call up a vision of the bleak coasts and changeful northern sea which are the scenes of their adventures. In the 15th century a German writer brought together in a single volume which he called the Heldenbuch-the *Book of Heroes"-a number of old legendary tales that must have been frequently on the lips of the people and of the wandering minstrels, while the knightly poets were singing of Tristram or of Arthur. This work, which was partly written by Kaspar von der Rhön, will not compare in imaginative force with its more famous rivals. The most powerful of the stories is probably the "Grosser Rosengarten," in which a monk, Ilsan, displays a very unclerical, but truly Teutonic, passion for war. Hande. The age of chivalry was remarkable not only for its romances and epics but for its lyrics. All the leading writers of the time exercised themselves in lyrical poetry, and it was laboriously cultivated by multitudes who did not feel equal to the task of a prolonged effort. Among those who gained more or less distinction may be named Heinrich von Morungen, Reinmar der Alte, and Gottfried von Neifen. The poets of this class were known as Minnesänger, because their favourite theme was Miune or love. They began by imitating the troubadours, whose metres they often reproduced when not penetrated by the emotion which originally found in these forms a genuine expression. At a later stage it was considered a point of honour for each poet to invent a stanza of his own, whether or not those already existing were appropriate to his feeling. Thus many of the minne songs produce an impression of unreality and coldness, seeming at best to be but clever pieces of handiwork. But when the atmost deduction has been made, it is surprising how much of what was achieved by these ardent writers still appeals The best among them strike notes which respond in every age to a master's touch; and they do it with a fine sense of beauty, a trained instinct for the appropriateness of words, and an evident delight both in simple and in subtle melody. to us. Perhaps no group of writers has ever had a deeper undertone of sadness than is to be detected in the greatest of the minnesänger. They had a vivid consciousness of the evanescence of human pleasure, an abiding feeling that corruption lurks behind the gayest forms and brightest colours. Bat they caught with proportional eagerness the passing rap ture, letting no drop escape from the cup that would soon fall from their grasp. This intensity of feeling is reproduced in their lays, yet it was purified and generalized as it passed from the fleeting reality to the permanent realm of art. Their treatment of love, although sometimes, according to modern ideas, extravagant and fantastic, often displays genuine elevation of sentiment. They sing also in impassioned strains the loyalty of the vassal to his lord, the devotion of the Christian to his church. If they do not exhibit the soaring spiritual ambition of Wolfram's Parzival, they have a kind of pathetic memory of a lost paradise, a vague longing, by some distant difficult service, in battle with the infidel, to attain to a world in which the discords of the present life may be forgotten or harmonized. And behind all their images is the background of nature, whose loveliness they do not the less appreciate because they refrain from elaborately describing it. To the dwellers in dreary towers winter had often a cheerless and melancholy aspect; but this made all the more enchanting the new life of spring. It is in bailing the returning warmth and colour of the young season that the minnesänger attain their happiest triumphs. alfi T Of all the minnesänger the first place belongs without nder question to Walther von der Vogelweide, probably of Tyrol whom Gottfried of Strasburg praises as heartily as he slyly depreciates Wolfram von Eschenbach. Walther lived some weide. time at the Wartburg, and was the friend of King Philip and Frederick II; he died on a little estate which the latter gave him in fief. Other Minnesänger lavished praise on generous princes; Walther was of a more manly charac ter, and seems always to have maintained an independent bearing. Besides the usual themes of the lyrical poetry of his time, he wrote with enthusiasm of his native land; he also frequently alludes to the strife between the spiritual and secular powers, and sternly rebukes the ambition of the papacy. Beyond all his rivals he gives us the impres sion of writing with ease and delight. The structure of his stanzas does not hamper the movement of his feeling; it appears to provide the conditions of perfect freedom. Such a lyric as his Unter der Linden an der Heide, with its musical refrain Tandaradei, although a masterpiece of art, is exquisite in its childlike simplicity; it has the unaffected grace of a flower, the spontaneity of a bird's song. Lichte stein As the expression of all that was fantastic and ridiculous U in the age of chivalry, must be mentioned the Frauendienst von of Ulrich von Lichtenstein, a work which was written about the middle of the 13th century, and had a certain popularity in its time. It is an autobiography, with a number of lyrics interwoven to give variety and animation to the narrative, The solemn gravity with which the author relates the amazing tasks imposed upon him by his mistress shows how easily the worship of