more.

than adamant. For, as we said, Superstition | commiseration. If he seek Truth, is he not is in its death-lair; the last agonies may endure our brother, and to be pitied? If he do not for decades, or for centuries; but it carries the seek truth, is he not still our brother, and to iron in its heart, and will not vex the earth any be pitied still more? Old Ludovicus Vives has a story of a clown that killed his ass because it had drunk up the moon, and he thought the world could ill spare that luminary. So he killed his ass, ut lunam redderet. The clown was well-intentioned, but unwise. Let us not imitate him; let us not slay a faithful servant who has carried us far. He has not drunk the moon; but only the reflection of the moon, in his own poor water-pail, where, too, it may be, he was drinking with purposes the most harmless.

That, with Superstition, Religion is also passing away, seems to us a still more ungrounded fear. Religion cannot pass away. The burning of a little straw may hide the stars of the sky; but the stars are there, and will re-appear. On the whole, we must repeat the often-repeated saying, that it is unworthy a religious man to view an irreligious one either with alarm or aversion or with any other feeling than regret, and hope, and brotherly

NOVALIS.*

[FORHIGN REVIEW, 1829.]

A NUMBER of years ago, Jean Paul's copy | we would contend that such soap-bubble guild of Novalis led him to infer that the German reading world was of a quick disposition; inasmuch as with regard to books that required more than one perusal, it declined perusing them at all. Paul's Novalis, we suppose, was of the first Edition, uncut, dusty, and lent him from the Public Library with willingness, nay, with joy; but times, it would appear, must be considerably changed since then; indeed, were we to judge of German reading habits from these volumes of ours, we should draw quite an opposite conclusion of Paul's; for they are of the fourth Edition, perhaps therefore the ten-thousandth copy, and that of a Book demanding, whether deserving or not, to be oftener read than almost any other it has ever been our lot to examine.

Without at all entering into the merits of Novalis, we may observe that we should reckon it a happy sign of Literature, were so solid a fashion of study here and there established in all countries; for directly in the teeth of most "intellectual tea-circles," it may be asserted that no good Book, or good thing of any sort, shows its best face at first; nay, that the commonest quality in a true work of Art, if its excellence have any depth and compass, is that at first sight it occasions a certain disappointment; perhaps even, mingled with its undeniable beauty, a certain feeling of aversion. Not as if we meant, by this remark, to cast a stone at the old guild of literary Improvisators, or any of that diligent brotherhood whose trade it is to blow soap-bubbles for their fellow-creatures; which bubbles, of course, if they are not seen and admired this moment, will be altogether lost to men's eyes the next. Considering the use of these blowers, in civilized communities, we rather wish them strong lungs, and all manner of prosperity: but simply

* Novalis Schriften. Herausgegeben von Ludwig Tieck und Friedrich Schlegel. (Novalis' Writings. Edited by Ludwig Tieck and Friedrich Schlegel.) Fourth Edition. 2 vols. Berlin, 1826.

should not become the sole one in Literature; that being indisputably the strongest, it should content itself with this pre-eminence, and not tyrannically annihilate its less prosperous neighbours. For it should be recollected that Literature positively has other aims than this of amusement from hour to hour; nay, perhaps, that this, glorious as it may be, is not its highest or true aim. We do say, therefore, that the Improvisator corporation should be kept within limits; and readers, at least a certain small class of readers, should understand that some few departments of human inquiry have still their depths and difficulties; that the abstruse is not precisely synonymous with the absurd; nay, that light itself may be darkness, in a certain state of the eyesight; that, in short, cases may occur when a little patience and some attempt at thought would not be altogether superfluous in reading. Let the mob of gentlemen keep their own ground, and be happy and applauded there: if they overstep that ground, they indeed may flourish the better for it, but the reader will suffer damage. For in this way, a reader, accustomed to see through every thing in one second of time, comes to forget that his wisdom and critical penetration are finite and not infinite; and so commits more than one mistake in his conclusions. The Reviewer, too, who indeed is only a preparatory reader, as it were, a sort of sieve and drainer for the use of more luxuri-ous readers, soon follows his example: these two react still further on the mob of gentlemen; and so among them all, with this action and reaction, matters grow worse and worse.

