Der zerbrochne Krug: Ein Lustspiel (Reclams Universal-Bibliothek) (German Edition)

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Deutsche Kultur; eine Geistesgeschichtliche Fibel. Der Hass; deutsche Zeitgeschichte. Friedrich und die grosse Koalition. Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte. Frankreich und die Franzosen. Spiritual conceptions are brought together in wonderfully affecting combinations, and a descriptive rhythm heightens the effect of the whole, which is almost like that produced by music. Still more affecting are often the very words which Klopstock uses ; he knew that the mere word bv the very charm of its sound will often throw all arts of paraphrase into the shade. Yet he is far from despising paraphrase, and is very happy in his choice of descriptive epithets.

The opening lines of some of his odes move us deeply, though the sequel is often disappointing. He can with a few strokes draw the most impressive natural scenes. In these descriptions of nature some particular scene floats before his eyes, and keeps him from wandering into vague and indefinite regions. Among his love-odes too, ihose are most successful in D 2 le latter case he writes in a simple style an ming i oem. There was one form of poetry. In his youth he hi L strong patriotism which, like his religious I his father, who was enthusiastically devoted Lt.

Be ith his disappointed the hopes which were set nage. The batile-cry of the old Teutons, the harditus mentioned by Tacitus, was supposed by Klopstock to refer to battle-songs sung by bards ; he knew of such bards from Celtic poetry, and supposed that they were also to be found among the early Germans. His classical Odes found imitators in Giseke, Ramler, Gotz, and many of his younger contemporaries. Goethe learnt from him the use of free unrhymed rhythms. His biblical epic found successors chiefly in Zurich, where the idea had really originated. The Swiss critics and their partisans greeted Klopstock with enthusiasm, and quickly made him famous.

In the summer of , Klopstock, at Bodmer's in- vitation, came to Zurich. Klopstock went to Kopenhagen, and other poets took up their abode by the Lake of Zurich, -about which he had written so manv beautiful lines. Wieland all tliat he liad missed in Klopstock. It extends over four hundred and sixty hexameters, each hexameter having an extra syllable at the begin- ning. The description is rather too detailed ; still it is not dull, ' but written throughout in an exalted style, and combined with much praise of the Deity. It was a new variation of that old yearning of the townsman for simpler conditions of life, to which Horace, and, following in his steps, Fischart and Opitz had given expression.

It was a new essay in the way of a poetic description of Nature, less in the diffuse style of Brockes than in the more concise manner of Haller. It was cer- Ch. Haller had found pure, uncorrupted scenery on nati re in the shepherds of the Alps. Gessner's shep- idyUa, It is true that we find in these idylls few touches of true unadulterated Swiss scenery ; still we may suppose that love of it, and feeling for its striking contrasts, helped to mould the taste of both Haller and Gessner.

For was not Rousseau also a Swiss, and did not he also call upon men to abandon the fictions of civilisation, of arts and sciences, and to re- turn to Nature? In France, as in Germany, the Swiss nature showed itself to be emotional and enthusiastic, and was in conse- Opposition quence opposed to the cold logic of modern ration- between the i.

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J he mtelleciual opposit. His father, a Pietist of the H; instructor from his third year, and sent him i bergen, a college near Magdeburg, in which r rule. There his emotional nature was subject course of contemplation, repentance, and ec! Pietistio and without experiencing an early and sentimental doubt. As early as his fifteenth phase in about between the opposing view! Wieland delighted in the idyllic form of poetry, and considered innocence the subject most worthy of poetic treatment The lofty idealism of his poems reminds us of Klopstock, but Wieland's writing is free from the harshness, obscurities, and exaggerations which disfigure Klopstock's poetry.

