Nothing further, perhaps, in the way of explanation, is required—unless to say that the present writer may be understood, acting under a sense of serious responsibility, to have formed independently for himself, though, naturally, not without much comparative study of various discussion by others, the literary, and by occasion the ethical, judgments and opinions which he has here committed himself to express. On the whole, it is a humble work, for a work so arduous and so full of risk to himself, that the writer herewith submits to the public. He hopes that he shall at least be found to have done no injustice, either to the authors whom he presents, or to the readers to whom he presents them. CLASSIC GERMAN COURSE IN ENGLISH I. GERMAN LITERATURE. To Germany may justly be accorded the paradoxical distinction of possessing at once the most voluminous and the least voluminous national literature in the world. Our meaning is, that while the aggregate bulk of books written and printed in the German language would probably be found to exceed, and even vastly exceed, that of those written and printed in any other language whatever, you would certainly look elsewhere in vain for a second example of a national literature in which the proportion of what, judged at once for substance and for form, could be pronounced choice and admirable was equally small. The German genius is prolific in thought, it is eager for expression; but of beauty in expression for thought, it is far, very far, from being correspondingly, we need not say capable, but desirous. The result is, as we have intimated, that, while of literature, in the large, loose sense of the term, the Germans have even an over-supply, of literature in the strict, narrow sense, they possess comparatively little. Little comparatively, we say; for absolutely they possess much. And of this much in quantity, a part at least is in quality very fine. Our concern, in the present volume, will be chiefly with what is best in German literature. We shall leave to one side, merely mentioning perhaps, as we pass, all that enormous contribution of the German mind to classical scholar |