We have left ourselves no room to make visibly within a few weeks of her end, and u

wasted with coughs and spasms, she still has her salon filled twice a day with company, and drags herself out to supper with all the countesses of her acquaintance. There is a great deal of French character, indeed, in both the works of which we now take our

any reflections; except, only, that the French fashion of living, and almost of dying, in public, is nowhere so strikingly exemplified, as in the letters of this victim of passion and of fancy. While her heart is torn with the most agonizing passions, and her thoughts turned hourly on suicide, she dines out, and leave;-a great deal to admire, and to wonder makes visits every day; and, when she islat-but very little, we think, to envy.

(August, 1825.)

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship: a Novel. From the German of GOETHE. 3 vols. 12mo. pp. 1030. Edinburgh: 1824.

THERE are few things that at first sight ap- | before judgment, warmth of feeling before

pear more capricious and unaccountable, than the diversities of national taste; and yet there are not many, that, to a certain extent at least, admit of a clearer explanation. They form evidently a section in the great chapter of National Character; and, proceeding on the assumption, that human nature is everywhere fundamentally the same, it is not perhaps very difficult to indicate, in a general way, the circumstances which have distinguished it into so many local varieties.

These may be divided into two great classes, the one embracing all that relates to the newness or antiquity of the society to which they belong, or, in other words, to the stage which any particular nation has attained in that great progress from rudeness to refinement, in which all are engaged; -the other comprehending what may be termed the accidental causes by which the character and condition of communities may be affected; such as their government, their relative position as to power and civilization to neighbouring countries, their prevailing occupations, determined in some degree by the capabilities of their soil and climate, and more than all perhaps, as to the question of taste, the still more accidental circumstance of the character of their first models of excellence, or the kind of merit by which their admiration and national vanity had first been excited.

It is needless to illustrate these obvious sources of peculiarity at any considerable length. It is not more certain, that all primitive communities proceed to civilization by nearly the same stages, than that the progress of taste is marked by corresponding gradations, and may, in most cases, be distinguished into periods, the order and succession of which is nearly as uniform and determined. If tribes of savage men always proceed, under ordinary circumstances, from the occupation of hunting to that of pasturage, from that to agriculture, and from that to commerce and manufactures, the sequence is scarcely less invariable in the history of letters and art. In the former, verse is uniformly antecedent to prose-marlous legends to correct history-exaggesentiments to just representations of Invention, in short, regularly comes

correct reasoning and splendid declamation and broad humour before delicate simplicity or refined wit. In the arts again, the progress is strictly analagous-from mere monstrosity to ostentatious displays of labour and design, first in massive formality, and next in fantastical minuteness, variety, and flutter of parts; - and then, through the gradations of startling contrasts and overwrought expression, to the repose and simplicity of graceful nature.

These considerations alone explain much of that contrariety of taste by which different nations are distinguished. They not only start in the great career of improvement at different times, but they advance in it with different velocities-some lingering longer in one stage than another-some obstructed and some helped forward, by circumstances oper. ating on them from within or from without. It is the unavoidable consequence, however, of their being in any one particular position, that they will judge of their own productions and those of their neighbours, according to that standard of taste which belongs to the place they then hold in this great circle;and that a whole people will look on their neighbours with wonder and scorn, for admiring what their own grandfathers looked on with equal admiration, while they themselves are scorned and vilified in return, for tastes which will infallibly be adopted by the grandchildren of those who despise them.

What we have termed the accidental causes of great differences in beings of the same nature, do not of course admit of quite so simple an exposition. But it is not in reality more difficult to prove their existence and explain their operation. Where great and degrading despotisms have been early established, either by the aid of superstition or of mere force, as in most of the states of Asia. or where small tribes of mixed descent have been engaged in perpetual contention for freedom and superiority, as in ancient Greecewhere the ambition and faculties of individ uals have been chained up by the institution of castes and indelible separations, as in India and Egypt, or where all men practise all oc. cupations and aspire to all honours, as in Ger many or Britain-where the sole occupation

of the people has been war, as in infant Rome, ❘ together on any thing so purely accidental as

or where a vast pacific population has been for ages inured to mechanical drudgery, as in China-it is needless to say, that very opposite notions of what conduces to delight and amusement must necessarily prevail; and that the Taste of the nation must be affected both by the sentiments which it has been taught to cultivate, and the capacities it has been led to unfold.

