The Philosophy of History.
Vol. 1.
by Friedrich Schlegel.
MEMOIR OF THE LITERARY LIFE of FREDERICK VON SCHLEGEL.
In the following sketch of the literary life of the late Frederick Von Schlegel, it is the intention of the writer to take a rapid review of that author"s princ.i.p.al productions, noticing the circ.u.mstances out of which they grew, and the influence they exerted on his age; giving at the same time a fuller a.n.a.lysis of his political and metaphysical systems:--an a.n.a.lysis which is useful, nay almost necessary to the elucidation of very many pa.s.sages in the work, to which this memoir is prefixed. Of the inadequacy of his powers to the due execution of such a task, none can be more fully sensible than the writer himself; but he trusts that he will experience from the kindness of the reader, an indulgence proportionate to the difficulty of the undertaking.
In offering to the British public a translation of one of the last works of one among the most ill.u.s.trious of German writers, the Translator is aware, that after the excellent translation which appeared in 1818 of this author"s "History of Literature," and also after the admirable translation of his brother"s "Lectures on Dramatic Literature," by Mr. Black, his own performance must appear in a very disadvantageous point of view. But this is a circ.u.mstance which only gives it additional claims to indulgent consideration.
The family of the Schlegels seem to have been peculiarly favoured by the Muses. Elias Schlegel, a member of this family, was a distinguished dramatic writer in his own time; and some of his plays are, I believe, acted in Germany at the present day. Adolphus Schlegel, the father of the subject of the present biography, was a minister of the Lutheran church, distinguished for his literary talents, and particularly for eloquence in the pulpit. His eldest son, Charles Augustus Schlegel, entered with the Hanoverian regiment to which he belonged into the service of our East India Company, and had begun to prosecute with success his studies in Sanscrit literature--a field of knowledge in which his brothers have since obtained so much distinction--when his youthful career was unhappily terminated by the hand of death. Augustus William Schlegel, the second son, who was destined to carry to so high a pitch the literary glory of his family, was born at Hanover in 1769--a year so propitious to the birth of genius. Frederick Schlegel was born at Hanover in 1772. Though destined for commerce, he received a highly cla.s.sical education; and in his sixteenth year prevailed on his father to allow him to devote himself to the Belles Lettres. After completing his academical course at Gottingen and Leipzig, he rejoined his brother, and became a.s.sociated with him in his literary labours. He has himself given us the interesting picture of his own mind at this early period. "In my first youth," says he, "from the age of seventeen and upwards, the writings of Plato, the Greek tragedians, and Winkelmann"s enthusiastic works, formed the intellectual world in which I lived, and where I often strove in a youthful manner, to represent to my soul the ideas and images of ancient G.o.ds and heroes. In the year 1789, I was enabled, for the first time, to gratify my inclination in that capital so highly refined by art--Dresden; and I was as much surprised as delighted to see really before me those antique figures of G.o.ds I had so long desired to behold. Among these I often tarried for hours, especially in the incomparable collection of Mengs"s casts, which were then to be found, disposed in a state of little order in the Bruhl garden, where I often let myself be shut up, in order to remain without interruption. It was not the consummate beauty of form alone, which satisfied and even exceeded the expectation I had secretly formed; but it was still more the life--the animation in those Olympic marbles, which excited my astonishment; for the latter qualities I had been less able to picture to myself in my solitary musings.
These first indelible impressions were in succeeding years, the firm, enduring ground-work for my study of cla.s.sical antiquity."[1]
Here he found the sacred fire, at which his genius lit the torch destined to blaze through his life with inextinguishable brightness.
He commenced his literary career in 1794, with a short essay on the different schools of Greek poetry. It is curious to watch in this little piece the buddings of his mind. Here we see, as it were, the germ of the first part of the great work on ancient and modern literature, which he published nearly twenty years afterwards. We are astonished to find in a youth of twenty-two an erudition so extensive--an acquaintance not only with the more celebrated poets and philosophers of ancient Greece, but also with the obscure, recondite Alexandrian poets, known to comparatively few scholars even of a maturer age. We admire, too, the clearness of a.n.a.lytic arrangement--the admirable method of cla.s.sification, in which the author and his brother have ever so far outshone the generality of German writers. The essay displays, also, a delicacy of observation and an originality of views, which announce the great critic. It is, in short, the labour of an infant Hercules.
As this essay gives promise of a mighty critic; so two treatises, which the author wrote in the following years, 1795 and 1796--one ent.i.tled "Diotima," and which treats of the condition of the female s.e.x in ancient Greece--the other, a parallel between Caesar and Alexander, not published, however, till twenty-six years afterwards--both show the dawnings of his great historical genius. Rarely have the promises of youth been so amply fulfilled--rarely has the green foliage of Spring been followed by fruits so rich and abundant. It is interesting to observe the fine, organic development of Schlegel"s mental powers--to trace in these early productions, the germs of those great historical works which it was reserved for his manhood and age to achieve. In the latter and most remarkable of these essays, he examines the respective merits of Caesar and Alexander, considered as men, as generals, and as statesmen. To the Macedonian he a.s.signs greater tenderness of feeling, a more generous and lofty disinterestedness of character--and a finer power of perception for the beauties of art. To the Roman he ascribes greater coolness and sobriety of judgment, an extraordinary degree of self-controul, a mind tenacious of its purpose, but careless as to the means by which it was accomplished, an exquisite sense of fitness and propriety in the smallest as in the greatest things, yet little susceptibility for the beautiful in art. With respect to military genius, he shows that Caesar united to the fire and rapidity of the Macedonian, greater constancy and perseverance; yet that the temerity of Alexander was not always the effect of impetuous pa.s.sion, but sometimes the result at once of situation and deliberate reflection. As regards the political capacities of these two great conquerors, he shows that Caesar possessed an over-mastering ascendancy over the minds of men--the talent of guiding their wills, and making them subservient to his own views and interests--in short, a consummate skill in the tactics of a party-leader. Yet he thinks him dest.i.tute of the wisdom of a law-giver, or what he emphatically calls, the _organic genius of state_--the power to found, or renovate a const.i.tution. To Alexander, on the contrary, he attributes the plastic genius of legislation--the will and the ability to diffuse among nations the blessings of civilization--to plant cities, and establish free, flourishing and permanent communities.