There he at first lived with Bodmer, and wrote at the same table with him ; he satisfied Bodmer's passion for biblical epics by the production of a poem on the trial of Abraham ; he openly attacked the Anacreontic poets, denouncing them as cor- ruptors of morals ; he found great delight in holding intercourse with Breitinger and other old gentlemen, he drank water and did not smoke like Klopstock, and, in short, lived for a time thoroughly after Bodmer's own heart. Then he accepted an appointment as private tutor, and, being removed from the direct influence of his Mentor, he became gradually more and more estranged from him, so that the honest Bodmer had at last to lament a new and much more bitter disillusioning than he had suflered a short time before in the case of Klopstock.

Nor was our young poet without his sorrows ; his Sophie, who had inspired his earliest poetic eflbrts, whom he had sung of as Doris and pourtrayed as Thusnelda, jilted him and gave her hand to a certam Herr von La Roche. Simple, spiritual religion is as much lacking here as in Klopstock's religious poems; but Wieland could describe in a more graphic and picturesque manner than Klopstock, and in his wealth and colour of diction he is hardly surpassed by any other German poet.

We seem to hear the voice of Goethe in some of his verses — for instance, in the following: Shaftesbury directed him Greek on to Plato and Xenophon ; this gave rise. Greek influence combined with the great historical events of the age and with the entanglements of his susceptible heart 10 bring him back to earth. One of his Platonic friendships carried him too far ; the tender-hearted enthusiast sud- denly felt himself a human lover, and had to be checked and rebuffed.

Xenophon's hero was also to become his own. Bodmer corresponded with Sulzer on the subject, but Wieland's hope in this direction was destined to be disappointed, like many others. He compromised his honour in one more love-aflfair after that, and then brought the history of his loves to a close by marrying the daughter of an Augsburg tradesman, a worthy but insignificant girl. The weak, fantastic, susceptible, and fickle youth became henceforth a model husband and father. Meanwhile, as a writer, he had entirely freed himself from the old fit of extravagant enthusiasm, and passed into the "Wieland opposite extreme, into frivolity.

Komisohe of much culture, and with a thorough knowledge of Bnah- the world ; he was the patron of Herr von La Roche lungen,'l7ee. Nothing was more natural than that Wieland should have frequent intercourse with 'them, and that the tone of the cultivated world, which, under French influence, and especially since the Regency, had taken a perceptibly frivolous turn, should affect him too, and according to his usual tendency incite him at once to literary pro- duction.

Wieland, who in his youth had so vehemently attacked the Anacreontic school, now became himself an Epicurean ; he, who had been a disciple of Bodmer, began to follow in the footsteps of Voltaire and the younger Crdbillon, and gave himself up to the poetry of humour and innuendo. This transition from extravagant enthusiasm to nature, also turned his attention to Sliakspeare, the master of naturalness and truth of delineation.

The golden age of I7fl3ri7ftft Athens, the epoch of Socrates, Pericles, Xenophon, and Plato, became henceforth the ideal region which took the place in his imagination of those paradisaic fields of the blessed, where his muse had wandered in his earlier years. Now he sought, instead of an imaginary innocence, plain, unvarnished human nature, men such as he himself was, full of kindness, and with susceptible hearts. Agathon ' is really the story of himself.

While he was in Zurich Wieland had been a rapturous admirer of Richardson's novels ; he joined with Gcllert and many others in admiring the faukless heroes set before the world by this novelist, Pamela and Clarissa and Grandison, and he even took the materials for a drama from one of these stories. Still Wieland's cha- racters are not of the solid motley texture that belongs to real men, but are thin impersonations of the opposed stages of morality through which Wieland had himself passed.

These one-sided ideals are set forth by his heroes in long dialogues, so that his novels became at the same time philosophical disquisitions. Even in the Ch. In another book, half novel, half history, he chose the cynic Diogenes as his hero, and most inappropriately grafted an Anacreontic element on the stern old philosopher. Wieland, we sec, rose from Greek men to the eternally fair ideals of Greek art, to the gods and heroes.