It rather seems to us as if, in this respect of faithfulness in reading, the Germans were somewhat ahead of us English; at least we have no such proof to show of it as that fourth. Edition of Novalis. Our Coleridge's Friend, for example, and Biographia Literaria, are but a slight business compared with these Schrif ten; little more than the Alphabet, and that in

gilt letters, of such Philosophy and Art as is here taught in the form of Grammar and Rhetorical Compend: yet Coleridge's works were triumphantly condemned by the whole reviewing world, as clearly unintelligible; and among readers they have still but an unseen circulation; like living brooks, hidden for the present under mountains of froth and theatrical snowpaper, and which only at a distant day, when these mountains shall have decomposed themselves into gas and earthly residuum, may roll forth in their true limpid shape, to glad den the general eye with what beauty and everlasting freshness does reside in them. It is admitted, too, on all hands, that Mr. Coleridge is a man of "genius," that is, a man having more intellectual insight than other men; and strangely enough, it is taken for granted, at the same time, that he has less intellectual insight than any other. For why else are his doctrines to be thrown out of doors, without examination, as false and worthless, simply because they are obscure? Or how is their so palpable falsehood to be accounted for to our minds, except on this extraordinary ground; that a man able to originate deep thoughts (such is the meaning of genius) is unable to see them when originated; that the creative intellect of a Philosopher is destitute of that mere faculty of logic which belongs to "all Attorneys, and men educated in Edinburgh ?" The Cambridge carrier, when asked whether his horse could "draw inferences," readily replied, "Yes, any thing in reason;" but here, it seems, is a man of genius who has no similar gift.

fool in low-lying, high-fenced lanes: retracing the footsteps of the former, to discover where he deviated, whole provinces of the Universe are laid open to us; in the path of the latter, granting even that he have not deviated at all, little is laid open to us but two wheel-ruts and two hedges.

On these grounds we reckon it more profitable, in almost any case, to have to do with men of depth, than with men of shallowness: and were it possible, we would read no book that was not written by one of the former class; all members of which we would love and venerate, how perverse soever they may seem to us at first; nay, though, after the fullest investigation, we still found many things to pardon in them. Such of our readers as at all participate in this predilection will not blame us for bringing them acquainted with Novalis, a man of the most indisputable talent, poetical and philosophical; whose opinions, extraordinary, nay, altogether wild and baseless as they often appear, are not without a strict coherence in his own mind, and will lead any other mind, that examines them faithfully, into endless considerations; opening the strangest inquiries, new truths, or new possibilities of truth, a whole unexpected world of thought, where, whether for belief or denial, the deepest questions await us.

In what is called reviewing such a book as this, we are aware that to the judicious craftsman two methods present themselves. The first and most convenient is for the Reviewer to perch himself resolutely, as it were, on the shoulder of his Author, and therefrom to show We ourselves, we confess, are too young in as if he commanded him, and looked down on the study of human nature to have met with him by natural superiority of stature. Whatany such anomaly. Never yet has it been our soever the great man says or does, the little fortune to fall in with any man of genius, man shall treat him with an air of knowingwhose conclusions did not correspond better ness and light condescending mockery; prowith his premises, and not worse, than those fessing, with much covert sarcasm, that this of other men; whose genius, when it once and that other is beyond his comprehension, came to be understood, did not manifest itself in and cunningly asking his readers if they coma deeper, fuller, truer view of all things human prehend it! Herein it will help him mightily, and divine, than the clearest of your so laud- if besides description, he can quote a few pas able "practical men" had claim to. Such, sages, which, in their detached state, and taken we say, has been our uniform experience; so most probably in quite a wrong acceptation uniform, that we now hardly ever expect to of the words, shall sound strange, and to cersee it contradicted. True it is, the old Pytha-tain hearers, even absurd; all which will be gorean argument of "the master said it," has long ceased to be available: in these days, no man, except the Pope of Rome, is altogether exempt from error of judgment; doubtless a man of genius may chance to adopt false opinions; nay, rather, like all other sons of Adam, except that same enviable Pope, must occasionally adopt such. Nevertheless, we reckon it a good maxim, that "no error is fully confuted till we have seen not only that it is an error, but how it became one ;" till finding that it clashes with the principles of truth, established in our own mind, we find also in what way it had seemed to harmonize with the principles of truth established in that other mind, perhaps so unspeakably superior to ours. Treated by this method it still appears to us, according to the old saying, that the errors of the wise man are literally more instructive than the truths of a fool. For the wise man travels in lofty, far-seeing regions; the