In the year 1797, Schlegel published his first important work, ent.i.tled "the Greeks and the Romans." This work was two or three years afterwards followed by another, ent.i.tled "History of Greek Poetry." These two writings in their original form are no longer to be met with--for in the new edition of the author"s works, they not only have undergone various alterations and additions, but have been, as it were, melted into one work. Winkelmann"s history of art was the model which Schlegel proposed to himself in this history of Greek poetry; and we must allow that the n.o.ble school which that ill.u.s.trious man, as well as Lessing, Herder, and Goethe, had founded in Germany, never received a richer acquisition than in the work here spoken of. Prior to the ill.u.s.trious writers I have named, Germany had produced a mult.i.tude of scholars distinguished for profound learning and critical acuteness; but their labours may be considered as only ancillary and preliminary to the works of men who, with an erudition and a perspicacity never surpa.s.sed, united a poetical sense and a philosophic discernment that could catch the spirit of antiquity, reanimate her forms, and place them in all their living freshness before our eyes.
In the first chapter of the "History of Greek Poetry," Schlegel speaks of the religious rites and mysteries of the primitive Greeks, and of the Orphic poetry to which they gave rise. Contrary to the opinion of many scholars who, though they admit the present form of the Orphic hymns to be the work of a later period, yet refer their substance to a very remote antiquity, Schlegel a.s.signs their origin to the age of Hesiod. "Enthusiasm," he says, "is the characteristic of the Orphic poetry--repose that of the Homeric poems." His observations however on the early religion of the Greeks, form, in my humble opinion, the least satisfactory portion of this work. He next gives an interesting account of the state of society in Greece in the age of Homer, as well as in the one preceding, and shews by a long process of inductive evidence, how the Homeric poetry was the crown and perfection of a long series of Bardic poems.
He then examines, at great length, the opinions of the ancients from the earliest Greek to the latest Roman critics, on the plan, the diction and poetical merits of the Iliad and the Odyssey; interweaving in this review of ancient criticism his own remarks, which serve either to correct the errors, supply the deficiencies, or ill.u.s.trate the wisdom of those ancient judges of art. After this survey of ancient criticism, he proceeds to point out some of the characteristic features of the Homeric poems. He enquires what is understood by natural poetry, or the poetry of nature; shews that it is perfectly compatible with art--that there is a wide difference between the natural and the rude--that Homer is distinguished as much for delicacy of perception, accuracy of delineation, and sagacity of judgment, as for fertility of fancy and energy of pa.s.sion. The author next pa.s.ses in review the Hesiodic epos, the middle epos, or the works of the Cyclic poets, and lastly, the productions of the Ionic, aeolic, and Doric schools of lyric poetry.
The fragments on the lyric poetry of Greece are particularly beautiful, and comprise not only excellent criticisms on the genius of the different lyrists themselves, but also most interesting observations on the character, manners, and social inst.i.tutions of the races that composed the h.e.l.lenic confederacy.
It was Schlegel"s intention to have given a complete history of Greek poetry; but the execution of this task was abandoned, not from any want of perseverance, as some have imagined, but from some peculiar circ.u.mstances in the world of letters at that period. The literary scepticism of Wolf, supported with so much learning and ability, was then convulsing the German mind; and while the purity of the Homeric text, and the unity and integrity of the Homeric poems themselves were so ably contested, Schlegel deemed it a hazardous task to attempt to draw public attention to any aesthetic enquiries on the elder Greek poetry. Hence the second part of this work, which treats of the lyric poets, remained unfinished. The general qualities, which must strike all in this history of Greek poetry are, a masterly acquaintance with cla.s.sical literature--a wariness and circ.u.mspection of judgment, rare in any writer, especially in one so young--a critical perspicacity, that draws its conclusions from the widest range of observation--and a poetic flexibility of fancy, that can transport itself into the remotest periods of antiquity. In a word, the author a.n.a.lyzes as a critic, feels as a poet, and observes like a philosopher.
But a new career now expanded before the ardent mind of Schlegel. The enterprising spirit of British scholars had but twenty years before opened a new intellectual world to European inquiry:--a world many of whose spiritual productions, disguised in one shape or another, the Western nations had for a long course of ages admired and enjoyed, ignorant as they were of the precise region from which they were brought. For the knowledge of the Sanscrit tongue and literature--an event in literary importance inferior only to the revival of Greek learning, and in a religious and philosophic point of view, pregnant, perhaps, with greater results;--mankind have been indebted to the influence of British commerce; and it is not one of the least services which that commerce has rendered to the cause of civilization. In the promotion of Sanscrit learning, the merchant princes of Britain emulated the n.o.ble zeal displayed four centuries before by the merchant princes of Florence, in the encouragement and diffusion of h.e.l.lenic literature.
