Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 by Various

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[Footnote H: _Philosophie des Lebens_, p.407.]

We said that Frederick Schlegel's philosophy, political and religious, but
chiefly religious, was the grand key to his popular work on the history of
literature. We may illustrate this now by a few instances. In the first
place, the "many-sided" Goethe seems to be as little profound as he is
charitable, when he sees nothing in the Sanscrit studies of the romantic
brothers but a _pis aller_, and a vulgar ambition to bring forward
something new, and make German men stare. We do not answer for the elder
brother; but Frederick certainly made the cruise to the east, as Columbus
did to the west, from a romantic spirit of adventure. He was not pleased
with the old world--he wished to find a new world more to his mind, and,
beyond the Indus, he found it. The Hindoos to him were the Greeks of the
aboriginal world--"_diese Griechen der Urwelt_"--and so much better and
more divine than the western Greeks, as the aboriginal world was better
and more divine than that which came after it. If imagination was the
prime, the creative faculty in man, here, in the holy Eddas, it had sat
throned for thousands of years as high as the Himalayas. If repose was
sought for, and rest to the soul from the toil and turmoil of religious
wars in Europe, here, in the secret meditations of pious Yooges, waiting
to be absorbed into the bosom of Brahma, surely peace was to be found.
Take another matter. Why did Frederick Schlegel make so much talk of the
middle ages? Why were the times, so dark to others, instinct to him with a
steady solar effluence, in comparison of which the boasted enlightenment
of these latter days was but as the busy exhibition of squibs by
impertinent boys, the uncertain trembling of fire-flies in a dusky
twilight? The middle ages were historically the glory of Germany; and
those who had lived to see and to feel the Confederation of the Rhine, and
the Protectorate of Napoleon, did not require the particular predilections
of a Schlegel to carry them back with eager reaction to the days of the
Henries, the Othos, and the Fredericks, when to be the German emperor was
to be the greatest man in Europe, after the Pope. But to Schlegel the
middle ages were something more. The glory of Germany to the patriot, they
were the glory of Europe to the thinker. Modern wits have laughed at the
enthusiasm of the Crusades. Did they weep over the perfidy of the
partition of Poland? Do they really trust themselves to persuade a
generous mind that the principle of mutual jealousy and mere selfishness,
the meagre inspiration of the so called balance of power in modern
politics, is, according to any norm of nobility in action, a more laudable
motive for a public war, than a holy zeal against those who were at once
the enemies of Christ, and (as future events but too clearly showed) the
enemies of Europe? Modern wits sneer at the scholastic drivelling or the
cloudy mistiness of the writers of the middle ages. Did they ever blush
for the impious baseness of Helvetius, for the portentous scaffolding of
notional skeletons in Hegel? But, alas! we talk of we know not what. What
spectacle does modern life present equal to that of St Bernard, the pious
monk of Clairvaux, the feeble, emaciated thinker, brooding, with his
dove-like eyes, ("_oculos columbinos_,") over the wild motions of the
twelfth century, and by the calm might of divine love, guiding the
sceptre of the secular king, and the crosier of the spiritual pontiff
alike? Was that a weak or a dark age, when the strength of mind and the
light of love could triumph so signally over brute force, and that
natural selfishness of public motive which has achieved its cold,
glittering triumphs in the lives of so many modern heroes and heroines--a
Louis, a Frederick, a Catharine, a Napoleon? But indeed here, as
elsewhere, we see that the modern world has fallen altogether into a
practical atheism by the idolatry of mere reason; whereas all true
greatness comes not down from the head, but up from the heart of man. In
which greatness of the heart, the Bernards and the Barbarossas of the
middle ages excelled; and therefore they were better than we.