The influence of early models, however, is perhaps the most considerable of any; and may be easily enough understood. When men have been accustomed to any particular kind of excellen excellence, they naturally become good judges of it, and account certain considrable degrees of it indispensable, while they are comparatively blind to the merit of other good qualities to which they had been less habituated, and are neither offended by their absence, nor at all skilful in their estimation. Thus those nations who, like the English and the Dutch, have been long accustomed to great cleanliness and order in their persons and dwellings, naturally look with admiration on the tugher displays of those qualities, and are proportionally disgusted by their neglect; while they are apt to undervalue mere pomp and stateliness, when destitute of these recommendations: and thus also the Italians and Sicilians, bred in the midst of dirt and magnificence, are curiously alive to the beauties of architecture and sculpture, and make but litle account of the more homely comforts which are so highly prized by the others. In the same way, if a few of the first successful adventurers in art should have excelled in y particular qualities, the taste of their nation will naturally be moulded on that standant-will regard those qualities almost exdoerely as entitled to admiration, and will not only consider the want of them as fatal to All pretensions to excellence, but will unduly despise and undervalue other qualities, in emselves not less valuable, but with which their national models had not happened to make them timeously familiar. If, for example, the first great writers in any country should have distinguished themselves by a pompous and severe regularity, and a certain claborate simplicity of design and execution, it will naturally follow, that the national taste will not only become critical and rigorous as to those particulars, but will be proportionally deadened to the merit of vivacity, nature, and intention, when combined with irregularity, homelmess, or confusion. While, if the great patriarchs of letters had excelled in variety and rapidity of invention, and boldness and sentiment, hent, though poured out with considerable disorder and incongruity of manner, those qualities would quickly come to be the national criterion of merit, and the correctness and decorum of the other school be despised, as mere recipes for monotony and

truth of

tameness.

the temperament or early history of a few individuals. No doubt the national taste of France and of England would at this moment have been different, had Shakespeare been a Frenchman, and Boileau and Racine written in English. But then, we do not think that Shakespeare could have been a Frenchman; and we conceive that his character, and that of other original writers, though no doubt to be considered on the whole as casual, must yet have been modified to a great extent by the circumstances of the countries in which they were bred. It is plain that no original force of genius could have enabled ed Shakespeare to write as he had done, if he had been born and bred among the Chinese or the Peruvians. Neither do we think that he could have done so, in any other country but England-free, sociable, discursive, reformed, familiar England-whose motley and mingling population not only presented "every change of manycoloured life" to his eye, but taught and permitted every class, from the highest to the lowest, to know and to estimate the feelings and the habits of all the others and thus enabled the gifted observer not only to deduce the true character of human nature from this infinite variety of experiments and examples, but to speak to the sense and the hearts of each, with that truly universal tongue, which every one feels to be peculiar, and all enjoy as common.

We have said enough, however, or rather too much, on these general views of the subject-which in truth is sufficiently clear in those extreme cases, where the contrariety is great and universal, and is only perplexing when there is a pretty general conformity both in the causes which influence taste and in the results. Thus, we are not at all surprised to find the taste of the Japanese or the Iroquois very different from our own-and have no difficulty in both admitting that our human nature and human capacities are substantially the same, and in referring this discrepancy to the contrast that exists in the whole state of society, and the knowledge, and the opposite quali of the objects to which we have been respectively accustomed to give our admiration. That nations living in times or places altogether remote, should disagree in taste, as in every thing else, seems to us quite natural. They are only the nearer cases that puzzle. And, that great European countries, peopled by the same mixed races, educated in the admiration of the same classical models-venerating the same remains of antiquity-engaged substantially in the same occupations-communicating every day, on business, letters, and society-bound up in short in one great commonwealth, as against the inferior and barbarous parts of the world, should yet differ so widely-not only as to the comparative excellence of their respective productions, but as to the constituents of excellence in all works of genius or skill, does

These, we think, are the plain and certain Effects of the peculiar character of the first indeed sound like a paradox, the solution of great popular writers of all countries. But which every one may not be able to deduce all we do not conceive that they depend al- | from the preceding observations.

