presume to call the mighty intellect of termining, with our present dogmatism, Kant atheistic ?" where spirit begins and matter ends." "It is almost incredible how rational beings can entertain a doubt of the existence of a Being who fills the universe. This doubt, where it does exist, can arise only from weakness, or absolute defect of the reasoning power. But I can hardly believe that such a thing as an absolute Atheist, not insane, exists. The more narrow our reason is, we seek to make to ourselves some god that squares with our narrow conceptions. Our alleged no god is often only a peculiar god that we have created for ourselves. THE END OF LIFE. "So long as man does not perceive that the circle of his existence is completed in himself, and that the true aim of his life can only be attained by persevering selfperfectionation (Vervollkommnung seiner selbst), so long must he be driven about, amid a thousand errors more or less extravagant. "To learn this is doubtless difficult; and men will betake themselves to a thousand appearances of benefit, before they will content themselves with this only real solid happiness of human nature. But nothing else can be made of it, and the sooner we are wise the better." SUPERSTITION. "It may sound strange, but I am obliged to recognize superstition as an insepara"The Infinite we cannot understand, ble element in the spiritual education of and therefore we have no clear idea of a men. I assume three stages of man's exuniverse-of a God. The attempt to sup- istence;-the animal; the socializing, but ply this defect by earthly images and alle- not perfectly socialized; the pure, or ragories sinks us only into the most absurd tional. The religion of the first stage is superstition. Worship the Infinite! and Fetism; that of the second class aims at though thou canst not see him, yet his the satisfaction of spiritual wants; but working is every where. He is the soul of the all. The highest equipoise of all things governs and determines universal nature. This is the ultimate law (Grund) of all being; thereby the world maintains itself. All individual qualities are lost in this one idea. We know the universe only by fragments, and of these fragments we make to ourselves images and idols. "Nothing but the law of love can unite again that which the individualizing narrowness of man's mind has separated." MATERIALISM AND SPIRITUALISM. both are superstitious; the religion of the third and last stage only is a pure and rational piety; but practically, the piety even of this highest stage of humanity is always more or less mixed with superstition. "Every man requires a support in life. He who does not find this support within himself must seek for it without himself. This is the origin of all superstition." As a poet, Knebel belongs to the calm, clear, Greek school, which has lately be. come so unfashionable, but which we prize very highly. That mistiness of feeling, and wateriness of sentiment, which on a "If we wish to arrive at any thing like late occasion we condemned, as charactertruth in metaphysical speculation, the old-istic of the romantic school in Germany, established distinction of materialism and finds no home in this pure region. Knebel spiritualism must be altogether given up. is as far from romance as Göthe; and, inThere is only one true Being, or every thing is a dream. Who can say that he deed, there is in his productions much of has examined into the qualities of matter? the spirit and character of Göthe's best miDo we know what that matter is of which nor poems. Knebel, however, has the mowe are continually prating? We always ral element strong, which Göthe wants. assume that the heavy clod of earth is the The same calm, self sustaining wisdom, and proper type of matter; but are we igno- the same mild breath of cheerful kindliness, is, however, characteristic of both. Both Göthe and Herder had a high opinion of Knebel's poems; and if they do not live after many that are now fluttering through fifth, sixth, and seventh editions, futurity will not have paid her debt to the present. It may be, however, that they move in too high a region of pure contemplation ever to become very popular. rant that the smallest atom of matter has its own inherent directing principle, so to say, its own atmosphere? To what else does electricity, magnetism, galvanism, point? That is a spiritual world, and who shall say how far up it goes, and how far down it sinks? "We ought to reverse our whole fashion of looking at these things: we begin with the intellectual, where we ought to end. The lowest ought to be followed step by step, till we lose ourselves in the highest. We should then find some difficulty in de As to the execution, they are harmonious and tasteful. Calm simplicity is their leading character; and "Ween ye that law and right and the rule of life is uncertain? Wild as the wandering wind, loose as the drift of the sand? Fools! look round and perceive an order and measure in all things! Own an inherent power that binds their rage; and without it Life and breath, what are they? the system of laws that sustain thee What thou art in thyself is a type of the common creation, For, in the universe, life, order, existence, are one. Look to the world of mind; hath soul no law