easy enough, if he have any handiness in the business, and address the right audience; truths, as this world goes, being true only for those that have some understanding of them; as, for instance, in the Yorkshire Wolds, and Thames Coal-ships, Christian men enough might be found, at this day, who, if you read them the Thirty-ninth of the Principia, would "grin intelligence from ear to ear." On the other hand, should our Reviewer meet with any passage, the wisdom of which, deep, plain, and palpable to the simplest, might cause misgivings in the reader, as if here were a man of half-unknown endowment, whom perhaps it were better to wonder at than laugh at, our Reviewer either quietly suppresses it, or citing it with an air of meritorious candour, calls upon his Author, in a tone of command and encouragement, to lay aside his transcendental crotchets, and write always thus, and he will admire him. Whereby the reader again feels

comforted; proceeds swimmingly to the con- case, a Samson is to be led forth, blinded and clusion of the "Article," and shuts it with a manacled, to make him sport. Nay, might it victorious feeling, not only that he and the not, in a spiritual sense, be death, as surely it Reviewer understand this man, but also that, would be damage, to the small man himself? with some rays of fancy and the like, the man For is not this habit of sneering at all greatis little better than a living mass of darkness.ness, of forcibly bringing down all greatness to In this way does the small Reviewer triumph his own height, one chief cause which keeps over great Authors: but it is the triumph of a that height so very inconsiderable? Come of fool. In this way, too, does he recommend it what may, we have no refreshing dew for himself to certain readers, but it is the recom- the small man's vanity in this place, nay, mendation of a parasite, and of no true servant. rather, as charitable brethren, and fellow-sufThe servant would have spoken truth, in this ferers from that same evil, we would gladly lay case; truth, that it might have profited, how the sickle to that reed-grove of self-conceit, ever harsh: the parasite glosses his master which has grown round him, and reap it altowith sweet speeches, that he may filch ap-gether away, that so the true figure of the plause, and certain "guineas per sheet," from world, and his own true figure, might no longer him; substituting for Ignorance, which was be utterly hidden from him. Does this our harmless, Error which is not so. And yet to brother, then, refuse to accompany us, without the vulgar reader, naturally enough, that flat- such allurements? He must even retain our tering unction is full of solacement. In fact, best wishes, and abide by his own hearth. to a reader of this sort few things can be more alarming than to find that his own little Parish, where he lived so snug and absolute, is, after all, not the whole Universe; that beyond the hill which screened his house from the west wind, and grew his kitchen vegetables so sweetly, there are other hills and other hamlets, nay, mountains and towered cities; with all which, if he would continue to pass for a Geographer, he must forthwith make himself acquainted. Now this Reviewer, often his fellow Parishioner, is a safe man; leads him pleasantly to the hill top; shows him that in-vantage; they are the posthumous works of a deed there are, or seem to be, other expanses, these, too, of boundless extent: but with only cloud mountains, and fatamorgana cities; the true character of that region being Vacuity, or at best a stony desert tenanted by Gryphons and Chimæras.

Farther, to the honest few that still go along with us on this occasion, we are bound in justice to say that, far from looking down on Novalis, we cannot place either them or ourselves on a level with him. To explain so strange an individuality, to exhibit a mind of this depth and singularity before the minds of readers so foreign to him in every sense, would be a vain pretension in us. With the best will, and after repeated trials, we have gained but a feeble notion of Novalis for ourselves; his Volumes come before us with every disad