By dint of promises and entreaties, they extorted from the Brahmin the mystic key, which has opened to us so many wonders of the primitive world. And as a great Christian philosopher of our age[2] has observed, it is fortunate that India was not then under the dominion of the French; for during the irreligious fever which inflamed and maddened that great people, their insidious guides--those detestable sophists of the eighteenth century--would most a.s.suredly have leagued with the Brahmins to suppress the truth, to mutilate the ancient monuments of Sanscrit lore, and thus would have for ever poisoned the sources of Indian learning. A British society was established at Calcutta--whose object it was to investigate the languages, historical antiquities, sciences, and religious and philosophical systems of Asia, and more especially of Hindostan. Sir William Jones--a name that will be revered as long as genius, learning, and Christian philosophy command the respect of mankind--was the soul of this enterprise. He brought to the investigation of Indian literature and history, a mind stored with the treasures of cla.s.sical and oriental scholarship--a spirit of indefatigable activity--and a clear, methodical and capacious intellect.
No man, too, so fully understood the religious bearings of these inquiries, and had so well seized the whole subject of Asiatic antiquities in its connection with the Bible. But at the period at which we have arrived, this great spirit had already taken its departure; nor in its flight had it dropped its mantle of inspiration on any of the former a.s.sociates of its labours. For among the academicians of Calcutta, though there were men of undoubted talent and learning, there were none who inherited the philosophic mind of Jones. At this period, too, the fanciful temerity of a Wilford was bringing discredit on the Indian researches--a temerity which would necessarily provoke a re-action, and lead, as in some recent instances, to a prosaic narrow-mindedness, that would seek to bring down the whole system of Indian civilization to the dull level of its own vulgar conceptions.
Schlegel saw that the moment was critical. He saw that the edifice of oriental learning, raised at the cost of so much labour by Sir William Jones, was in danger of falling to pieces--that all the mighty results which Christian philosophy had antic.i.p.ated from these inquiries, would be, if not frustrated, at least indefinitely postponed--that a wild, uncritical, extravagant fancifulness on the one hand, or a dull and dogged Rationalism on the other--(equally adverse as both are to the cause of historic truth)--would soon bring these researches into inextricable confusion; in short, that the time had arrived when they should be fairly brought before the more enlarged philosophy of Germany. Filled with this idea, and animated by that pure zeal for science, which is its own best reward, Schlegel resolves to betake him to the study of the Sanscrit tongue. But for the considerations I have ventured to suggest, such a resolution on the part of such a man would be surely calculated to excite regret. We should be inclined to lament that a mind so original, already saturated with so much elegant literature and solid learning, should be thus doomed in the bloom of its existence, to consume years in the toilsome acquisition of the most difficult of all languages.
In prosecution of his undertaking, Schlegel repaired in the year 1802, to Paris, which had been long celebrated for her professors in the Eastern tongues, and where the national library presented to the oriental scholar, inexhaustible stores of wealth. Here, with the able a.s.sistance of those distinguished orientalists, M. M. de Langles and Chezy, Schlegel made considerable progress in the study of Persian and Sanscrit literature. But while engaged in these laborious pursuits, he contrives to find time to plunge into the then almost unexplored mines of Provencal poesy--to undertake profound researches into the history of the middle age, and to deliver lectures on Metaphysics in the French language. If these lectures did not meet with all the success which might have been hoped for, this cannot surprise us, when we consider that the gross materialism which had long weighed on the Parisian mind, and from which it was then but slowly emerging, could ill accord with the lofty Platonism of the German; nor when we add to the disadvantage under which every one labours when speaking in a foreign tongue, the fact that nature had not favoured this extraordinary man with a happy delivery. From Paris, he wrote a series of articles on the early Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Provencal poetry. The article on Portuguese poetry is singularly beautiful, and contains, among other things, some remarks as new as they are just, on the influence of climate and locality in the formation of dialects. It comprises, too, an admirable critique on the n.o.ble poem of the Lusiad, which in allusion to the great national catastrophe that so soon followed on its publication, and by which the ancient power, energy, and glory of Portugal were for ever destroyed, he calls "the swan-like cry of a people of heroes prior to its downfall." This essay and others of the same period furnish also a proof how very soon Frederick Schlegel had framed his critical views and opinions on the various works of art. His aesthetic system seems to have been formed at a single cast--we might almost say, that from the head of this intellectual Jove, the Pallas of criticism had leaped all armed. His metaphysical theories, on the contrary, appear to have been slowly elaborated--to have undergone many modifications and improvements in the lapse of years, and never to have been moulded into a form of perfect symmetry, until the last years of his life.
During his abode in France, he addressed to a friend in Germany, a series of beautiful letters on the different schools and epochs of Christian painting. The pictorial treasures of a large part of Europe were then concentrated in the French capital; and Schlegel, availing himself of this golden opportunity, gave an account of the various master-pieces of modern art, contained in the public and private collections of Paris; interweaving in these notices, general views on the nature, object, and limits of Christian painting. These letters the author has since revised and enlarged; and they now form one of the most delightful volumes in the general collection of his works.
The three arts, sculpture, music, and painting, correspond, according to the author, to the three parts of human consciousness, the body--the soul--and the mind. Sculpture, the most material of the fine arts, best represents the beauty of form, and the properties of sense: Music explores and gives utterance to the deepest feelings of the human soul: but it is reserved for the most spiritual of the arts--Painting, to express all the mysteries of intelligence--all the divine symbolism in nature and in man. He shows that the three arts have objects very distinct, and which must by no means be confounded. But the respective limits of these arts have not always been duly observed. Hence, confining his observation to painting, there are some artists, whom he calls sculpture-painters, like the great Angelo--others again musical painters, like Correggio and Murillo.
