A very sharp controversy is now being waged by the scholars of Denmark and Schleswig. The Danes resort to philology in order to prove the right of their country to extend its government over the Germans of that Duchy, and the other party meet their onslaught with weapons equally keen, drawn also from the a.r.s.enals of dictionaries and grammars. The best of the quarrel hitherto seems to be on the side of the Schleswigers, whose great champion is one Herr Clement, a man of as much learning as talent. In a recent essay, he establishes that the original inhabitants of Schleswig were not Danes but Angles, or Frieslanders, essentially the same race as the original Saxon stock of England. In ill.u.s.tration of this doctrine he adduces an immense list of names of places which are the same in Schleswig and England--as, for instance, Ripen and Ripon, Ellum and Elham, Rodding and Reading, Meldorp and Milthorp, Wilstrup and Wilthorpe, &c., &c. This essay will probably be expanded into a book.
The German critics are discussing with high encomiums a volume of poems by ANNETTE VON DROSTE, a deceased poetess of Westphalia. It is ent.i.tled _Das Religiose Jahr_ (The Religious Year), and is inspired with that absolute devotion which lends so great a charm to the poems of Montgomery, the Moravians, and the mystical writers generally.
BYRON"S _Manfred_, with musical accompaniments, by R. Schumann, is about to be produced at the Weimar theatre.
JAHN, the well-known Leipsic professor, is engaged in writing a life of Beethoven.
RICHARD WAGNER, the revolutionist, musical composer, and writer upon aesthetics, has published a new work, ent.i.tled _Oper und Drama_ (Opera and Drama), which the German critics fall upon with considerable ferocity. They complain that while he entirely rejects the old form of the opera, he does not indicate what is the new kind of musical drama to be subst.i.tuted for it. Wagner has also published _Three Opera Poems_, which the same critics cannot but praise for their originality, power, and inspiration. If the music of these operas is adequate to the _libretti_, say they, they are really new and grand productions. This would seem, also, to be proved by the fact that one of them has been brought out at Weimar, through the influence and under the direction of Liszt. The author is living in exile in Switzerland, and is engaged upon a dramatic trilogy with a prelude. He no longer professes to write operas, but musical dramas.
An attempt has been made in Germany to register the enormous number of books and pamphlets which the Germans themselves have published on their two great poets, Goethe and Schiller. A catalogue of the Goethean literature in Germany, from 1793 to 1851, has been published by Balde, at Ca.s.sel, and in London by Williams and Norgate. The Schiller literature, from 1781 to 1851, is likewise announced by the same firm.
A very excellent translation of sundry old Scottish and English ballads has just made its appearance at Munich, from the pen of W. DOENNIGER. It contains sixteen Scotch and seventeen English ballads, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, all rendered with great fidelity, and in the true spirit of the original. So successful is the book that a second edition of it is about to appear, with ill.u.s.trations by Kaulbach, Voltzen, and other eminent artists.
The _Augsburg Gazette_ states that the Congregation of the Index has just prohibited all the works of Eugene Sue and Proudhon; also a clerical Turin paper, called the _Buona Novella_; a work on animal magnetism, by Tomasi; a manual for schoolmasters, printed at Asti in 1850; and all the works of Gioberti.
A book to be read by the students of literature and by critics is HETTNER"S _Moderne Drama_, just published at Brunswick. We do not know of a profounder and keener discussion of the principles and laws of dramatic writing, or of more just and striking dramatic criticisms than it contains.
LAYARD"S popular account of his excavations and discoveries at Nineveh has been translated into German by one of the Meissners (not the poet, we believe), and is published at Leipsic.
FRAULEIN FRIEDERIKE FRIEDEMANN has published, at Leipsic, a metrical version of Lord BYRON"S _Corsair_, which is worthy of all commendation.
The gloomy hue and pa.s.sionate vehemence of the original are preserved in the translation with surprising fidelity, and the rhythm is hardly less perfect than in Byron"s English itself.
The last number of the _Theologische Quartalschrift_ (Theological Quarterly), published at Tubingen, by Laupp, contains an interesting paper on the pretended objections to the historical truth of the Pentateuch, by WELTE; the critical historical examination of the x.x.xi.
x.x.xii. Jeremiah, by REINKE; and the Aloge, with their relations to the Montanists, by HEFELE.
MR. GEORGE STEPHENS, the translator of Tegner"s _Frithiof"s Saga_, and whose intimate acquaintance with the early literature of Sweden has been shown by the collection of legends of that country which he edited in conjunction with Hylten-Cavallius, and by various works superintended by him for the _Svenska Fornskrift-Salskapet_, (a sort of Stockholm Camden Society,) has removed to Copenhagen in consequence of his having been appointed Professor of the English Language and Literature in the University there. The subject of his first course of lectures was Chaucer"s Canterbury Tales. We have in our possession the MS.
translations of some very interesting ancient Swedish poems made by Mr.
Stephens some five years ago, and not yet published.
The London _Leader_, socialist and avowedly and industriously infidel, says of EUGENE SUE, not long ago the rage of half the world:
"We have to announce the third and last volume of Eugene Sue"s _Fernand Duplessis_, wherein the memoirs of a husband are recounted with a license which only a French public could permit. Perhaps the worst thing in Sue is not his positive pa.s.sion for what is criminal and odious, so much as the way in which he always contrives to render the good people odious. Much as we reprobate his pictures of vice, we think them less offensive than his pictures of virtue. How a man so essentially vulgar-minded could ever have attained the position he had once!"
