From Titan. PERTHES THE PUBLISHER, AND LITERARY GERMANY.* "The stamp of fate-the fiat of a god;" THERE was a talk, some fifteen or twenty | torian, had newly left the stage: brilliant years ago, that the genius of old "Fater- the days of Queen Elizabeth, when Shaksland" was exhausted. Men, while admit-pere and Jonson drank and punned at the ting the splendid achievements of the elder Mermaiden; when Burleigh nodded in Germans of the Kants, Fichtes, Goethes, the council, his nod, like Jove's, Schillers, and Richters-were in the habit of saying: "But that people are doing little or nothing now." Some spoke as if Goethe were at once the Alpha and the Omega of German literature and poesy. Such talk was partly founded on ignorance, partly on that principle in the human mind which leads men to depreciate the present and to exalt the past, and partly on sympathy with the sceptical spirit which had so strongly characterised the elder German authors. Of late years, more justice has been done in this country to the later fruits of the German mind; fruits which, if inferior to the first products of the tree in brilliancy of hue and piquancy of taste, are much superior in the qualities of solid nourishment and healthful influences. Yet, ere introducing to our readers the great German publisher, whose shop formed that nucleus of the fine cluster of the later school-of Niebuhrs, Neanders, Krummachers, and Tholucks-we are tempted to look back for a little with deep interest and admiration to the more splendid, although more uncertain and dangerous, lustre of the constellation which preceded it. Certainly, in the history of letters, seldom, if ever, was such a distinguished group assembled as met at Weimar. Brilliant the days of Agustus, when Virgil and Horace met and embraced each other under the shadow of Mæcenas; when Livy and Sallust were contending for the smiles of Clio; and when the wondrous Cicero, philosopher, orator, moral writer, epistolist, litterateur, and the more wondrous Cæsar, soldier, statesman, splendid roué, orator, and his when Raleigh strode the deck, like Apollo embarked in the car of Neptune; when Bacon sat on the woolsack, his brows heavy-laden with wisdom, and his heart overflowing with serpentine wiles; and when Spenser poured his most melting, mellifluous, and unearthly strains, and had flowers and poems thrown into his premature grave: brilliant the days of Queen Anne, when Pope, Gay and Arbuthnot mingled their streams of wit, and when Swift infused his gall, and turned them into Marah-waters of bitterness; when each morning the "Spectators" were shed abroad on the world, like soft and snowy blossoms from a tree in May; when Addison was seated in his coffee-house senate, with Budgell as his shadow, Phillips as his echo, Tickell as his weaker alias, and Steele as his (never empty) butt: brilliant the days of George III., when, in London, Burke and Johnson talked far above singing; and Goldsmith gaped for wonderment, or got pale in envy; and Boswell hurried away to record the conversation in his journal; and Garrick caught some new oddity in Johnson's manner to help him in his next imitation of the sage; and Reynolds, through snuff-watering eyes, watched the faces of the disputants-their words half heard-for a pictorial purpose; and Beauclerk surveyed the whole company with the coollest and civilest of sneers: and when, in Scotland, Robertson and Blair were bowing to each other their gentle contradictions and soft impeachments across the table; and David Hume was playing his rubber of whist, his ideas and impressions forgotten; and Robert Burns was interposing his sturdy sense, rough wit, and round oaths in the intervals of Dugald Stewart's delicate discriminations, and Alison's fine-spun theories; brilliant the days of George IV., or rather, of the "Prince Regent," when, at the "Round Table," or under the "Lion's Mouth" of the "London Magazine," Hazlitt snarled and stormed; Leigh Hunt fluttered about like a bird, bustling with kindness, and overflowing with bonhommie and animal spirit; Shelley screamed out his insane sincerities; Lamb stuttered, punned, and hiccuped; and John Scott contributed his Norland sense and Aberdonian accent to the medley; and when with us Wilson poured forth his unpremeditated strains of farce and tragedy, of poetry and fun; Lockhart snapped at every subject, like a hungry and angry dog; Hogg ejaculated coarse confusions of thought and language-a chaos which another and greater mind was to fuse and to round into harmony; MacGinn sang, swore, and quaffed; and De Quincy wound along through all the uproar his own quiet, deep current of philosophical and poetic imaginings, tinged with that soft shade which overlies all his better converse as well as writing, and reminds you of his own favorite words: "The grace of forest-charms decayed, And pastoral melancholy:" but more brilliant, perhaps, still than any since the Augustan or Elizabethan age, the assemblage of fine spirits, such as Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Herder, and a host more, which met in or near Weimar, and have made that region not only classical but enchanted ground. The reason of the superiority of this assemblage, perhaps, lies here: it was a cluster of wizards of creators, of men of original genius. In many of the brilliant groups we have rapidly pictured, there was much more of talent than of genius. But in Weimar there was a reunion of several of the very first