The page numbers in arabic type ranging from 1
through 87 refer to Carlyle's text and his footnotes. All other
numbers, roman and arabic, refer to pages in the editorial in-
troduction and notes.
The bibliography is alphabetically arranged under key abbre-
viations. Such abbreviations are employed in the introduction
and notes in order to save space. Experienced readers will have
little difficulty with this system of abbreviated documentation,
which is expanded in the bibliography.
VI: Hypothetical Reconstruction of the Original Volume
and a Half That Carlyle Is Known to Have Written
To reconstruct what Carlyle worked out in the stone farm-
house at Craigenputtock during the spring and summer of 1830,
one may piece together six sections of material, all of which
are now available. They will assume the following order: (1)
the essay "On History" (Essays, II, 83-95), which was origin-
ally written to introduce the History; (2) the History itself, as
printed in the present volume, from the beginning of the text
down to the break in Chapter V (pp . 1-67); (3) most of the
last half of the essay "The Nibelungen Lied" (Essays, II, from
the bottom of p. 242 through p. 273, omitting only pp. 265-70);
(4) the remainder of the History, as printed in the present vol-
ume (Chapter VI, pp. 68-87); (5) the essay "Early German
Literature" (Essays, II, 274-332), which is presumably most
of what was written in the only half-finished and now lost Vol-
ume II of the manuscript; and (6) parts of the essay "Historic
Survey of German Poetry" (Essays, II, 333-73), which essay
contains here and there elements pertaining to the time before
Luther. This reconstruction will no longer be difficult, for it
involves the use of only one volume of Carlyle's Essays (Vol.
II) to supplement the present volume. 10
lOSince some of the materials mentioned above are not parts
of the extant manuscript History and therefore are not printed
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? INTRODUCTION
XXXV
VII: Acknowledgments
The final place in this introduction is reserved for acknow-
ledgments of various kinds of indebtedness not specifically noted
elsewhere. The debt to Yale University and its officials is a
basic one, for allowing me a decade ago to study the manuscript,
for granting permission to edit it, and for providing a microfilm
copy of it. Harvard University Library has furnished a micro-
film copy of the Norton Typescript of the manuscript. MacMur-
ray College Library, University of Illinois Library, and Univer-
sity of Kentucky Library have provided, sometimes by inter-library
loans, the reference materials needed for the editorial work.
LawrenceS. Thompson -- German scholar, linguist, and biblio-
grapher, as well as director of Libraries at the University of
Kentucky -- has been kind enough to examine critically the whole
of the present volume; and many of his suggestions for improve-
ment have been utilized. Helen Chadwick Shine at all stages of
or annotated in the present volume, certain facts about them
are worth notice here. "On History, " of which no manuscript
is known, was first printed as "Thoughts on History" in Fra-
ser's Magazine (II, No. 10, November, 1830, 413-18). The
reprinted version (Essays, II, 83-95) shows many changes in
mechanics but none in meaning. "Early German Literature, "
which belonged to the unknown manuscript of the only half-
finished Vol. II of the History, was first printed as "German
Literature of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries" in the
Foreign Quarterly Review (VIII, No. 16, October, 1831, 347-
91). Carlyle himself in 1839 specifically said that this essay,
which he called Reinecke Fox, was part of his unfinished His-
tory (Emerson Correspondence, I, 227-28). The reprinted
version (Essays, II, 274-332) shows relatively few changes in
punctuation, one in paragraphing, four corrections of spellings
that might have been misleading, and the omission of part of a
footnote; but there is no basic change in meaning. "Historic
Survey of German Poetry, " which deals extensively with the
modern period and therefore owes perhaps relatively little to
any part of the manuscript, was first printed as "Taylor's
Historic Survey of German Poetry" in the Edinburgh Review
(LIII, No. 105, March, 1831, 151-80). The reprinted ver-
sion (Essays, II, 333-73) contains many changes in mechanics
but none in meaning. Finally, an heretofore unmentioned bit,
"Luther's Psalm, " which was first printed in Fraser's Maga-
zine (II, No.