It is by no means necessary for the admirer of Schlegel to maintain that
all this eulogium of the twelfth century, or this depreciation of the
times we live in, is just and well-merited. Nothing is more cheap than to
praise a pretty village perched far away amid the blue skies, and to rail
at the sharp edges and corners of things that fret against our ribs. Let
it be admitted that there is not a little of artistical decoration, and a
great deal of optical illusion, in the matter; still there is some truth,
some great truth, that lay in comparative neglect till Schlegel brought it
into prominency. This is genuine literary merit; it is that sort of
discovery, so to speak, which makes criticism original. And it was not
merely with the bringing forward of new materials, but by throwing new
lights on the old, that Frederick Schlegel enriched aesthetical science.
If the criticism of the nineteenth century may justly boast of a more
catholic sympathy, of a wider flight, of a more comprehensive view, and
more various feast than that which it superseded, it owes this, with
something that belongs to the spirit of the age generally, chiefly to the
special captainship of Frederick Schlegel. If the grand spirit of
combination and comprehension which distinguishes the "Lectures on Ancient
and Modern Literature," be that quality which mainly distinguishes the so
called Romantic from the Classical school of aesthetics, then let us
profess ourselves Romanticists by all means immediately; for the one seems
to include the other as the genus does the species. The beauty of
Frederick Schlegel is, that his romance arches over every thing like a
sky, and excludes nothing; he delights indeed to override every thing
despotically, with one dominant theological and ecclesiastical idea, and
now and then, of course, gives rather a rough jog to whatever thing may
stand in his way; but generally he seeks about with cautious,
conscientious care to find room for every thing; and for a wholesale
dealer in denunciation (as in some views we cannot choose but call him) is
really the most kind, considerate, and charitable Aristarchus that ever
wielded a pen. Hear what Varnhagen Von Ense says on this point--"The
inward character of this man, the fundamental impulses of his nature, the
merit or the results of his intellectual activity, have as yet found none
to describe them in such a manner as he has often succeeded in describing
others. It is not every body's business to attempt an anatomy and
re-combination of this kind. One must have courage, coolness, profound
study, wide sympathies, and a free comprehensiveness, to keep a steady
footing and a clear eye in the midst of this gigantic, rolling
conglomeration of contradictions, eccentricities, and singularities of
all kinds. Here every sort of demon and devil, genius and ghost, Lucinde
and Charlemagne, Alarcos, Maria, Plato, Spinoza and Bonald, Goethe
consecrated and Goethe condemned, revolution and hierarchy, reel about
restlessly, come together, and, what is the strangest thing of all, do
_not_ clash. For Schlegel, however many Protean shapes he might assume,
never cast away any thing that had ever formed a substantial element in
his intellectual existence, but found an _advocatus Dei_ to plead always
with a certain reputable eloquence even for the most unmannerly of them;
and with good reason too, for in his all-appropriating and curiously
combining soul, there did exist a living connexion between the most
apparently contradictory of his ideas. To point out this connexion, to
trace the secret thread of unity through the most distant extremes, to
mark the delicate shade of transition from one phasis of intellectual
development to another, to remove, at every doubtful point, the veil and
to expose the substance, that were a problem for the sagacity of no
common critic."[I] We take the hint. It is not every Byron that finds a
Goethe to take him to pieces and build him up again, and peruse him and
admire him, as Cuvier did the Mammoth. Those who feel an inward vocation
to do so by Schlegel may yet do so in Germany; if there be any in these
busy times, even there, who may have leisure to applaud such a work. To
us in Britain it may suffice to have essayed to exhibit the fruit and the
final results, without attempting curiously to dissect the growth of
Schlegel's criticism.

[Footnote I: RAHEL'S _Umgang_. FRIEDRICH VON SCHLEGEL, vol. i. p. 325.]

The outward fates of this great critic's life may be found, like every
thing else, in the famous "Conversations Lexicon;" but as very few
readers of these remarks, or students of the history of ancient and
modern literature, may be in a condition to refer to that most useful
Cyclopaedia of literary reference, we may here sketch the main lines of
Schlegel's biography from the sources supplied by Mr Robertson,[J] in the
preface to his excellent translation of the "Lectures on the philosophy
of history." Whatever we take from a different source will be distinctly
noted.

[Footnote J: The authorities given by Mr Robertson are, (1.) _La
Biographie des Vivans, Paris_. (2.) An article for July 1829, in the
French _Globe_, apparently an abridgement of the account of Schlegel in
the Conversations Lexicon. (3.) A fuller and truer account of the author,
in a French work published several years ago at Paris, entitled "Memoirs
of distinguished Converts." (4.) Some facts in _Le Catholique_, a
journal, edited at Paris from 1826 to 1829, by Schlegel's friend, the
Baron d'Echstein.]