womanhood degenerated into almost incredible childishness. Ulrich is sometimes compared to Don Quixote, but this is to do extreme injustice to Cervantes's hero. Amid all his illusions the fictitious knight maintains a certain pathetic dignity; the knight of reality passes from absurdity to absurdity without a touch of idealism to redeem his folly. And his lyrics are the tasteless manufacture of a thoroughly prosaic spirit. Several of the minnesänger, Walther von der Vogelweide Didacti especially, display at times a strongly didactic tendency, poets. From the beginuing of the period this tendency was developed by writers who took little interest in poetry for its own sake, and it became more and more prominent as the purely lyrical impulse passed away. The didactic poet, however significant his labours may be to his contemporaries, has necessarily the stamp of commonplace for posterity; and the gnomic writers of the 13th century form no exception to this rule. But several of them have at least the interest that attaches to sincerity and earnestness. There is genuine enthusiasm for pure morality in the Welsche Gast of Thomasin Zerklar; and the Bescheidenheit of Freidank expresses so high a conception of duty, and expresses it so well, that the work was ascribed to Walther himself. Reinmar von Zweter and Heinrich Frauenlob came a little later, and they were followed by Hugo von Trimberg, whose Renner sets forth unimpeachable lessons in homely and satirical verses. A higher tone is perceptible in Der Winsbecke, a collection of sayings in which we find an echo of the reverence for noble women that marked the epoch at its dawn. Among didactic writings must be classed the well known Der Krieg auf der Wartburg (“The Contest at the Wartburg"). It includes the verses supposed to have been sung at a tournament of poets attended by Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Walther von der Vogelweide, and Wolfram von Eschenbach As Latin cortinued to be the speech of scholars, and the passion for metrical expression pervaded the higher classes, there was not much scope for the growth of prose. Never theless, it is in this age that we find the first serious attempts to secure for German prose a place in the national literature. The Sachsenspiegel and the Schwabenspiegel, two great collections of local laws, although of a scientific character, and mainly interesting because of their social importance, had considerable influence in encouraging the Declination of shivalry. respect of the Germans for their own language. The preachers, however, were the principal founders of prose style. Preaching became about the middle of the 13th century an agency of great power in the life of Germany. A number of the clergy, dissatisfied with the technicalities of scholasticism, and with the mere forms under which spiritual aspiration was often crushed, strove to attain to a fresh vision of religious truth, and to kindle their own enthusiasm in the minds of others. Of this generous band the most popular was Brother Berthold, a Franciscan monk, a man of a noble and commanding temper, and an orator of the highest rank. Love for the poor was his dominant motive, and he sometimes expressed it in language a modern socialist might envy. Having something of the imaginative glow of the minnesänger, he gave such colour to his abstract teaching as made it at once intelligible and attractive. Of a less poetical nature than Berthold, Master Eckhart, the next early master of religious prose, was more deeply philosophical. Although familiar with the scholastic systems, he broke away from their method, and became the founder of the mystical school which was one of the most potent factors in preparing the way for the Reformation. Eckhart's reasonings are sometimes hard to follow, but he is not a confused thinker; his obscurity arises rather from the nature of his themes than from his mode of handling them. He occasionally touches profound depths in the spiritual nature of man, and it is refreshing to pass from the formal hairsplitting of the scholastic philosophers to the large conceptions of a mind which obeys its own laws and is evidently in direct contact with the problems it seeks to solve. III. The Later Middle Age.-After the fall of the Hohenstaufen dynasty the age of chivalry in Germany virtually came to an end. The breaking up of the old duchies set free a large number of petty nobles from their allegiance to mediate lords; and as there was no longer a strong central authority, either to hold them in check or to provide them with such outlets for their energy as they had found in the crusades and in the imperial expeditions into Iy, nearly the whole class sank from the high level to which it had temporarily risen. Many knights became mere robbers, and thought themselves honourably employed in taking part in the innumerable little wars which shattered the prosperity of the nation. Men of this kind were not very likely to inherit the free and poetic spirit of Walther von der Vogelweide. In the course of the 14th and 15th centuries attempts were still made by Wolkenstein, Muskatblüt, and other writers to imitate his style; but in their hands the lyre of the minnesänger gave forth only feeble or discordant notes. For a long time the princes were no more inclined to literature than the nobles; they were too much occupied with