This time he resolved to choose some pre-Christian legend and to employ the fashionable form of the operetta. Parallel with his Greek current 46 The Age of Fre. Urick the Great, [Ch. But this time his high conception of the princely calling really brought him into contact with a princely house ; after "Wieland having been made in Professor of philosophy and called literature at Erfurt, he was called in to Weimar to Weimar.

There he was soon allowed to devote himself again exclusively to literary activity, and he lived in comfortable circumstances till his death in 1 8 1 3. If he did not always find Ch. But his ripest works were still to come see p.

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Wieland had gradually freed himself from the bonds of literary partisanship which had trammeled him as a youth at Zurich. He carefully watched Wieland's develop- ment, ridiculed his dreamy extravagance, refuted his polemics, annihilated his dramatic efforts, praised his ' Agathon,' and shared his enthusiasm for the Periclean age ; and in German literature he did for the drama what Wieland had done for the epic, he raised it from mere good intentions to real merit. He, too, came of a clergyman's His early family, and was brought up in the Lutheran faiih ; but he never had anything in common with pietism, and in his poetic language we miss the magic solemnity, the sensuous charm, 4 8 The Age of Frederick the Great, [ch.

Lessing received his public-school training at the princely college of Meissen, matriculated at Leipzig in the autumn of , at the age of seventeen, and as early as first came before the public with some short poems and a comedy. These Saxon poets were, as we have seen, thoroughly moralised writers, good-natured, self-satisfied, and as correct in their style as in their religious and political opinions; they lived as peaceable citizens, without struggles, without conflicts, happy in their mediocrity, and like quiet settlers cultivated their small field with industry and understanding.

Lessing, on the contrary, was full of the spirit of enterprise and, far from being a peaceable nature, was inclined to assail mediocrity and give no quarter. It is, therefore, all the more to his honour that he was never revolutionary in his proceed- ings ; he always started from the existing state of things, took account of present facts, and with the genuine zeal of reform aimed only at introducing gradual improvements.

Neither in poetry nor in science was he a radical innovator ; he never lost his inner balance, nor that rare tact for distinguishing the possible and the useful, in which a fiery poet's nature is so often deficient. The impulse to go forward, however, drove him from place to place, and he was not comfortably settled till late in life ; though adverse cir- cumNtances may have had much to do with this, yet it was mainly the rcsuli of his temperament.

He did not like to bind himself, he easily entered into relations and quickly broke them off, and was fond of seeking new surroundings and new interests. As early a boy he had loved books, quickly ransacking their emanoipa- contents, and school-life at first strengthened his pro- pensity towards unprofitable learning. But nature had endowed him with a cheerful and lively disposition, and with a fund of healthy mother- wit, which made him turn his pedantic teachers to ridicule, and soon revealed to him his own pedantic tendencies.

With him too the spirit of modem enlightenment breathed life into the dry bones of scholarship, while mathematics, natural science and Anacreontic poetry all helped to emancipate him. The great city, whose University he entered, widened his horizon and gave him the wish to become above all a true man, and to learn how to live his life best. He associated with actors, which gave great offence to his parents and finally he left Leipzig to try his fortunes in Berlin. The opposition between pedantry and human feeling plays the same part in his character as the oppo- sition between extravagant sentiment and nature did in Wieland's ; but while Wieland never got beyond this one problem of his life, in Lessing it was a youthful episode and he soon triumphed over it.

He went to Berlin against the will of his parents, and while they were fearing the worst for his religion and morals, he Leasing was earning a scanty but honourable livelihood by his goes to pen, writing reviews, making translations and publish- Berlin, ing original works, poems and dramas. But the apprehensions of his parents were, it must be confessed, not without foundation ; his orthodoxy was put to the test and succumbed. It was, of course, an enormous advantage for a young beginner like Lessing to be the guest of the greatest writer in Europe, and of the King of Prussia's friend.