The brothers Schlegel belonged to what Frederick in his lectures calls the
third generation of modern German literature. The whole period from 1750
to 1800, being divided into three generations, the first comprehends all
those whose period of greatest activity falls into the first decade, from
1750 to 1760, and thereabout. Its chief heroes are Wieland, Klopstock, and
Lessing. These men of course were all born before the year 1730. The
second generation extends from 1770 to 1790, and thereabouts, and presents
a development, which stands to the first in the relation of summer to
spring--Goethe and Schiller are the two names by which it will be sent
down to posterity. Of these the one was born in 1749, and the other in
1759. Then follows that third generation to which Schlegel himself
belongs, and which is more generally known in literary history as the era
of the Romantic school--a school answering both in chronology, and in many
points of character also, to what we call the Lake school in England.
Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, are contemporaries of Tieck, Novalis,
and the Schlegels. Their political contemporaries are Napoleon and
Wellington. The event which gave a direction to their literary
development, no less decidedly than it did to the political history of
Europe, was the French Revolution. Accordingly, we find that all these
great European characters--for so they all are more or less--made the
all-important passage from youth into manhood during the ferment of the
years that followed that ominous date, 1789. This coincidence explains the
celebrity of the famous biographical year 1769--Walter Scott was born in
that year, Wellington and Napoleon, as every body knows--and the elder
Aristarchus of the Romantic school, _the_ translator of Shakspeare,
Augustus William Von Schlegel was born in 1767. At Hanover, five years
later, was born his brother Frederick, that is to say, in May 1772, and
our Coleridge in the same year--and to carry on the parallel for another
year, Ludwig Tieck, Henry Steffens, and Novalis, were all born in 1773.
These dates are curious; when taken along with the great fact of the
age--the French Revolution--they may serve to that family likeness which
we have noted in characterizing the Romanticists in Germany and the Lake
school in England. When Coleridge here was dreaming of America and
Pantisocracy, Frederick Schlegel was studying Plato, and scheming
republics there.[K] In the first years of his literary career Schlegel
devoted himself chiefly to classical literature; and between 1794 and
1797 published several works on Greek and Roman poetry and philosophy,
the substance of which was afterwards concentrated into the four first
lectures on the history of literature. About this time he appears to have
lived chiefly by his literary exertions--a method of obtaining a
livelihood very precarious, (as those know best who have tried it,) and
to men of a turn of mind more philosophical than popular, even in
philosophical Germany, exceedingly irksome. Schlegel felt this as deeply
as poor Coleridge--"to live by literature," says he, in one of those
letters to Rahel from which we have just quoted--"is to me _je laenger je
unertraeglicher_--the longer I try it the more intolerable." Happily, to
keep him from absolute starvation, he married the daughter of Moses
Mendelsohn, the Jewish philosopher, who, it appears, had a few pence in
her pocket, but not many;[L] and between these, and the produce of his
own pen, which could move with equal facility in French as in German, he
managed not merely to keep himself and his wife alive, but to transport
himself to Paris in the year 1802, and remain there for a year or two,
laying the foundation for that oriental evangel which, in 1808, he
proclaimed to his countrymen in the little book, _Ueber die Sprache und
Weisheit der Indier_. Meanwhile, in the year 1805, he had returned from
France to his own Germany--alas, then about to be _one_ Germany no more!
And while the sun of Austerlitz was rising brightly on the then Emperor
of France, and soon to be protector of the Rhine, the future secretary of
the Archduke Charles, and literary evangelist of Prince Metternich, was
prostrating himself before the three holy kings, and swearing fealty to
the shade of Charlemagne in Catholic Cologne. There were some men in
those days base enough to impeach the purity of Schlegel's motives in the
public profession thus made of the old Romish faith. Such men wherever
they are to be found now or then, ought to be whipped out of the world.
If mere worldly motives could have had any influence on such a mind, the
gates of Berlin were as open to him as the gates of Vienna. As it was,
not wishing to expatriate himself, like Winkelmann, he had nowhere to go
to but Vienna; in those days, indeed, mere patriotism and Teutonic
feeling, (in which the Romantic school was never deficient,)
independently altogether of Popery, could lead him nowhere else. To
Vienna, accordingly, he went; and Vienna is not a place--whatever
Napoleon, after Mack's affair, might say of the "stupid Austrians"--where
a man like Schlegel will ever be neglected. Prince Metternich and the
Archduke Charles had eyes in their head; and with the latter, therefore,
we find the great Sanscrit scholar marching to share the glory of Aspern
and the honour of Wagram; while the former afterwards decorated him with
what of courtly remuneration, in the shape of titles and pensions, it is
the policy alike and the privilege of politicians to bestow on poets and
philosophers who can do them service. Nay, with some diplomatic missions
and messages to Frankfurt also, we find the Romantic philosopher
entrusted and even in the great European Congress of Vienna in 1815, he
appears exhibiting himself, in no undignified position, alongside of
Gentz, Cardinal Gonsalvi, and the Prince of Benevento.[M] We are not to
imagine, however, from this, either that the comprehensive philosopher of
history had any peculiar talent for practical diplomacy, or that he is to
be regarded as a thorough Austrian in politics. For the nice practical
problems of diplomacy, he was perhaps the very worst man in the world;
and what Varnhagen states in the place just referred to, that Schlegel
was, what we should call in England, far too much of a high churchman for
Prince Metternich, is only too manifest from the well-known
ecclesiastical policy of the Austrian government, contrasted as it is
with the ultramontane and Guelphic views propounded by the Viennese
lecturer in his philosophy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Frederick Schlegel wished to see the state, with relation to the church,
in the attitude that Frederick Barbarossa assumed before Alexander III.
at Venice--kneeling, and holding the stirrup.