mutual jealousies, and with incessant attempts to shake themselves free of the crown, to give heed to anything so removed from practical interests as poetry. It so happened that during this period the cities rose to a position of higher importance than they had ever before occupied. There was a while when it even seemed possible that by their leagues, and by alliance with those emperors who had insight enough to recognize their strength, they might become the preponderating element in the state. Driven from the castles of the princes and the towers of the nobles, literature took refuge in these young and growing centres of a vigorous life. Not one or two here and there, but multitudes of honest citizens, became possessed by the desire to distinguish themselves in the arts in which they had been so much surpassed by the nobles of a previous generation. Unfortunately, they had no literary training; they were not familiar with any great models; few of them had leisure for the cultivation of style; and the character of their daily employments was not such as to kindle thoughts Meiste that demand poetic utterance. At that time every trade sanger. had its guild; and they now formed guilds of poetry, the task of whose members was in intervals of leisure to produce songs according to a body of strict rules, as in hours of business they produced shoes or loaves. The rules were called the "Tabulatur," and the rank of each member was determined by his skill in applying them. The lowest stage was that of a man who had simply been received into the guild; the highest, that of a master, who had invented a new melody. Between these were the scholar, the friend of the school, the singer, and the poet Literature produced under such conditions could not have much vitality. It amused the versifiers, and developed a certain keenness in the detection of outward faults; but the spirit of poetry was wanting, and there is hardly a "meistersänger" whose name is worthy of being remembered. drama Much more important than these tedious manufacturers Beginnin of verse were the unknown authors of the earliest attempts of the at dramatic composition. In the 10th century Hroswitha, the abbess of Gandersheim, wrote Latin imitations of Terence; but they were without influence on the progress of culture. The real beginnings of the modern drama were the crude representations of scriptural subjects with which the clergy strove to replace certain pagan festivals. These representations gradually passed into the "Mysteries" or "Miracle Plays," in which there was a rough endeavour to Miracle dramatize the events celebrated at Easter and other sacred plays. seasons. They were acted at first in churches, but afterwards in open courts and market places; and for many hours, sometimes day after day, they were listened to by enormous audiences. The fragment of a Swiss "Mystery" of the 13th century has survived; but the earliest that has come down to us in a complete form is a play of the first half of the 14th century, treating of the parable of the ten virgins. Like those of France and England, these medixval German dramas display little imagination; and they are often astonishingly grotesque in their handling of the most awful themes. Along with them grew up what were known as "Shrove Tuesday Plays," dialogues setting forth some scene of noisy fun, such as a quarrel between a husband and wife, with a few wise saws interspersed. They were declaimed without much ceremony in the public room of an inn, or before the door of a prominent citizen, and gave ample occasion for impromptu wit. Nuremberg seems to have been particularly fond of "Shrove Tuesday Plays," for one of its poets, Hans Rosenblüt, who flourished about the middle of the 15th century, was the most prolific author of them. A little later he was extensively imitated by Hans Folz, a Nuremberg barber and meistersänger. By far the most interesting writers of the 14th century Mystica were the mystics, who continued the movement started by Eckhart. Johannes Tauler of Strasburg (1300-61) had not the originality and force of his predecessor, but the ultimate mysteries of the world had an intense fascination for him, and his tender and sensitive spirit opened itself to lights which find no way of entrance into more robust and logical intellects. He did not in the main pass beyond the speculations of Eckhart, but he added grace and finish to their expression, and made them a greater popular power than they could have become through the master's writings Heinrich Suso, of Constance (1300-65), who has been called "the minnesänger of the love of God," made the doctrines of Eckhart an occasion for the outpourings of a full and sometimes extravagant fancy. Eckhart's teaching was also put into shape by an unknown author, whose work was afterwards published by Luther under the title Eyn deutsch 'heologia. To all these writers the phenomenal world a in its nature evil, but it is also unreal; the only reality of 15th tury. they recognize is a world outside the limits of space and time, in union with which man rises to his true life. They are chiefly of importance in the history of speculative thought, but even from the point of view of literature they were of high service in the development of a rich and vigorous prose. A plain narrative prose style was cultivated in the chronicles which