Слике страница
PDF
ePub

of the gospel, and the most important remains of the THEOTISCAN, or the transitional state of the Teutonic language from the Gothic to the old German of the Swabian period. Of this period (the polished dialect of which is analogous to that of our Chaucer, and which leaves the philosophic student in doubt, whether the language has not since then lost more in sweetness and flexibility, than it has gained in condensation and copiousness) I read with sedulous accuracy the MINNESINGER, (or singers of love, the provencal poets of the Swabian court,) and the metrical romances; and then laboured through sufficient specimens of the master singers, their degenerate successors; not, however, without occasional pleasure from the rude yet interesting strains of HANS SACHS, the cobler of Nuremberg. Of this man's genius, five folio volumes, with double columns, are extant in print, and nearly an equal number in manuscript; yet, the indefatigable bard takes care to inform his readers, that he never made a shoe the less, but had virtuously reared a large family by the labour of his hands..

In Pindar, Chaucer, Dante, Milton, &c. &c. we have instances of the close connexion of poetic genius with the love of liberty and of genuine reformation. The moral sense at least will not be outraged, if I add to the list the name of this honest shoemaker; (a trade, by the bye, remarkable for the production of philosophers and poets.) His poem entitled the MORNING STAR, was the very first publication that appeared in praise and support of LUTHER; and an excellent hymn of Hans Sachs', which has been deservedly translated into almost all the European languages, was commonly sung in the Protestant churches, whenever the heroic reformer visited them.

Close as babes and mothers lie!
Blessed, blessed evermore;
With her virgin lips she kiss'd,
With her arms, and to her breast
She embraced the babe divine,
Her babe divine the virgin mother!
There lives not on this ring of earth
A mortal, that can sing her praise.
Mighty mother, virgin pure,
In the darkness and the night

For us she bore the heavenly Lord!

Most interesting is it to consider the effect, when the feelings are wrought above the natural pitch by the belief of something mysterious, while all the images are purely natural. Then it is that religion and poetry strike deepest.

In Luther's own German writings, and eminently in his transla tion of the bible, the German language commenced. I mean the language, as it is at present written; that which is called the HIGH GERMAN, as contra-distinguished from the PLATT-TEUTSCH, the dialect of the flat or northern countries, and from the OBERTEUTSCH, the language of the middle and southern Germany. The High German is indeed a lingua communis not actually the native language of any province, but the choice and fragrancy of all the dialects. From this cause it is at once the most copious and the most grammatical of all the European tongues.

Within less than a century after Luther's death, the German was inundated with pedantic barbarisms. A few volumes of this period I read through from motives of curiosity; for it is not easy to imagine any thing more fantastic than the very appearance of their pages. Almost every third word is a Latin word, with a Germanized ending; the Latin portion being always printed in Roman letters, while in the last syllable the German character is retained.

At length, about the year 1620, OPITZ arose, whose genius more nearly resembled that of Dryden than any other poet, who at present occurs to my recollection. In the opinion of LESSING, the most acute of critics, and of ADELUNG, the first of lexicographers, Opitz, and the Silesian poets, his followers, not only restored the language, but still remain the models of pure diction. A stranger has no vote on such a question; but after repeated perusals of the work, my feelings justified the verdict, and I seemed to have acquired from them a sort of tact for what is genuine in the style of later writers.

Of the splendid era which commenced with Gellert, Klopstock, Ramler, Lessing, and their compeers, I need not speak. With the opportunities which I enjoyed, it would have been disgraceful not to have been familiar with their writings; and I have already said as much as the present biographical sketch requires concerning the German philosophers, whose works, for the greater part, I became acquainted with at a far later period.

Soon after my return from Germany, I was solicited to undertake the literary and political department in the Morning Post; and I acceded to the proposal, on the condition that the paper should, thenceforward, be conducted on certain fixed and announced principles, and that I should be neither obliged or requested to deviate

from them, in favour of any party or any event. In consequence, that Journal became, and for many years continued, anti-ministerial indeed; yet, with a very qualified approbation of the opposition, and with far greater earnestness and zeal, both anti-jacobin and anti-gallican. To this hour, I cannot find reason to approve of the first war, either in its commencement or its conduct. Nor can I understand with what reason, either Mr. Percival, (whom I am singular enough to regard as the best and wisest minister of this reign,) or the present administration, can be said to have pursued the plans of Mr. PITT. The love of their country, and perseverant hostility to French principles and French ambition are, indeed, honourable qualities, common to them and to their predecessors. But it appears to me as clear as the evidence of facts can render any question of history, that the successes of the Percival and of the existing ministry, have been owing to their having pursued measures the direct contrary to Mr. Pitt's. Such, for instance, are the concentration of the national force to one object; the abandonment of the subsidizing policy, so far, at least, as neither to goad or bribe the continental courts into war, till the convictions of their subjects had rendered it a war of their own seeking; and above all, in their manly and generous reliance on the good sense of the English people, and on that loyalty which is linked to the very heart* of the nation, by the system of credit, and the interdependence of property.