man cut off in early life, while his opinions, far from being matured for the public eye, were still lying crude and disjointed before his own: for most part written down in the shape of detached aphorisms, “none of them," as he says himself, "untrue or unimportant to his Surely, if printing is not, like courtier speech, own mind," but naturally requiring to be re"the art of concealing thought," all this must be modelled, expanded, compressed, as the matter blamable enough. Is it the Reviewer's real cleared up more and more into logical unity; trade to be the pander of laziness, self-conceit, at best but fragments of a great scheme which and all manner of contemptuous stupidity on he did not live to realize. If his editors, Friedthe part of his reader; carefully minister-rich Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck, declined coming to these propensities; carefully fencing off whatever might invade that fool's-paradise with news of disturbance? Is he the priest of Literature and Philosophy, to interpret their mysteries to the common man; as a faithful preacher, teaching him to understand what is adapted for his understanding, to reverence what is adapted for higher understandings than his? Or merely the lackey of Dullness, striving for certain wages, of pudding or praise, by the month or quarter, to perpetuate the reign of presumption and triviality on earth? If the latter, will he not be counselled to pause for an instant, and reflect seriously, whether starvation were worse or were better than such a dog's-existence?

menting on these Writings, we may well be excused for declining to do so. "It cannot be our purpose here," says Tieck, "to recommend the following Works, or to judge them; probable as it must be that any judgment delivered at this stage of the matter would be a premature and unripe one: for a spirit of such originality must first be comprehended, his will understood, and his loving intention felt and replied to; so that not till his ideas have taken root in other minds, and brought forth new ideas, shall we see rightly, from the historical sequence, what place he himself occupied, and what relation to his country he truly bore."

Meanwhile, Novalis is a figure of such importance in German Literature, that no stuOur reader perceives that we are for adopt-dent of it can pass him by without attention. ing the second method with regard to Novalis; If we must not attempt interpreting this Work that we wish less to insult over this highlygifted man, than to gain some insight into him; that we look upon his mode of being and thinking as very singular, but not, therefore, necessarily very contemptible; as a matter, in fact, worthy of examination, and difficult beyond most others to examine wisely and with profit. Let no small man expect that, in this

for our readers, we are bound at least to point out its existence, and according to our best knowledge, direct such of them as take an interest in the matter how to investigate it farther for their own benefit. For this purpose, it may be well that we leave our Author to speak chiefly for himself; subjoining only such expositions as cannot be dispensed with for even

verbal intelligibility, and as we can offer on schaftslehre, which, as we are told of the latter, our own surety with some degree of confidence." he studied with unwearied zeal," appears to By way of basis to the whole inquiry, we pre- to have been the groundwork of all his future fix some particulars of his short life; a part of speculations in Philosophy. Besides these our task which Tieck's clear and graceful metaphysical inquiries, and the usual attainNarrative, given as "Preface to the Third Edi- ments in classical literature, Novalis seems tion," renders easy for us. "to have devoted himself with ardour to the Physical Sciences, and to Mathematics, the basis of them :" at an early period of his life, he had read much History" with extraordinary eagerness;" Poems had from of old been "the delight of his leisure;" particularly that species denominated Mährchen, (Traditionary Tale,) which continued a favourite with him to the last; as almost from infancy it had been a chosen amusement of his to read these compositions, and even to recite such, of his own invention. One remarkable piece of that sort he has himself left us, inserted in Heinrich von Ofterdingen, his chief literary performance.

NOVALIS.

what beauty shone in her, what softness and majesty encircled her. Novalis became a poet every time he chanced to speak of it. She had concluded her thirteenth year when he first saw her: the spring and summer of 1795 were the blooming time of his life; every hour that he could spare from business he spent in Grüningen; and in the fall of that same year he obtained the wished-for promise from Sophie's parents."