The various schools of art--the elder Italian--the later Italian--the Spanish--the old German--and the Flemish, pa.s.s successively under review. The distinctive qualities of the mighty masters in each school--the fantastic and truly Dantesque wildness of Giotto--the soft outline of Perugino--the depth of feeling that characterises Leonardo da Vinci--the ideal beauty--the various, the infinite charm of Raphael--the gigantic conception of Angelo--the glowing reality of t.i.tian--the harmonious elegance of Correggio--the bold vigour of Julio Romano--the n.o.ble effort of the Caraccis to revive in a declining age the style of the great masters--the true Spanish earnestness and concentrated energy of Murillo--the deep-toned piety of Velasquez--the profound and comprehensive understanding which distinguishes his own Durer, whom he calls the Shakspeare of painting--the distinctive qualities of these great masters, (to name but a few of the more eminent) are a.n.a.lysed with incomparable skill, and set forth with charming diction. I regret that the limits of this introductory memoir will not allow me to give an a.n.a.lysis of these enchanting letters; but I cannot forbear observing in conclusion, that at the present moment, when there seems to be an earnest wish on all sides to revive the higher art among ourselves, whoever would undertake a translation of these letters, would, I think, confer a service on the public generally, and on our artists in particular. To the friends and followers of art, such a work is the more necessary, as the ill.u.s.trious author has in a manner taken up the subject where Winkelmann had left off. These letters are followed by others equally admirable on Gothic architecture, where the characteristic qualities of the different epochs in the civil and ecclesiastical architecture of the middle age are set forth with the same masterly powers of fancy and discrimination. This sublime art seemed to respond best to Schlegel"s inmost feelings.
But I am now approaching a pa.s.sage in the life of Schlegel, which will be viewed in a different light according to the different feelings and convictions of my readers. By some his conduct will be considered a blameable apostacy from the faith of his fathers--by others, a generous sacrifice of early prejudices on the altar of truth. To disguise my own approbation of his conduct, would be to do violence to my feelings, and wrong to my principles; but to enter into a justification of his motives, would be to engage in a polemical discussion, most unseemly in an introduction to a work which is perfectly foreign to inquiries of that nature. I shall therefore confine myself to a brief statement of facts: noticing at the same time, the intellectual condition of the two great religious parties of Germany, immediately prior and subsequent to Schlegel"s change of religion.
It was on his return from France in the year 1805, and in the ancient city of Cologne, that the subject of this memoir was received into the bosom of the Catholic church. There--in that venerable city, which was so often honoured by the abode of the great founder of Christendom--Charlemagne--which abounds with so many monuments of the arts, the learning, the opulence and political greatness of the middle age--where the great Christian Aristotle of the thirteenth century--Aquinas--had pa.s.sed the first years of his academic course--there, in that venerable minster, too, one of the proudest monuments of Gothic architecture--was solemnized in the person of this ill.u.s.trious man, the alliance between the ancient faith and modern science of Germany--an alliance that has been productive of such important consequences, and is yet pregnant with mightier results.
The purity of the motives which directed Schlegel in this, the most important act of his life, few would be ignorant or shameless enough to impeach. His station--his character--his virtues--all suffice to repel the very suspicion of unworthy motives; and the least reflection will shew, that while in a country circ.u.mstanced like Germany, his change of religion could not procure for him greater honours and emoluments than under any circ.u.mstances, his genius would be certain to command; that change would too surely expose him to obloquy, misrepresentation, and calumny--and what to a heart so sensitive as his, must have been still more painful--the alienation, perhaps, of esteemed friends. Had he remained a Protestant, he would instead of engaging in the service of Austria, have in all probability taken to that of Prussia, and there doubtless have received the same honours and distinctions which have been so deservedly bestowed on his ill.u.s.trious brother. We may suppose, also, that a man of his mind and character, would not on slight and frivolous grounds, have taken a step so important; nor in a matter so momentous, have come to a decision, without a full and anxious investigation. In fact, his theological learning was extensive--he was well-read in the ancient fathers--the schoolmen of the middle age, and the more eminent modern divines; and though I am not aware that he has devoted any special treatise to theology, yet the remarks scattered through his works, whether on Biblical exegesis, or dogmatic divinity, are so pregnant, original and profound, that we plainly see it was in his power to have given to the world a "_systema theologic.u.m_," no less masterly than that of his great predecessor--Leibnitz. The works of the early Greek fathers, indeed, he appears to have made a special object of scientific research, well knowing what golden grains of philosophy may be picked up in that sacred stream. The conversion of Schlegel was hailed with enthusiasm by the Catholics of Germany. This event occurred indeed, at a moment equally opportune to himself and to the Catholic body. To himself--for though his n.o.ble mind would never have run a-ground amid the miserable shallows of Rationalism, yet had it not then taken refuge in the secure haven of Catholicism, it might have been sucked down in the rapid eddies of Pantheism. To the Catholic body in Germany, this event was no less opportune; and for the reasons that shall now be stated.
Germany, which in the middle age had produced so many distinguished poets, artists, and philosophers, was, at the Reformation, shorn of much of her intellectual strength. In the disastrous thirty years" war, which that event brought about, she saw her universities robbed of their most distinguished ornaments, and the lights, which ought to have adorned her at home, shedding their l.u.s.tre on foreign lands. The general languor and exhaustion of the German mind, consequent on that fearful and convulsive struggle, was apparent enough in the literature of the age, which ensued after the treaty of Westphalia. To these causes, which produced this general declension of German intellect, must be added one which specially applies to the Catholic portion of Germany.
Every great abuse of human reason, by a natural revulsion of feeling, inspires a certain dread and distrust of its powers. This has been more than once exemplified in the history of the church. So, at this momentous period, some of the German Catholic powers sought in obscurantism, a refuge and security against religious and political innovations, and denied to science that encouragement which she had a right to look for at their hands:--a policy as infatuated as it is culpable, for, while ignorance draws down contempt and disgrace on religion, it begets in its turn, as a melancholy experience has proved, those very errors and that very unbelief, against which it was designed as a protection.