12, January, 1831, 743-44) and was reprinted in
Essays, (II, 160-64), seems to have been connected with the
unrealized plan for the History. Though on August 6, 1830,
Carlyle quoted in German a stanza of this hymn (Froude II,
94), he perhaps did not make the English translation until about
October 10 (Letters of Carlyle, p. 173). And his brief intro-
duction to it may date from even later.
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? xxxvi
INTRODUCTION
the task has patiently transcribed and advised and encouraged.
The Research Fund Committee of the University of Kentucky
has subsidized the publication. And the officials and staff of
the University of Kentucky Press have given careful and respon-
sible attention to the production. To them -- institutions and
individuals -- I wish to indicate in these few words my grateful
sense of obligation.
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? Chapter I
Introduction. Of Literature, and its Influences. --Literary
Histories: Design of the present jonej. 1
AS, IN THE material things, the seven or ten old Corporate
Trades nowise, in these days, occupy the whole field of indus-
try, but some of our most essential conveniences are now fur-
nished by miscellaneous craftsmen of no guild-privileges what-
ever; so likewise is it in things spiritual: the ancient guildhall
no longer, in either case, represents the collective handicrafts,
but often only a small and half-obsolete part of them. There is a
Church of long standing in most countries; but no Tithes are
anywhere levied, or Convocations held, for behoof of the News-
paper Press; the artists who make Laws for us are an old,
wealthy, well-known Corporation, while again our Songmakers
are poor and without charter, who nevertheless, as we have
heard on good authority, are the more important class of the
two. 2 ,
Literature, the strange, composite set of Agencies which
men designate by that word, has in late times, as we see, ob-
tained a specific name; so that we can now say an Author, as we
say a Carpenter or Smith, and talk of the Literary world, as we
do of the Clerical, Medical, Legal: but this is nearly all the
length we have got. Not for the Writer of Books, whatever it
might do for the Binder of Books, has Government, or Custom,
hitherto passed any enactment, appointed any guidance or fur-
therance, better or worse; not so much as bound him to serve
an apprenticeship. While Theology has its Schools and Cathe-
drals; Law its Inns of Court; Physic its Royal Colleges, and Sa-
lernian Diplomas;3 Mathematics, Chemistry, Mechanics, nay
Farriery itself, their Institutes, their Professors and accredited
Graduates, --Literature has been left to fight or fail for itself;
to spring up spontaneously, in such shape as the transient re-
quisitions of Mode, or the accidental characters of individuals
might direct. The Author takes up his craft, exercises it, finds
payment for it, does incalculable good or incalculable mischief
with it, wheref,] whenf,] and how seems him fit. To the Govern-
ment, one would think, whether he preached forth everlasting
wisdom, and became the benefactor of whole generations, or
spouted the sheerest delirium, it were all one. Only if he chance
to run foul of the Government itself, is an effort made with gags
and curb-bits: for let the Holy of Holies in Man's Mind be faith-
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? 2
HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE
fully ministered to, or made a den of thieves, the sacred Con-
stable-staff shall not be sniffed at. Nay sometimes, by way of
preventive, the more paternal sort of Governments have insti-
tuted a Censorship for Literature; which however proving rather
to be a thorn in the nose of our Leviathan, 4 than a soft leading-
string and support for him, he has scornfully shaken away. But
let it not be said that Governments are like spring-guns and thief-
takers, motionless so long as mere Good is doing or to do, alert
only when Mischief is astir: have they not, to encourage the true
Literary man, sold him, on cheap terms, a certain right of prop-
erty in his own Thoughts, which he has only created, not manu-
factured; so that for the space of fourteen years long he may even
sell them at what they will bring, and live on the proceeds? 5
The truth is, Literature cannot well be legislated for: except
in some Utopian community, where the Philosophers have become
Kings, 6 or the Kings Philosophers, and the Game Laws are set-
tled on a satisfactory basis, Parliaments have no time for such
deliberations. Still more is, and was always, the insight want-
ing. Literature, like other as momentous results of man's ex-
ertion, took its rise in humble beginnings, scarcely, among the
more stirring concerns of society, arresting the eye even of a
minute observer; but flowing silently, as it were in separate rills,
each indeed with its verdant margin, inviting to the peaceful wan-
derer; yet scanty in water; far apart from one another; and only
in after times, to be united into that mighty river of Thought, of
published Opinion, on which all human interests are now embark-
ed and steered. Nay, even in these days, far from looking for-
ward with prospective contrivance into Literature, how many are
there that can rightly discern so much of it as is before their
eyes? The course and meaning of external things is complex
enough; infinitely more so that of spiritual and invisible things.