"An emperor tramples where an emperor knelt."

Joseph II., in his estimation, had inverted the poles of the moral world,
making the state supreme, and the church subordinate--that degrading
position, which the Non-intrusionsts picture to themselves when they talk
of ERASTIANISM, and which Schlegel would have denominated
simply--PROTESTANTISM.

[Footnote K: "_Das republikanishe Werk erscheint gewiss nicht vor Zwei
Jahren_."--Letters to Rahel--1802. Varnhagen, as above. Vol. I. p. 234.]

[Footnote L: "_Das kleine Vermogen meiner Frau_."--Letters to Rahel.
Paris: 1803.]

[Footnote M: _Das Wiener Congress_ in 1814-15, by VARNHAGEN VON ENSE, in
the fifth volume of his _Denkwuerdigkeiten_, p. 51. By the way here, Mr
Robertson in his list of famous Catholics in Germany, (p. 19,) includes
Gentz. Now, Varnhagen, who knew well, says that Gentz was only
politically an Austrian, and always remained Protestant in his religious
opinions; which is doubtless the fact.]

During his long residence at Vienna, from 1806 to 1828, Schlegel
delivered four courses of public lectures in the following
order:--One-and-twenty lectures on Modern History,[N] delivered in the
year 1810; sixteen lectures on Ancient and Modern Literature, delivered
in the spring of 1812, fifteen lectures on the Philosophy of Life,
delivered in 1827; and lastly, eighteen lectures on the Philosophy of
History, delivered in 1828. Of these, the Philosophy of life contains the
theory, as the lectures on literature and on history do the application,
of Schlegel's catholic and combining system of human intellect, and,
altogether, they form a complete and consistent body of Schlegelism.
Three works more speculatively complete, and more practically useful in
their way, the production of one consistent architectural mind, are, in
the history of literature, not easily to be found.

[Footnote N: _Ueber die neuere Geschichte Vorlesungen gehalten zu Wien im
Jahre 1810; Wien, 1811_.]

Towards the close of the year 1828, Schlegel repaired to Dresden, a city
endeared to him by the recollections of enthusiastic juvenile studies.
Here he delivered nine lectures _Ueber die Philosophie der Sprache, und
des Worts_, on the Philosophy of Language, a work which the present writer
laments much that he has not seen; as it is manifest that the prominency
given in Schlegel's Philosophy of Life above sketched to living experience
and primeval tradition, must, along with his various accomplishments as a
linguist, have eminently fitted him for developing systematically the high
significance of human speech. On Sunday the 11th January 1829, he was
engaged in composing a lecture which was to be delivered on the following
Wednesday, and had just come to the significant words--"_Das ganz
vollendete und voll-kommene Verstehen selbst, aber_"--"The perfect and
complete understanding of things, however"--when the mortal palsy suddenly
seized his hand, and before one o'clock on the same night he had ceased to
philosophize. The words with which his pen ended its long and laborious
career, are characteristic enough, both of the general imperfection of
human knowledge, and of the particular quality of Schlegel's mind. The
Germans have a proverb:--"_Alles waere gut waere kein ABER dabei_"--"every
thing would be good were it not for an ABER--for a HOWEVER--for a BUT."
This is the general human vice that lies in that significant ABER. But
Schlegel's part in it is a virtue--one of his greatest virtues--a
conscientious anxiety never to state a general proposition in philosophy,
without, at the same time, stating in what various ways the eternal truth
comes to be limited and modified in practice. Great, indeed, is the virtue
of a Schlegelian ABER. Had it not been for that, he would have had his
place long ago among the vulgar herds of erudite and intellectual
dogmatists.