Had the court of Austria acceded to the proposal of Leibnitz for establishing at Vienna that academy of sciences which he afterwards succeeded in founding at Berlin, the glory of that great resuscitation of the German mind, which occurred in the middle of the eighteenth century, would have then probably redounded to Catholic, rather than to Protestant, Germany. But the German Catholics, though they started later in the career of intellectual improvement, have at length reached, and even outstripped, their Protestant brethren in the race.
Three or four years before Schlegel embraced the Catholic faith, the signal for a return to the ancient church was given by the ill.u.s.trious Count s...o...b..rg. The religious impulse, which this great man imparted to German literature, was simultaneous with that Christian regeneration of philosophy, commenced in France by the Viscount de Bonald. And these two ill.u.s.trious men, in the n.o.ble career which five and thirty years" ago they opened in their respective countries, have been followed by a series of gigantic intellects, who have restored the empire of faith, regenerated art and science, and renovated, if I may so speak, the human mind itself.[3]
Forty years" ago, the Catholics of Germany, as I said, were in a state of the most humiliating intellectual inferiority to their Protestant brethren--they could point to few writers of eminence in their own body--Protestantism was the lord of the ascendant in every department of German letters:--and yet so well have the Catholics employed the intervening time, they now furnish the most valuable portion of a literature, in many respects the most valuable in Europe. In every branch of knowledge, they can now shew writers of the highest order. To name but a few of the most distinguished, they have produced the two greatest Biblical critics of the age--Hug and Scholz--profound Biblical exegetists, like Alber, Ackermann, and, recently, Molitor, who has created a new era not only in Biblical literature, but in the Philosophy of History--divines, like Wiest, Dobmayer, Schwarz, Zimmer, Brenner, Liebermann, and Moehler, distinguished as they are for various and extensive learning, and understandings as comprehensive as they are acute--an ecclesiastical historian pre-eminent for genius, erudition, and celestial suavity, like Count s...o...b..rg--philosophic archaiologists, like Hammer and Schlosser--admirable publicists, like Gentz, Adam Muller, and the Swiss Haller--and two philosophers, possessed of vast acquirements and colossal intellects, like Goerres, and the subject of this memoir. In Germany and elsewhere, Catholic genius seems only to have slumbered during the eighteenth century, in order to astonish the world by a new and extraordinary display of strength. It is undoubtedly true that several of the above-named individuals originally belonged to the Protestant church--and that that church should have given birth to men of such exalted genius, refined sensibility, and moral worth, is a circ.u.mstance which furnishes our Protestant brethren with additional claims to our love and respect. We hail these first proselytes as the pledges of a more general, and surely not a very distant, re-union.
The vigorous graft of talent, which the Catholic thus received from the Protestant community, was imparted to a stock, where the powers of vegetation, long dormant, began now to revive with renovated strength.
The old Catholics zealously co-operated with the new in the regeneration of all the sciences--and the effects of their joint labours have been apparent, not only in the transcendent excellence of individual productions, but in the new life and energy infused into the learned corporations--the universities as well as the inst.i.tutes of science. The mixed universities, like those of Bonn, Freyburg, and others, are in a great degree supported by Catholic talent; and the great Catholic University of Munich, which the present excellent King of Bavaria founded in 1826, already by the celebrity of its professors, the number of its scholars, and the admirable direction of the studies, bids fair to rival the most celebrated Universities in Germany.[4]
Gratifying as it must have been to Schlegel to see by how many distinguished spirits his example had been followed, and to witness the rapid literary improvement of that community in Germany to which he had now united himself, he could not expect to escape those crosses and contradictions which are, in this world, the heritage of the just. The rancorous invectives which the fanatic Rationalist--Voss, had never ceased to pour out on his own early friend and benefactor--the heavenly-minded s...o...b..rg, excited the contempt and disgust of every well-const.i.tuted mind in the Protestant community. This Cerberus of Rationalism opened his deep-mouthed cry on Schlegel also, as he set his foot on the threshold of the Catholic church. In this instance, the religious bigotry of Voss was inflamed and exasperated by literary jealousy. By his criticisms, and masterly translation of Homer and other Greek poets, this highly gifted man had not only rendered imperishable service to German literature, but had contributed to infuse a new life into the study of cla.s.sical antiquity. Jealous, therefore of his Greeks, whom he worshipped with a sort of exclusive idolatry, he looked with distrust and aversion on every attempt to introduce the orientals to the literary notice of the Germans. He ran down Asiatic literature of every age and nation with the most indiscriminate and unsparing violence--denounced the intentions of its admirers as evil and sinister; and, in allusion to the n.o.ble use which s...o...b..rg, Schlegel, and others had made of their oriental learning in support of Christianity, petulantly exclaimed on one occasion, "The Brahmins have leagued with the Jesuits, in order to subvert the Protestant, or (as we should translate that word in this country) the Rationalist religion."
It was in 1808, after several years spent in the study of Sanscrit literature, Schlegel published the result of his researches and meditations in the celebrated work ent.i.tled the "Language and Wisdom of the Indians." This work, the first part of which is occupied with a comparative examination of the etymology and grammatical structure of the Sanscrit, Persian, Greek, Roman, and German languages, the second whereof traces the filiation and connection of the different religious and philosophical systems that have prevailed in the ancient oriental world, and the last of which consists of metrical versions from the sacred and didactic poems of the Hindoos--this work, I say, might not be inaptly termed a grammar, syntax, and prosody of philosophy.