It opened out to him prospects of instruction, advancement, and patronage, and of course, in the opinion of his parents, of spiritual harm. If Lessing had summed up his views and plans at that time, they would probably have borne a great resemblance to Voltaire's. He wished to become a free author, not to influence literature from the professorial chair, but to be independent of the academic tradition, and, like Voltaire, to rely on the intrinsic power of his pen. Voltaire had written some counsels for a journalist, in which he recommended impartiality in all things ; in philosophy he advised respect for greater thinkers, in history he called men's attention to the various grades of civilisation, and laid special stress on the modern periods ; in dramatic criticism he required faithful analysis, moderation in judgment, and a comparison with other extant pieces on the same subject.

In aesthetic criticism in general he insisted on the method of comparison, a method as valuable, he declared, in such departments of knowledge as in anatomy. The interest which he then took in history in general was not continued later, but literary history proved a sub- ject of permanent attraction to him. Lessing did not remain faithful to the physical sciences which Voltaire popularised, and neither tried his skill in the epic nor in the novel ; but he shared Voltaire's pre-eminent delight in the drama, and, like Voltaire, pro- ceeded cautiously in the reform of the stage.

In their disinclination to positive religion and in their demand for religious toleration they were both of one mind ; and Lessing's clear unadorned prose, which fits and follows every nuance of thought, might have been acquired from Voltaire, had it not been natural to himself. For good or evil, Lessing's relation to Voltaire was an important element in his life. Personally he afterwards broke with him Ch. But even without this breach, it was not in Lessing's nviture to resign himself to a foreign influence ; mere scoffing at religion exer- cised no power over his soul, and the weak points in Voltaire were too apparent to escape such a clever observer as he was.

Voltaire was lo him only a lever by which to raise himself to independence. If Voltaire had learnt from the ancients, Lessing might read them also ; if Voltaire had learnt from the English, Lessing could follow suit there, and draw from the same source as Haller, Hagedorn, and Klopstock had done. In Berlin Lessing became not dependent but free ; and, what is more important, he brought about the literary emancipation of Berlin from Swiss influence. Moses Mendelssohn, and the bookseller Nicolai, who were his literary disciples and, like himself, adhered neither to the Swiss school nor to the Gottschedians, neither raved for Klopstock nor for Sch5naich, and always reserved their own right of judgment.

When, in , he published a collected edition of his works, he was already a celebrated man, a dreaded critic and an admired poet. His little Anacreontic poems found great favour as songs, and the powerful drinking-song where Death appears before him and he succeeds in deceiving Death, has lived on among German students to this day. In his poetic fables he imitated the easy, conversational tone of Gellert. His epigrams borrowed much from foreign sources, but were seldom without the true epi- grammatic ring.

In certain fragments of didactic poems he has the conciseness of Haller without his obscurity. But it was above all as a dramatist that Lessing took the first rank among E 2 iiiry: But he did not remain pieces for the amusement of the public ; his ide; stage as a moral influence, and to prove to his fa not giving up his life to empty aims.

But unfortunately these middle-class plays often degenerate into sensationalism on the one hand, or into the depths of commonplace on the other. Lessing returned to Leipzig in the autumn of But this tour was soon interrupted by the outbreak of the Seven Years' War; Lessing returned in October, , to Leipzig, and at once became a centre of literary interests there.

Poets all of a sudden found great subjects close at hand, and no longer needed to seek their heroes in a remote past ; and though it was hard on Bodmer, Sulzer, Lessing, and others, that the hard-pressed king should a; this very time have given a man like Gottsched an 54 Tlu Age of Frederick the Great, [Ch. Lessing, though a Saxon by birth, was in his heart on Frederick's side. Another Saxon, Kastner see p.

Qf opinion that Frederick was greater than Cassar. Kleist sang the praises of his king and of the Prussian army, and the patriotic death which he had desired for himself fell to his lot at the battle of Kunersdorf A Prussian Sappho, too, Karsohin. Many other writers besides these, cultured and uncultured, a few with a vocation for poetry, many with none, made their voices loudly heard.