News of the famous victory over the French is conveyed by tele-
graph, in a few hours, to all ends of the world; but news of the
much more famous victory over the Powers of Darkness spreads
far slower; perhaps in some half-century, beginning to be faintly
whispered. The Luther, 7 the Hume8 is often overtopped by pig-
mies on high pedestals, his voice is but one sound amid the uni-
versal din; and not till both pigmy and pedestal have melted into
nothingness, does it appear that those others were giants and im-
mortal. Truly we may say, no Parliament, till there be a more
than Radical Reform in it, can legislate for such things. Wa[i]ting
for which happy consummation, literature must even grope its
own way, and perish or prevail in the general chaos, as so much
else has to do.
Nevertheless, in all times, and long before the era of Books,
Literature, what may be called Literature, has had the deepest
influence on the business of the world. For in all times, as in
the present, Conviction is the parent of Action; whether the Law
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? OF LITERATURE
3
be promulgated in thunders from Sinai; or written, as with a
pen of air, silently yet ineffaceably, by man, in the hearts of
men. Thus new Truths may be called the most important of
events; or rather, they are the only important ones. Nay as
separated from the more strictly logical and scientific provinces
of Thought, wherein Philosophy, Polity, Economy, and all man-
ner of didactic and immediately practical speculations hold their
rule, Literature has still a wide empire in man's mind; and if
not the widest, yet the deepest and surest; for its sphere is in
our inmost nature, and embraces the primary fountains whence
Thought and Action take rise. Defined never so narrowly, Liter-
ature includes the whole Kingdom of Poetry, which is indeed the
soul and essence of what in common speech, we specially mean
by that vague term. So that Literature, if it be not Thought, is
the Music of Thought; which indeed does not plead to us by logical
demonstration and computation, yet awakens mysterious and far
more potent impulses than these: the deep tones of Imagination,
the gay melodies of Fancy, which sound or slumber in every bos-
om; and once awakened, lead not to this action or to that, but to
all Action; thenceforward moulding our whole life and mind. We
err much when we suppose that Understanding, the part of our
nature which can be moved by syllogisms, is stronger than Ima-
gination; which last, we may rather say, is as the boundless In-
visible to the small Visible, as the infinite Universe to the little
horizon we command with our eye. 9 It is but a small portion of
any life that is determined by perception of things seen: the dull-
est worlding worships not his golden or clay idols, of guineas or
acres, but a divinity which lies hidden in these; he knows well, his
sleep is not softer, or his fare more savoury, than the poor man's;
only he would have an unseen empire in the hearts of his brethren;
he too is an Idealist, sacrifices Ease to Ambition, the palpable and
calculable to the invisible good. Our very senses, whether for
pleasure or pain, are little more than implements of Imagination.