began at this time to be written in different parts of Germany. The Limburg Chronicle written between 1336 and 1398, the Alsace Chronicle about 1386, and the Thuringian Chronicle, by Rothe, a monk of Eisenach, about 1430, have all considerable historical value; and the fact that they are in German, not like previous chronicles in Latin, proves the rising respect among the people for their native speech. and from the 11th to the 15th century they formed the subject of many works in Latin, French, and German. The epic to which allusion is now made appeared in 1498, and was probably by Hermann Barkhusen, a printer of Rostock. It is in Low German, and its materials were obtained from a prose version of the tale which had appeared some years before in Holland, and of which Caxton printed an English translation. Originally, the story had no satirical significance; it was a simple expression of interest in what may be called the social life of wild animals. In the hands of the author of this Low Ger man poem it becomes an instrument of satire on some enduring tendencies of human nature. He does not lash himself into fury at the vices he chastises; he laughs at while he exposes them. His humour is broad and frank, and he During the latter part of the 15th century there was in did more than any one else to make Reynard the type of Germany, as in the other leading European nations, a great the resource and cunning which overmaster not only brute revival of intellectual life. And it was due to the same force but even truth and justice. There are several causes as prevailed elsewhere,-especially the rediscovery renderings of the poem into High German, the most imof Greek literature and the invention of printing. The portant being the well-known work of Goethe in hexameters. movement was naturally most powerfully felt in the uni- Another popular satirical work was the Narrenschiff Brands versities. The first of these institutions had been founded ("Ship of Fools") of Sebastian Brandt, published in Basel early in the 14th century by Charles IV. in Prague. Soon in 1494. It is an allegorical poem of more than a hundred afterwards others were established in Vienna, Heidelberg, sections, in which the vices are satirized as fools. This Cologne, and Erfurt; and in the 15th century universities work passed through many editions, and was rendered into were set up also in Rostock, Greifswald, Tübingen, Leipsic, more than one Low German dialect, and into Latin, French, and elsewhere. For a long time law and divinity were and English; it was even made the subject of a series of almost the only subjects studied; but when the Renaissance sermons by Geiler, of Kaisersberg, a well-known preacher passed from Italy into Germany, university teaching be- of the day, who had himself some satirical talent. Brandt came the instrument of a freer and larger culture. Scho- was personally of a mild and unassuming character, and the lastic philosophy fell into disrepute; the most active minds fact that he became a satirist in spite of himself is a strikoccupied themselves only with the intellectual treasures ing proof of the confusion which had fallen upon both of the ancient world. The men devoted to the new church and state. Now that the occasion of his book has studies were called "Humanists," and they carried on passed away, it is difficult to realize that it once enjoyed continual warfare with the more ignorant and intolerant almost unprecedented popularity. We cannot but feel that of the clergy. Unfortunately they knew nothing of the the writer was an honest man; but his allegories are withvalue of their own language; they wrote, as the scholastic out force or charm, and his moral lessons have been the philosophers had done, solely in Latin, and they gave but commonplaces of every civilized society. A satirist of a slight and contemptuous attention to the movements of bolder type was Thomas Murner, who, although he Murner popular literature, lived far into the age of the Reformation, belongs in spirit altogether to the preceding period. He was a preacher, and both in sermons and in secular writings attacked without mercy the classes who were the butts of his fellow-satirists. After the beginning of the Reformation he included Luther among the objects of his.comprehensive dislikes. His laughter was loud and harsh, and can hardly have been favourable to any small buddings of charity that may have revealed themselves among the antagonisms of his generation. pular Yet the popular literature of their time was quite worthy erature of study, for the stir of new life had affected not only scholars but all classes of society, citizens and even peasants included. It is surprising how many books found their way to the public between 1450 and the outbreak of the Reformation; every one seemed anxious that the newly discovered process by which writers could appeal to so wide an audience should be turned to the utmost possible advantage. Of this great mass of literature a comparatively small proportion was created in obedience to the free impulses of the intellect. The problems of the time were mainly social and practical: men were less moved by ideal interests than by questions as to the tyranny of the princes, the greed and sensuality of tho clergy, the worldliness of the papacy, the powerlessness of the crown to enforce peace and