Klopstock, in his song on Frederick the Great, had struck a p owerful and popular tone, and had made use of a celebrated English ballad-metre. The artificial obscurity of the classical ode was laid aside, and all digressions and sudden transitions were done away with ; the grenadier-poet renounced all pomp, linsel, and even decorative epithets, and simply called things by their real names. Though he sometimes becomes too diffuse, and though we meet with harsh and awkward forms of expression in his songs, yet on the whole he gives us happy ideas and striking scenes.

Gleim is most successful in his fusion of epic and lyric elements ; he introduces God, or the king, or Frederick's generals as speaking ; his tone is now grand, now naive, now comic, and he never forgets that he must speak as being himself a fighter in the battles which he relates. Lessing might well assign a high special literary place to the grenadier-poet, and expressly reckon him as one of the ' people ' who were always at least half a century behind modern refinements of language, and therefore opposed to French canons of criticism.

He thus shows his appreciation not only of the value of national and popular poetry, but also of the great epochs of German literature. With these and such-like reflections, Lessing introduced the Grenadier-Songs to the public, and the impulse thus given was partly beneficial, partly injurious; we soon seem to trace its influence when we see the old Northern poetry and the Minnesingers coming into favour again, and the longing after the Germanic bards feeding itself on the Celtic Ossian.

Christian Felix Weisse, who had no glorious deeds to celebrate, wrote in his 'Amazon-songs,' without reference to particular battles or to any particular war; by 56 The Age of Frederick the Great, [ch. But these Grenadier-songs also produced another and much wider result. Klopstock, who had long designated him- Ch. He was acquainted with the popular play of Dr. Faustus, and proposed to make the magical Doctor a character for the regular stage.

He meant to endow him with a passionate love of truth, but finally to save him from hell ; an angel was to declare at the end of the play: In neither direction did he get beyond the mere sketch ; for the time being, the present, the Seven Years' War, laid hold on his imagination, as it also gave new impulses to his life. The same laconic style is lieasing 8 noticeable in the prose- fables which he now published. Gellert and Gleim had written fables of epic length ; the Prussian Lichtwer had made the fable the vehicle of his peculiar humour, and the Swiss Mever von Knonau had embodied in it close observation of nature.

Lessing's fables displayed none of these characteristics ; they have just the epigrammatic brevity which pro- perly belongs to so trifling a branch of didactic poetry. In Lessing's hands the fable was curtailed of the exaggerated importance which it had acquired in an age of literary sterility. But Lessing was able to convey very profound matter in his fables in spite of their concise style and meagre form ; we catch in them quiet echoes of the strong emotions of a fiery soul.

In these contrasts of true with false greatness, of real with fictitious merit, in the onslaught made on pretence, hypocrisy, and fanaticism, we have a reflection of the views of life, and probably of the life-experiences, of their proud and self-reliant author ; and this is what raises these poems to the rank of classical masterpieces in their modest sphere.

These fables, and still more an essay attacking the established view of the fable, are sufficient evidence that Lessing was dissatisfied with current literary ideals, and filled with the presentiment of a new age and a new art. But the future of poetry seemed to him to be menaced by the stirring political events and interests of the time, which nearly monopolised men's minds and incapacitated them for steady Hterary work. Accordingly, in various literary essays, he set him- self to divert men's attention to the cause of letters by discouraging bunglers, by setting those who had talent to work on worthy sub- jects, and by rendering men's artistic perceptions more acute.

But such an undertaking could at that time be worked from Berlin alone. At an earlier period he had, perhaps with unneces- sary vehemence, held up to ridicule an unsuccessful translation of Horace, and ruined for ever in public opinion the unhappy author, Cb. He now set himself to chastise, though with less severity, the bad taste of a wider circle of scribblers. Yet we must not suppose that his criticisms were wholly negative; there was no want of positive suggestions in them. The one reveals his Hellenic tendencies, while the other gives expression to his national senti- ments.