Heinrich Steffens, a well-known literary and scientific character in
Germany, in his personal memoirs recently published,[O] describes
Frederick Schlegel, at Jena in 1798, as "a remarkable man, slenderly
built, but with beautiful regular features, and a very intellectual
expression"--(_im hoechsten Grade gisntreich_.) In his manner there was
something remarkably calm and cool, almost phlegmatic. He spoke with
great slowness and deliberation, but often with much point, and a great
deal of reflective wit. He was thus a thorough German in his temperament;
so at least as Englishmen and Frenchmen, of a more nimble blood, delight
to picture the Rhenish Teut, not always in the most complimentary
contrast with themselves. As it is, his merit shines forth only so much
the more, that being a German of the Germans, he should by one small
work, more of a combining than of a creative character, have achieved an
European reputation and popularity with a certain sphere, that bids fair
to last for a generation or two, at least, even in this book-making age.
Such an earnest devotedness of research; such a gigantic capacity of
appropriation, such a kingly faculty of comprehension, will rarely be
found united in one individual. The multifarious truths which the noble
industry of such a spirit either evolved wisely or happily disposed, will
long continue to be received as a welcome legacy by our studious youth;
and as for his errors in a literary point of view, and with reference to
British use, practically considered they are the mere breadth of
fantastic colouring, which, being removed, does not destroy the drawing.

[Footnote O: _Was Ich Erlebte_, von HEINRICH STEFFENS. Breslau, 1840-2.
Vol. iv. p. 303.]

* * * * *

MARSTON; OR THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.

PART IV.

"Have I not in my time hear lions roar?
Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind,
Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat?
Have I not heard great ordnance in the field,
And heaven's artillery thunder in the skies?
Have I not in the pitched battle heard
Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

SHAKSPEARE.

What that residence and Brighton have since become, is familiar to the
world--the one an oriental palace, and the other an English city. But at
this time all that men saw in the surrounding landscape was almost as it
had been seen by our forefathers the Picts and Saxons. I found the prince
standing, with four or five gentlemen of distinguished appearance, under
the veranda which shaded the front of the cottage from the evening sun.
The day had been one of that sultry atmosphere in which autumn sometimes
takes its leave of us, and the air from the sea was now delightfully
refreshing. The flowers, clustered in thick knots over the little lawn,
were raising their languid heads, and breathing their renewed fragrance.
All was sweetness and calmness. The sunlight, falling on the amphitheatre
of hills, and touching them with diversities of colour as it fell on their
various heights and hollows, gave the whole a glittering and fantastic
aspect; while the total silence, and absence of all look of life, except
an occasional curl of smoke from some of the scattered cottages along the
beach; with the magnificent expanse of the ocean bounding all, smooth and
blue as a floor of lapis-lazuli, completed the character of a scene which
might have been in fairyland.

The prince, whose politeness was undeviating to all, came forward to meet
me at once, introduced me to his circle, and entered into conversation;
the topic was his beautiful little dwelling.

"You see, Mr Marston," said he, "we live here like hermits, and in not
much more space. I give myself credit for having made the discovery of
this spot. I dare say, the name of Brighthelmstone may have been in the
journal of some voyager to unknown lands, but I believe I have the honour
of being the first who ever made it known in London."

I fully acknowledged the taste of his discovery.

"Why," said he, "it certainly is not the taste of Kew, whose chief
prospect is the ugliest town on the face of the earth, and whose chief
zephyrs are the breath of its brew houses and lime-kilns. Hampton Court
has always reminded me of a monastery, which I should never dream of
inhabiting unless I put on the gown of a monk. St James's still looks the
hospital that it once was. Windsor is certainly a noble
structure--Edward's mile of palaces--but that residence is better
tenanted than by a subject. While, here I have found a desert, it is
true; but as the poet says or sings--

'I am monarch of all I survey.'"

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