order. Multitudes of little tales in prose and verse appeared, in which the princes, the nobles, the clergy, and sometimes rich citizens, were held up to ridicule. The "Shrove Tuesday Plays," which now became.extremely popular, also expressed the general discontent; and there were even "Miracle Plays" whose object was to reveal the wrongs of the people. In one of them, the leading character of which was Joanna, the mythical female pope, a clerical author did not hesitate to pour contempt on the Roman see itself. etneke By far the greatest of these satirical writings was the epic narrative, Reineke Vos. It has been already stated that the stories of "Reynard the Fox" and "Isengrim the Wolf" probably belong to prehistoric ages. They became current, through the Franks, in Lorraine and France; One of the favourite books of this time was Tyll Tyll Eulenspiegel. It was published in 1519, and the author Eulenspiegel (probably Murner) seems to have included in it many anecdotes already well known. According to the preface, Tyll was a Brunswick peasant of the 14th century, who went about the country perpetrating practical jokes. The force of his humour rainly consists in taking every word addressed to him in its most literal sense, and in giving it applications altogether different from those intended by the speaker. There are readers who still find amusement in his rough pleasantries. During the better part of this stirring period Maximilian I. was emperor, and he interested himself a good deal in the current literature. As in politics, however, so in poetry, his sympathies were altogether with an earlier age; and he attempted to revive the taste for mediæval romance. From a sketch said to have been prepared by him, Melchior Pfinzig celebrated in. Theuerdank the emperor's marriage with Princess Mary of Burgundy. The work was splendidly printed, and attracted much notice; but romantic poetry, once so fascinating, produces in its pages the effect of an elderly coquette who, refusing to believe in the ravages of years, tricks herself out in the gay adornments of youth. An earlier book, the Weiss Kunig, an autobiography of Maximilian, written by his direction in prose by his secretary Treizsauerwein, has the excellence neither of a chronicle nor of a romance; it is for the most part the fantastic work of a mind which misunderstood its epoch and its own powers. Popular Behind the strife and noise of contending sections there poetry. was slowly growing up an admirable intellectual product of Germany, its popular poetry. One of the earliest writers who struck the note of the popular poets was Veit Weber, a Swiss who fought with his countrymen against Charles the Bold, and who celebrated in vigorous verses the battles of Granson, Murten, and Nancy. From this time the German people had always a living poetry of their own, created by unknown authors, but caught up by the masses, passed on from village to village till it was every where known, and handed down by each generation to its successors. This popular poetry ultimately reflected every aspect of daily life among the humbler classes; each section among them had its appropriate lyrics, and there were songs of youth, of age, and of middle life. There is no elaboration in these offshoots of the popular fancy, but many of them have an artless beauty which touches the fountains of smiles and tears, and which had an irresistible fascination for the poets of the greatest period of German literature. Refor IV. The Century of the Reformation. It is possible mation that if there had been no Reformation the Renaissance period would have revealed itself in Germany in a great literary movement, as in France and England, or in a great artistic movement, as in Italy. The conditions of both movements were present in the labours of the humanists on the one hand, and of the Holbeins, Albert Dürer, and Lucas Cranach on the other. But the questions of the Reformation were too profound and agitating for the mind of the nation to turn seriously to any task save that which they imposed. Thus it happened that the young shoots of the Renaissance withered almost before they were. in leaf. It was settled that Germany must wait until a much later time for the full exercise of her highest energies. Luther. 66 In literature not less than in religion Luther (1483-1546) was the commanding spirit of the age; but he was so rather by accident than by choice. For form for its own sake he cared little; he studied it solely that he might the better produce the moral effect at which he aimed. It is hardly possible for any one to sympathize now with the violence and the dogmatism of his tracts, addresses, and sermons; but they had the high merit of addressing the nation in a language it could understand. They are always clear, simple, warm with the glow of a passionate nature; and amid their noise and fury an att ntive ear will sometimes catch the still small voice of a spin it touched to finer issues than mere party warfare. My husk may be hard," he himself said, "but the kernel is soft and sweet." We do extreme injustice to Luther if we do not recognize in him a strongly poetic element, -an element which had free play only in the best of his private letters, and in his still popu lar hymns. By the highest of his literary achievements, his translation of the Bible, he made a truly splendid