THERE is something attractive and interesting, not only to the critic but to the general public, in that dose contact and juxtaposition of two great writers in almost any department of literature, which permits every reader the privilege of contrast and comparison, and seems to enlarge his powers of discrimination by the mere external circumstances which call them forth. It would be difficult to overestimate how much Goethe has done for Schiller and Schiller for Goethe in this way. They have made a landscape and atmosphere for each other, rounding out, by the constant variety and contrast, each other's figures from the blank of the historical background-impressing upon our minds what one was and the other was not, by an evidence much more striking than that of critical estimate. We have not in England any parallel to the group they make, or to the effect they produce. Wordsworth and Coleridge might have faintly emulated it had their intercourse NEW SERIES.-VOL. XVIII., No. 5

been longer and fuller; but Wordsworth and Coleridge, or Byron and Shelley, or any other combination in our crowded poetical firmament, would be but two among many-not The Two, the crowned and undisputed monarchs of a national literature, as are this German pair,-men of the same age, the same inspiration, to whom the great task has been given, consciously and evidently, of shaping the poetry of a people. To us, with our older traditions and long accumulated slowlygrowing wealth, the position altogether is remarkable enough to call forth an interest more curious and eager than is generally excited by literary questions. The poetry of a nation, according to our experience, is its oldest and most assured inheritance, something so deeply bedded in our heart and life that we cannot point out to ourselves where it began, or call up before our minds any conception of those dim ages when it was not. Shakespeare himself, the greatest glory of our English

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tongue, stands centuries back, and has been the birthright of many generations of Englishmen; yet even he was far from being the founder of our national poetry. But here, not so far parted from absolute sight and touch-one of them still living within the recollection, or at least within the lifetime, of a great many of us-stand the two men who have created German poetry. Were it possible that, instead of the slow and gradual growth of character and expression which makes us out of children become men, the expansion of a human soul could come about in a day or a moment like that of a flower, it would scarcely be more surprising, more interesting, than are the phenomena which attend this other development, the birth of poetry -in a race which it is now the fashion to consider one of the most poetic races of humanity. A hundred years ago, however, that race had done little more than babble in vague ballad strains and preludes of verse. It had its Minnesingers, it is true, great enough to charm the literati of the present day who take to themselves the glory of having disinterred them; but great poems never need disinterring. Germany lay silent in a rich chaos of material, fanciful, superstitious, sentimental, transcendental, but with no literature in which to express itself, no poetry-a Memnon's head, quivering with sound suppressed, which as yet no sun-touch had called forth. But that the image is trivial for so great an occurrence, we might say that the curtain rolled visibly up from the dim world, thus lying voiceless, revealing in a moment the two singers, whose office was to remake that world, and give its darkness full expression. The curtain rolls up slowly-upon nothing-an empty stage, a vast silent scene; when, lo, there enters from one side and another, on either hand, a poet-and the poetry of Germany is created under our eyes. A most curious, memorable sight as ever came to pass in this world, and all the more notable that the doers of it are not one nor many, but two, magnifying, revealing, expounding each other, and by their mutual presence making the mystery clear.

What would it have been in England had Shakespeare and Milton, instead of being the growth of two different ages, stood side by side, working together, creating consciously, and of set purpose, that literature which they enriched so nobly,

one of them, at least, with probably little thought enough of the vast thing he was doing! We are all fond of comparing and contrasting these two Princes of English song, notwithstanding the difference of their time and character; but what endless opportunities should we not have found for this contrast had they existed in one sphere. The difference is so great, however, that we cannot make any just parallel. Milton could no more have been produced in all his intensity and learned austere splendor in the broader and richer Shakespearian age, than Shakespeare, allembracing, all-tolerant, all-comprehending, could have preserved that godlike breadth and fulness in the stern struggles of the Commonwealth. The comparison between them cannot be complete. But Goethe and Schiller were born and lived under the same influences, were moulded by the same events, drew breath in the same atmosphere. And they were what it is possible our Shakespeare was not, though of late ages we have been taught to believe it essential to poetry-they were conscious poets, worshipping in themselves the divine faculty which they recognised, and feeling its importance with a distinctness which was beyond all shadow of a doubt. The association of two such men gives an additional interest and attraction to each. It is a union which has been commented upon at unmeasured length and by many critics, moved by that curious and overweening enthusiasm for German literature which has affected with a kind of literary frenzy so many original and thoughtful minds. We do not pretend to approach the subject with the adoring reverence which has been so common, and from which it is so difficult to escape when any attempt is made to consider the two great poets of modern Germany; but we do not claim any exception from the special spell of their remarkable position, a position as notable in the world as that of any reformer, statesman, or patriot who has given new form and development to the life of his country.

Of the two Goethe was so much the more remarkable that he can be considered and treated of alone; but of Schiller we can scarcely speak without bringing in the name of his greater, more splendid, and less lovable coadjutor. Their friendship was creditable and profitable to both, though we confess we are a little weary

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