The former is connected with general European culture, while the latter is founded on the special interests of the German nation, and marks the culminating point of the influence of the Seven Years' War upon German letters. The scene is laid Bamhelm, in Berlin, immediately after the war; the characters arc no longer burdened with Greek or English names, and are not typical masks, but living people with individual traits drawn from the author's own experience, and in sympathy with his own character. There is, first of a. All these characters are excellent, loveable and thoroughly German people.

The play is a homage to German women, and a glorification of the Prussian army, in whose midst Lessing had lived for four years ; it is, furthermore, a eulogy of the great king who looms in the background as the administrator of that justice which restores to the Major his lost pride, vindicates his injured honour, and brings everything to a happy conclusion. By way of contrast and as a salve to wounded national feeling, Lessing places by the side of the honest German, a French ad- venturer, a contemptible character, who excites the laughter of the audience by his broken German.

All this is very happily embodied in scenes, partly mirthful, partly affecting. Before long, much the same thing was attempted for the novel, Ch. This author, who was a The German Prussian by birth, rescued the novel from those remote Novel, regions which had been alone thought appropriate to it, and made it a story of current events in Germany, as Grimmelshausen had done before him. Lessing had given a prose form to tragedy, the fable, and the ode, and now, too, the mock-heroic poem was transformed into prose ; it was thus assimilated to the novel and the romance, and helped to bring these two forms of literature down to the interests of.

Sebaldus comes in contact with orthodox people, pietists and free-thinkers, with noblemen and Prussian sol- diers ; he supers much on account of his opinions, is persecuted and driven from place to place, but is finally more or less consoled by winning a prize in a lottery. In January, German comedy and the German novel ha- the problems of national life, Frederick t superintendence of Prussian instruction to ] made the Prussian gymnasium what it is, oi times.

Montesquieu, and combined with it a vast experience and know- ledge of facts at first hand, along with a marvellous divination of the characteristics of the purest Hellenic style, although no monu- ments of that style had at that time been recovered. Nor should we omit to notice the remarkable sharpness of perception and en- thusiasm in observation which the book attests, nor the graphic language peculiar to Winckelmann, rich and sensuous in its de- scription of works of art, and often rising to poetic sublimity, nor lastly the glorious principle with which the work culminates, that art flourishes where liberty reigns.

Winckelmann gave an aesthetic turn to classical studies by re- cognising as he did the importance of a knowledge of Greek art and by advocating the study of monuments study of in connection with ancient literature. But Winckel- Greek Art mann was only the most important representative of ,. The magic of his imagination, transported his shore of the Mediterranean Sea, and mad among the contemporaries of Pericles; h times have rather resembled Frenchmen of A.

In de- fending ' beauty' as the supreme law of ancient art, and of sculpture and painting in general, in esteeming beauty of form higher than that of colour, in desiring that expression should be toned down and subordinated to beauty — in all this Lessing stood in essential agreement with Winckelmann, and he and Winckelmann together established grandeur and repose as the ideal of Hellenic sculpture and painting, and as the principle which should govern modern artists. But when Winckelmann went further and derived the dis- tinctive character of the Greek masterpieces from a certain Stoical composure of soul, and tried to discover the same spirit in the Greek poets, Lessing could not agree with him.

Heroic stoicism, wliich only excites cold admiration, was not at all to his mind ; and it was easy to show that it was also contrary to the spirit of the Greeks. In the development of this controversy with , Winckelmann, Lessing has given us signal proof of his controversy ability to think out a thing in the abstract, and at the with same time to accurately observe and appreciate facts. In th petent Frenchman was appointed over tl Winckelmann. If Frederick could only German author was really so akin to his sing.