minds of that or any age; and on the whole they contrived to live in tolerable harmony; and their light shines on us thick and cruded as that of the Pleiades. We are far from being idolaters of Goethe. We consider the excessive worship of him by Carlyle and Lewis as, in the first, a mental, and in the second, a moral, derangement. Goethe, as a man, we not only dislike, but loathe. He had the genial temperament, without that temperament itself. Byron even seems respectable compared to him. Byron was the slave of passion; Goethe sinned on system. Byron was the creature of impulse; Goethe came calm, if not sober, to the perpetration of seduction, and the patronage of suicide. Byron never seduced a female; Goethe many. Byron drank to drown remorse, and to stop despondency on the edge of despair and madness; Goethe to intensify pleasure, and to nourish pride. Sin soured Byron; it agreed with Goethe's constitution, and he continued healthy, and almost happy, with it. Sin was driving Byron latterly toward Christianity; it drove Goethe to a belief in an immoral and lifeless God. Byron shrank, withered, and died on the poisons he had imbibed; Goethe fattened, flourished, and became an octogenarian on their strength. Byron sinned like an erring man; Goethe like a Pagan god, whose wickedness seem all the more intolerable that they are done with a high hand, from a celestial vantage-ground, and without any human-like result of remorse. Both became satirists; but, while the satire of Byron, in its very bitterness as well as fire, proves that the iron has entered into his soul, that of Goethe is cool, sardonic, and seems to mock, not only the objects of its scorn, but that scorn itself. The one, at the worst, is the smile of a Satan, a being of hot heart, disappointed ambition, and awful regrets; the other we may liken to that of Ahrimanes himself, the fabled aboriginal evil god, who may sneer at, but can hardly be angry at, the evil he has himself made, and which has always seemed to him good. With these views of Goethe's character we, of course, warmly admire his genius. He united qualities seemingly the most incompatible: Horatian elegance with almost Shaksperian imagination; unbounded command over the regions of the ethereal, with the coolest intellect, and stores of worldly wisdom worthy of Lord Bacon. "No writer," Emerson said once, "has less nonsense in his works than Goethe." No writer at all events has turned his nonsense to better account, handled his filth with a more delicate touch. Some of his looser writings remind you of: "Garden gods, and not so decent either." all the faults supposed to be incident to but they are formed with all the elegance of Canova's sculpture. The story of the | only a sorry solution, was darted by the "Elective Affinities" is one of intertan- radiance he saw rising through the dark gled abomination, almost incredible; the valley and shadow of Death? His expecharacters resemble a knot of foul toads, rience is not at all peculiar. Who has but few indecorous expressions occur. not seen a strange smile shining on the Many of the scenes are exquisitely beauti- face of the departing, as if they saw some ful; sentiment of a pure and lofty kind unearthly splendor, or celestial shape alternates with essential smut; and close dawning on their eyes, or as if they heard to the fire-springs of guilty passion lie the first bells of that city which hath no masses of clear, icy, but true and deep need of the sun? And who has not reflection. The "Sorrows of Werter," noticed that wondrous calm which, often seem to us a wondrously trashy produc- succeeding the most violent anguish, settion, and, were it appearing now, would tles down on the dying man, and seems be classed with inferior French novels. It the rest prepared for the people of God would now fail in producing a single sui- arrived before the time? And what utcide. Altogether, Goethe's works give terances come often from dying personsus the impression of extreme coldness; eloquence from lips that had been dull and not of the cheerful, bracing cold of before-wisdom from the foolish-genius snow, but of the deadly cold of the grave, from the clown-the most glowing sentiif not rather of that cold which Milton ments of virtue from the depraved! And has ventured to represent in the very how do the good sometimes then surpass heart of Pandemonium, where "frozen themselves; and the departing mother, Alps" nod to " fiery," and where alike fire rising from her couch, and blessing or and frost are everlasting. Intellect and counselling her children, seems absolutely imagination, without heart, principle, or inspired, and rolls out her words with geniality, although with considerable supernatural force, fluency, and beauty, power of simulating sympathy with all and the silence that succeeds seems that three, were, in spite of Lewis, the true of a shrine newly deserted by the god! constituents of Goethe's genius; and "Oh! just, subtle, wise, and mighty Walsingham, in Sterling's "Onyx-Ring," Death!" said Raleigh; but he referred to is his perfect likeness. the revelations which follow; whereas the words may be as appropriately applied to those which precede it. There are sometimes "chariots of fire and horses of fire" seen seen on this, as well as on that side of the Black River. Not long ago, a person whom we knew, and who had been long ill, starting from a brief trance, told his attendant that he had seen, and continued to see, the