that controls it? Elements many in one build up the temple of thought; And when the building is just, the feeling of truth is the offspring; Passions arouse the breast; the tongue, swift-seized by the impulse, Far by the sacred stream, where goddess Ganga is worshipped, From the stars of the welkin they trace their birth; and the ancient Gaugeth the spirit divine purer the measure of right? But by the fate of the wicked the wicked are punished; unfading (tually denies the gods, and actually does deny the immortality of the soul, expect to find readers in this country. It is worse than Queen Mab; mad, and triple mad. But in Germany these things are managed in a dif ferent fashion. There, where the outward world of action is governed by what (in Prussia at least) is allowed on all hands to be the beau ideal of a wise despotism. Nature seems to have wished to antagonize this one. sided development by establishing in the inward world of thought the perfection of a wise anarchy. We say a wise anarchy, because there is a great deal of wisdom at the bottom of what we English, in the pride of our me. chanical conceit, are accustomed to call the Among these poems and prose fragments our readers will doubtless have observed indications of a mind peculiarly fitted by its habits of thought and philosophic sympathies to become the interpreter of Epicurean philosophy to modern times. A man should never read anything, said Göthe, but what he admires; and, on the same principle, a man should never translate anything but what he sympathizes with; and that not merely by a sympathy pro hâc vice, as the lawyers say, artificial and momentary, but immanent and permament in the soul. Every good translation is a natural growth of the spiritual man, as much as a good original composition; only here the plant grows by self-sustainment, whereas there it is prop-nonsense of German metaphysics; and what ped up by a stick. Major Knebel was a living plant of Epicurean philosophy, cultivated and improved in a Christian soil; but, wanting strength (or perhaps only imagining that he wanted strength) to grow alone, he leant upon the poem of Lucretius, and by this assistance grew up into a tree of goodly size. We doubt much if the same can be said of any of our English translators, from Evelyn down to Busby. We rather fear (though it is certainly to the honor of British orthodoxy) that they were all mere transla. tors in the common sense of that word. They did not translate the book " De rerum naturâ," as Carlyle translated Wilhelm Meister, because they were living in the ele. ment of Lucretius as he was living in the element of Göthe. If this be the case; we have what might be called an à priori reason why Knebel's translation must, cæteris paribus, necessarily be superior to any that we can yet boast of in the English language. But indeed England is not the place for translating philosophic poems. We are not a philosophic nation; we have not a philosophic language; we have not a philosophic public. Much less can such an ominous poem as Lucretius's "De rerum naturâ," which vir *N. B. This poem is German in many things besides the measure; and the English critic would do well to think seven times before he condemns it. We look upon it in the original (however strangely it may sound to English ears) as a perfect gem of philosophical poetry, only inferior to some of Göthe's unequalled elegies. We certainly do prefer the "Metamorphose der Pflanzen" to every thing in the contemplative style of poetry we ever read. sounds at first as a mere blown up mountain It gives us pleasure to be able to annex here the testimony of Göthe on this subject, a man who, however weak Knebel might justly consider him to be in matters of political insight, was certainly the very best person in the world to give an opinion on the excellence of the German language as a translating medium. The English are quite right," said Göthe, "in applying themselves so diligently as they have recently done to the German language. It is not only that our language on its own account deserves this attention, but it is also impossible to deny, that he who now knows German well, may dispense with the knowledge of almost every other language. I do not here include the French, for that is the language of conversation, and is indispensable as a universal interpreter to every gentleman who moves beyond the four corners of his own home. As to Greek, La.in, Italian, and Spanish, however, the principal works in these languages can be read in German translations as well as in the originals; and, unless he 66 cially in poetico-metaphysical translations poetry. A pregnant heresy! for, in original. from the ancient languages, the sooner we composition, it may make dwarfs of many give up our vain attempts the better; for if it giants; and, in translating from the antique, is not sheer madness, it is at least sheer tri- it will, nine times out of ten, produce a monfling to attempt competing with the Germans. ster. Thanks to Shelley, and Coleridge, and A profound metaphysics is inwoven into the Southey, we are no more such smooth, very form and texture of the German lan- gilded slaves in metrical matters as we were guage. Not only the poetry, but the very at the end of the late century; but we