M. ALFRED VILLEFORT has published at Paris a treatise on literary and artistic property in an international point of view. It not only discusses the question as a matter of principle, but gives the history of the negotiations and treaties which France has made in that respect with the nations.
Among the pleasant books recently published in France is a.r.s.eNE HOUSSAYE"S volume of stories, _Les Filles d"Eve_, very piquant and French in its treatment. A translation is announced in this city by Redfield.
The literary event of the month at Paris is the publication of the third volume of LOUIS BLANC"S _History of the French Revolution_. Of all the works written upon that memorable epoch, none is more marked by originality of thought and power of treatment than this, and we can only hope that the present volume, which we have not yet seen, may prove equal to its predecessors. Its table of contents is as follows: Att.i.tude of Property toward the Revolution, Att.i.tude of the Gospel toward the Revolution, Tableau of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, First Labors of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, Administration of Necker, People Starving, Treasury Empty, A New Power, Journalism, Faction of the Count de Provence, The Fifteen Complots, The Women of Versailles, The King brought to Paris, The Court at the Tuileries, Munic.i.p.al and Military Organization of the Bourgeoisie, The Wealth of the Clergy Denounced, War of the Bourgeoisie on the Clergy, The Authority of the Parliaments Discussed, War of the Bourgeoisie on the Parliaments, The Ambition of Mirabeau, Complots of the Luxembourg, New Organization of the Kingdom.
The _Leader_ mentions that Mr. Blanc undertakes to _prove_ that Egalite was not at the bottom of those conspiracies with which his name has been a.s.sociated, but that the real culprit was the Comte de Provence, afterwards Louis XVIII.
M. EDMOND TEXIER, one of the most fresh and agreeable of that race of literary b.u.t.terflies, the _feuilletonists_ of Paris, is publishing a large work upon that great capital, which promises to be as readable as its exterior is splendid. It is to be ornamented with some two thousand engravings on wood, representing all the prominent and famous public edifices and places which not only figure so largely in history, but are so splendid in themselves. The t.i.tle of M. Texier"s work is the _Tableau de Paris_. It appears in parts.
The publication of the magnificent work, the _Catacombs de Rome_, for which the French National a.s.sembly voted $40,000, will shortly commence, under the direction of a commission nominated by the Government, consisting of Messrs. Ampere (now in the United States), Ingres, Prosper, Merinice, and Vitel, all members of the Inst.i.tute. The work will contain exact copies of the architecture, mural paintings, inscriptions, figures, symbols, sepulchres, lamps, vases, rings, instruments, in a word, of every thing belonging to, or connected with, the primitive Christians, which by the most diligent search, exercised during many years, have been brought to light in the catacombs of ancient Rome. Its enormous price, between $250 and $300, will, however, keep it out of the hands of all but the wealthy. Another work on the same subject and of similar character is announced in Rome, under the direction of the ecclesiastical government.
A volume purporting to contain thirty hitherto unpublished Letters of Sh.e.l.lEY, appeared a few weeks ago from the press of Moxon, in London, edited by Robert Browning. It appears from an article in the _Athenaeum_ that these--letters, and many others recently sold to publishers and autograph collectors, are forgeries. The book referred to is of course suppressed. The _Athenaeum_ inquires:
"From whom did Mr. Moxon buy these letters? They were bought at Sotheby & Wilkinson"s, at large prices. From whom did Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinson receive them for sale? "We had them from Mr. White, the bookseller in Pall Mall, over against the Reform Club." Off runs the gentle man-detective.
"From whom did you, Mr. White, obtain these letters?" "I bought them of two women--I believed them to be genuine, and I paid large prices for them in that belief." Such are the words supposed to have been spoken by Mr. White. The two women would appear to have been like the man in a clergyman"s band, but with a lawyer"s gown, who brought Pope"s letters to Curll.
"It is proper to say thus early that there has been of late years, as we are a.s.sured, a most systematic and wholesale forgery of letters purporting to be written by Byron, Sh.e.l.ley, and Keats,--that these forgeries carry upon them such marks of genuineness as have deceived the entire body of London collectors,--that they are executed with a skill to which the forgeries of Chatterton and Ireland can lay no claim,--that they have sold at public auctions, and by the hands of booksellers, to collectors of experience and rank--and that the imposition has extended to a large collection of books bearing not only the signature of Lord Byron, but notes in many of their pages--the matter of the letters being selected with a thorough knowledge of Byron"s life and feelings, and the whole of the books chosen with the minutest knowledge of his tastes and peculiarities.
"But the "marvel" of the forgery is not yet told. At the same sale at which Mr. Moxon bought the Sh.e.l.ley letters were catalogued for sale a series of (unpublished) letters from Sh.e.l.ley to his wife, revealing the innermost secrets of his heart, and containing facts, not wholly dishonorable facts to a father"s memory, but such as a son would wish to conceal. These letters were bought in by the son of Sh.e.l.ley, the present Sir Percy Sh.e.l.ley--and are now proved, we are told, to be forgeries. To impose on the credulity of a collector is a minor offence compared with the crime of forging evidence against the dead, and still minor as, in one instance, against the fidelity of a woman.
"The forgery of Chatterton injured no one but an imaginary priest; the forgery of Ireland made a great poet seem to write worse than Settle could have written; but this forgery blackens the character of a great man, and, worse still, traduces female virtue.
"Mr. Moxon is not the only publisher taken in. Mr. Murray has been a heavy sufferer, though not to the same extent.
Mr. Moxon has printed his Sh.e.l.ley purchases; Mr.
Murray--wise through Mr. Moxon"s example--_will not_ publish his Byron acquisitions."
These forgeries seem to us to have been very clumsily executed.