flaws in the conduct of John Scott. The essential point to me seems that, before acknowledging Lockhart's right to demand satisfaction for injuries, Scott insisted that the latter declare upon his honor "that he had never derived money from any connection, direct or indirect, with the management of Blackwood's Magazine; and that he had never stood in a situation giving him, directly or indirectly, a pecuniary interest in its sale." To the wording of this demand Lockhart objected, and as a matter of right refused to make the denial, so Scott declared the affair terminated. Lockhart thereupon wrote to Scott that he considered him "a liar and a scoundrel" and posted him in the press. But the statement which appeared in the newspaper contains the denial that "he derived, or ever did derive, any emolument from the management" and declares in its last sentence that "the first copy of this statement was sent to Mr. Scott, with a notification that Mr. Lockhart intended leaving London within twenty-four hours of the time of his receiving it." Here is a palpable misstatement which Andrew Lang, who is constantly impugning the correctness of Scott's conduct on the score of punctilio, explains away as an oversight-an oversight so flagrant that Scott should have known it to be such. Lang's explanation successfully clears Lockhart from the suspicious appearances, though it argues a terribly excited state of mind on the part of the latter that he should have overlooked the significance of a declaration on which the whole weight of the quarrel rested. This error (and I speak with diffidence on a subject so far out of my experience) is much more serious than any Scott was guilty of, whose worst mistake, if I follow Mr. Lang, is that the man he first chose for his second, the witty and humane Horatio Smith, was not of a bellicose disposition and showed a tendency to mess up the proceedings. And perhaps Scott himself was not too eager for a meeting. But Lang even tries to turn Lockhart's crucial blunder into a point against Scott; he seems to think that it was Scott's business to look for honorable explanations of his adversary's behavior. Is it not obvious, however, that with such an opinion as he already had of Lockhart, the action would have impressed him as eminently characteristic? Was it not in keeping with the notorious methods of the editors of Blackwood's? He felt called upon to issue a counter-statement taking full advantage of the opening offered by Lockhart's blunder and renewing his former charges. To cut the story short, in the correspondence that followed Chrystie managed to assume the quarrel upon himself and to provoke a challenge from Scott. A meeting was arranged and, because of bad management on the part of the seconds, ended more tragically than was usual with such meetings. The duel was fought at night, and Scott not being able to observe that Chrystie, whose behavior in all these proceedings was above reproach, had fired his shot into the air, took deliberate aim and missed. Another exchange of shots was called for, and this time Chrystie's second insisted on his firing directly, in self-defense. On February 27, 1821, John Scott died as a result of the wound which he received, and the London Magazine was deprived almost at the beginning of its career of an editor who had given promise of making it as brilliant as Blackwood's and far more steady and respectable. JACOB ZEITLIN University of Illinois TRACES OF ENGLISH INFLUENCES IN FREILIG RATH'S POLITICAL AND SOCIAL LYRICS Hardly any German poet of the nineteenth century studied English literature with such diligence and thoroughness as Ferdinand Freiligrath, the poet of the German revolution. The works of Milton, Goldsmith, and Scott1 were his constant companions during his school years; and the endeavor to acquaint the German public with the best productions of English and American poetry dominated his literary activities throughout his life. As translator, anthologist, and editor of English literature he deserves the highest praise; and several poets such as Thomas Hood, Felicia Hemans, and Alfred Tennyson as well as Walt Whitman and Bret Harte owe their first introduction into Germany to his untiring efforts. Not only was he prepossessed in favor of English literature but he showed also a somewhat sentimental predilection for the English people-a feeling which was, however, quite general among German liberals during the first half of the nineteenth century. The inhabitants of his native province, Westphalia, he considered more closely related to the AngloSaxons than any other German tribe,2 and in a letter to a friend we find the following burst of Anglomania: "Das englische Leben und Weben, Volk, Literatur und Handel hat mich immer mächtig angezogen, und die Thränen standen mir in den Augen, als ich vor drei Monaten den dickleibigen Batavier mit seiner Fracht bestaubmäntelter Söhne und beschleierter Töchter Albions die Maas hinabdampfen sah." Later he was obliged to spend a number of years in England as a political refugee. It may, therefore, be assumed that English poets exercised a lasting influence on Freiligrath's own productions. He himself says in a letter of 1833: "Ich wüsste, unsere eigne ausgenommen, keine neuere Sprache, deren Literatur mich so mannigfach angeregt hätte, als gerade die englische." Yet 1 Buchner, W., Ferdinand Freiligrath. 