What are Fear and Hope, mounting to rapture, or sinking to de-
spair, but Pictures which it draws? Nay even for the dullest of
us is not our earthly Life a little Isle of Dreams girdled round by
the infinite Unknown? Is not all vision based on Mystery, all Mat-
ter Spirit^ or something stranger, and our week day business
shadowed over by thoughts that wander thro' Eternity? ^ Fearful,
majestic, unfathomable, in these hearts of ours, is the Witness
and Interpretess of that Unknown! Her minister, the Poet, were
he true to himself and to his art, is still an Orpheus; can bend the
knotted oaks with his lyre! Our whole Life has been shaped and
moulded by him; our thought, our will still hangs on his words:
his domain is all the Infinite in man. 'Who but the Poet, ' cries
one, himself the noblest of living Seers and Singers, 12 'who but
the Poet was it that first formed gods for us; that exalted us to
them, and brought them down to us! '
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? 4
HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE
Apart from these deeper considerations, it is curious to
observe how universally the Poet still vindicates his sway over
us, how the Pleasures of Imagination are part of the inheritance
of all men. In every man, there lies a mystic universe, which
when the words, 'Let there be light, '13 are spoken, starts into
visibility; and the astonished soul beholds itself in that wide
Wonderland, which thence forward with all its splendour and its
gloom, is to be our own. Who can forget his Fairy Tales, his
Giantkiller, and Fortunatus, and Doctor Faustus, whether learned
from the lips of a garrulous nurse; or purchased, in sackcloth-
and-ashes paper, with the penny saved from sweetmeats ? 14 It
was then for the first time that Mind was found to be higher than
Matter; the Palate compared with the Imagination a barren thing.
And afterwards, when an enlightened skepticism had demolished
those glittering air-castles, and now only Truth and pictures of
Truth were to be our joy, was Imagination, as we fancied, broken
down into a patient house-drudge menial; or still, tho' under more
cunning guise, lord paramount of the inward Kingdom? We again
followed the Ideal, our best wealth was not of this world. Not as
seen with the dim bodily eye, but as mirrored in the magic of
Imagination, had Man and Nature their true meaning for us. Our
first Novel, our Crusoe, our Roderick Random, in which Fiction
wearing a new semblance of Reality, still shadows forth a scene
which is ideal, was again one of the most memorable epochs in
our life. 15 What happens to one has, in this form or the other,
happened to all. There is no nation, raised one grade above the
wild animals, that has not what we may call its Literature: its
Traditions, its Mythologies, its Singers and Narrators. The
Arabs gather round their fire in the desart, and think not of sleep,
while the inward eye is kept so wakeful: in the tale of venturous
love, with its moving accidents by flood and field, all bodily things
are forgotten, and every spirit hangs entranced on the spirit of
the speaker, as if his rudely modulated utterance were music of
the spheres. Nay the Lazzaroni on the quays of Naples, have their
Romancers; and even pay them copyright: often, on bright days,
among these ragged children of nature, appears some ragged ora
tor, or reader, with his time-worn and thumb-worn Tasso, 1? or
his clear, unworn memory and invention; the circle closes round
him; shaggy faces, dark eyes kindle with his story; by word and
gesture they applaud, condemn, pity or triumph; and alas, at
the utmost nodus, that spiritual Magnetiser stops short, and the
copper coins must all be lodged in his hat, before the spell will
proceed. So sweet is the music of Poesy even to the simplest;
so far into the outskirts of existence has Imagination asserted her
sway.
Thus Literature may be called the earliest and the noblest pro-
duct of man's spiritual nature; and at all epochs of his history, is
to be seen spreading out, in flowers and fruits, over the whole field
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? OF LITERATURE
5
of his existence. From the time of the Sibylline Verses to that
of the London Gazettes, the spoken or written Word, under a
thousand different aspects prophetic, poetic, didactic, has ever
been the grand index and agent of our progress; the element in
which Mind lived and moved. Literature unites the Past with
the Present; and the scattered Present into one whole: itself
silent and bodyless, only in the long run a picture of the brain,
it utters and embodies the voices and doings of all generations,
and of separate Men makes Nations and a Mankind.
Still more impressive and universally palpable have been its
influences in later, chiefly in very late times, when being not
only the festive song or worship of the people, but their business
speech also, it has gone forth professedly as the exponent of
their Opinion, and thereby as ultimate regulator of all their in-
terests. Literature is now seen to be not only a moving power
among men, but the most important of all moving powers. In
truth, it is both a new name, and a new form, new mode of oper-
ation, for much that has always been most essential in society.