With respect to etymology, Schlegel points out the number of Sanscrit words identical in sound and signification with words in the Persian, or the Greek, or the Latin, or the German, or sometimes even in all those languages put together. He excludes words which are imitations of natural sounds, and which therefore might have been adopted simultaneously by nations unknown to each other; and selects those words only which are of the most simple and primitive signification, such as relate to those intellectual and physical objects most closely allied to man; as also auxiliary verbs, p.r.o.nouns, nouns of number, and prepositions:--words which are less exposed than any to those casual and partial changes which conquest, commerce, and religion, introduce into language. With respect to grammatical structure, the author shows that the mode of declining nouns, and conjugating verbs, of forming the degrees of comparison in adjectives, of marking the gender and number of substantives, of changing or modifying the signification of words by prefixed particles, is common to the Sanscrit, and the other derivative languages above-mentioned. It is from this strong external and internal resemblance, these languages have received the appellation of the Indo-Germanic. The prior antiquity of the Sanscrit the author infers from the greater length and fulness of its words, and the richness and refinement of its grammatical forms; for, to use his own expression, "words, like coin, are clipped by use, and the languages, where abbreviation prevails, are ever the most recent."
The prescient genius of Leibnitz had foretold a century and a half ago, that the study of languages would be found one day to throw a great light on history. No one better realized this prediction than Schlegel.
In the first part of this work, he has proved, by his own example, that language is not a mere instrument of knowledge, but a science in itself; and when I consider the n.o.ble use he has made of his Sanscrit learning; when I contemplate all the great and brilliant results of his oriental researches, I must recal the sort of regret I expressed a few pages above. While in the course of the last fifty years, a number of distinguished naturalists have carried the torch of science into the dark caverns of the earth, traced by its light the physical revolutions of our globe, and discovered the remains of an extinct world of nature; many ill.u.s.trious philologists have at the same time explored the inmost recesses of language, and, by their profound researches, brought to light the fossil remains of early history, discovered the migrations of nations and the changes of empire, and regained the lost traces of portions of our species. This remarkable parallelism in the moral and physical inquiries of the age will be considered fortuitous by those only, who have not watched the luminous course of that loving Providence, whose hand is equally visible in the progress of science, as in every other department of human activity.
But on no branch of historical knowledge have the recent philological researches thrown more light than on mythology--a science which the present age may be said to have created. While ill.u.s.trious defenders of the Christian religion--a Count s...o...b..rg[5] in Germany, and still more, an abbe de la Mennais[6] in France, treading in the footsteps of the ancient fathers, and of the abler modern apologists, like Grotius, Huet and others, have victoriously proved the existence of a primeval revelation, the diffusion and perpetuity of its doctrines among all the nations of the world, civilized and barbarous--the compatibility of a belief in the unity of the G.o.d-head with the crime of idolatry, ranked by the apostle, "among the works of the flesh,"--the local nature and object of the Mosaic law, destined by the Almighty for the special use of a people charged with maintaining, in its purity, that worship of Jehovah mostly abandoned or neglected by the nations, who "though they knew G.o.d, did not glorify him as G.o.d"--and favoured also with the promises of "the good things to come," intrusted with the prophetic records of the life and ministry of that Messiah, of whose future coming the Gentiles had only a vague and obscure antic.i.p.ation:--while these ill.u.s.trious defenders of religion, I say, were proving the agreement of all the Heathen nations in the great dogmas of the primitive revelation; another cla.s.s of inquirers (and among these was Schlegel) laboured to shew the points of divergence in the different systems of Heathenism, studied the peculiar genius of each, and traced the influence which climate, circ.u.mstance, and national character have exerted over all. The object of the former was to point out the general threads of primeval truth in the fabric of Paganism--that of the latter to trace the later and fanciful intertexture of superst.i.tion. For in that fantastic web, which we call mythology, truth and fiction, poetry and history, physics and philosophy, are all curiously interwoven. Hence the arduous nature of these researches--hence the difficulties and perils which await the investigator at almost every step.
Of the second part of this work on India, which treats of the religious and philosophical systems of the early Asiatic nations, it is the less necessary here to speak, as the reader will find the subject amply discussed in the course of the following sheets. It may be proper, however, to observe that the different philosophic errors mentioned by Schlegel, as prevalent in the ancient Asiatic world, may all be resolved to two systems--Dualism and Pantheism--the two earliest heresies in the history of religion--the two gulfs, into which dark, but presumptuous, reason fell, when, rejecting the light of revelation, she attempted to explain those unfathomable mysteries--the origin of evil on the one hand, and the co-existence of the finite and the infinite on the other.
On the whole, the "Wisdom of the Indians" is an admirable little book, whether we consider the profound and extensive philological knowledge it displays--the rich variety of historical perceptions it discloses--the clearness of its arrangement, and the elegant simplicity of the style.
In the seven and twenty years which have elapsed since this production saw the light, the subjects discussed in it have undergone ample investigation--many of its observations have pa.s.sed into the current coin of the learned world--truths which it vaguely surmised, have since been fully established--and the knowledge of Indian literature and philosophy has been vastly extended; yet this is one of those works which will be always read with a lively interest. It is thus that, in despite of the progress of cla.s.sical philology, the writings of the great critical restorers of ancient literature have, after the lapse of three centuries, retained their place in public estimation. It is pleasing to watch the stream of learning in its various meanderings--to trace it as it winds through a broader, but not always a deeper, channel, sullied and disturbed not unfrequently by accidental pollutions--it is pleasing to trace it to its source, where, from underneath the rock, it wells out in all its limpid purity. Prior to the publication of this work, the Semitic languages of the East were alone, I believe, cultivated with much ardour in Germany; its appearance had the effect of directing the national energies towards an intellectual region, where they were destined to meet with the most brilliant success; and, if Germany may now boast with reason of her ill.u.s.trious professors of Sanscrit; if France, under the Restoration made such rapid progress in oriental literature; if England, roused from her inglorious apathy, has at last founded an Asiatic society in London, and more recently, the Boden professorship at Oxford--these events are, in a great degree, attributable to the enthusiasm which this little book excited.