2 vols., Lahr, 1882. Vol. I, pp. 38f, 148f. literary investigation has so far failed to trace English influences upon our poet. My original intention was to investigate the subject in its broadest sense; but that would have necessitated a thorough study of English literature from the middle of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century. I, therefore, limited my research to the political and social lyric; and even this field proved to be so extensive that the third part of this paper should be considered only as a preliminary survey. Nevertheless I believe that my conclusions, so far as they go, are fairly definite and final. FREILIGRATH'S DEVELOPMENT AS A POLITICAL AND SOCIAL POET Various investigators of this subject have stated that English poets were instrumental in turning Freiligrath from exotic to political and social poetry. Richter says: "Bei diesem jähen Übergang Freiligraths in das Lager der politischen Dichter darf man wohl nach Vorbildern suchen, die dem "Wüstendichter" den Weg gewiesen haben," and then puts forward the suggestion that besides Hoffmann, Prutz, and Herwegh mainly English and American poets pointed the way which Freiligrath was to follow. Petzet expresses a similar opinion, while Weddigen and Erbach boldly assert that the roots of Freiligrath's political poetry may be found in Byron.' I shall first attempt to prove that Freiligrath turned to political poetry independently of Byron or any other British poet. The year 1840 we may regard as the turning point in Freiligrath's poetical production, though this date is chosen somewhat arbitrarily. Until then he was under the spell of his exotic poetry, the necessary result of his character and natural gifts. This full-blooded scion of the Saxon tribe was unable to follow the lead of Heine's "Buch der Lieder" like most of the other German poets of that period. The aridness of public life Richter, K., Ferdinand Freiligrath als Übersetzer. Forschungen zur neueren Literaturgeschichte, XI. Berlin, 1899, p. 64. • Petzet, C., Die Blütezeit der deutschen politischen Lyrik. München, 1903, pp. 183 f. 7 Weddigen, F. H. Otto, Lord Byron's Einfluss auf die europäischen Litteraturen der Neuzeit. Hannover, 1884, pp. 48 f. Erbach, W., Ferdinand Freiligraths Übersetzungen aus dem Englischen im ersten Jahrzehnt seines Schaffens. Bonn, 1908, p. 137. in Germany after the Napoleonic wars caused Freiligrath's muse to flee into foreign lands. The struggle for existence in the tropics, the enslavement of the negroes, the conquest of the American West, the fight of the seafaring people against wind and water-such were the pictures that engaged the imagination of our poet. But Freiligrath was well aware that this kind of poetry could not satisfy a true poet for any length of time. In 1841 he wrote: "Meine Kameele und Neger sind nun freilich, Gott seis geklagt, auch just nichts Ewiges und Bleibendes, an dem man sich in die Höhe ranken könnte, aber wenn der liebe Gott nur etwas mehr freien Odem und ein gut Theil weniger Sorgen giebt, als ich jetzt habe, so denk ich noch was Tüchtiges zu leisten." He commenced, therefore, to look for new inspiration within the borders of the fatherland. As early as 1839 he had sung in his "Freistuhl zu Dortmund": Den Boden wechselnd, die Gesinnung nicht, Wählt er die rote Erde für die gelbe! Die Palme dorrt, der Wüstenstaub verweht:Ans Herz der Heimat wirft sich der Poet, Ein anderer und doch derselbe! And two years later in "Auch eine Rheinsage" he definitely abandoned his "Löwen- und Wüstenpoesie": Zum Teufel die Kameele, But he struggled in vain to rid his mind of the glowing pictures of the tropics and to find in the sober surroundings of his native country new motifs for his muse, until he turned-after several unproductive years-to political poetry. This change, however, was not brought about by English political poets but by the unbearable political conditions of his country to which the poet's eyes were opened in the course of his famous literary controversy with Herwegh. While there are, as we shall see later on, unmistakable signs of English influences Buchner, op. cit., I, p. 411. |