Literature, that is to say, the empire of the Press, has spread
itself over many ancient provinces whence reverent oracles were
wont to issue for our guidance; and is yet spreading daily, so
that in time all must become tributary to it, or be absorbed in it.
Our sole accredited Teachers, in these days, are Books: it is by
their light, as it reaches us immediately through types, or medi-
ately thro' oral exposition, that in all things we act and walk;
Books are more than Kings to us, they are also prophets and
priests. 17 Independently of Journals and other Political writ-
ings, which in every country where there is a free Press, must
ultimately render Government, be its technical form what it may,
a Democracy, and perhaps the only genuine and possible Demo-
cracy, 18 reducing the duty of the Sovereign to that of a mere Po-
liceman, better or worse paid, more or less kindly dealt with, --
there is no department of our public or private interests over
which Literature does not rule, acknowledged or not, with abso-
lute authority. The ideas of the wisest are now spoken in the
hearing of all; and these, one day, when the ideas of the foolish
are evaporated, must and will become the universal law. Clergy
may preach, and Senators enact: but the true preachers and law-
givers of the community lie in the shelves of Libraries. 19 With
few does religious belief extend much farther than the threshold
of the Church: him who on Sunday listened as an orthodox tithe-
paying Christian to the godlike lesson of Humility, 20 yOU shall
find on Monday with percussion pistols at Chalk Farm. 21 Does
he not believe in the Thirty-Nine Articles ? Faithfully, it may
be; but these are only the patent ladder for mounting into Heaven;
the 'way of the world' points in quite another direction. The
world learns its ways, not from Church Articles and Visitation
Sermons, but in complex action and reaction, on the three thousand
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? 6
HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE
four hundred gentlemen that write with ease. 22 Let any one try
to compute the influence of the very Minerva Novels! 23 These
washy husks are thrown on the virgin mould of our young and as
yet empty mind, where even the half-dead grain of mustard-seed
will be forced into life, and grow to be a wide-spreading tree.
It is they that teach us our magnanimities, and punctilios, and
senses of honour, and the other meteors and shooting-stars we
steer by: the common Compass-card of Profit and Loss, with
the needle, agitated but constant, ever pointing homeward, com-
pletes, in combination with these, our instruction for the voyage.
How many real flesh-and-blood biographies have those same
pasteboard Cliffords and Adelaides" shaped out and modelled,
whose Moral Philosophy, brought home by example to every bos-
om, lectures to the unfurnished head from all Circulating Libra-
ries, and at second hand wherever two or three are gathered to-
gether! Books are now to us as the lamp of our whole path; and
the most miserable rushlights and falsest will-o'-wisps find some
to lead and mislead.
Of an element so important in man's life as Literature, nay
which is fast becoming all-important, some inspection and des-
criptive survey, could not but seem useful. Accordingly the
smallest insight into so vast a matter, any vestige of order point-
ed out in what, by nature, seems so fortuitous, and miscellane-
ous, and infinitely completted, is and has long been universally
welcome. Witness so many Critics, with their 'Courses of Litera-
ture'; and more lately, the Elegant Extractors, Specimenists, and
the whole mixed multitude of Reviewers, reprospective and cir-
cumspective, innumerable as the sea-sands; so that it might al-
most seem as if the Madrid Glass-manufactory were our pattern,
wherein for eleven workmen there were nineteen clerks. Never-
theless the parallel does not hold; for these clerks, if worth any-
thing, are themselves glass-makers, nay lustre-makers, and
throw out prismatic light on the whole shop. Of the many that
work in green glass, and throw out nothing but a pallid darkness-
visible, let no mention be made here. --
Above all, any History of a National Literature, could it be
accomplished according to the ideal of such a work, might prove
the most instructive of all the Histories. History is written that
we may understand how men, in time past, have lived and had
their being; what they have done, and, which is still more im-
portant, what they have been. Now a national Literature, so far
as it can deserve that name, is not only the noblest achievement
of the nation, but also the most characteristic; the truest emblem
of the national spirit and manner of existence; out of which, in-
deed, it directly springs, as a purified essence, and disembodied
celestial, [sicjlikeness, and into which again, in strong influences,
it continually descends. 25 Nowhere does the mind and life of a
nation, in all its specialties, and deep-laid yet light and almost