There were never two men more created for each other than Lessing and Frederick the Great, and Frederick could not have found any- where a subject who would have served him with greater faithfulness and a more worthy aim, or a writer who would have so fully compen- sated him for the loss of what attracted him in his beloved French. But the unproved and unjust accusation made years before by a Frenchman, whom the king despised much as he admired him, was sufficient reason for striking out the name of this German poet and scholar for ever from the list of those who might serve him.

A permanent German national the Hamburg Theatre was about to be founded in the town which theatre, had been the home of the early German opera, the birth-place of Brookes and Hagedorn, and which was then the place of residence of so many old and young scholars and poets. The art of acting had been raised to a much higher level since the first start had been given it by the efforts of Caroline Neuber, already men- tioned in connection with Gottsched.

The Schonemann, Koch, and Ackermann companies had become quite celebrated, and their best actors were beginning to give up imitating the French, and to aim at a less affected style of acting. Many excellent actors and actresses in Hamburg were ready to support Lessing in his new dramatic schemes. Lessing was to be ihe reporter, The wns to tr ain the ac tors by his free criticisms, and to , Hamburg- pd ucate the public ta ste.

But these two volumes are of F 2. From this standpoint he criticised the achievements of German tragedy up to his own time, and the tragedies of his old friend Weisse did not come off much better under his treatment than the comedies of Frau Gottsched. Then he attacked the false tragedy of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, the false interpretation and arbi- trary perversion of the Aristotelian doctrines by the French, and pointed out how entirely Voltaire had failed in his attempts to rival Shakspeare in depicting passion or in introducing supernatural elements into the drama. It was at Voltaire that Lessing's hardest blows were levelled, for in him he was attacking a living man, a personal enemy who had done him grave injury ; and besides, was he not indirectly avenging the cause of German literature against Frederick the Great, by lowering the reputation of a poet w'hom the king esteemed as the highest genius?

Still, Lessing was no indiscriminate hater of the French. In earlier life it was Diderot who had nerved him to attack the French stage, and who had directed his attention to the special limitations of the various arts ; they both agreed in preferring the tragedy of middle- class life. Lessing had translated Diderot's plays, and always gratefully acknowledged the influence which this worthy philosopher had exercised upon him.

He now set his clique and his papers to bait Lessing. In Brunswick the Abbot Jerusalem, a cle views, endeavoured to the utmost of his pov poets, in the same way as we have noticed t did in Berlin. Yet the impressions wrought on him by the Hamburg stage were still active in his mind. His important advances in the recognition of the principles on which the drama rested were yet to bear some tangible fruit.

The play gives us a terrible picture of a princely egoist, who, in the satisfaction of his riotous desires, sets the life of his subjects at nought ; he hurries from one amour to another, drives one woman almost mad by de- serting her, then murders a bridegroom in order to possess his bride ; the girl herself longs for death, and at her request her father plunges a dagger into her heart and thus saves her from dishonour.

Though the plot may have been settled beforehand, and the characters only drawn out afterwards to fit in with it, though the father may be blamed, and has been, for slab- bing his daughter and not the despot — yet all must own that the plot is developed without any awkward halts or gaps, and the difii- cullies involved in its presentation on the stage got over with won- derful ease.

Lessing proved himself in this piece a master of tragedy as in his ' Minna ' he had shown himself a master of comedy. As the author of 'Emilia Galoiti' he became the real teacher of a younger generation of dramatists. But Lessing's dramatic activity was not to end with this play. In truth, this new work, which Lessing disguised as a humble bibliographical publication, precipitated a crisis in the history of Protestant theology and of the Protestant Church.

The whole theological world was soon in uproar, though it had seemed fully prepared for the strongest criticism. The general development of the Church and of religious doctrine had been in a decidedly liberal direction ; orthodoxy was retreating, and most of the influential Church appointments were filled by the Liberals. The society of Freemasons, which had spread from Eng- land about the time of the accession of Frederick the Great, under- mined the esteem hitherto cherished for p ositive religion, and Voltaire's malicious criticisms on Christianity were eagerly read in Germany, as in the whole of Europe.