contribution to the sp ritual life of his people. No body of literature has been so fortunate in its translators as the Scriptures; and Luther's rendering ranks with the best. Its absolute simplicity brings it to the level of a child's understanding; its strength and grace give it an enduring place as a work of art. Germany instantly felt its charm; and for three centuries it has been to innumerable millions the supreme consoler and sanctifier, the power associated with their tenderest, most pathetic memories, the one link which has connected sordid lives with noble and sublime ideas. And for the first time it gave the nation a literary language. Up to this stage every author had written in the dialect with which he was himself familiar; henceforth for the men of Swabia, of Bavaria, of Saxony, and of all other districts there was a common speech, which the writers of each state could use without any sense of inferiority to those of another. It is thus to Luther that the Germans owe the most essential of all the conditions of a truly national life and literature. The writer who deserves to stand next to Luther is Ulrici Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523). An accomplished von humanist, he effectively attacked the enemies of the new cul- Hutter, ture in the Epistola Obscurorum Virorum, of which he was one of the chief writers. This was before the special work of Luther began; and at a still earlier period he had assailed in a series of fine Latin orations the tyranny oi Duke Ulrich of Würtemberg, who was accused of murdering a member of Hutten's family. He had little real sympathy with Luther's religious aims; but he threw himself heartily into a movement by which it seemed possible to purge the state of the spiritual and secular ills which were in deadly antagonism to the progressive energy of humanism, His German writings are mainly short satirical poems and prose dialogues and addresses. Their style is direct, bold, and trenchant; but they are now in teresting mainly because of the spirit of freedom which breathes through them, the lofty political ideals of the writer, and his generous ardour for the popular welfare. A far more voluminous author than Hutten or Luther Hans was Hans Sachs, meistersänger of Nuremberg (1494-Saclis, 1576). He was, indeed, one of the most prolific of German writers, having composed, according to his own calculation, more than 6000 poems. Although extremely popular in his own time, Sachs was almost forgotten after his death, His memory was revived by Wieland and Goethe, and he is now universally admitted to have been the chief German poet of the 16th century. Every species of verse then known he freely cultivated, and there is no important element of his age which is not touched in one or other of his works. He had little of the culture of the schools, and many of his verses are excessively rude. But Hans had considerable force of imagination, sly humour, and, in his happiest moments, a true feeling for melody. His best works are his "Shrove Tuesday Plays." It is true he makes hardly more attempt than Rosenblüt to develop a dramatio action, but his characters have life, and in many individual scenes are artistically grouped. His didactic dialogues and satirical tales present a remarkably vivid picture of the ideas, controversies, and moral sentiments of his generation; and some of his lyrics still live in the memory of the nation. The song in which he hailed the "Wittenberg Nightingale" gave fine utterance to the reverence of the Lutherans for their chief, and in his hymn, Warum betrübst du dich, mein Herz? he so happily met the spiritual need of the day that it was soon translated into eight languages, including English, French, and Greek. If Hans Sachs was the most industrious poet of the century, Johann Fischart was beyond all comparison its Fischart greatest satirist. There was a distinctly Rabelaisian touch in this restless, bizarre, and effusive spirit,—a man of upright and manly character, keenly alive to the evils of his time, and continually opening fire at new points on hig enemies. He was an enthusiast for the Reformation, and did it more lasting service among the middle class than half the theologians. His chief work was an adaptation of Rabelais's Gargantua, which he rendered with an insight into its purpose, and a fulness of sympathy with its Prose Arndt. although he often appears to darken counsel by words, methods, unsurpassed even by Urquhart. In the poem, | he sought to ground them in the deepest reason; and Several other cultivators of prose style deserve mention. writers. Albert Dürer, whose paintings, drawings, and engravings gave to the age of transition between mediævalism and the modern world its most perfect artistic expression, wrote several scientific treatises, one of which, on the proportions of the human body, is a masterpiece of calm, clear, and systematic exposition. Johann Thurnmeier, called Aventinus (1466-1534), Sebastian Franck (1500-45), and Ægidius Tschudi, of Glarus (1505-72), wrote histories which, as ordered narratives, rank considerably above mere chronicles. The autobiography of Götz von Berlichingen, if its style is without merit, has an enduring interest as a sketch of the rude lives of the petty nobles at the time when the old social order was breaking up under the influence of new ideas. Huldrich