The great practical equation on which we in this country have been hitherto most frequently employed, has been between our own standard of taste and that which is recognized among our neighbours of France:-And certainly, though feelings of rivalry have somewhat aggravated its apparent, beyond its real amount, there is a great and substantial difference to be accounted for, -in the way we have suggested-or in some other way. Stating that difference as generally as possible, we would say, that the French, compared with ourselves, are more sensitive to faults, and less transported with beauties more enamoured of art, and less indulgent to nature-more charmed with overcoming difficulties, than with that power which makes us unconscious of their existence-more averse to strong emotions, or at least less covetous of them in their intensity -more students of taste, in short, than adorers of genius-and far more disposed than any other people, except perhaps the Chinese, to circumscribe the rules of taste to such as they themselves have been able to practise, and to limit the legitimate empire of genius to the provinces they have explored. There The has

been a good deal of discussion of late years, in the face of literary Europe, on these debatable grounds; and we cannot but think that the result has been favourable, on the whole, to the English, and that the French have been compelled to recede considerably from many of their exclusive pretensions-a result which we are inclined to ascribe, less to the arguments of our native champions, than to those circumstances in the recent history of Europe, which have compelled our ingenious neighbours to mingle more than they had ever done before with the surrounding nations and thus to become better acquainted with the diversified forms which genius and talent may assume.

But while we are thus fairly in the way of settling our differences with France, we are little more than beginning them, we fear, with Germany; and the perusal of the extraordinary volumes before us, which has suggested all the preceding reflections, has given us, at the same time, an impression of such radical, and apparently irreconcilable disagreement as to principles, as we can scarcely hope either to remove by our reasonings, or even very satisfactorily to account for by our suggestions.

This is allowed, by the general consent of all Germany, to be the very greatest work of their very greatest writer. The most original, the most varied and inventive, -the most characteristic, in short, of the author, and of his counny. We receive it as such accordingly, with implicit faith and suitable respect; and have perused it in consequence with very great attention and no common curiosity. We have perused it, indeed, only in the translation of which we have prefixed the title: But it is a translation by a professed admirer; and by one who is proved by his Preface to be a person of talents, and by every part of the work to be no ordinary master, at least of one of the languages with which he has to deal. We need scarcely way, that we profess to judge of the work only

according to our own principles of judgment ana habits of feeling; and, meaning nothing less than to dictate to the readers or the critics of Ger. many what they should think of their favourite authors, propose only to let them know, in all plainness and modesty, what we, and we really believe most of our countrymen, actually think of this chef-d'œuvre of Teutonic genius. We must say, then, at once, that we cannot enter into the spirit of this German idolatry; nor at all comprehend upon what grounds the work before us could ever be considered as an admirable, or even a commendable per formance. To us it certainly appears, after the most deliberate consideration, to be eminently absurd, puerile, incongruous, vulgar, and affected; and, though redeemed by considerable powers of invention, and some traits of vivacity, to be so far from perfection, as to be, almost from beginning to end, one flagrant offence against every principle of taste, and every just rule of composition. Though indi cating, in many places, a mind capable both of acute and profound reflection, it is full of mere silliness and childish affectation;-and though evidently the work of one who had seen and observed much, it is throughout altogether unnatural, and not so properly improbable, as affectedly fantastic and absurdkept, as it were, studiously aloof from general or ordinary nature-never once bringing us into contact with real life or genuine character -and, where not occupied with the profes sional squabbles, paltry jargon, and scenical profligacy of strolling players, tumblers, and mummers (which may be said to form its staple), is conversant only with incomprehensible mystics and vulgar men of whim, with whom, if it were at all possible to understand them, it would be a baseness to be acquainted. Every thing, and every body we meet with, is a riddle and an oddity; and though the tis sue of the story is sufficiently coarse, and the manners and sentiments infected with a strong tinge of vulgarity, it is all kept in the air, like a piece of machinery at the minor theatres, and never allowed to touch the solid ground, or to give an impression of reality, by the disclosure of known or living features. In the midst of all this, however, there are, every now and then, outbreakings of a fine specula. tion, and gleams of a warm and sprightly imagination-an occasional wild and exotic glow of fancy and poetry-a vigorous heaping up of incidents, and touches of bright and powerful description.

It is not very easy certainly to account for these incongruities, or to suggest an intelligible theory ry for SO strange a practice. But in so far as we can guess, these peculiarities of German taste are to be referred, in part, to the comparative newness of original composition among that ingenious people, and to the state of European literature when they first ventured on the experiment and in part to the state of society in that great country itself, and the comparatively humble condition of the greater part of those who write, or to whom writing is there addressed.

The Germans, though undoubtedly an ima

a

rouse the most torpid sensibility, by the violence and perseverance with which they thundered at the heart. They were the very things, in short, which the German originals were in search of; and they were not slow, therefore, in adopting and improving on them. In order to make them thoroughly their own, they had only to exaggerate their peculiarities -to mix up with them a certain allowance of their old visionary philosophy, misty metaphysics, and superstitious visions and to introduce a few crazy sententious theorists, to sprinkle over the whole a seasoning of rash speculation on morality and the fine arts.