gates of heaven opening to receive him. It was singular that while this person a few days after, was committed to the dust, a lark rose directly over the grave, and poured down a strain of thrilling harmony till the funeral was over, when the sound ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Schiller was a man of a different order. Perfected through suffering, hardened by endurance, into a mere mass (intellectually) of muscle, brawn, and bone; an earnest struggler; a man of high Roman nature—with a warm heart, but a Pagan creed-Schiller might seem at first sight still more remote from men, and disconnected from general sympathy, than Goethe. But, amidst all his muscular strength, there were weaknesses and foibles in his constitution, and beneath all his iron hardihood there were softenings of humanity which have endeared him to the world. Aspiring, like Goethe, to be only an artist, he did not cease, like him, to be a man. His humanity was originally so abundant, that it sur vived his early and souring struggles, his long devotion to a somewhat paganized philosophy, and a high but cold ideal of art, and was beating in his heart to the last. His final words were, "Many things are now becoming plain and dear to me." Curious question, what were these things? What light on the dread knots which had long perplexed him, and for which his prose essays show that he had found There are often apparent, but seldom any real, disparities between a man's character and his genius. As a man's imagination is, so is he. As a man's works are, so is his life. The strong, manly work proclaims the strong man. The effeminate writing stamps the cultivated weakling. The impure conceptions of the book come from the foul fancy of the writer. The satire shows the spirit to be either permanently or temporarily soured. The man halting between two opinions, or two ideals, or two plans of life in his conduct, halts as much in his works. Milton, the semi-seraph, wrote the semiseraphic epic; Butler and Swift, the unhappy and disappointed, wrote caricatures and libels; Thomson, the lazy lover of nature, wrote languid but beautiful loveletters to her, and these are his Seasons;" you see Byron's personal defect crippling or convulsing portions of his poems. Christopher North's uncertain position between the serious and the ludicrous, and his veering political, literary, and religious opinions are visible in his "Noctes." And so, if we have accurately described Schiller's character, we need not describe his genius. He was just his own "Diver," ""lean and strong"fearing no danger and no toil in his search after the beautiful and the true; nay, lovving to seek them in the very depths of the Maëlstrom, and if perishing in the plunge, perishing with the eye of love and the breathless hush of admiration attesting the profound sympathy with which the attempt was regarded. How different the conduct of those dainty bardlings, who (Scottice) tape their talents, who brood over their eggs for years, and at length produce their young with a portentous cackle, which only more loudly proclaims that they were but earocks' eggs after all! How different this from the earnest although mistaken enthusiasm of a Schiller or a Shelley, all whose poems are sobs, and the voice of whose wrestling genius often reminds you of the poet's "Solitary shriek, the bubbling cry, Of some strong swimmer in his agony !" All hail to another true-hearted child of Germany and genius, honest, fearless, strong, and simple-minded Jean Paul! From Perthes' memoir, we gather that he was rather dull and tedious in conversation, but so, too, he often was in writing. Endowed with many faculties with fancy, imagination, language, learning, strong philosophic tendencies and gifts, humor, too, and wit of a certain kind-he seems either to have wanted naturally, or to have lost, his proper proportion of animal spirits. The Frenchman was quite omitted in his composition. Hence he became too much dependent on artificial stimulus to put his vast mind in motion; and hence his vivacity has But often a labored and fantastic air. let the great soul within him be once fairly roused, by visions of nature, or by memories of early love, or by anticipations of the future life, and no one can so blend pathos with sublimity, beauty of description with depth of feeling, as Jean Paul. What a picture in his "Fruit, Flower, and Thorn Pieces" that of spring! Read in the depth of winter, it brings into the room the smell of roses and the flutter of flowers. As a white substance spread without before your window gives you, even in summer, the feeling, and almost the chill, of snow, so Jean Paul's descriptions warm you with the breath and cheer you with the joy of spring. His night scenes, too, always take you out with him under the canopy, where he is sure to show you a moon waning in the east, large stars burning by thousands in the zenith, some strange clouds, like angelwings, stretching athwart the heavens, and a few "Meteors of the storms, To plough the deep night with their fiery forms." Night, indeed, was his element, and has suggested to him imaginations profounder, more genial, more hopeful, if not grander or more original, than the "Night Thoughts" of Young. And of his " Dream in a Churchyard," we need not speak. It were enough itself to make his name immortal-enough, itself, shall we say? to demonstrate a God and a future life. The soul capable of such a vision_must be from God, and