that at this very time, in opposition to the violent demands of Tieck, the Schlegels, and their followers, it was reserved for a writer of a more moderate genius and less exaggerated claims to prove with what far more useful results the foreign model might have been brought in aid of the native effort, if a modest, practical spirit had only guided and controlled its introduction. Schreijvogel's pleasing translations from the Spanish drama are still acted. He was a man, we may add, of very great merit, though little known out of Germany. He was born in 1768, and was properly the creator of the first German theatre, the Burg-theater' at Vienna. He died in 1832: one of the first victims to the cholera. His best and most successful translations are Donna Diana,' from the Spanish of Aretino Mureto; 'Don Gutierre,' after Calderon; and Life a Dream' also after Calde 6 ron. Meanwhile Iffland and Kotzebue had steadily and perseveringly cultivated what we have called the domestic school, the bourgeois drama (das bürgerliche Schauspiel). Both these writers are widely known; both are popular to this day with German audiences. Overflooding with his comédie larmoyante' every little theatre in the country, Kotzebue was too profuse and immoderate in production to care at any time for progress or elevation. Iffland, himself the best existing actor, and the head of a dramatic school some members of which are yet living at Berlin, had a practical knowledge of the stage superior to any of his contemporaries: his motives were well-marked and effective; his characters strongly individualized: but his plots were in every instance from commonplace life, and that in its most prosaic form. A bankruptcy, a gambling loss, a theft if possible: these were the catastrophies of the plays of Iffland. A generous husband, who forgives his femme perdue; an illegitimate son, who reconciles his mother to his father; an uncle, who arrives in the nick of time from the Indies, West or East: these were the favourite heroes of Kotzebue, whom our German friends have the most loudly applauded for upwards of thirty years. Not classical' tragedy this, it must be confessed; no need of the cothurnus here, to mount up the actor to the poet's requirements; here are heroes much within standard height of the Prussian soldier, and passions other than those whereat Germany might have wept with Shakspeare, or shuddered with Calderon. It may be further admitted that there is often in these writers more sterility than simplicity, less clearness than insipidity in their intentions, and of the humble much less than of the vulgar in their general scope and aim. *He wrote under the name of West. But there was some reality to go upon; something that made appeal to the honest German playgoer on the score of what he had felt himself; and all the idealisms on abstractions in the world went for nothing against it. The 'romantic' school was worsted; and the highest order of genius then existing in Germany was withdrawn from the service of the stage, and unluckily devoted to the misdirection of other talents on their way to it. Success vitiated the bourgeois style, of course: but, though its fortunes were not without vicissitude, and other modified styles, influenced by the critical sway which the 'romanticists' maintained, became grafted on it, we must admit that it has on the whole kept the victory it won. When we arrive at the most recent date-in the detailed review to which we now proceed-it will be seen that the plays of the two most successful stage writers of the day, the Princess Amelia of Saxe, and the Baron Münch-Bellinghausen* are but the revival, with modern additions, of the principles of Lessing and Iffland. What the Germans call das Schicksalsdrama, the drama founded on the idea of fate (Schicksal), comes first in our review. It was a strange product of the conflicting theories and tendencies of the time: a sort of wild clashing together of the most inflated romantic pretensions, and the most ordinary domestic interests. Here was Calderon with a vengeance, his Christian inspiration, his wild catholicism, wedded to the old remorseless Fate of the Greeks: here was all-sufficient sympathy for the wonderful and mysterious in nature and in man, to please even the most exact ing romanticists: and could Shakspeare have been fairly represented by supernatural passions and unearthly fancies, here was a laudable effort to imitate Shakspeare. Superstition, mysticism, or murder, had constant possession of the scene; fright and shudder were the fashion; pity was dethroned by terror, and this despot ruled alone. Conceptions so wild and irregular must have a