are so common speech, of Germany is colored by conservative, so statutory, so anti-plastic in philosophy; and, ex converso the German our linguistical ideas, that the Lakers" still philosophy (if we excep: Immanuel Kant remain with the mass of us mere Lakers, and Hegel) is for the most part highly poe- and not Britons: rhyme and syllable counttical. What have we to set against this? ing still sway the rod of criticism; and the We have no metaphysics at all; a very consequence is, that we are nearly as far re scant philosophy; a philosophical language moved from perfection in the art of translayet more scant; and our philosophy (what ting from the ancient languages, as we were little we have) has never been incorporated when Pope translated Homer. That that with our poetry. We have an instinctive translation (so excellent when viewed as an national aversion to metaphysics in any original poem) should still be considered by shape. When it appears in our theology we many "as the most excellent translation call it atheism, when it appears in our poetry which the world ever saw,' "* is one of the we call it the same, or, perhaps, as the case worst symptoms of our disease. We are may be, only mysticism. We sent Gil still not content to do into English; we must bert Wakefield (honest Gilbert !) to study or- also Anglicize. We are still too artificial to thodoxy in the King's Bench prison; Percy take the "divine swincherd" simply and naBysshe Shelley we marched off to Italy; kedly as a divine swineherd. We must dress and what we may make of Thomas Carlyle him, and brush him, and polish him, before no man knows. What then have we to do he is fit to enter into genteel society. even supposing we had altogether shaken off But there is another formidable difficulty this hereditary disease of our translated literain our way; and here again the Germans ture, (and we are willing to think that great have travelled so far that it is impossible for progress has of late been made in the right us to overtake them; or rather, they are path,) there still remains a hindrance in the travelling upon a road on which it is impos- mechanism of our language, which renders sible for us to follow them. The Germans it impossible for us to compete with the Gerhave not only a flexibility and ductility of po- mans. We cannot re-echo the ancient etical language superior to what any other measures. Let no one think that this is a modern tongue can boast, but they have tri- slight matter. In itself, indeed, abstractly umphantly freed themselves from what are considered, it is of no consequence; but, commonly called (and, in the face of much when we consider for a moment its practical contradiction, we still believe are most working, we shall soon sec that it is a matter properly called) the shackles of rhyme. We of very serious importance. For, in the first are worshippers of that sweet singing Syren; and the consequence is, that we are often found playing at see-saw, or fencing elegantly with mere sound, when we ought to be on the march. We are apt to look upon rhyme (except in the case of a few stately epics) as almost inter essentialia of classical with translating Lucretius? is reading with some very particular purpose, a German scholar may reasonably spare himself the long labor of learning these languages. It is a peculiarity of the German mind to give its due and natural value to what is foreign, and to accommodate itself to the particular character of every kind of national poetry. This, taken along with the great power and flexibility of our tongue, renders German translations as perfect in the whole as they are accurate in the detail. Nor can it be denied (whatever the pedantry of mere scholarship may pretend) that a good translation, to all practical purposes, will bring a man as far as the original."-Eckermann's Gespräche. But, place, the measure is very often essential to the character of the poem (just as a proud man strides, and a merry man dances); and, in the next place, adherence to the measure of the original has a great tendency to ensure accuracy; and accuracy in a translation (as in all copies) is the first, and the second, and the third thing† Perhaps the demand of accuracy may not be enforced so strictly *Preface to Drummond's Lucretius. + Ramler, in one of his letters to Knebel, has the following sensible remark: "You know as well as I do, dear Knebel, how poets, especially those who have power, fire, and invention, are accustomed to manage translations. They express themselves most elegantly, write the most beautiful verses, pregnant with the most excellent meaning, only not the meaning of the author. I prefer the dry word-mongery of a mere lexicographer to such translations."