An increasing indifference to dogma was everywhere apparent, and theological writings were becoming more elegant in style, more secular in tone. As in the time of the Humanists, so now, the general advances in history and philology were, after German fashion, at once turned to the account of theology in particular, and this could only result in an increasing independence of thought and criticism, Emesti, and a corresponding diminution of faith.

He was followed in this by Michaelis and Scmler, both of whom studied at Halle. Scraler became the father of modem historical criticism fromv original sources; he was the first to distinguish between contem- porary and second-hand evidence, original and indirect authorities, and treated the writings of the New Testament as monuments of literary history, trying to discover the purpose with which they were written, and the occasions which called them forth. He wished to separate what was of permanent value in them from what was merely local and temporary. This was too much, not only for the orthodox, but for the Liberal party.

Among the former the disputatious Melchior Goeze of Hamburg, and among the latter Semler and many others rose up and challenged these views. All of them made Lessing responsible for the opinions set forth, and he had to answer all attacks. He had been prepared for this, and knew what a storm he was conjuring up. But the frame of mind in which he had published those first cutting fragments was very different from that in which he now set about undertaking the defence of the anonymous Wolfenbtitteler. Then, peace and happi- ness had just begun to dawn for him.

Alone, and often in struggle with want and debts, he had lived on till his forty-eighth year ; at length fortune seemed to smile upon him, for his outward circum- stances had improved, and a clear-headed and energetic woman, Eva K6nig, the widow of a Hamburg friend, had become his wife in October, But on Christmas Eve, , Death of she gave birth to a son, who died in twenty-four hours, Iiessing's and on the loth of January, , she died herself.

Lessing wrote heart-rending letters, letters breathing the bitter misanthropic mockery of his Tellheim or his Orsina, letters full of unfathomable misery, and such as no one had ever before written, except Frederick the Great in his most desponding moments. I am thankful there cannot be still reserved to me many such experiences, and am quite easy. His quick transitions of thought keep Qoeae. The dramatic vivacity of the Lutheran pamphlets is revived here in the hands of a true dramatist.

Now Lessing adopts the form of the dialogue, now of the epistle. At one time he propounds a parable, at another he brings forward a chain of theses; here we have calm evidence and statements, there a storm of query and invective. He has a special style for every separate opponent.

Goeze gets the hardest blows, being stamped as a disloyal persecutor and bigot, an intolerant hypo- crite and slanderer. Every weak point which he betrays Lessing at once spies out with eagle eye, and mercilessly assails. Luther's spirit demands that no man should be hindered in seeking after truth according to his lights, for the final purpose of Christianity is not that we should be saved in any manner, but that we should be saved through the truth illumining our souls.

He would have treated Chris- tianity as Winckelmann had treated Greek art, and would have shown how different climates produced different wants and satis- factions, different manners and customs, different ethics and dif- ferent religions. He considered religions as the products of a necessary but purely human development, and said that their chief importance lay in the moral effect they produced.

This was why he regarded as proof against any refutation the pious feeling which is happy in its faith, and why he so earnesdy longed for a new and permanent Gospel, which should recommend virtue for its own sake, and not for the sake of a future happiness. The noblest flower of virtue seemed to him to be that love which unites men and lifts them above the earthly limits of nationalities, states, and religions. Lessing did not find time to set forth all his thoughts on religious subjects.

His controversy with Goeze was only a preliminary skirmish ; the real battle was to come. He was not a man who would build up a system in too great haste. His strength lay in discriminating, examining, refuting; in one word, in criticism. These convictions form a quiet background to the stormy activity of his controversial writings.

Lessing's most violent controversy took place in Then silence was suddenly imposed on him by a command from Bruns- wick, and the right of free publication was withdrawn from him.

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