special language too; and the passionate rhythm of the trochaic verse, modelled on Calderon, supplanted the steady flow of the iambic. The representatives of this extraordinary dramatic style→→ which after all would never have taken hold of the audiences as it did, but for its points of human interest studied in the school of Lessing-were Werner, Müllner, and Houwald: three men of very different talents, and the first by far the most remarkable. But for him, indeed, there had been little interest for us in das Schicksalsdrama. A gifted spirit,' as Mr. Carlyle has well described him,† 'struggling earnestly amid the new, complex, tu *Frederick Halm is his adopted name. † In Carlyle's Miscellanies a paper will be be found on the Life of Werner. multuous influences of his time and country, but without force to body himself forth from amongst them; a keen, adventurous swimmer, aiming towards high and distant landmarks, but too weakly in so rough a sea; for the currents drive him far astray, and he sinks at last in the waves, attaining little for himself, and leaving little, save the memory of his failure, to others.' Zacharias Werner was born at Konigsberg in Prussia, in 1768, and died at Vienna in 1823. Impassioned and ill-regulated in his life and in his poetry; without a solid foundation in character or in knowledge; three times married, and three times divorced; now selecting for his dramatic hero the great author of the Reformation, and then announcing himself a zealous convert to the Roman Catholic religion; at Berlin the ruling dramatic author, and at Vienna a preaching, proselytising, fantastic priest: Werner, wandering on this earth like a restless shadow, proved, by so many changeful contrasts and vicissitudes, that the wild, irregular spirit in his poetical productions, was at least no affectation, but a truly felt, remediless, sickness of his soul. His first dramatic work* was 'The Sons of the Valley,' and notwithstanding its vague, impracticable, rhapsodical character, it contained more of the chaotic nature and genius of the man than any of his later writings. It is in two parts: the first, The Templars in Cyprus' (Die Templer auf Cypern); and the second, The Brethren of the Cross' (Die Kreuzesbrüder). Each of these parts is itself a play of six acts, and the two fill two thick volumes. The subject is the persecution and destruction of the Order of the Templars: a rich and tragic subject as it stands in history, and presenting a worthy hero in the person of Jaques Molay. But mere history had no charms for Werner. It was the history entirely within himself to which he had resolved to give utterance, and a mightily strange business he made of it. He happened at this time to be a brother, and an exalted one, of the order of Freemasons; and so, behind the full and warlike form of the Templars, to which in the first part of his poem (where their condition before * We subjoin a list of the whole. Die Söhne des Thales (The Sons of the Valley): 2 vols. Berlin, 1803. Der Vier-und-Zwanzigste Februar (The Twenty-fourth of February): Leipsic, 1815. Das Kreuz an der Ostsee (The Cross on the Baltic Sea): 2 vols. Berlin, 1806, and Vienna, 1820. Martin Luther; oder, die Weihe der Kraft (Martin Luther, or the Consecration of Strength): Berlin, 1807. Attila: Berlin, 1808. Wanda (Queen of Sarmatia): Tübingen, 1810. Kunigunde (St. Cunigunde): Leipsic, 1815. Die Mutter der Makkabäer (The Mother of the Maccabees): Vienna, 1815. The complete edition of his works was published in 1840, by his friends Grimma, and contains, in addition to the dramas, the lyric poems and the sermons preached at Vienna. His friend and companion, Hitzig, published his biography at Berlin, in 1823. their fall is pictured) he now and then does striking dramatic justice, he places the shadowy power and control of a mystic institution: : a new, never heard-of, rival Order, called The Sons of the Valley, half-spiritual, half-real, omnipotent, ubiquitous, and full of extraordinary schemes for the perfecting and regenerating of the soul of man. Amazing are the plans and structure of this society; but more amazing the expression it affords to the wild, unmanageable thoughts that made up the fever-fit we call Werner's life. It has projected a perfectly novel religion: a syncretistic, universal faith, combining Moses, Christ, and Mahomet, and uniting with Christian devotion the paganism of the ancient times, the mysteries of the oriental countries, and the worship of Isis and of Florus. And how connect it with the Templars? Why, by correcting history. It is not by the King of France, it is not by the Pope, that the Templars are destroyed: neither