In the year 1810, Schlegel delivered, at Vienna, a course of lectures on "Modern History." This book, which was in two volumes, 8vo., has long been out of print; and the volumes destined to contain it in the general collection of the author"s works, have not yet been published. Hence no account of it can be here given--a circ.u.mstance which I the more regret, as, in the opinion of some, it is Schlegel"s masterpiece. It embodied in a systematic form the views and opinions contained in a variety of the author"s earlier historical essays, which are also out of print, and have not yet been re-published. In it, I know, are to be found the detailed proofs and evidences of many positions advanced in the second volume of the work, to which this Memoir is prefixed.
We should, however, form a very inadequate estimate of the services this great writer has rendered to literature, and of the influence he has exerted on his age, were we to confine our attention solely to his larger works. Throughout his whole life, he was an a.s.siduous contributor to periodical literature--a species of writing which, in the present age, has been cultivated with signal success in England, France and Germany. At the commencement of the present century, he edited in conjunction with Tieck, Novalis and his brother, a literary journal, ent.i.tled the Athenaeum; and afterwards successively conducted political and philosophical journals, such as the "Europa,"--the "German Museum,"--and lastly the "Concordia;" giving latterly, also, his zealous support to the Vienna Quarterly Review. Some of his earlier critiques have already been noticed. Among the shorter literary essays, which appeared in the twelve years that elapsed from 1800 to 1812, I may notice the one ent.i.tled "the Epochs of Literature," 1800; and which may be considered the first rude outline of those immortal lectures on the "History of Literature," which he delivered in 1812. Often as he has occasion to treat the same subject, yet such is the inexhaustible wealth of his intellect, he seldom tires by repet.i.tion. Thus his minutest fragments, like the sketches of Raphael, are full of interest and variety. Another essay of the same year, "on the different style in Goethe"s earlier and later works," shews with what a discriminating eye the young critic had already scanned all the heights and the depths of this wonderful poet. Of this great writer, the moral direction of some of whose writings he reprobated in the strongest degree, he did not hesitate to say that, like Dante in the middle age, he was the founder of a new order of poetry--that he had been the first to restore the art to the elevation from which, since the commencement of the seventeenth century, it had sunk--that he united the amenity of Homer--the ideal beauty of Sophocles--and the wit of Aristophanes. The opinion which in youth he had formed of the great national poet of Germany, his maturer experience fully confirmed. Eight years afterwards he published a long and elaborate critique on Goethe"s lays, songs, elegies, and miscellaneous poems. Pre-eminently great as Goethe is in every branch of poetry, in songs he is allowed to stand perfectly unrivalled. "From the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic to the frontiers of Alsace," says the Baron d"Eckstein, "the lyric poetry of Goethe lives in the hearts and on the lips of an enthusiastic people." In this reviewal we find, among other things, a learned and ingenious dissertation on the various species of lyric poetry--the lay, the romance, the ballad, and the occasional poem; on the nature, object, and limits of each--their points of resemblance, and points of difference, together with observations on the fitness of certain metres for certain kinds of poetry.
From his youth upwards, Schlegel was in the habit of seeking, in the delightful worship of the muse, a solace and relaxation from his severer and more laborious pursuits. Without making pretensions to anything of a very high order his poetry is remarkable for a chaste, cla.s.sical diction, great harmony and flexibility of versification, a sweet elegance of fancy, and, at times, depth and tenderness of feeling.
Friendship, patriotism and piety are the n.o.ble themes to which he consecrates his strains. What spirit and fire in his lines on Mohammed"s flight from Mecca! What a n.o.ble burst of nationality in his address to the Rhine! How touching the verses to the memory of his much-loved friend, Novalis--that sweet flower of poesy and philosophy, cut off in its early bloom! In the lines to Corinna, what lofty consolations are administered to that ill.u.s.trious woman, under the persecutions she had to sustain from the Imperial despotism of France! And in the sonnet ent.i.tled "Peace," 1806, what lessons of exalted wisdom are given to the men of our time!
The longer poem, ent.i.tled "Hercules Musagetes," is among the most admired of the author"s pieces. His original poems equal in number, though not in excellence, those of his brother; for it would be absurd to expect that this universal genius should shine equally in every department of letters. The flexible, graceful, harmonious genius of Augustus William Schlegel has at different periods enriched his own tongue with the n.o.blest literary treasures of ancient and modern Italy, of Portugal, Spain and England; and his immortal translations, which have superior merit to any original poems, but those of the highest order, are admitted by competent judges to have done more than the works of any writer, except Goethe, for improving the rhythm and poetical diction of his country. The great poetical powers which his short original pieces, as well as his translations, display, make it a matter of regret that he should have so much confined himself to translation, and never ventured on the composition of a great poem.
Both these incomparable brothers are minds eminently poetical, and eminently philosophical. In one the poetic element prevails--in the other, the philosophical element, and, by a great deal, predominates. In their early productions we can scarcely discriminate the features of these apparently intellectual twins: but, as their genius ripens to manhood, the one becomes an etherial Apollo, full of grace, energy, and majesty--the other an intellectual Hercules, of the most gigantic strength and colossal stature.