-Nachlass, vol. ii. p. 42. upon the translator of a modern poem. superabundance of monosyllables, as comHere, where translator and translated belong pared with the Greek (e. g. for Tотаμòs, módeμos, to the same era of mental development, are encircled with the same atmosphere of imaginative association, and speak (in one sense) the same poetical language, there is less danger of any foreign and incongruous element being inoculated upon the work in the process of transmutation; but, in transla. tions from the antique, every thing modern (which is so apt to insinuate itself) must always appear as a patch; or, at all events, the copy may be tinted and colored throughout in a modern style, which is perhaps worse than patchwork. No person, who is even superficially acquainted with English and German translations from the ancient languages, will fail to perceive how these remarksapply to them; but, as the subject is one of great importance, and bears immediately upon the translation of Lucretius, which is now before us, we shall consider it our duty to hear what von Knebel himself has to say on the subject. It is Böttiger who narrates. "When Madame de Staël was with us in Fluss, Krieg), on the inconvenience of the continually jumping about, right and left, innumerable prefixes and affixes, which are when no one is wanting them; but he was, at the same time, not to be shaken in the belief that a middle way could be maintained, between the heavy hammering of Voss's stiff formality, and the loose draggling slovenliness of our vulgar hexametrists. He was also continually insisting on the incalculable more for the eye than for the ear-being evil that resulted from poetry being written transplanted from life and nature to the desk of a mere scholar. There ought to be less reading,' he said, 'and more recitation. The evil has its root in our pedantic system of eau. cation, and the inattention of mothers to that which they have so much in their power, viz. the formation of the vocal organs of their us?' he used to exclaim, with indignation; children.' Is there no Cornelia, amongst and Jean Paul's Levana' (about which Herder and Knebel had had many conversations before it came out) was then spoken of, and the due meed of praise awarded." To turn from these general observations 1803-4, engaged in the preliminary studies of to that out of which they immediately arose, her great work on Germany, her attention viz. Knebel's translation of Lucretius. After was particularly directed to the capacity of a careful examination we have no hesitation the German language to echo back the dis- in saying, that this production is not only in tichs of the ancient languages in the original all respects equal, but in some points superior, measures. To this she always answered with to its original.* This is saying much; but an incredulous smile, and said that the motion or such verses must always be about as smooth as that of a cart upon a moss-road. Knebel, who was at that time living among the mountains at Ilmenau, having been informed of the French lady's incredulity, advised his friends in Weimar to try the experiment of declaiming continually in her ear the well-known distich of Schiller, 'In dem Hexameter steigt des Springquell's flüssige Säule, Im Pentameter drauf fällt sie melodisch hinab,** and request her to express the same sense in two Alexandrines. But Madame de Stäel, though assisted by Benjamin Constant, who was then engaged in translating Wallenstein, with all her cleverness, could not make the Alexandrines, in this case, obedient to her will; at which Knebel was of course very much delighted. He was, however, by no means blind to the very great difficulty of making our rough Teutonic dialect as smooth and flexible as it is stron. He made bitter lamentations on the want of spondees, on the *This distich is familiar to the English ear from Coleridge's beautiful translation:"In the hexameter rises the water's silvery column; In the pentameter aye falling in harmony back." Let this excuse our " Adrastea," though passibus heu! quam iniquis! remarks on this subject, though somewhat long, *This was also the opinion of Wieland, whose we shall here transcribe at length. In the second volume of the Correspondence, p. 215, we find the following letter, dated 7th July, 1803: "Dear Knebel-Your translation of Lucretius, so far as I can judge from the first book, is a master-piece, in which acumen, tact, taste, and iron laboriousness are equally pre-eminent. Such a translation is worth the best original; yea, considering the unspeakable difficulties with which you must have had to contend, and which you have overcome as successfully as boldly, of more value than an original, far superior to Lucretius himself. I am much mistaken if you have not performed a task much more difficult than any that Voss has attempted. That you have left your excellent predecessor Meineke a hundred to do you common justice. I have compared parasangs behind you, is the least that I can say your work carefully with the original, and have found it (unless where everything was so excellent a few macula might remain invisible), in every respect so accurate, so energetic, so spirited, and so characteristically LUCRETIAN, that I have no words to express to you my admiration, or (what is perhaps better) my complete satisfaction. What pleases me peculiarly, among other things, is this, that though you are using a language far more cultivated than what Lucretius employed, still you have contrived to preserve the austere simplicity, and, if I may so speak, the rust-color (Rost-farbe) of the ancient original. In this regard I may say that, I praise you even more for what you have not done than for what you have done. To make a beautiful periphrasis of such a poet as Lucretius is very obvious and very |