can never die. It is a proof also that Jean Paul's forte lay in the terribly sublime. He, perhaps, loved the humorous better, but the love is not fully reciprocated. His fun seems in general sadly forced work, and you yawn instead of laugh. It has never at least been naturalized amongst us in Britain; and, compared to that of Sterne, it seems vulgar-to that of Addison, Goldsmith, and Washington Irving, overdone and outrageous - and to that of Christopher North, tedious and unmeaning. Indeed it is in extracts chiefly that "Richter," is likely to survive out of his own country. But we must tear ourselves away from the Dii Majorum Gentium of Germany, after repeating a previous remark, that none of these three, nor of their contemporaries, such as Herder, Novalis, Kant, etc., seem to have had any belief ir Christianity as a special revelation from | ble, his own Keats, and to astonish his God, or as a special remedy for an abnormal and imported disease in human nature. It is difficult to define their different shades of opinion, but all worshipped nature as God's only and ultimate revelation, although Goethe worshipped nature principally as beauty-Schiller partly as this, and partly as benevolence, saying, with Shelley, "Love is God," and in one of his poems toasting "the Good Spirit"-Kant as inexorable law-Richter as the envelope of a higher life-and Novalis as coming to a climax in man, according to him, the true "Schekinah." Let us now turn to Perthes, whom we regard, apart from his many other admirable qualities, as an index and exponent of the reaction which has taken place in Germany in favor of a modified orthodoxy. own Sergeant Talfourd. We very much fear that the poetical bookseller who pens a stanza when he should be examining his ledger, is a pretty considerable particular prig, and we never intend to publish with such a one. Perthes was of a very different order. A man of highly cultivated mind, an enthusiast, and a sage, he was not actuated by any vain ambitions. He knew, and he kept his own place. He was not the mere slave of a "Reader;" he did not gather helpless opinions about books out of the discordant clang of coteries, or the cross-firing of reviews, he read and judged for himself, and he felt that, had he become a regular author, it were equivalent to a judge leaving the bench, and taking his place to be tried at the bar. His aim was not merely to estimate the literary merit of books, but to infuse a high cosmopolitan and Christian spirit into the whole business of publish As to Perthes' intellectual qualities, they stood deservedly very high. If hardly himself a man of genius, he had a vivid sym-ing, and to make of it at once an ideal pathy, as well with the eccentricities and and a moral thing. Oh! for a whole weaknesses, as with the powers of the Paternoster Row of such publishers as men of imaginative gifts. He saw little Perthes! of the splendid group above described, The intellectual qualities of this rebut he intensely appreciated them, markable man were subordinate to his and his opinion of Goethe seems very moral. He was a thoroughly earnest, nearly what has been just expressed. His true, affectionate, brave, and noble being; powers were those of acute discrimination, genial, too, and with just the due dash a degree of strong common sense and (latterly) of the animal in his composition. practical sagacity not common in a Ger- Coleridge never drew a juster distinction man, and a keen interest and just appre- than that between a good and a goody ciation of all the varieties and forms of his man. As a clever acquaintance, in one of country's literature. To a sound judg- his published lectures, professes himself ment, and large liberal taste, he added "entirely unable" to understand the dif the proper degree of enthusiasm. Such ference indicated by Coleridge, we shall are the principal qualities which we would try to make it apparent. A good man, desiderate in a publisher. That he should then, we take to be a man whose goodbe an author, or a philosopher, or a poet ness is unpretentious, and who wears it as a himself, is less desirable. We have known humble, although comely garment, not as some specimens of the poetical publisher, a flaunting, scarlet robe, who feels it, too, but they did not serve to improve our to be a robe lent him by another; a goody conception of the class. The poetical was man is proud of his small virtues and far from being the ideal publisher. Con- decorums, thinks them (as they are) his ceive the ludicrous aspect of an intense- own, and seems to ask at every one he looking personage, with blue eyes, yellow meets: "Don't you know me, Mr. Sohair, and large lips, selling a boy a half-and-so, the celebrated goody man?" The penny worth of paper across the counter, with an air of huge disdain, and then hurrying away to the back-shop to indite an ode to Glencoe, or an imitation of Wilson's "Noctes!" or a little dapper, round man, with a strong Yorkshire accent, whom calling on to settle an account you can not find, because he is "doing" a few sonnets, wherewith to eclipse, if possi good man has his faults and errors, and does not seek to disguise them, feeling that the acknowledment of an error is a pledge of sustained effort to get rid of it nay, is that effort begun; the goody man has reached a sort of stunted perfection: the sun of his virtue is so small that its spots are hardly visible, and the faults he has he dexterously hides under loud |