Zwingli, the Swiss Reformer (14841531), could state an argument with logical precision, but his style is thin and weak in comparison with the nervous force of Luther. Johann Agricola (1492-1566) wrote some theological works on the Catholic side; he is chiefly important, however, for a collection of German proverbs, which afford important evidence as to the currents of popular thought. Of a far higher class as a religious writer was Johann Arndt (1555-1621), who wrote the most widely read work of the 16th century, Vier Bücher vam Wahren Christenthum ("Four Books on True Christianity"). Soon after Luther's death the doctrines of the Reformation lost nearly all vitality; becoming the subjects of vehement controversy among contending theologians, they ceased to interest the misses, who turned to simpler and more congenial themes. Arndt, like Eckhart, Tauler, and Luther himself, being a man of religious genius, saw the futility of these noisy disputes, and brushing them aside went to the heart of Christianity as a power fitted to nourish spiritual feeling and to govern conduct. His work appeared in Magdeburg in 1610, passed through edition after edition, and was translated into eleven languages. It still has a place of its own, for beneath the forms of a past age there burns the are of a true enthusiasm. Sebastian Franck, already mentioned as a historian, wrote some religious works in a spirit akin to that of Arndt; but he lacked the intensity, the power of touching the popular mind, which was possessed by the later writer. Less practical in tendency, but incomparably deeper in philosophic thought, were the writings of the Boehme. Görlitz theosophist, Jacob Boehme (1575-1624). Boehme is in many respects one of the most striking figures in the history of German speculation. A man of mild and humble temper, working in patient obscurity as a shoemaker, he spent his life in grappling with the vastest problems which perplex humanity. Starting from the dogmas of Christianity, The secular poetry of this period, if we except the works of Hans Sachs and Fischart, is without value. An ambitious didactic poem by Rollenhagen, Der Froschmäusler, gained a certain reputation; but it stands far/ beneath Reineke Vos, of which it is partly an imitation. The religious lyrics of the age are, however, of high Religious excellence; they, indeed, are the sole works in which a lyrics. perfect marriage was effected between idea and form in the epoch of the Reformation. In his grand battle-hymn Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, in his pathetic verses Aus tieffer Not schrey ich zu dir, and in other lyrics, Luther led the way; and he was, as we have seen, followed by Hans Sachs, Nicolaus Herrmann in his Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag, Paul Eber in his Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sein, Philip Nicolai in his Wie schön leucht uns der Morgenstern, and several other writers not less distinguished, created, in moments of genuine inspiration, lyrics which must move men while religious instincts survive. The adherents of the Reformation everywhere opened their hearts to these beautiful poems, for in them alone, not in creeds or sermons or controversial treatises, were the deepest emotions of the time freely poured forth, Next to the translation of the Bible, nothing did so much as the popular hymns to unite the Protestants, to stimulate their faith, and to intensify their courage. drama During this century the drama made considerable pro- Growth gress. Besides the "Mysteries" and "Shrove Tuesday of the Plays," "School Comedies," in imitation of Terence and Plautus, were written and acted in the universities and publio schools. Luther, with the large humanity characteristic of him when dogmatic disputes were not in question, encouraged these comedies, and was, indeed, friendly to dramatic effort of all kinds. To persons who complained that modesty was often offended by the actors he replied that if they carried out their principle they would have to refrain from reading the Bible. When the Jesuits began to agitate in opposition to Protestantism they detected at once, with their usual tact, the importance of this element in popular life; and through their influence more attention was paid not only to the plays but to the manner in which they were represented. Towards the end of the 16th century Germany was visited by a band of English comedians, who went about acting in their own language. They appear to have produced a deep impression; and at least one of their importations, the clown, the "Pickelhäring" of the Dutch survived in Hanswurst or Jack Pudding, who was for more than a century an indispensable character in every play designed to gratify the prevailing taste. In imitation of the English comedians, wandering companies, consisting largely of idle students, now began to be formed, and thrilled both rustic and city audiences with blood-and-thunder tragedies, and with comedies too coarse to deserve even the name of farces. About the middle of the century a theatre was built in Nuremberg, and Augsburg and other cities soon followed the example. Duke Julius of Brunswick (1564-1613) not only built a theatre in his capital but maintained a perma nent company; and he amused himself by writing for it comedies and tragedies in the approved style of the day. |