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? OF LITERATURE
7
evanescencent fsicl individualities, so faithfully shadow itself,
as in the mirror of its Art and Literature; in which two, or in
rather which last, for it virtually includes the former, lies the
only complete record both of What it has felt and thought, and
of How it has felt and thought. These charmed words of the
Poet are as windows into his own inmost soul, and into those
others that loved and encouraged him in his art. Whereas the
movements of the Statesman or Captain, tho' whole kingdoms
hung thereon, are at best out-of-doors transactions; between us
and their real origin and meaning, stand always dark walls, im-
penetrable except to our surmises. The Historian who should
picture for us, in any measure, the true significance of a national
Literature, would bring the essential life of the nation far nearer
us than he who treated merely of its material operations whether
in War or Industry, nay even of its Laws and Polity. Or rather,
let us say, each of these aspects, well illustrated, would add
clearness to the other; and so, comparing Word with Act, a much
truer insight into the whole living phenomenon might be obtained.
Still more profitable for such insight would a Series of Liter-
ary Histories be, wherein all nations were brought into view of
one another, and the united light of a Whole, more and more per-
fectly evolving itself in that survey, should be made to illustrate
each of the Parts. For the rest, the manifold uses of such na-
tional intercourse, and mutual understanding, are palpable enough.
This closer acquaintanceship among nations, this new curiosity
we are all manifesting towards our neighbours, especially the ef-
fort everywhere making to gain some knowledge of their Literature,
is justly reckoned among the most cheering signs of the times.
Directly in face of that poor calumny on human nature that those
we know least are often best esteemed, it may be asserted that
among nations, as among individuals, Knowledge, provided it be
genuine, is the sure parent of Affection; that to no man, not to the
meanest and worst, did we thoroughly penetrate his secret heart,
and survey from his point of view the strange chaotic quarry of
Difficulties and Possibilities, among which he lives, and where-
from he, even he, has built up or begun a little edifice of Freewill,
and Moral Good, should we refuse some pity, some approval and
Love. This freer intercourse, and reciprocal familiarity among
nations, whom Commerce indeed brings together, but only Litera-
ture can cause [to] speak together, and understand each other, is
already widening our horizon, and adding in many ways to our in-
tellectual gratification and resources: but its effects one day may
be much more momentous than these. What is it, for example,
but strangeness to each other, but ignorance of each other, that
influences national hatreds, aggravates all casual misunderstand-
ings into fierce discord, and makes the bloody delirium of War
almost perpetual in this Earth? Let nations begin to know each
other, and they will begin to love each other; for virtues are in
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? 8
HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE
each, otherwise it were not there;26 and man is drawn by invisible
links towards all worth in man. Surely the time will come when
nations instead of regarding themselves as natural enemies, will
find that they are natural friends; when it will be discovered that
we are all brothers and fellow-soldiers engaged, as our fathers
have been and as our sons will be, in one mighty ever-enduring
warfare against Necessity and Evil, and that all other war is but
madness and wicked mutiny. Or if this time can never arrive,
the nearer and nearer approximation of it may be longed for;
wherein if madness must visit certain of us, it may be known
for madness, and by interposition of the sane, be softened in
its paroxysms, and the sooner put an end to.
Such fruits, even in a political respect, are to be anticipated
from the general cultivation of foreign Literature, from the free
interchange of Thought between nation and nation; and this the
more surely and speedily, as the influence falls first and strong-
est on the learned classes, who by their writings are guides of
the unlearned. What still higher benefits, in a moral and spirit-
ual point of view, might follow, were the Literature of all coun-
tries harmonized, in thinking minds, into one World-Literature;27
wherein all that was accidental, transient, local should fall away;
and only the necessary, universal and perennial remaining, the
entire Truth, now so disjointed and discoloured, of man's past
Existence and Endeavour should unite itself into one magnificent
Whole, accessible to all, and thenceforward to be consciously
cooperated in by all: this is a cheering consideration in part open
to every one, yet stretching into long dim vistas, which the wisest
cannot discriminate into form, yet look upon with wonder and hope.