In was in the Spring of 1812 that Schlegel delivered, before a numerous and distinguished audience at Vienna, his lectures on ancient and modern literature. Of this work, which a German critic has characterised "as a great national possession of the Germans,"
and which has been translated into several European languages, and is so well known to the English reader by the excellent translation which appeared in 1818, it is unnecessary to speak at much length.
Here were concentrated in one focus all those radii of criticism that this powerful mind had so long emitted. Here, at the bidding of a potent magician, the lords of intellect--the mighty princes of literature of all times--
"The dead, yet sceptred, sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns"--pa.s.s before our eyes in stately procession--each with his distinct physiognomy--his native port--and all clothed with a fresh immortality. Literature is considered not merely in reference to art--but in relation to the influence it has exerted on the destinies of mankind, and to the various modifications which the religion, the government, the laws, the manners, and habits of different nations have caused it to undergo. The first quality that must strike us in this work is the admirable arrangement which has formed so many and such various materials into one harmonious whole. By what an easy and natural transition does the author pa.s.s from the Greek to the Roman literature! With what admirable skill he pa.s.ses, in the age of Hadrian, from the old Roman to the oriental literature, and from the latter back again to the Christian literature of the middle age! How skilfully he has interwoven, in this sketch of oriental letters, the notices of the ancients and the researches of the moderns on the East! The next characteristic of this work is gigantic learning. To that intimate familiarity with the poets, historians, orators and philosophers of cla.s.sical antiquity which his earlier writings had displayed--to the profound knowledge of oriental, and especially Sanscrit, literature evinced in the above-noticed work of India; we now see added a knowledge of the long buried treasures of the old German and Provencal poetry of the middle age--the scholastic philosophy--the princ.i.p.al modern European literatures in their several periods of bloom, maturity and decay. What a strong light, also, is thrown on some dark pa.s.sages in the history of philosophy! Where shall we find a more curious, graphic, and interesting account of the mystics of the middle age, and of the German and Italian Platonists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries! Every page bears the stamp of long and diligent inquiry, and original investigation. The minute traits--the accurate drawing--the freshness and vividness of colouring--the truth and life-like reality in this whole picture of literature, prove that the artist drew from the original, and not a copy. No better proof can be adduced of the _accuracy_, as well as extent of learning which distinguished this ill.u.s.trious man and his brother, than the fact that their different works on cla.s.sical, oriental and modern literature have received the approbation of such scholars, as made those several branches of knowledge the special objects of their study and inquiry. Thus their labours on Greek and Roman poetry met with the high sanction of a Heyne, a Wolf, and other distinguished h.e.l.lenists--their works on Sanscrit literature have been commended by a Guignault--a Remusat--a Chezy, and our own academicians of Calcutta; and their critiques on Shakspeare and the early English poets have been approved by the national critics, and especially by one who had devoted many years to the study of our elder poetry--I mean that able critic and accomplished scholar--the late Mr.
Gifford.
The other and more important characteristics of this work are delicacy of taste, solidity of judgment, vigour and boldness of fancy, and depth and comprehensiveness of understanding. Here we see united, though in a more eminent degree, the acuteness, sagacity, and erudition of Lessing--the high artist-like enthusiasm of Winkelmann--and that exquisite sense of the beautiful, that vigorous, flexible and excursive fancy which made the genius of Herder at home in every region of art, and in every clime of poesy. The intellectual productions of every age and country--the primitive oriental world--cla.s.sical antiquity--the middle age--and modern times, pa.s.s under review, and receive the same impartial attention--the same just appreciation--the same masterly characterization. In a work so full of beauties, it is difficult to make selections--but, were I called upon to point out specimens of succinct criticism, which, for justness and delicacy of discrimination--a poetic soaring of conception--and depth of observation, are unsurpa.s.sed, perhaps, in the whole range of literature, I should name the several critiques on Homer--Lucretius--Dante--Calderon--and Cervantes. The part least well done is that which treats of the literature of the last two centuries; but, from the vast multiplicity of details, it was impossible for the author, within his narrow limits, to do full justice to this part of his subject. He has not paid due homage to several of the great writers that adorned the reign of Louis XIV. He drops but one word on Pascal, and pa.s.ses Mallebranche over in silence; though if ever there were writers deserving the notice of the historian of literature and philosophy, it was surely those two eminent men. In general, Schlegel was too fond of crowding his figures within a narrow canva.s.s--hence many of them could not be placed in a suitable light or position; and several of his heads appear but half-sketched. This is not a mere book of criticism--it is a philosophical work in the widest sense of the word--the genius of the author is ever soaring above his subject--ever springing from the lower world of art, to those high and aerial regions of philosophy still more native to his spirit. To him the beautiful was only the symbol of the divine--hence the tone of earnestness and solemnity which he carries even into aesthetic dissertations. The style too, of this "history of literature" leaves little to be desired. To the lightness, clearness, and elegance of diction which had distinguished Schlegel"s earlier productions, was here united a greater richness and copiousness of expression, and a more harmonious fulness and roundness of period. From this time, however, (if an Englishman may presume to offer an opinion on such a subject,) a decline may, I think, be observed in his style. His mind, indeed, seemed to gain strength and expansion with the advance of years--the horizon of his views was perpetually enlarged--and in vastness of conception, and profundity of observation, his last philosophical works outshine even those of his early manhood.
Yet to whatever cause we are to attribute the fact--whether it be that his last works had not received from his hands the same careful revisal--or whether some men as they advance in life, become as negligent in their style as in their dress--or whether he at last gave in to the bad practice so prevalent in Germany, of disregarding the lighter graces of diction--certain it is, that his later writings, much as they may have gained in excellence of matter, and presenting, as they do, pa.s.sages perhaps of superior power and splendour, are on the whole no longer characterised by the same uniform terseness and perspicuity of language.