Clement nor Philippe le Beau had any thing to do with it, for the great work was transacted by these Sons of the Valley, and even the good Jaques Molay himself becomes persuaded that the sacrifice is necessary, and is inaugurated into their secrets before he dies. Such is the strange conception of a poem, which, it would be most unjust not to add, is rich in many characteristic beauties. Besides its gorgeous theatrical effects and show, it contains characters and figures in whose outline there is no lack of either strength or manliness; but the solid foundation in truth is absent, it is without organic connexion, and is wholly deficient in progressive interest: matters somewhat needful to a drama. In Martin Luther,' Werner again indulged his unfathomable notions, metaphysical and religious. The lesson proposed to be worked out was that the Strength (of human belief) received its highest consecration from Love; wherefore ought both to be, as man and wife, inseparable. Not at all clear in itself, this idea is plunged into the obscurest depths of a mystic plot, in which, notwithstanding some passages of exquisite beauty, the noble and manly figure of the great reformer is certainly seen to disadvantage. Better, decidedly, is the tragedy of Wanda, Queen of Sarmatia,' adopted daughter to Libussa, the celebrated mythic heroine of Bohemian tradition. Wanda and Rudiger (Prince of Rugen) had been in love, and pledged to each other, before she was called to the throne of Sarmatia. Since then, she has vowed herself solemnly to her people, when suddenly Rudiger, whom she thought dead, appears and claims her hand. The dilemma is cut through by a battle between Rudiger and the Samaritans, the latter defending Wanda: he loses the battle, and is himself slain by Wanda, who afterwards drowns herself in the Vistula. The two chief characters are here drawn with some strength and substance of reality; the collisions of love and duty, and the situations of mutual despair, are painted with masterly success; and there is a unity about the work, wanting to the other dramas of Werner-even to the Cross on the Baltic Sea,' which Iffland, struck with the genius there was in it, in vain endeavoured to adapt for his theatre at Berlin. But from these we must pass at once to the work which sent the name of Werner like wildfire through Germany. This, the most significant for him and for the 'school' it set up, was The Twenty-fourth of February,' which found at once incredible success and numberless imitations. It was the first of that long list of dramas, compounded of the mean and the terrible, which excited and degraded the taste of German playgoers. The plot and catastrophe of this piece, Werner took occasion to declare, were merely fictitious. He might, with the exercise of a little more candour, have recollected to add that for both he was greatly indebted to the Fatal Curiosity' of our English Lillo. Not that we would not gladly, but for the fact's sake, hand over to Germany the whole credit of the invention, for assuredly the whole is a most horrible and unwholesome nightmare. Briefly, thus the story runs. Kuntz Kuruth, once a soldier now a peasant, lives with his wife, Trude Kuruth, in a solitary valley of Switzerland. Well off in former days, they are grown poor and miserable. Many misfortunes have overtaken them, and now the cottage is to be sold, and prison stares them in the face. Such is the state of things, when Kuntz comes home in the stormy and dark night of the 24th of February, if the cold and empty room in which his wretched wife awaits him can be called a home. You then find by their talk that, apart from even their worst misfortunes, some terrible cloud is over them. Past and present times are alike dreadful to both, the future more dreadful still. The man thinks of killing himself; the wife proposes a theft; when a sudden knock at the door disturbs these domestic confidences. A foreigner is there, who has lost his way, and seeks a refuge in the storm of the night. He has the appearance of wealth; he has brought wine and food; he entreats the starved inmates to partake with him. At table, conversation begins: and such is the interest manifested by the rich stranger for these occupants of a hovel, that Kuntz is moved to tell his story. It runs to this effect. His father, choleric, passionate, and unjust, had never approved his marriage with Trude; and one miserable day-the 24th of February-the old man having grossly insulted and ill-treated his daughter-in-law, Kuntz in ungovernable rage and fury flung a knife at him. He had not hit his father, but the latter, to Kuntz's horror and remorse, died almost |