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cation to Savigny: "True poetry" (poetry again, you will observe, in the preface to a grammar), "true poetry is like a man who is happy anywhere in endless measure, if he is allowed to look at leaves and grass, to see the sun rise and set; false poetry is like a man who travels abroad in strange countries and hopes to be uplifted by the mountains of Switzerland, the sky and sea of Italy; he comes to them and is dissatisfied ; he is not as happy as the man who stays at home and sees his apple tree flowering every spring, and hears the small birds singing among the branches." Jacob Grimm's prejudice against the schools (Schulweisheit) is expressed in this context as strongly as Wordsworth's; Nature as against school learning is revered with the same certainty of choice. It is perplexing at first to find this faith in Nature and this hatred of the schools proclaimed as an introduction to the first and second Lautverschiebung and other branches of learning. But there is no real difficulty. Schulweisheit means modern rationalism; something like the Eighteenth Century in Carlyle; the conceited and self-confident intellect which very probably cares as little for the first as for the second Lautverschiebung, and only knows Walther and Wolfram from the play-bill of Wagner's

opera.

Philology, anyhow, can be practised by the simpleminded; that seems to come out as a fair inference. It does not require what the worldling calls cleverness. But we must be on our guard against a voluntary humility.

All this work and more was done, the Rechtsalterthümer in 1828, the Mythologie in 1835, Reinhart completed and published in 1834, before the adventure which puts the names of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in

the public history of Germany and Europe—the protest of the seven professors of Göttingen against the tyranny of Ernest, King of Hanover.

Jacob Grimm's tract on his expulsion is what one might expect from his noble spirit; there is nothing mean in it; there are no personalities except as touching the king, the pro-rector of the university, the deans of faculties, and "my brother"; he does not even give the names of the seven; neither Dahlmann nor Gervinus nor Ewald is there—I cannot find the name of any single person except the late king, William IV., and Ernest, Duke of Cumberland.

The character of Jacob Grimm was brought to the touchstone; his own report of the ordeal may be trusted; an excerpt from the Chancery of Heaven could hardly be more sincere. His political faith is simple. His country is Hesse and Germany; he respects the powers that be; he belongs to no party; he has no extreme faith in parliamentary government; constitutions have a negative value-they are dikes against a devastating flood, while positive fertility is given by the benevolent grace of the monarch. But William IV. had established a constitution, and Ernest had by two successive decrees revoked it. In the sight of Grimm, Ernest had perjured himself, and it was the duty of Georgia Augusta, the University of Göttingen, to protest.

The brothers Grimm, against their will, had been led away from Hesse into Hanover; and Hanover had thrown them out in December, 1831. Berlin took them up, and there they lived happily enough, and went on working.

Jacob Grimm, in the quiet end of his days, seems to have felt that the learned world was moving away from

him; there is sadness in his voice as he speaks of the cool reception given to his Weisthümer, the great collection of German local laws and customs. In 1839, for the first two volumes, he writes with the old spirit, the same enthusiasm as in the preface to the Meistergesang or the Grammar. The Weisthümer are a fresh springing well, and he trusts the reading public to avail themselves of it. The new collection is destined to enrich and transform the history of German law, to give colour and warmth to the history of the German race, and contribute largely to the sciences of language, mythology, and manners.

In Berlin, at the end of his life, writing on the 13th of December, 1862, for the fourth volume, he confesses that he has been disappointed: "My collection has been rather coolly received, and there has been no great rush of scholars to this fountain." A little disappointed, but with all his old courage and industry, he faces the evening. "Now is the time when all the lights wax dim."

For every student it must be of interest to follow the record of so great a learner and teacher, so enthusiastic and so painstaking. And by the way it may be interesting to compare the opinions of Jacob Grimm with those of his great contemporary Hegel. The men resemble one another in their vast ideals and their capacity for taking pains; and Hegel was, further, himself a student of literary history and especially of poetry. At first we may be inclined to say that he and Jacob Grimm divide the range of poetry between them; Hegel's poets are the tragedians, while for Grimm dramatic poetry is something like the devil;

1 Meine sammlung ist doch lau empfangen worden, und die forscher sind dieser quelle wenig zugetreten.

it is that mode of human thought most different from Nature-poetry, from the inspired original epic of the golden heroic age. Hegel speaks slightingly of the Nibelungen (though he respects Ossian); he looks like a champion of the classics against the barbarism of the North. But he is much more liberal than he sometimes appears, and more in agreement with the tastes of the brothers Grimm. He is fond of ballads; he names Fauriel's collection of Romaic popular songs; he has higher praise for the Arabian poems of the "Ignorance"; the Cid is one of his heroes; and his descriptions of the heroic age and of the age of chivalry show his talent as an abstractor of quintessence, as well as his sympathy with the literary fashions of his time, even with the Romantic School. Hegel died nine years before the Grimms came to Berlin.

Grimm's large additions to positive science seem at times like the result of chance. They came as a precipitate from the most extraordinary vague vapour of ideas a strange enthusiastic religion, the worship of an imaginary golden age. In details, the work of Jacob Grimm is sometimes as extravagant as the derivation of cheval from equus: Plato's Cratylus is no more antiquated in philology than some of the early papers of Jacob Grimm. But the cloud of his fancies and aspirations had fire and life in it; and the history of Jacob Grimm, his progress and his conquests, is a demonstration of the power of that great god Wish whom Jacob Grimm was the first to name.1 The moral seems to be Fay ce que voudras, when that counsel is rightly understood. It was never intended for any but honourable persons, and of such was Jacob Grimm, and Wilhelm his brother.

1 Deutsche Mythologie (1835), p. 99.

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XXXIII

ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF ART

PLATO in the Protagoras makes Socrates say that conversation about poetry and the meaning of poetry should be left to people who have not completed their education and are not able to converse freely. The vulgar like to dispute about the interpretation of the sayings of poets, who cannot come into the company to answer for themselves; men who have been well schooled prefer, in their conversation, to go on without the help or the distraction of poetry," each one in the company taking his turn to speak and listen in due order, even though they be drinking deep." To turn conversation into a wrangle about the interpretation of poetical passages is hardly less a sign of want of education than to bring in flute players in order to save the banqueters from the sound of their own voices. Socrates, before making this contemptuous speech, had criticised and explained a passage of Simonides in a way that shows how possible it is for a critic to maintain his freedom and speak his own mind while professing to draw out the hidden meaning of his author; how the sermon may be made a different thing from the text. The whole passage is characteristic of an age which has grown too old for poetry, which is determined to work out its own problems with its own understanding, not

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