The style was also to be relieved by a variety of odd comparisons and unaccountable

ginative and even enthus astic race, had ne- | by not being altogether intelligible-effectuglected their native literature for two hundred ally excluded monotony by the rapidity and years-and were chiefly known for their violence of their transitions, and promised to learning and industry. They wrote huge Latin treatises on Law and Theology and put forth bulky editions and great tomes of annotations on the classics. At last, however, they grew tired of being respected as the learned drudges of Europe, and reproached with their consonants and commentators; and determined, about fifty years ago, to show what metal they were made of, and to give the world taste of their quality, as men of genins and invention. In this attempt the first thing to be effected was at all events to avoid the imputation of being scholastic imitators of the classics. That would have smelt too much, they thought, of the old shop; and in order to prove their claims to originality, it was necessary to go a little into the opposite similes-borrowed, for the most part, from extreme, to venture on something decidedly low and revolting objects, and all the better modern, and to show at once their indepen- if they did not exactly fit the subject, or even dence on their old masters, and their supe- introduced new perplexity into that which rrority to the pedantic rules of antiquity. they professed to illustrate. With this view some of them betook themselves to the French models-set seriously to study how to be gay-appendre à être vif-and composed a variety of petites pieces and novels of polite gallantry, in a style of which we shall at present say nothing. This manner, however, ran too much counter to the general character of the nation to be very much followed--and undoubtedly the greater and better part of their writers turned rather to us, for hints and lessons to guide them in their ambitious career. There was a greater original affinity in the temper and genius of the two matious-and, in addition to that consideration, cur great authors were indisputably at once more original and less classical than those of France. England, however, we are sorry to ay, could furnish abundance of bad as well as of good models and even the best were perilous enough for rash imitators. As it happened, however, the worst were most generally selected and the worst parts of the good. Shakespeare was admired-but more for his flights of fancy, his daring impropriethes his trespasses on the borders of absurdity, than for the infinite sagacity and rectifying pood sense by which he redeemed those extavagancies, or even the profound tenderness und simple pathos which alternated with the lofty soaring or dazzling imagery of his style, Altogether, however, Shakespeare was beyond their rivalry; and although Schiller has dared, and not ingloriously, to emulate his miracles, was plainly to other merits and other rival

This goes far, we think, to explain the absurdity, incongruity, and affectation of the works of which we are speaking. But there is yet another distinguishing quality for which we have not accounted-and that is a peculiar kind of vulgarity which pervades all their varieties, and constitutes, perhaps, their most repulsive characteristic. We do not know very well how to describe this unfortunate peculiarity, except by saying that it is the vulgarity of pacific, comfortable burghers, occupied with stuffing, cooking, and providing for their coarse personal accommodations. There certainly never were any men of genius who condescended to attend so minutely to the non-naturals of their heroes and heroines as the novelists of modern Germany. Their works smell, as it were, of groceries-of brown papers filled with greasy cakes and slices of bacon, and fryings in frowsy back parlours. All the interesting recollections of childhood turn on remembered tidbits and plunderings of savoury store-rooms. In the midst of their most passionate scenes there is always a serious and affectionate notice of the substantial pleasures of eating and drinking. The raptures of a tête-a-tête are not complete without a bottle of nice wine and a "trim collation." Their very sages deliver their oracles over a glass of punch; and the enchanted lover finds new apologies for his idolatry in taking a survey of his mistress "combs, soap, and towels, with the traces of their use." These baser necessities of our

nes that the body of his ingenious country- nature, in short, which all other writers whe men aspired. The ostentatious absurdity- have aimed at raising the imagination on the affected oddity-the pert familiarity-the touching the heart have sept studiously out broken style, and exaggerated sentiment of of view, are ostentatiously brought forward, Tristram Shandy the mawkish morality, and fondly dwelt on by the pathetic authors dawdling details, and interminable agonies of of Germany.

Ricaardson-the vulgaradventures, and home- We really cannot well account for this ex. ly, though, at the same time, fantastical specu- traordinary taste. But we suspect it is owing lations of John Buncle and others of his for- to the importance that is really attached to gotten class, found far more favour in their those solid comforts and supplies of neceseyes. They were original, startling, unclas- saries, by the greater part of the readers and cal, and puzzling. They excited curiosity writers of that country. Though there is a

great deal of freedom in Germany, it operates to give of it by a few extracts. Wilheim less by raising the mass of the people to a describing the dress of the prophet Samuel in