Literature is now not only our grand Arsenal and Storehouse,
wherein all that Time has done for us is to [be] preserved and turned
to use; but it is becoming also, what is infinitely more, our grand
Metropolitan Temple, where, if anywhere, all men are to meet
and worship. 28 To the perfection and purifying of Literature, of
Poetry, [of]Art, all eyes are turned; for in these times the deepest
interests of man seem to be involved in it; the ashes and fast-
burning fragments of the whole Past lie there, from which, amid
clouds and whirlwinds, The Phoenix Future^9 is struggling to un-
fold itself.
The Historian of a National Literature, could he ever hope to
embrace the whole meaning of his subject, would have two things
to do. First, to decipher and pourtray the spiritual form of the
nation at each successive period; how the Universe and man's Life
painted itself to their minds; and with what means, purposes, suc-
cess, they endeavoured, in gayety or earnestness, to copy and out-
wardly represent this picture. Secondly, we could wish him to
show us in what combination of external or internal circumstances,
this particular form of mind originated; not only that such and such
was the spiritual aspect of affairs, but how it came to be so. The
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? OF LITERATURE 9
whole secret of that Literature were thus laid open to us; and
many secrets besides; for we should now see clearly into the
hidden inward structure of that nation, and wherein its social
Life specially consisted; whatsoever nobleness and good it had
realized we might, in the highest conceivable degree, compre-
hend and appropriate.
Literary Historians have nowise lost sight of these severe
conditions they work under, nay rather that second and far hard-
er condition has stood too fixedly before them. Descanting, with
or without examination, with or without descriptive gift, on the
external characters of a Literature, they have seldom neglected
to look out, diligently enough, for the inward sequences and mov-
ing causes; being proud to make their History too, what general
History has long boasted of being, Philosophy teaching by Ex-
perience. 30 On the whole, that tendency we have to theorize on
all things, to 'account' for all things, is but our natural love of
order, put in action; and blameless, praiseworthy, so it over-
step not the limits. Nothing can be more natural than for a man
to build himself some small theoretical Observatory, whence he
may look around upon the world a little; only let him not try to
reach the Heavens with it, otherwise it proves a Tower of Babel,
and ends in confusion of tongues. The Stars are seen more clear-
ly from some stations than from others; but they are not to be
handled and dipt in pieces from any. Literature, Poetry, the
Sphere-music of man's soul, is one of those divine things, which,
it is to be feared, no Science, with its school-gamut, will ever
give us mastery over. Meanwhile we have theories enough where-
in the whole course and mechanism of Poetry is explained; how
it rises, prospers, declines, and even finally terminates, for
except perhaps Cookery, there seems to be no deathless art in
this world. Various are the genetical schemes of such philoso-
phers: sometimes, for instance, Poetry is found to depend on
National Wealth; as if the Greeks in the age of Homer had been
richer than in that of Alexander, the ancient Hebrew Prophets
than the modern Hebrew Goldschmids and Rothschilds. Then
again comes a Denina31 with his Political Freedom; all depends
on Freedom, on a popular constitution: forgetting the eras of
Pericles, Augustus, Leo, Philip Second; and the inconsiderable
Literature of Sparta and the Four Forest Cantons. Freedom
truly it is that makes Poets, that would make us all Poets, in
word or, still better, in deed; but Freedom of an infinitely more
surprising sort than that of the elective franchises; such Free-
dom as an Epictetus, 32 under slave fetters, may plentifully pos-
sess, and the boldest voter in Westminster, tho' the very rivers
ran ale, may altogether want. Which latter Freedom he were a
cunning man that could show us how to come at.