*Lord Grenville has lately re-asserted, (in the House of Lords,) the imminent danger of a revolution in the earlier part of the war against France. I doubt not that his Lordship is sincere; and it must be flattering to his feelings to believe it. But where are the evidences of the danger, to which a future historian can appeal? Or must he rest on an assertion? Let me be permitted to extract a passage on the subject from THE FRIEND. "I have said that to withstand the arguments of the lawless, the anti-jacobins proposed to suspend the law, and by the interposition of a particular statute, to eclipse the blessed light of the universal sun, that spies and informers might tyrannize and escape in the ominous darkness. Oh! these mistaken men, intoxicated and bewildered with the panic of property, which they themselves were the chief agents in exciting, had ever lived in a country where there really existed a general disposition to change and rebellion! Had they ever travelled through Sicily; or through France at the first coming on of the revolution; or even, alas! through too many of the provinces of a sister island, they could not but have shrunk from their own declarations concerning the state of feeling, an opinion at that time predominant throughout Great Britain. There was a time, (heaven grant that that time may have passed by!) when, by crossing a narrow strait, they might have learnt the true symptoms of approaching danger, and have secured themselves from mistaking the meetings and idle rant of such sedition, as shrunk appalled from the sight of a constable, for the dire murmuring and strange consternation which precedes the storm or earthquake of national discord. Not only in coffee-houses and public theatres, but even at the tables of the wealthy, they would have heard the advocates of existing government defend their cause in the language, and with the tone of men, who are conscious that they are in a minority. But in England,

Be this as it may, I am persuaded that the Morning Post proved a far more useful ally to the government in its most important objects, in consequence of its being generally considered as moderately anti-ministerial, than if it had been the avowed eulogist of Mr. Pitt. (The few, whose curiosity or fancy should lead them to turn over the Journals of that date, may find a small proof of this in the frequent charges made by the Morning Chronicle, that such and such essays or leading paragraphs had been sent from the treasury.) The rapid and unusual increase in the sale of the Morning Post, is a sufficient pledge that genuine impartiality, with a respectable portion of literary talent, will secure the success of a newspaper, without the aid of party or ministerial patronage. But by impartiality I mean an honest and enlightened adherence to a code of intelligible principles, previously announced, and faithfully referred to, in support of every judgment on men and events; not indiscriminate abuse, not the indulgence of an editor's own malignant passions; and still less, if that be possible, a determination to make money by flattering the envy and cupidity, the vindictive restlessness and self-conceit of the half-witted vulgar; a determination almost fiendish, but which, I have been informed, has been boastfully avowed by one man, the most notorious of these mob-sycophants! From the commencement of the Addington administra

when the alarm was at its highest, there was not a city, no, not a town or village, in which a man suspected of holding democratic principles could move abroad without reciving some unpleasant proof of the hatred in which his supposed opinions were held by the great majority of the people; and the only instances of popular excess and indignation, were in favour of the government and the established church. But why need I appeal to these invidious facts? Turn over the pages of history, and seek for a single instance of a revolution having been effected without the concurrence of either the nobles, or the ecclesiastics, or the monied classes, in any country in which the influences of property had ever been predominant, and where the interests of the proprietors were interlinked! Examine the revolution of the Belgic provinces under Philip 2nd; the civil wars of France in the preceding generation; the history of the American revolution, or the yet more recent events in Sweden and in Spain; and it will be scarcely possible not to perceive, that in England, from 1791 to the peace of Amiens, there were neither tendencies to confederacy, nor actual confederacies, against which the existing laws had not provided sufficient safeguards and an ample punishment. But alas! the panic of property had been struck, in the first instance, for party purposes; and when it became general, its propagators caught it themselves, and ended in believing their own lie; even as our bulls in Borrowdale sometimes run mad with the echo of their own bellowing. The consequences were most injurious. Our attention was concentrated to a monster, which could not survive the convulsions in which it had been brought forth: even the enlightened Burke himself, too often talking and reasoning, as if a perpetual and organized anarchy had been a possible thing! Thus, while we were warring against French doctrines, we took little heed whether the means, by which we attempted to overthrow them, were not likely to aid and augment the far more formidable evil of French ambition. Like children, we ran away from the yelping of a cur, and took shelter at the heels of a vicious war-horse."

tion to the present day, whatever I have written in the MORNING Post, or, (after that paper was transferred to other proprietors,) in the COURIER, has been in defence or furtherance of the measures of government.

Things of this nature scarce survive the night
That gives them birth; they perish in the sight,
Cast by so far from after-life, that there

Can scarcely aught be said, but that they were!

CARTWRIGHT's Prol. to the Royal Slave.

Most

Yet in these labours I employed, and, in the belief of partial friends, wasted, the prime and manhood of my intellect. assuredly, they added nothing to my fortune or my reputation. The industry of the week supplied the necessities of the week. From Government or the friends of Government I not only never received remuneration, or even expected it; but I was never honoured with a single acknowledgment, or expression of satisfaction. Yet the retrospect is far from painful or matter of regret. I am not indeed silly enough to take, as any thing more than a violent hyperbole of party debate, Mr. Fox's assertion, that the late war (I trust that the epithet is not prematurely applied) was a war produced by the MORNING POST; or I should be proud to have the words inscribed on my tomb. As little do I regard the circumstance, that I was a specified object of Bonaparte's resentment during my residence in Italy, in consequence of those essays in the Morning Post, during the peace of Amiens. (Of this I was warned, directly, by Baron VON HUMBOLDT, the Prussian Plenipotentiary, who at that time was the minister of the Prussian court at Rome; and indirectly, through his secretary, Cardinal Fesch himself.) Nor do I lay any greater weight on the confirming fact, that an order for my arrest was sent from Paris, from which danger I was rescued by the kindness of a noble Benedictine, and the gracious connivance of that good old man, the present Pope. For the late tyrant's vindictive appetite was omnivorous, and preyed equally on a Duc D'Enghien,* and the writer of a newspaper para

*I seldom think of the murder of this illustrious Prince without recollecting the lines of Valerius Flaccus (Argonaut. Lib. I. 30.)

-Super ipsius ingens

Instat fama viri, virtusque haud læta Tyranno;

Ergo ante ire metus, juvenemque extinguere pergit.

« ПретходнаНастави »