Unhappily, however, these halcyon days were of too short continuance. Soon after this, Sophie fell dangerously sick "of a fever, attended with pains in the side;" and her lover had the worst consequences to fear. By and by, indeed, the fever left her; but not the pain, "which by its violence still spoiled for her many a fair hour," and gave rise to various apprehensions, though the Physician asserted that it was of no importance. Partly satisfied with this favourable prognostication, Novalis had gone to Weissenfels, to his parents, and was full of business; being now appointed Auditor in the department of which his father was Director; through winter the news from Grüningen were of a favourable sort; in spring he visited the family himself, and found his Sophie to all appearance well. But suddenly, in summer, his hopes and occupations were interrupted by tidings that, "she was in Jena, and had undergone a surgical operation." Her disease was an abscess in the liver: it had been her wish that he should not hear of The her danger till the worst were over. Jena surgeon gave hopes of a recovery though a slow one; but ere long the operation had to be repeated, and now it was feared that his patient's strength was too far exhausted. The young maiden bore all this with inflexible courage, and the cheerfulest resignation: her Mother and Sister, Novalis, with his Parents, and two of his Brothers, all deeply interested in the event, did their utmost to comfort her. In December, by her own wish, she returned home; but it was evident that she grew weaker and weaker. Novalis went and came between Grüningen and Weissenfels, where also he found a house of mourning; for Erasmus, one of these two Brothers, had long been sickly, and was now believed to be dying.

"The 17th of March," says Tieck, "was the fifteenth birthday of his Sophie; and on the 19th about noon she departed. No one durst tell Novalis these tidings: at last his Brother Carl undertook it. The poor youth shut himself up, and after three days and three nights of weeping, set out for Arnstadt, that there with his true friend he might be near the spot, which now hid the remains of what was dearest to him. On the 14th of April, his Brother Erasmus also left this world. Novalis wrote to inform his Brother Carl of the event, who had been obliged to make a journey into Lower Saxony: Be of good courage,' said he, 'Erasmus has prevailed; the flowers of our fair garland are dropping off Here, one by one, that they may be united Yonder, lovelier and for ever."

Among the papers published in these Volumes are three letters written about this time, which mournfully indicate the author's mood. "It has grown Evening around me," says he,

"while I was looking into the red Morning. My grief is boundless as my love. For three years she has been my hourly thought. She alone bound me to life, to the country, to my occupations. With her I am parted from all; for now I scarcely have myself any more. But it has grown Evening; and I feel as if I had to travel early; and so I would fain be at rest, and see nothing but kind faces about me;-all in her spirit would I live, be soft and mildhearted as she was." And again, some weeks later: "I live over the old, bygone life here, in still meditation. Yesterday I was twenty-five years old. I was in Grüningen, and stood beside her grave. It is a friendly spot; enclosed with a simple white railing; lies apart, and high. There is still room in it. The Village, with its blooming gardens, leans up around the hill; and at this point and that the eye loses itself in blue distances. I know you would have liked to stand by me, and stick the flowers, my birthday gifts, one by one into her hillock. This time two years, she made me a gay present, with a flag and national cockade on it. Today her parents gave me the little things which she, still joyfully, had received on her last birthday. Friend,--it continues Evening, and will soon be Night. If you go away, think of me kindly, and visit, when you return, the still house, where your Friend rests for ever, with the ashes of his beloved. Fare you well!"Nevertheless, a singular composure came over him: from the very depths of his griefs, arose a peace and pure joy, such as till then he had never known.

"In this season," observed Tieck, "Novalis lived only to his sorrow: it was natural for him to regard the visible and the invisible world as one; and to distinguish Life and Death, only by his longing for the latter. At the same time, too, Life became for him a glorified Life; and his whole being melted away as into a bright, conscious vision of a higher Existence. From the sacredness of Sorrow, from heartfelt love, and the pious wish for death, his temper, and all his conceptions are to be explained: and it seems possible that this time, with its deep griefs, planted in him the germ of death, if it was not, in any case, his appointed lot to be so soon snatched away from us.

"He remained many weeks in Thuringia; and came back comforted and truly purified, to his engagements: which he pursued more zealously than ever, though he now regarded himself as a stranger on the earth. In this period, some earlier, many later, especially in the Autumn of this year, occur most of those compositions, which, in the way of extract and selection, we have here given to the Public, under the title of Fragments: so likewise the Hymns to the Night."

Such is our Biographer's account of this matter, and of the weighty inference it has led him to. We have detailed it the more minutely, and almost in the very words of the text, the better to put our readers in a condition for judging on what grounds Tieck rests his opinion, that herein lies the key to the whole spiritual history of Novalis, that "the feeling which now penetrated and inspired him, may be said to have been the substance of his Life." It