Part 1 (2/2)

Had the court of Austria acceded to the proposal of Leibnitz for establis.h.i.+ng 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 wors.h.i.+pped 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 professors.h.i.+p 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 wors.h.i.+p 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.

Friends.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+ne 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 outs.h.i.+ne 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.

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